Css

[nonewmsgs]

oh yes content scrambling system the power to control the universe and how you watch your dvds.

i was in college when DeCSS came out. i still remember the free speech blue ribbons and frivilous lawsuits, napster betas and the digital milenium copywrite act. DeCSS was on tshirts and everywhere anyone would want to go. inexpensive dvd recorders didnt exist and the expensive ones could copy bit for bit anyway. the big argument was linux users should have the right to watch a dvd movie they legally own.

about a week ago or so i was looking at a site that sold all those fancy restricted codecs. is the dvd playback codec simply that little C program and that is what the company wants a license on? and i wondered if i legally have that license. i have gotten OEM dics with nero and powerdvd from buying hardware so dont i actually own the usage of that codec for each disc i have?

just wondering...

[Hendrixski]

when it comes to technologies lke that just assume that they're trying to screw you... so it's probably not enough to have the license to use it, you probably also have to use their software, and bend over for them and grab your ankles.

[Polygon]

what they are selling is a licence basically. Cause for manufactures to sell a DVD player, they have to pay money to whoever ot allow them to sell devices that let you watch DVD's. This is why you cannot get a program to watch DVD's for free legally, becuase you have to pay money for the licence (which is included if you buy a program to watch DVD's for your computer, or buy a DVD player)

For me, i have the decss codecs installed. It might be illegal for me, but i do know that a copy of WinDVD 4 came with my motherboard, which is a program to "legally" watch dvd's on a windows XP computer, which i do have installed on the extra hard drive (since my computer is dual boot). If you got something similar, or if the nero program you were talking about lets you watch DVD's, then your fine. If you do happened to get sued ( which i highly doubt as the movie industry has basically given up trying to restrict dvd piracy, but has moved on to like hd-dvd and bluray), im sure there would be some argument that you own a license to watch dvd's, but its the companies fault for not having a linux version so you have to resort to illegal methods or something.

and you dont need a license for each dvd that you watch. if you have a program that does it or a dvd player then thats the only license you need