Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
Not disputing your point, but are you actually saying you cannot play your DVDs? Or you bought them to play on your linux computer and they don't?
I am not a linux user obviously as I would have assumed that most DVDs would play on it. Copies maybe not, but probably.
I cannot see that the software actually playing a purchased DVD is circumventing DRM by playing it even on linux. DVD players have software to decode the DRM or no-one could play them. Where is the illegality of watching your legally purchased DVDs on any device that will play them?
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I only started buying DVDs when the DRM had been cracked about ten years ago (by the infamous DVD Jon of Norway). Up until then, you could not play a DVD on a Linux system because the software wasn't available. Other, more popular, platforms (Windows, Mac) had commercial, closed-source programs for decrypting DVDs for playing, but those were never ported to Linux. So, I was still buying VHS tapes up until that point. Once the encryption was broken, the contents could be descrambled without needing the inaccessible keys hidden on the disc. The descrambling code was made public, so even the open source programs in Linux could make use of it. From then on, I stopped buying VHS tapes and switched to DVDs. That descrambling software is still used to this day, but since it is circumventing the DRM on the DVDs, it will become illegal to use when this law is passed.