Watching DVDs in Linux HOWTO

IceFox writes "Last week CSS Disk encryption was cracked. Soon after the data encryption was cracked. With some hagling I got everything working and was able to watch DVDs in Linux. Sound, Video, the works. I wrote up a how to for anyone else that cares to do it." Its not quite ready for prime time. No sound and vid at the same time. Update by roblimo: Jens Axboe sent a link to his page, which contains additional Linux/DVD info.

Missing the point

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I think everyone here is missing what DVD encrytion is all about. IIRC the movie studio's don't give a damn whether you copy thier product or not. The idea behind encrypting the data is so that you can't make an exact duplicate of the movie. You can copy the thing as much as you want. The movie producers problem is that with the ability to digitally copy almost anything there is no degradation, a 20th generation copy is just as good as the 1st generation copy. With DVD we now have the ability to have almost the same experience at home as we do in the theater. This is not a copy protection issue, but rather a picture quality issue. If anyone has read the copyright notice at the start of the movie,instead of fast forwarding through it, you'll note that you can copy the movie for your own usage as much as you want, as long as it is not for financial gain.

So just to state the obvious, copy to your hearts content, just don't expect the same quality as the origional

Re:DVD = Damned Video Decoding

The Matrix DVD isn't buggy, rather the players themselves arn't up to spec (ie: the manufacturers cut features to make a shipdate, because "who will ever use that overlay feature?").

If the disc were buggy all of the players would exibit the same problems. Seeing how one thing is broken on one player, while another is broken on another indicates (to me) the player is broken in these instances.

For what it's worth the Panasonic A-110 is one of the few players I've seen that play it properly.

I'm still impressed that they used every last byte that the disc could hold... all 4.3gigs :).

Re:Reasons not to use Linux

Componentisation with ActiveX and COM? So they are the end-all, be-all of component technology, using something else is not an option?
We have lots of complete IDEs. RAD tools aren't that common, but IMHO they suck anyway. Xemacs is a great IDE. Then there are KDevelop, Code Crusader, CodeWarrior, GNUpro, xwpe, RHIDE, and probably a lot of other things that I don't recall at the moment. Exactly what is it that Visual Studio has that these are missing, beyond GUI builders?
As for configuration, why do we need a registry? A registry is in no way necessary for GUI config tools, so that's not an argument.
A more stable XFree86 would be nice, but given that it has crashed 4 times in 5 years for me, it's not that huge an issue. And with a bit of luck, XFree86 4 might be more stable.
A decent web browser we definitely need. And I think Mozilla will provide us with one, though it's a while till that's finished.

This is going to get faster, real soon.

From what I've heard, the decoder doesn't support the YUV conversion stuff in many modern graphics cards yet. So the code is pretty fast, for not-really-optimized C. So when the Xfree86 people come up with an extension to support hardware-based YUV conversion, things are going to get lots better with any format that requires a YUV conversion pass to play.

And by the way, you can pretty much forget about $free{"beer"} decoder card software; from what I've heard, the DVD license comes on a per-developer fee and a hefty NDA. Which means that even if Creative wanted, they couldn't release any critical parts of the DVD "standard", even if the cat is already out of the basket.

Re: mfrs *CAN'T* be locked out!

Actually 3 cryptoanalytical attacs against the various CSS ciphers have been produced in the last week alone.

1) 2^^16 attack on the CSS cipher itself Requiring 6 known plaintext bytes [openprojects.net]

2) A 2^^17 attack on the key generation, that will yield a deluge of player keys in a matter of minutes ( such as the randum nubers ). read here [openprojects.net]

3) Finaly A third crack that will decrypt a DVD without even knowing a single player key. This attack [openprojects.net] is more complex (2^^24)but will give a valid key in less than 20 seconds on a decent machine.

In short the CSS system was poorly designed, and has now been thuroughly been demolished.

Actually, you can...

use video and sound simultaneously. It just requires a higher end machine or dual processor config...

This is just because the code at this point is not optimized. It will be soon, since a large chunk of the interested geek communities (sound & video geeks + computer nerds) overlap...

