"If I buy a legal copy of a movie on DVD, I should be able to watch that DVD on any DVD player, or under any operating system, anywhere in the world that I chose to."

What is right and what is legal aren't necessarily in the same subset.

Ah. after reading cragevil's comment. I think that my previous comment may have been a bit stupid. :)
It's just that I read somewhere that using something like libdvdcss was illegal. Obviously I'll have to check my facts before opening my mouth. (Or typing a comment like that. :D)

It just like you buy a car, you have the permit for the car. But you still to pay road tax in order to drive the car (or maybe car license)? DVD patern is own by somebody, DVD content is own by another party.

Regards,
Ks

You pay the 'road tax' to support the infrastructure, the road repairs, etc. I do not see how that pertains to DVD encoding

Sorry I should make my opinion more clear.

Actually not much difference, government own the road (Assume DVD pattern), you want to use the road then you need to pay road tax to government (You want to play DVD you must have the right to play it).

movie own by others people (assume car park from the shopping center), you need to pay car park fee in order to get park your car inside (You must purchase original movie for legal).

Before your reach shopping center, you must use the road(You must use legal dvd player). Even though you pay car park fee(You have the original dvd), you only have the right to use car park(You have the right to USE but you not own).

I think the DVD player license is cover by manufacturer, thats why we have no issue. But Linux developer probably don't solve the licensing issue from the DVD movie pattern owner.

Who know I day Macromedia flash come out same strategy and third party .swf file generator all have legal issue(vnc2swf, gnash and etc) :(.

I don't know much law and I just study little bit about Microsoft License and submit this post. Somebody please correct me.
Regards,
Ks

Sorry I should make my opinion more clear.

Actually not much difference, government own the road (Assume DVD pattern), you want to use the road then you need to pay road tax to government (You want to play DVD you must have the right to play it).

movie own by others people (assume car park from the shopping center), you need to pay car park fee in order to get park your car inside (You must purchase original movie for legal).

Before your reach shopping center, you must use the road(You must use legal dvd player). Even though you pay car park fee(You have the original dvd), you only have the right to use car park(You have the right to USE but you not own).

I think the DVD player license is cover by manufacturer, thats why we have no issue. But Linux developer probably don't solve the licensing issue from the DVD movie pattern owner.

Who know I day Macromedia flash come out same strategy and third party .swf file generator all have legal issue(vnc2swf, gnash and etc) :(.

I don't know much law and I just study little bit about Microsoft License and submit this post. Somebody please correct me.
Regards,
Ks

Watching DVD's in Linux is illegal in some countries. This is because Linux developers can't get their hands on proper technology, so they have to decode the DVDs to play them.

Distros such as GeeBoxX let you legaly watch DVDs, but they don't do much else.

There is, of course, no problem with paying royalties to the owner of the technology that you are using (eg a road tax). I do have a problem with the owner of that technology trying to restrict what you can do unnessesarily. For example, what possible difference can it make to the owner of a movie released on DVD if I watch it on a DVD player, Windows, Linux, providing I don't do anything illegal (eg make copies).

As for royalties for the owner of the DVD technology - I bought my DVD player legally. Presumably, some money was directed in his direction for the use of the DVD technology. If not, what is the problem with this idea? Then I can watch DVDs on my computer, regardless of OS.

--Ian

The problem is normally we purchase the DVD room for PC, not dvd player. And Linux don't have the right to become DVD player(with dvd decoder) unless the Linux vendor purchase some license from technology owner.

Am I right? What say if we donate some money to developer to solve this issue permanently? Can we?

Regards,
Ks

If I have paid for a dvd, then I have a right to watch it. Period. A company in another country cannot dictate to me what property I'm allowd to own (PC/dvd player) or what I can do with that property (run Linux/Windows/whatever). Companies that claim this right are terrorists. Copy protection is illegal, since I have a right to make a backup copy of my digital media, anyone who tries to stop me making a backup is violating my civil rights. Furthermore, copyright is a law and laws are supposed to be enforced and upheld by the state, not by individuals or organisations. A private foreign company usurping a country's power to make its own laws is surely nothing less than a declaration of war. This terrorism needs to be stopped.

Only in a police state. Here in old blighty the roads are owned by the people of this country. The government has no property of its own, it is merely the custodian of the people's property, until the next election.

