The Committee for Economic Development on digital copyright [LWN.net]

The Committee for Economic Development on digital copyright

Posted Mar 4, 2004 9:12 UTC (Thu) by csamuel (subscriber, #2624)
Parent article: The Committee for Economic Development on digital copyright

I have one minor nit that I've never quite gotten my head around. If DeCSS was "created to play DVDs on Linux systems rather than as a piracy tool" as the quoted article says (and as seems to be an article of faith these days) then why was it created as an MS Windows executable rather than as a library for Linux ?

From Harvards Openlaw DVD/DeCSS Forum FAQ

1.1.1) What is DeCSS? What does it do?

 
DeCSS is an executable binary utility, written for Microsoft Windows. 
When you execute this program it displays a simple dialog box and two 
buttons. These buttons are labeled "Select Folder" and "Transfer".      
 
One button reads CSS-scrambled content from a DVD-ROM, and the other 
deposits unscrambled MPEG-2 video files to the user's hard drive. 
[...]

1.2.4) Was DeCSS written to be a component in the LiViD DVD Player?

 
[...] 
When DeCSS 1.1b was released on October 6, 1999, it was released in 
Microsoft Windows executable form only, but apparently source code was 
released privately to Fawcus. He mentions in the LiViD archives at this 
point that DeCSS 1.1b contained the LiViD CSS descrambling code in place 
of the original MoRE algorithm. Presumably each version of DeCSS that has 
since been released has contained the Fawcus routines that were written 
intentionally for the LiViD DVD player. 
 
Three weeks later, Fawcus posted a description of the CSS algorithm on 
his website, with the hope that others in the LiViD project would 
reimplement the algorithm using "clean room" methods. At this point 
DeCSS, the executable, had been in wide circulation for several weeks. 
 
So, to answer the question, there is no evidence that DeCSS itself - a 
Microsoft Windows interface surrounding the Fawcus descrambling code - 
was written to be in any way a part of the LiViD project. DeCSS is not a 
listed module of the LiViD player, nor is it included in the standard 
LiViD release package. Only the internals of recent versions, not written 
by MoRE, were written as part of LiViD. While the vital component of the 
CSS algorithm may have been supplied by the MoRE routines, no one has 
conclusively stated this at this time. 
[...]

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The Committee for Economic Development on digital copyright

Posted Mar 4, 2004 12:11 UTC (Thu) by haraldt (guest, #961) [Link]

Jon Johansen, who did this work, knew how to mock up a GUI in MSwindows, but not how to it in GNU/Linux. He was young, and not that experienced a programmer.
It was meant as a proof of concept, another small step in the creation of a free DVD utility set, not as much of a solution in itself.

Also of importance: Modern free DVD players don't use much (if any) of the code in this program. It's outdated, probably as it was meant to be.

The Committee for Economic Development on digital copyright

Posted Mar 4, 2004 15:55 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

It has been mentioned many times that at the time DeCSS was originally
written, Linux support for DVDs (specifically the UDF filesystem, I believe)
was poor and just not up to the task of creating a Linux version of the
program... So, just to test their theory and see if they were on the right
track to something that could work at all, they tried it on Windoze first...
Once they saw it worked there, they knew they could eventually do the same
thing on Linux, which WAS indeed the original intent... So, yes, I think it
IS fair to say that DeCSS was created as part of an effort to be able to
play DVDs on Linux... True, by itself it's not at all useful for that task;
but, it's merely one (very early) stage in the effort... The fact that it
runs on Windoze is just a necessary evil, given the situation at the time,
and the desire to immediately test their approach...