Why Linux has problems with proprietary multimedia... (was: Interesting article)

Benjamin Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Sat Mar 6 19:11:04 EST 2010


On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
<rozzin at geekspace.com> wrote:
>> Apple and Microsoft have paid up royalties on these things ...
>
> ... which has me wondering: how does Ubuntu get away with shipping all
> of the stuff necessary to do DVD-authoring!?

  While I've never touched Ubuntu's "DVD authoring" stuff, I can add
some additional speculations, in addition to maddog's very cogent
points:

  At a lower level, a DVD is just a filesystem.  They don't have to be
restricted using anyone's special crypto, nor do they have to use any
particular codec.  In order for them to play in a consumer appliance
which implements "DVD Video" and *only* DVD Video, the files have to
have particular names and use particular codecs, but they still don't
need special crypto.  Many consumer appliance these days implement
additional codecs, meaning the files just have to particular names if
you don't care about broad compatibility.  Your DVD will not meet "DVD
Video" studio requirements, but presumably you're not interested in
that, you just want the damn thing to play.

  It's *playing* the discs from the big studios that requires all the
encumbered crypto and codecs.

  Legal technicalities may also enter into play.  Sometimes the
originator is technically in a non-US jurisdiction where they can
publish something without paying fees.  Sometimes it's legal to
distribute but not to use.

-- Ben


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