Re:Project list

Well, this is all good and great, but we have a lot of data streams we have to break still :)

-Quick time came up a few weeks ago on slashdot.

I seem to recall that a QT/AVI player on the Amiga had a radius cinepak decoder and a CYUV decoder, in source. Although the formats that people would most desire are still the intel indeos... Yes, there are the xanim linkable files, but reverse engineering ain't fun.

-We need to come up with a good GPLed VCD player (I can't find any, youknow of one?)

I'd hack the SDLmpeg code myself to do this, if I knew something about the VCD format :-) After all, it's all in the headers, right? MpegTV (an evil capitalist piece of proprietary chicken poo) does this just by parsing the headers and separating the audio/video stream, IIRC.

-console based Real-Audio receiver that can save to .wav or .mp3 or something

Uhh... Realaudio sucks, compared to an equal bitrate (equal hz, too) LAME-encoded mp3 stream. IMO of course.

Re:HDTV DVDs - The next problem in 4~6 years...

quite right that current dvd doesn't support hdtv resolutions. But it's just a scaling problem. DVD's are usually encoded at 480p (480x640 frames @ 30 fps). Highest HDTV is 1080x1920 progressive or about 19.3 Mbps or 2.4 MBps (Most broadcasts will be in 720p which is only 8.8 Mbps) By comparison, my 10x DVD-ROM does 13MBps.

Cut & Paste does not "work great"

I have to disagree with you on the cut and paste thing. I'm on google.com and my search didn't pan out too well. Ok, I'll try altavista. I select the text in the search field, go to altavista in the same window, middle click in the search field and what happens? The same thing that was in the box in Kentucky Fried Movie: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Oh well, I can just type in the same text all over again.

Now, I've finally found a working url to q3test 1.08. I've used "copy link location" in Netscape's rmb menu to get the url into the clipboard and I'm going to paste it into a wget command line. Now, I'm going to be doing some X development and I'm afraid I'm going to crash X so I'll need to run wget under nohup in an xterm or in the console. I want to watch the download progress so I'll do it in the console. CTRL-ALT-F3, type "wget ", middle click. What happens? Some shit I selected in the console earlier and contains a load of newlines is pasted, causing wget to try download some garbage and the string "rm -rf /" (that happened to be leftmost on the screen in the garbage I had pasted earlier (presumably a copy of some haX0r digest)) to be executed as a command.

Fortunately I'm not one of those lesser beings that do everything as root.

Incidentally, the reason I'd selected that block of text is that I wanted to paste it into jed, running in another console. Guess what. That didn't work either!

BTW, what are the universal cut, copy, and paste keypresses that work in almost all programs, X or console? What is the ubiquitous method of selecting text with the keyboard?

"Cut and paste works great here w/ all apps... select w/ left mouse button and paste w/ the middle one" is an example of what we pride ourselves of not doing: sweeping problems under the rug instead of fixing them.
--

Re:Hardware Decoders...

Unless DVD decoders get very cheap ($5-10) it's better to use the CPU to do it. For several reasons:

1- Take that $50 you'll spend on a decoder and put it towards a faster CPU. It'll not only let you do DVD with less of a strain on the system, it'll speed up everything else.

2- Software decoders can be free.

3- Software decoders can be upgraded.

4- Software decoders can be portable across platforms.

5- Hardware takes up space, even a single chip is precious in the land of tiny laptops.

The only reason hardware decoders exist now is because CPU's weren't *quite* able to keep up. Now they are.

Some things need to have special-purpose hardware, like 3D video cards. DVDs do not. The frame rate won't ever need to increase. The resolution will stay the same.

I read about it...

I just read how DTCP works... Potentially hazardous, except one thing. If the CA private key is compromised to a small group of people before a new CA key can be distributed, the the entire system would be lost to that group of people if they found means to transmit a new CA public key to the rest of the boxen. At that point every box would be at the hands of people of unknown intent, who might redesign the system or (worse) destroy the entire sysem by contaminating it with massive "Certificate Revocations". Immediately at that point, millions of lawsuits would force the manufacturers to repair the damage, would force the DTLA out of business, and inevitably destroy any future chance for "Content Protection" systems to be developed and implemented due to the incredible consumer outrage and economic disaster for the technology companies employing it. This will forever be a danger of a CA system, which is only secure for the limited time it takes to break the CA key. When the CA key size is takes small enough time to break before a new CA key is issued.. Trouble.

