The illegality of playing DVDs on Linux (was Re: Interesting article)

[Alan Johnson]

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 8:30 PM, Benjamin Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:00 PM, Jon 'maddog' Hall <maddog at li.org> wrote:
> >>Not one Linux distro I've seen does a convincing job with consumer
> >>media, an absolutely basic requirement, and something we ought to be
> >>able to get right.
> >
> > Well, please ask the DVD people not to used royalty bearing patents in
> > their codecs, and encryption practices ...
>
> ...

>   The problem with "consumer media" is mostly
> political/legal/economic, not technical. There's a huge amount of
> money being spent to ensure that a small number of large companies
> continue to wield control of the field.  They're willing to spend that
> money because they are protecting an even huger amount of money.
> Linux can provide code, but it can't provide legality.  Nominally, the
> solution is to change the law -- write your congressperson, that sort
> of thing.  But again, lots of money is being spent to keep things the
> way they are.
>
>  Mass public outcry is required, and getting that looks to be
> difficult.
>

I believe it was this pod cast http://twit.tv/floss95 where I heard this
paraphrased quote: "Under DRM laws in the US, not only is it illegal to play
DVDs on Linux, but it is illegal to tell some one else how to do it."  So, I
can't speak to whether or not I've seen Ubuntu play DVDs very nicely if you
install one magical package from the repo.  And to be fair, I haven't tried
recently, so I would also not know if this is something that can still be
done, but I do believe there are some advantages, that may or may not be
related to this subject, to using distros provided by
organizations/companies based outside the US.

If some one feels compelled to listen to that episode (and I encourage you
all to do so), I would greatly appreciate if you would post the exact quote
here.

Fight the power!
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