It's illegal to watch a DVD on Linux?

[Flexor the Mighty!]

...this is amazing. When I downloaded Xine and the libraries to decode DVD's so I can watch them on my computer I was informed that this breaks the DMCA and I must stop if I live in the US.

Just crazy.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

The DVD consortium requires a fee to get access to the decryption keys necessary to play a copy-protected DVD. The fee is 'per device' so you have to pony up for each physical DVD player (no big deal) or each piece of DVD player software you distribute (potentially big deal).

Since no one (to my knowledge) wants to pay $$ a pop to distribute a free software DVD player, and no company thinks they can make a profit selling one to Linux users, the only alternatives are free players that use the DeCSS code to break the copy protection.

The same will be true for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, except that presumably their copy protection is much better than the pathetic stuff that was used for standard DVD, making (free) Linux players less likely.

On the one hand, it's kinda stupid at this point to insist on the fee, since the cat is pretty much out of the bag. OTOH, given how a large segment of the Linux community can be such jerks about god-forbid actually paying a few bucks for a program, I can see why no commercial vendors have bothered.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

So does VLC pay this fee I wonder? They make a free media player for all types of files, including DVD, for just about every OS out there. I use it instead of Windows Media Player on my WinXP box, I used to use it on my Mac, and I have it on my Ubuntu box, but xine works better on Linux for me.

And every Linux distro I've messed with has had the CSS libraries and media players packaged for download so it's not stopping Linux users from watching the DVD's they paid for in any event. I'm sure that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will be cracked quick enough.

Well I'm a criminal now. I watched Sopranos Season 3 on it last night.
*cue Judas Priest*
breakin' the law, breakin' the law!

On a side note Ubuntu 6.06 rocks! I'm not sure if getting on the Vista train is going to be in my future. I need to install it on my AMD64 system and see if, and how fast my games run under Wine. If the performance hit is minimal I may have to wipe my XP install and put 6.06 on that box as well.

 

[XCorvis]

I think it's possible to legally use DVD playing software you already own. I seem to recall something about pointing something to the DVD player on your windows partition, and it uses the decryption key there. Since you've already paid for it, I think that it is supposed to be legal. (Of course, the DMCA make a lot of things illegal that seem like they should be OK, so who knows anymore...)

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I don't have a Windows Partition on my Linux machine, but ultimately it doesn't matter. This "law" doesn't really concern me other than the broader implications of such things. I hate being told how I can access media I paid for.

 

[Asmor]

Illegal? Absolutely.

Unethical? Not at all.

You payed for the DVD, why shouldn't you watch it?