Hey, we're just trying to view purchaced movies

It is wrong that the movie industry was preventing me from playing my copy of a movie how/where I wanted to.

I wish the record/movie industry would learn.
COPY PROTECTION IS ONLY ANNOYING.

Dual cassette recorders didn't kill music.
Two VCR's didn't kill movies.
MP3's won't kill CD's(yet).

Though all these probably do serve to keep the industry more honest in pricing.

And BTW, I do have unencrypted DVD's. I'm not copying those or posting them on the web either.
There's more issuses that prevent this:
Download/upload time, HD space
Honesty

You're making the same mistake.

When will people realize that JUST because its always been done that way in the past means it CANNOT BE DONE DIFFERENTLY IN THE FUTURE.

The telephone obsoleted the telegraph. Many people lost their jobs, many telegraph companies lost their only source of money. Do we still lament their passing?

JUST BECAUSE the current distribution methods of media won't give the CURRENT POWERS their money in the future. doesn't mean that there won't be alternatives in the future.

So what if the era 100-million-dollar movie ends? So what if the era of MGM or Paramount or Disney as film companies ends? So what if the era of the railroads ended? So what if the era of the Telegraph ended? As long as there is demand, there will be a replacement. Its safe to say that there will always be a demand for entertainment.

``I propose that to save the critically important telegraph industry we must make it illegal to transmit voice electronically over any wire.''

Or how about:

``I propose that to save the critically important post office, we must make it illegal to transmit any message electronically over a wire domestically.''

``I propose that we immediately discount that new foolish idea that some legistlators are proposing, called 'copyright', as it will let tyrannical authors prevent bookmakers from making books.''

Or, what was that one about british candlemakers protesting about how the Sun was screwing up their business?

The future is different from the past, just because its the past doesn't make it better, doesn't make it the only way that works.

HDTV DVDs - The next problem in 4~6 years...

In a few years, aren't DVDs & players going to be replaced by HDTV versions of the same thing?

If so, what's keeping the them from working out a scheme that's exponentially more difficult to break?

If I'm missing something, let me know...

Linux DVD patch confusion

After having read the many comments here, it's apparent that there is some confusion with regards to what patch you need for what kernel and what type of drives it works on. Let me attempt to clarify that a bit.

The original DVD patch was done by Andrew T. Veliath and this is the patch linked on the HOWTO page. While it only worked on ATAPI drives, his interface and structure was good and I decided to integrate this in the standard Linux kernel but in a bus independent way. Current 2.3 kernels contain this code and it works equally well on ATAPI as well as SCSI drives (which is an important point, IMO).

In summary, if you are running a recent 2.3 kernel you are all set and there is no need to patch your kernel. If you are on a 2.2 kernel, get the patch from my page to get support for both ATAPI and SCSI drives.

http://www.kernel.dk

Something useful..

..would be a multimedia-oriented linux distro. Good stuff to include would be MP3 players/encoders, WAV players/recorers, MIDI sequencers, various video players, and of course a fully functional DVD player. It would not be necessary to include most of the various server programs and such, since it would be oriented towards MM and the idea would be to have the system do the best it could.

Re:Minimum specs for sound/video?

Min specs call for a 600Mhz proccesor(at least), because the Mpeg player is just a pixal pusher. It is highly unoptimized. Doing just video you can do it on a 450 (that is what my box is), but not a 300 and soudn works on 300.

Re:Minimum specs for sound/video?

The page recommends 350mHz with 128M RAM for video alone, 600mHz for video and audio (there are software decoders for Windows that require significantly less horsepower simply because the software is more optimized). There are not yet any decoder cards that work with Linux. Another requirement that is not mentioned in the HOWTO is that you must be running a 16-bit X server.

Re:Why would you want to?

A raw DVD can be 9GB That is way to much for the average user, heck jsut about everyone. And with this program it is stupid to copy the raw data cause it wont work anyway. The only way to copy it would be with a DVD recorder and do bit/bit copy. Oh by the way thoughs are $17,000. Oh and your average DVD is $14.95

Re:Which DVD Drive?