USA might be the exception here. I think it is legal to use libdvdcss and watch legally obtained DVDs in most European countries at least and probably also in Australia judging from the music example earlier.
If I'm not mistaken one of the developers of libdvdcss is the Norwegian nicknamed DVD-Jon. He was prosecuted in Norway some years ago by the US film industry. He won the case because in Norwegian law, you have the right to play a DVD you have bought on any system you want.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't the film industry given up trying to stop libdvdcss now and effectively accepted the argument that cragevil quoted earlier? If I was the film industry I would concentrate on the illegal copying of DVDs.
But then the film industry might not be that sensible...

DVD is a format and a kind of disc storage technology. DVD is actually the wrong term for the format but i forget what it actually is. There is a consortium of individuals that own the format for encoding and decoding. Not even Microsoft has been able to get the rights to integrate a decoder into there operating system hence you need a player program that has obtained the permission to decode the format on the disk. It is not to prevent you from being able to watch your media as you do not own the rights to the content but only the physical media it self. This is just like if you buy a music cd you do not have the right to take the songs re master them put them on a new cd and then go out and sell them. This goes for operating systems too. Windows for example you have to purchase a cd key in order for you to have the right to use the operating system from Microsoft you do not own the operating system and Microsoft has the right to revoke your use of the software at any time for any reason. This is one of the reasons I use Linux as i OWN my own operating system.


Dvd decoders or libraries that decode the format without permission from the format copyright holders is illegal in the strict sense of the law. However there are loopholes to this as you can use a legal decoder to decode the content and change what type of format it uses to a freely available one. This is not illegal as long as you do not redistribute the media. This practice falls under the right to make legal backups of the physical media in which you own you are not changing the content.

The warning on movies ( the big FBI one ) is really mostly a scare tactic rather then a real enforceable thing. The laws that govern the extent to which a content copyright holder or format holder rights extend to are blurred and easily dismiss able in court. This is why several individuals have gotten out of copyright lawsuits.

So, who have the owner ship of this DVD decoder and encoder?

You are mostly right exvor, but when you buy a DVD you do have rights to the content, not only the physical media itself. When you buy a DVD or CD, you have the right to watch/listen to the content as many times as you want. You are also allowed to transfer ownership of the DVD or CD by trading or selling the physical media that the content comes on. DVDs and CDs are very simple in this way because they can be mostly treated like normal property.

The problem comes when you rip DVDs. What happens if you sell that DVD to someone? Then you still have the content on your computer, but not any rights to use it. This is the reason that people were so outraged when people started ripping DVDs. It just made DVD ownership much more complicated.

DVDs are now basically in the realm of software. Just like you need to follow the EULA with a peice of software, you are limited in what you can do with DVDs. The only problem is that it's taken too far. Once someone has the power to say that you shouldn't copy a DVD, they can also dictate everything else you do with it. Of course enforcing this is hard... enter online media and DRM. You can see why this is bad. It's against everything Linux is about.

Now some people might say that the open source model wouldn't work for movies, but think about it this way: even though people can save money by buying just DVDs, they still go to movie theaters. If people could do whatever they want with their DVDs, it wouldn't really affect the movies studio's profits. A movie theater is a service which people will still pay for no matter what. While the movie studio's would still need to restrict what movie theaters do with the movies (so that a movie theate couldn't just get the DVD and make $$$$$$ without contributing back to the studio), that's not really so bad considering the theaters are doing the equivalent of selling open source software. By selling liscenses to movie theaters and then distributing the movie itself with no restrictions and relying on contributions, the movie studios wouldn't do too bad.

So there is a specific format (format x) that is used to store the data (the movie) on the DVD medium. 'Format x' is copyrighted by someone and encrypted. The owners of 'format x' license the right to codecs that can unencrypt 'format x' so that it can be watched. DVD Player for Windows pays the owners of 'format x' a royalty and they now have the right to sell their DVD player and decode 'format x'. Freely available DVD players for Linux (as a rule) are not going to be paying this royalty and are therefore breaking the encryption to 'format x' illegally.

Am I wrong to assume that any DVD ROM comes with DVD playing software that has payed this fee to the 'format x' people. Of course, this DVD playing software will only play on a Mac or Windows, so even though I have payed the fee (when I purchased the DVD ROM) to the owners of 'format x', because I use Linux, I am still breaking the law?

Thanks,
Todd