The new copyright law in Finland makes it illegal to circumvent copy protections on a DVD or CD. Linux, being based on Free Open Source Software, doesn't have an official "accepted" DVD playing program, because DVD decryption software was never mean to be Free Open Source Software, but rather closed and secret, and this does not fit in with the FOSS way of thinking. The DVD playing programs in Linux use libdvdcss or something based on it, which is based on the original DeCSS program, which raised a big stink when it was released onto the Internet. It is open source. So any DVD watching involving an encrypted DVD (most of them) in Linux is circumventing the encryption. The same decryption process is used for ripping, which is also illegal.

It is also a crime to spread around source code or instructions for decrypting DVDs. So wearing a T-shirt with the source to qrpff is technically illegal.

A group of 8 people went and turned themselves in to the police recently for being criminals according to this law.

The Finland Linux Users Group FLUG is a bit concerned.

The new law was created by an ex Miss Universe, Tanja Karpela, who is the Minister of Culture in Finland.

Little do they know, they are punishing the most avid consumers of DVDs and CDs. I have a stack of DVDs half as tall as I am and a stack of CDs taller than I am.

Bummed in Finland,
Ekkume

qrpff
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/qrpff.pl

There is the law and then there is the enforcement of the law.

It is technically impossible to enforce a law forbiding people from viewing media on the media player of choice. As long as you are not broad casting the copyrighted works or selling them for profit, who cares which playback method you use to view the recordings.

This is true, and I agree wholeheartedly. However the point is that the fact that such a law exists is a problem. I can't think of any analogies at the moment, so use your imagination..

And the biggest concern is, what if your one of the lucky people that THEY want to make a example out of. I would recommend that you lobby and protest to your law makers regarding there uneducated decisions on making shut-ch a law.

Whilst you are right, there are plenty of more urgent targets in the Western world legal landscape, such as the various terror laws being drawn up everywhere...

This is ridiculous. So will VLC be illegal to download in Finland?

I am sorry I am from the USA. What are you refering to [/QUOTE]So will VLC be illegal {/QUOTE].. What is VLC?

VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Ahh, I see.... Thank you very much for explaining that to me. But WOW that a nice program Ill have to try it out here in the USA.

Depending on your distro alot of times its already on the cd/dvd

The USA already has laws like that. I use Suse and it comes without MP3 or DVD support. It's easy enough to get the support (so I've heard ) It does seem pretty silly that actually paying for the products and using them is more of a headache than downloading them.

Why can't you just give the link to Wikipedia and let it explain it all better?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player

By the way, I must say that this is very ironic, considering that Linux actually is from Finland

[QUOTE=EliasAlucard]Why can't you just give the link to Wikipedia and let it explain it all better?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player

He got the point didn't he?

Sure he did, but Wikipedia is SO AWESOME! :P

This IS an anti-terrorism law.

1. You use Linux therefore you must be a terrorist
2. You bypassed copy protection to watch legally-purchased DVD, so obviously you are a terrorist.

Isn't that how movie industry logic works?