The HiVal ones that suck int he disk are good. :) Just about any drive will work. As long as it can be seen as a normal drive it will work fine (i.e. you should ahve no problems with a perticular DVD drive)

Re:mpeg2player

The actual name of the package is nist. It's here [germany.net] or in the LIVID cvs server. I recommend the binary version from the web page, it's a bit difficult to compile right now.

What the DVD How-To says

Since it took me several tries to get through - /. effect and all, I took the liberty of copying the howto from the aforementioned page.

linuxdvd.webjump.com/"

************************************************ **
This comes from the URL listed above and is not my
own personal work.
************************************************ **
To watch a DVD film in Linux you should follow the following steps (to complete the hack, as in challenge, not crack!).

1) Get the DVD encryption kernel patch from http://atv.ne.mediaone.net/linux-dvd/ It is the file "linux-dvd-2.2.12.1.diff.gz"
LOCAL MIRROR
Insert it into the 2.2.13 kernel with the command "patch output.vob

10) Play the Movie.
mpeg2player -vob -f output.vob
(use the option -na for no sound)
(use the option -nv for no video)

11) You can use ac3dec to just play the sound if you want.

/*********************************************** ****************/

Comments:

You will not be able to play both video and sound in the current configuration unless you have some sort of a high end system. Min
requirements would have to be a 350Mhz for just sound or Video. (At least 128MB mem) Min Req for both sound and video would have to
be somewhere around a 600Mhz. The highest I have tested it on is a 450. The reasoning behind this is that the code is very very new and
hasn't yet been optimized at all. I have no clue as to dual system.

There is only one button, so to say. That is PLAY. Once you start a film you have to quit the program to end it! Even then, you have to
have the vob files lined up. You could stream them from the cd-rom to the decoder to the player, but that would require a insane system.
And mpeg2player doesn't do streaming yet ( | ), but we would all appreciate it if someone would simply submit a patch to the author that
would allow it.

There is no Menu functionality whatsoever. You can only view it in DVD size 769*239 (something like that). That is how big it is on the
screen. You can't get Subtitles or any of the other fun stuff. You can't grab any or the sub picture or handle the navigation at all.

At some point shortly (MAYBE) a lot of this will be merged together to form a software backend for the Linux DVD API. [link]. Thus
you will be able to use a player (any player) to play the movie without having to do all of this. But that is a long way down the road to have
this software work in full. The Linux-DVD API is being developed by the DVD hardware group who will be releasing hardware decoders
around Christmas that support that API. And then you will not need this software at all. Other groups will also be coming out with a fully
functional (and much faster compared to todays hack) software decoder within the turn of the millenium , that will support everything that a
DVD does.

Full screen does not work, nor can you resize the window.

Please do not post silly comments to the mailing list. When this gets on slashdot please use the feedback on slashdot to handle any
minor issues that you will have. Please do not badger the authors to make bug fixes or to do something. These people have been working
at it for a long time and will do it when they see fit. PLEASE debate the ethical side of this on slashdot and NOT on the newsgroup.
Thanks.

For all those out there that thinks that this is a wonderful chance to copy the DVD, think again. Yes, you do have full access to the drive
and you would be able just copy the files somewhere else. The only thing is that you need somewhere to copy it too. The only place to put
it is on a DVD-RAM. And that is around $25 for a disk. The real DVD is $15 to $20. So it is quite silly to copy it to DVD-RAM. Also
you simply copy the decrypted files you won't be able to run it as a DVD at ALL. You get funny video, or really weird shit, but none of the
DVD features at all. This hack was NOT meant as a DVD-RIPPER. And it is almost the exact opposite of that. There are windows
programs that are designed for that and those are the people that you should be yelling at about this.

To be MP3, are the movies we see

It's quite inevitable that, as the exponentially exploding storage devices become suitable to encompass full motion video, and bandwidth opens enough to exploit isosyncronous transfers, the film industry will be in the place of the recording industry. Where would MP3's be just ten years ago when 3-4 of them filled a hard drive; is that not the ratios of movies now?

