2 Apr
2002
2 Apr
'02
12:39 p.m.
On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Wayne M. Smith wrote:
A) I never mentioned Linux in conjunction with DeCSS
B) Whose version of that story are you reading? DeCSS was Open
Source. I've NEVER seen a Windows version, I've SEEN the source
code, and I've SEEN it run on Linux. Not owning a DVD drive,
I've never needed it myself. I gave away my DeCSS T-shirt,
which has the DeCSS source printed on it under a Freedom Of
Speech banner.
C) Your weapons analogy still fails. Neither DeCSS nor anything like
it was ever necessary to duplicate DVD disks. Its *function*,
as well as its purpose, is the decoding of the header and volume
label info of a DVD-ROM, and the decryption and output of the
.vob file to stdout. That's _all_. You *could* use it to copy
a DVD to disk in unencrypted form, but that would be useless in
a mass-distribution piracy operation.
This thread has gone way, way afield of anything on-topic, so I
suggest, if we're going to pursue it, that we pick a newsgroup to post
in. Your call.
Doc
DeCSS was a
huge red herring. It was originally developed to _watch_
DVD movies, not _copy_ them.
The reason why something is developed is really not that relevant to how it may
ultimately be used -- we (the US) build weapons of
mass destruction as a deterrent to keep the peace, but they're clearly capable of
great evil. If you're referring to the that DeCSS
was developed because there was no Linux DVD player, this story is apocryphal. DeCSS is
a Windows-only executable file; there never
was a Linux version, and the claim that it was developed as a Windows file because Linux
didin't support the DVD file structure is
nonsense. Moreover, if you need the windows OS to decrypt a DVD, then you already have a
computer that can play the DVD.