Dvd use illegal in US under linux?
 

I was reading the "timeing is right for java desktop article at desktoplinux.com, and one paragraph stated this:

I don't quite understand this. I'm in the us, and I use my dvd player to watch dvds with mplayer and burn dvds, with no problems at all. I have never heard of it being illegal. So, is it true? Am I breaking the law by using my dvd player in linux?

Please use QUOTE tags, not CODE tags.

Yes fix post.

i never heard anything like that, but i wouldn't be surprised if it is, in the US almost everything is illegal..,,

Illegal???

Well, that's a complicated answer...

Technically, the DMCA prevents the breaking of any code intended to prevent access to a computer or other electronic device, or even talking about it.

However, copyright fair use exceptions have not been tested under this law. For instance, there was no litigation on whether it is legal to use a library that permits DVD playback on a Linux based machine, even though there are supposedly no signed Linux DVD players...

Downloading and installing the full version of Mplayer (as in gmplayer) complete with DVD playback would be an interesting test of the law.

I suspect that if a Court got a hold of a case where a Linux user downloaded the full version of gmplayer to playback DVDs on his/her computer, they would rule that was a fair use exception. I doubt that the MPAA would even bring such a case up. The negative press would be enough to cause a potential repeal of the DMCA.

i am not an attorney, and the following is only an opinion.

current copyright laws grant you fair use of what you have paid cold hard cash for.

DMCA laws state that oligarchy record labels have legal rights to extort the general public. the general public retain no rights in any media(ium) which the record labels cannot control directly or indirectly. this applies to educational use etc etc (we're not talking about file-sharing copyrighted materials, which is unethical and has always been illegal, we're talking about the removal of PRIVATE rights to the media(ium) purchased).

this legislation is in direct conflict with provisions in the US copyright code, case law, common sense, and equity. the wealthy oligarchies would have better representation in court (think deep pockets), but i'm not sure the greedy legislation would stand up to "fair use" laws.

the issue is illegal file sharing. the record labels are all to happy to sacrifice freedom to address their grievance. i'm ashamed our gov allowed it. my hope is that the gov identifies the difference between "fair use" and "illegal propagation of copyrighted material", and figures out a non-invasive way to address the latter without trampling justice, freedom, and other rights synonymous with open-source.

What would it take to build a legal DVD Player for Linux? Why are Windows DVD Players legal? Is it because they are closed-source? Then how about making a Linux player that uses a closed-source (non-free) codec to play DVDs?

Who wrote that? the SCO?

alot of good this comment is, next time supply something more useful!!

Fine. Allow me to elaborate. The original post looks like crap. It uses the CODE flags instead of QUOTE. It stretches the page out beyond the edge of my screen, so I have to scroll over to read the rest of it.

As for useful comments, does yours really have a point?

The issue is the CSS cypher that DVDs are usually encrypted with. The Linux decrypter routine (I use libdvdcss) was reverse-engineered, I think by reading the ROM from a commercial DVD player. The encryption is very simple.

The point of the encryption was not to make it hard to crack; it isn't. It was simply to make the act of cracking it illegal under the DMCA. It seems that with the DMCA the owners of copyrighted material wish not only to stop you copying it (fair enough) but also to control the means by which you access the material (not fair).

For there to be a legal DVD player for Linux, somebody would have to buy a licence to distribute a CSS decryption routine. This, I imagine, is beyond the means of most Linux software distributors.

y not just make DVD's without the css encryption?, i mean what is the point of encrytping DVD's when any DVD player can read it?, esp using a chipper that isn't even meant to be secure?, its obviously a waste of time and resources and computing power

Because the copyright holders are scum. Some DVDs are made without encryption, but just about any Hollywood movie will be encrypted.

It's a similar story with the region encoding. When films were distributed on video, the distributors were able to control when their works were released in which part of the world, as an accidental result of the varying UHF TV formats. The advent of DVDs threatened to destroy this control, with the prospect of one disc format for the whole world, just like compact discs. So they cooked up this stupid region encoding to kill that and somehow got it adopted in the DVD format specifications.

The other means of producing a signed (I won't say legal, since as an attorney, non-practicing but licensed to, I have issues with the DMCA) Linux DVD player would be to have a DVD developer release a DVD player for the general population that was Multi-platform, complete with the CSS decription algorithm libraries.

It's my opinion that too many people put too great an importance on whether or not an action is legal. I'm not talking about important laws here...just the silly ones like this. I can understand it in a business environment, considering the love that many have for litigation....but as an individual I really don't care whether or not I'm breaking a ridiculous law.
Illegal does not necessarily mean wrong. There are many American laws created with the sole purpose of protecting one's revenue, and a few of these laws are just silly.
Fortunately "fair use" is still applicable in many situations, and when/if "fair use" is cut out of print, it will still be implied. Making a copy of a CD for a friend (who would never have considered purchasing it otherwise) will never in my eyes be wrong, regardless of the rules. The same applies to viewing a movie that I legally purchased...I'm going to watch it by whatever means I choose, and no law is going to make me hesitate.
Civil disobedience (aka "ignoring the dumb rules")...nothing wrong with that.