And truth be told, this bothers me none. The multimillion dollar movie does not help my world at all -- rather the contrary, instead of promoting my health, education, or well being in any way, shape, or form, the Hollywood giants get bigger, the recording industry expands, the money eater eats money, and someone whose daddy was rich, gets richer. And what good are patents, when they directly inhibit a healthy economy by promoting stagnation and monopolies. What good are copyright laws that prevent modern Disney films from being referenced in a text book from which I wish to learn.

What good is music I cannot listen to. And why must the recording industry insist on making people famous, despite their obvious lack of talent, and thereby truncating any forwards my society has fought for local, true, non-mass entertained culture. I say let MP3's thrive, and so will our choice in music, and let true popularity be shown.

And of movies? Movies make money from commercials, food companies, advertising agencies, theatres, rental outlets, and royalties. How much money do they need? Good movies make good money, as they should. But I have been to countless bad movies, whereby my spent money has left me with only the return of bitterness or exhaustion, frustration or sadness. Whomever made the movie, makes their, in my opinion of the movie, undeserved dollar. Is this fair? No.

Then what would be fair? I say let me copy DVD's, let me copy MP3's, let me have that moment of entertainment, without worrying about some rich person's pocket money. I have enough issues with money not to have to think about someone else's whenever I seek to be entertained.

At some point of earning money, I conclude, the possession of more money is fundamentally wrong.

Re:ripping

How do you mean?

DVD's have a few forms of protection in CSS authentication and encryption, but both have been cracked for a while now although only recently has some source code been made available to the public.

programs like DeCSS and DOD SpeedRipper (both windows proggies) have been able to extract the .VOB files (Video OBject -- mpeg2 streams) from dvds for a while and from there it's not a difficult process to convert to MPEG1 for the vcd "scene" .. as is evident by the number of DVD ripped movies available on the net ..

I guess what i'm saying is this; the law has been flaunted for a while now, it's just that finally people who have a legitimate and legal right to view their own dvd's will finally be able to do so under linux.

What i really can't wait for is for one or two big hardware decoder manufacturers to release some programming specs so we can have hardware assisted playback .. software decoding is soo slow.

-Iain Wade

Project list

Well, this is all good and great, but we have a lot of data streams we have to break still :)
-Quick time came up a few weeks ago on slashdot.
-We need to come up with a good GPLed VCD player (I can't find any, youknow of one?)
-console based Real-Audio receiver that can save to .wav or .mp3 or something
So while we have a way of watching dvds now, we still have a lot more work that needs doing before we can do everything other OSs can.

Re:Hardware Decoders...

1- But I don't want to replace my system, dual PPro 150's, 128MB RAM, nice case, PC Power & Cooling power supply, none of it will work in a new system, and I am happy enough with it now.

1a-a hardware decoder will always be less of a strain on the system than doing it in software. DMA from the drive to the card, and from the card to your video card. Shouldn't eat more than a few % of your cpu.

2-I cannot argue with that, IF you have a fast enough cpu. In a GPL sense, not as long as there are patents on any part of it, and I expect there are.

3&4-well, yeah.

5-hey, and they don't take a PCI slot anyways. But I'm not replacing my Libretto any time soon either. And I bet hardware is easier on your battery. If you have the space, why not use hardware?

There is a place for hardware decoders, yeah, next summer, when I upgrade to a dual 1ghz Athlon system, software will be great, but until I get around to it (and it may be longer than that), hardware is the only way for me to watch it. Well, when it finally works under Linux.

Re:Legality of the software?

The stuff is trade secret and not patented. This is where the fuzzy line comes into play. It doesn't need to be cracked then technicly, just figured out.

DVD = Damned Video Decoding

Ohmigod, Ohmigod, Ohmigod!!!

Can you tell I'm excited? Here's the fourm to say what I need to say. FUCK YOUR ENCRYPTION! Does anyone remember when we thought this was impossible, and that even if it weren't, it would need a hardware decoder? Well, the Linux-DVD team has proven them all wrong.

Oh, and any posts about the "ethics" of this are pointless to say the least. When you pay for a DVD, you pay for the right to watch it, and enjoy it. Should you be penalized if you aren't using Windows to view it?

