[KLUG Members] Re: Movies? Weird!!! -- civil "trade secret" and criminal "DMCA" violations ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

--=-hkaZgjk35Aml1O9on3ew
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Tue, 2002-12-17 at 08:07, Vernon wrote:
> How do you know this?
> That statement seems a bit extreme.
> Is that to say that it is NOT illegal to play most DVDs on Windows? ... W=
hy?
> What is the reasoning behind such laws?

There is no licensed CSS code for Linux.

As such, any library/player on Linux that uses it is violating a "trade
secret."  Trade secret law is interesting.  One thing I thought I
learned in business law was that "trade secrets" were only enforcable
until an independent, 3rd party discovered it -- as was the case with
DeCSS.  I.e., you could only sue _if_ the secret was obtained by
coercing a privileged individual with the info.  That did not happen
with DeCSS.

But trade secret law is only a _civil_ matter.

What makes it "illegal" is the DMCA which makes it a _criminal_ act to
circumvent any copyright protection devices.  And that is what is
happening with DVD Joe (or whatever they are calling him now), the
original author of DeCSS.  He is being charged with a _crime_ under the
DMCA.

DeCSS isn't about trying to prevent copying of DVDs.  Anyone with a
Pioneer DVD-R(A) drive, or a pirate "stamping duplication" machine (like
some companies in China have) can make a 100% usable copy of a DVD-Video
disc.  But it is about control of the format.  I have discussed this at
length on other lists, so I won't do it anymore here.

I, however, am using "libcss" from VideoLAN ( http://www.videolan.org/
 ) CSS code.  It does not use DeCSS code, although its "crypto attack"
function probably uses the keylist that was obtained by DeCSS.  I don't
know personally.  I haven't looked into it.  I really don't care, all I
want to do is play DVDs on my Linux box, and that code allows me to.

Both MPlayer and Xine, probably others, use this library, along with
libdvd, to play DVDs.

> The people who sell DVD-ROM drives are not advertizing this very much

The DVD-ROM format has _nothing_ to do with DVD-Video.  In fact,
DVD-Video is really just a DVD-ROM from the standpoint of the files on
it.  The _files_ are encrypted, not the disk.

You don't need DeCSS to make a usable duplicate of any DVD-Video disc.=20
You only need it if you want to decrypt (or encrypt) files independently
of a licensed player.  Otherwise "duplicated" DVD-Video discs work
_fine_ in _all_ players and don't require DeCSS to make.

--=20
Bryan J. Smith, E.I. (BSECE)       Contact Info:  http://thebs.org
[ http://thebs.org/files/resume/BryanJonSmith_certifications.pdf ]
------------------------------------------------------------------
  The more government chooses for you, the less freedom you have.


--=-hkaZgjk35Aml1O9on3ew
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc
Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQA9/yi6DjEszaVrzmQRAtA0AJ0S2UpmIt18xWBQZ/8U3Rzb2+dpAwCgu7ms
J7S10RCUzS3zlGZw0qSD958=
=c1eO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--=-hkaZgjk35Aml1O9on3ew--