DeCSS; Was Re: The Future End of Classic Computing

From: Doc <doc_at_mdrconsult.com>
Date: Tue Apr 2 12:39:50 2002

On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Wayne M. Smith wrote:

> > 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.

  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
Received on Tue Apr 02 2002 - 12:39:50 BST