I love you Tux, I love you Linux-DVD team, I love you Slashdot.

By the way, I heard about people using their DVD drives under Linux (for data DVDs) back in Janurary. I never thought I would see the Matrix playing in an X-Window.

Re:To be MP3, are the movies we see

Well that's horribly selfish way to look at it. When you say "Let MP3s thrive", I'm assuming you mean the pirating of MP3s because you also seem to want to be able to copy them (and DVDs) to your hearts desire, regardless of the wishes of the people who produced them.

I don't really care if you have to spend more money than you'd like to, to get a CD you want. That's life. Yes, major labels have hideously overpriced the cost of CDs, but it's still your choice whether or not to buy them. Look, I'm all for the MP3 format, and I love to see artists distribute their content over the internet. What I can't stand, however, is when people decide that it's okay for them to pirate music that wasn't distributed by it's creators for free.

It's theft, plain and simple. I know that everyone thinks of the industry as being the big bad guy, and maybe they are. That doesn't make it okay for you to steal from them though. If you do, then you're just as bad as they are. Just because you don't like a musician or a company doesn't make it okay for you to violate their right to intellectual property. They can charge whatever they damn-well like for their products.

Look, it's not like music/movies are something you HAVE to have. If you don't want to pay their price then vote with your feet: take you business elsewhere. But don't reduce yourself to the level of a theif by pirating their material. It's unacceptable in any media: music, movies, software, or whatever.

If pirating movies and music becomes a wide-spread practice (right now MP3s aren't quite as ubiquitous as they could be) then the movie and music industries will have to hike their rates for people who actually have a conscience. And if those people can't pay the price then said industry will be shut down. Period. If people aren't willing to pay for movie, then no one is going to spend 100 million on special effects to create it.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

All I care about is the folly of "regional DVDs"

I'm glad of these breakthroughs mostly because, as it stands, a DVD I buy in France can't be played with an American DVD player. If the addage is true that information should be free (as in freedom), then this is a terrible thing. It's especially bad since many films are not available outside their own regions--for example, there's a "director's cut" of the movie called in America *The Professional*, which is called *Leon: version integrale" which is only available in Europe. The American version of the film is fluff, but the French version is beautiful--they won't ever release it in the U.S. because 13-yr.-old Natalie Portman (Queen Amidala in her latest role) asks Leon to sleep with her, and though he refuses he does take her out to help him in his job as a hitman and teach her the ropes. None of that happens in the U.S. censored version. That's just one version. Now we're closer to breaking down the barriers of film-industry censorship, and that's a great thing. Thanks to the hackers and code-breakers who did this work. Thanks a lot.

Re:DVD = Damned Video Decoding

Oh by the way the Matrix has a differnt code that isn't int he source yet.

Here is the number:
{0x28, {0x53, 0xd4, 0xf7, 0xd9, 0x8f}};


or for the codeers:
struct player_key player_key = {0x28, {0x53, 0xd4, 0xf7, 0xd9, 0x8f}};

DVD crypto evilness: mfrs can be locked out!

Read the description in NTK [ntk.net] of how the crypto on a DVD is organised: the whole disk is encrypted with a single random key, then the key is itself encrypted several times, once for each DVD manufacturer. Your DVD player will have only one of these manufacturer master keys built in, so the corresponding encrypted key needs to be on the disk for you to read it.

The nasty bit is this: the idea was that if a given key is leaked, they simply stop using it on newly pressed disks. Bang: the key in *your* brand of DVD player was leaked, so now neither you nor anyone else with a player from that manufacturer can play new disks. This threat has never been carried out.

Fortunately, they screwed up the crypto: master keys can be brute forced in a few days. Basically DVD locking is dead; they'd have to come up with a forward-and-backward incompatible "DVD Plus" format to rescue things now.

However, this is so far the industry's best effort at a universal copy-resistant format; as the tide turns our way, it might hopefully be their last.
--

Whoa boy...

And truth be told, this bothers me none. The multimillion dollar movie [sic] does not help my world at all

Maybe you don't care about the movie industry (which makes me wonder why you have such a strong opinion on it), but personally, I like to watch movies. Big budget ones, and little budget ones. I would be very displeased if they ceased to exist.

