Jon Johansen returns to court [LWN.net]

Jon Johansen returns to court

Posted Dec 4, 2003 11:12 UTC (Thu) by gyles (subscriber, #1600)
Parent article: Jon Johansen returns to court

My understanding was that Jon was not an author of DeCSS, he wrote a windows front end.

As there are plenty of ("legal") windows DVD players available, that ought to change the situation.

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Jon Johansen returns to court

Posted Dec 4, 2003 16:12 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

Well, the original DeCSS was a Windoze app... Jon helped write it, along
with a couple others, I believe... But, yes, he has said that one of the
anonymous others is the one responsible for the actual decryption code,
which is the heart of the program...

And, frankly, I don't see why it should change matters one bit... He has
stated that it was created as a Windoze app for the simple reason that
Linux's UDF support wasn't yet up to the task at the time... It was a
sort of proof-of-concept test app, to see if their approach was sound...
But, even if it were created solely to be used as a Windoze app, I don't
see the problem... So what if there are other legal players available??
Why should that mean that any person that wants to shouldn't be allowed to
create another one?? I don't see why any self-appointed authority should
be able to tell anyone what kind of code they can and can't write...
Besides, unlike the officially licensed 'legal' players, DeCSS can be used
to get get around stupid stuff like required viewing of ads and junk like
that, too... Which is a perfectly legitimate use for it, all by itself...

Jon Johansen returns to court

Posted Dec 5, 2003 16:34 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Giles refers to the conclusion of law mentioned in the article:

The court, however, decided that, if you buy a DVD with a film on it, you have bought the right to access that film.

Linux users often apply that conclusion to DECSS by reasoning that if you're a Linux user, you've bought the right to access the film on Linux, and outlawing DECSS would deprive people of their rights. Ergo, writing DECSS must be legal.

So if DECSS were a Windows-only program, that would completely obliterate that argument. So yes, it's originally being a Windows program changes things. There are a dozen reasons it doesn't change things enough to make a difference, but it does change things.

Jon Johansen returns to court

Posted Dec 6, 2003 19:38 UTC (Sat) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

No, I don't see any way in which that argument is "obliterated"... The
legal ruling quoted makes no mention of Linux, or any other OS... It says,
"you have bought the right to access that film"... Period... However and
wherever and under whatever OS you like... If you want to access it under
Windoze instead of Linux, well then so be it... You might be accused of
having poor taste in OS's, but that's not a crime... ;-) And, no, it doesn't
matter that you already COULD access it under Windoze, because you couldn't
FULLY access it, in any way you might choose to... And, you have a right to
do so...

Also, remember it was an open source app, so the fact that it happened to be
initially targeted at Windoze does not make it any less useful for Linux
users, either... They were able to take the code, and adapt it into various
apps and libs, which still exist today, and are widely used... So, DeCSS
indeed WAS very important to Linux users, and DID ultimately allow them to
access their DVDs under Linux... Regardless of the OS it was initially
targeted at for testing/proof-of-concept purposes...

To make a comparison, would you claim that OpenSSH isn't important to Linux
users just because it was originally targeted at OpenBSD instead of Linux??
No, that's just silly... Same thing here...