That is what you're suggesting, right? Because of course, movies cost a hell of a lot of money to make. Movie companies aren't going to spend $100M+ on a movie like Titanic if they are forced to give away their movies for free. (Because they're "too rich"?) Sure, they could still charge people to see the film in theaters, but that will become increasingly irrelevant as home theater technology advances.

That reason alone is plenty explanation for why you can't copy movies. But I can't let the many snide remarks about "rich" movie companies go by without comment. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner and their peers really are completely selfish and amoral. When you steal movies from them, since they're already so rich anyway, do you think they're just going to smile and take a pay cut? Of course not. They'll close a studio, putting hundreds of minimum-wage workers out of a job... they'll cancel interesting or controversial projects, in favor of guaranteed money-makers like Big Daddy... they'll raise prices on whatever it is that they're still alowed to sell... and everyone else will be hurt.

I must say, I lose a bit of respect for /. every time I see such a childish, selfish rant like this one marked as "Insightful".

Reasons not to use Linux

With one of the last few bastions of end-user Windows software being ported or made available on the Linux Operating System, there are fewer and fewer reasons to remain a faithful user of the Microsoft family of operating systems. However, I was able to come up with the following top 5 reasons to continue to use Microsoft Windows.

1. The idea of using something primarily controlled by typing revolts you.
   
2. You could never get the hang of the GIMP.
   
3. You are an employee of Microsoft.
   
4. Paperclips turn you on. Especially talking ones.
   
5. You like the color blue
   

Re:Hardware Decoders...

I accually have a player in the works that will be done by the end of next week. It works to the LinuxDVD API specs, so as soon as this is converted into the standard the player will be able to work :) Read above for the two companies that are releasing DVD hardware cards in December. Yes other companies need to too. HOPEFULLY they will use the API that is allready in place. I player is allready skinable etc. :) If any of you patition them or even inquire ask them to follow the API that is allready in place. standards standars!

Re:To be MP3, are the movies we see

There is no objective pricing of entertainment. If I say it is worth $2 to me, then who can argue with that?

The studios and me. That was my point. Bargaining works like this:

A) Widgets! Get your widgets right here! Only $100!
B) I'll pay $2
A) $50
B) $2
A) $25
B) $2
A) Screw you. I'll taking my widget and going home.

You removed the studios' ability to say the last part. It would be one thing if you said "I'm not willing to pay $18 for that album" and sucked it up and went without. But when you say "I'm not willing to pay $18 for that album; I'm stealing it instead", what incentive does the studio have to lower the price? Sure, a FEW people might buy it instead (you claim you would, but are you sure?), but most would not and they would lose more money (I suspect they could lower it some and gain more from people who abstain, not pirates).

When you say "It's worth $2 to me" that means you're willing to pay $2 and if it costs more you won't have it. It does not mean that you will give the person $2 for the item. A subtle difference, but consider. How much is fetchmail worth to me? I'd say $25, maybe a little more. Does that mean that's how much I pay for it? No. Likewise, the album/movie may be "worth $2" to you, but the studio has no evidence that you won't just steal it anyway, so they won't sell it for $2.

Re:Why?

1. The Linux community has earned a reputation of not being willing to pay for anything.

2. The Linux market for things like this is sufficiently small that the companies figure that it's not worth spending the money to make sure that it works under Linux.

They don't sit around and say, "Yeah! Let's shut out all those Linux/Amiga/Etc. users, we don't want them watching our movies," they just don't yet see a business advantage in doing so.

Cheers,
[e-mail]

Re:it's a start...

Does anyone just sit back and enjoy the hack anymore? It seems everyone wants to jump 20 steps ahead all the time. At least take a few seconds to give credit for the hack...

Here we have a person/group of people who complete a not so trivial task and the first thing people hit them with is, 'gee, is that all, it wont clean my room for me?'

At least give them a day to bask...

Or has the time come when none can rest and all must push for world domination by next tuesday at the latest?

Anyway, congrats to those who hacked...

Re:To be MP3, are the movies we see

I agree completely. What right does anybody have to expect money just because you viewed a copy of their movie/software/music? What does the fact that you look at/copy it have to do with how much effort they put into it, how much it cost to make, and how much money they ought to make? If they make a movie, spending billions of dollars, and nobody pays to see it, well then they should have thought of that before making the movie. It is just like software. If the movie producers want to get rich making their movies, they must find a way to be paid for making them, NOT for viewing them. Just like software, movies are less valuable if fewer people can see them.

You are completely justified in 'pirating' a movie rather than submitting to extortion. Think about it, how much more does it cost the movie producers when you view their movie? How much more work do they have to do when you give 1000 copies away? ZERO!! Asking to pay for copying is demanding something for nothing, which is most certainly wrong. Some people claim that viewing a movie without paying is getting something for nothing, and therefore stealing. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Viewing a movie gratis is getting nothing for nothing. You aren't getting anything, except the right to do something no one has the right to deny you.

If this causes the movie industry to crumble and die, as is happening any time now with software and music, then so be it. Musicians will still write music, they have for years before copyright. Software will still be written, it is necessary for many aspects of life and business. If movies don't get made it is because nobody wants to pay. If nobody wants to pay, then obviously no one would care if they stop being made.

Re:To be MP3, are the movies we see

You're way off :)

The CSS stuff (which is where this breakthrough was) is NOT PATENTED
If they had PATENTED it, we would have had working (but illegal) stuff last year. Instead, they kept it a TRADE SECRET. That has no legal protection, but it means it took an extra 12 months or so to get free code which works.

For the player, no-one can legally make a FREE (as in Beer or as in Speech) player. You have to pay per-copy fees for at least some of the component technologies (AC3 comes to mind) in a player.

However, just because it is ILLEGAL to make a free player, doesn't mean no-one has :)
Anyway, the key breakthrough (CSS) means there's no major difference between "DVD Video on Linux" and "MPEG 2 on Linux", except a few silly add-on features. I can live without subtitles if I have to.

Hardware Decoders...

Let's face it. No matter how much we push the code, no matter how much we optimize the routines, no matter how fast our machine is, there is *no* way a software decoder, open source or not, will outperform & look better than a hardware decoder.

After we get the Linux-DVD project on the road to completion (now that CSS & Data encryption have been cracked, and a makeshift player has been put together -- way to go IceFox, a "snowball" effect is almost sure to start...) Within a few months, we should see quality (hopefully) GPL'ed players emerge. But there's something that really irks me. We need to concentrate on the manufacturers of hardware decoders. Creative has given somewhere between a very poor to slightly poor effort to bring drivers for it's DXR series of decoder cards to *NIX systems. They've opened up the SB Live drivers, but what of the DXRs? We need to e-mail, petition, press (not harass, just make our voices heard) to open up the source for the hardware decoder drivers. Many of you (including me and my DXR3) have a $70-$150 card in our computers that if we were to delete Windows, which some of us have, would become worthless to us. This is a shame -- and should be our next challenge to overcome.

Way to go on the software. Now we need to get the hardware.

Re:To be MP3, are the movies we see

Look at what you're saying! Do you think that music and movies are some kind of god-given right? I don't care how inflated you think the prices are, that doesn't give you warrant to steal them.

Extortion has to be the biggest stretch of the imagination. No one needs movies. You don't have to pay their price, but don't expect to get something for free, just because you don't think it's reasonable. I don't think it's reasonable to pay $35,000 for a car. I happen to know that cars do not cost that much to build. That, however, does not give me the right to walk into a Nissan dealership and drive off in a new Maxima without paying for it.

If you don't pay for a movie, then the producers don't get a return on their investment. If they don't get their money back, they won't sink money into another film. Unless you're satisfied with a thousand films a year that all look like "Blair Witch", then someone needs to shell out a couple million.

From your last comment, though, it seems like you wouldn't mind if the entire movie industry disappeared. Fine. Go fsck yourself because the rest of us enjoy it. People like you are nothing but theives. Go ahead and justify it by telling yourself that they are the one's who're extorting you. Its dillusional and no moral person would have any part in it.

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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."