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Old 03-23-2012, 06:48 PM   #53
BWinmill
Nameless Being
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe View Post
Well that doesn't seem right. Can't say I totally understand the bill, but to me you are not circumventing DRM by playing an original DVD no matter how you play it. You bought the right to watch that DVD. Whether you have a right to legally copy it may be nebulous, but you should be able to watch that DVD using any capable equipment.
Like rkomar, I only started watching DVDs when the DRM was cracked and I was able to watch them under Linux. After all, watching video isn't a big thing for me so I didn't want to buy a dedicated player and TV.

But the thing that you have to understand is that DRM is about Rights Management, rather than copyright. It is specifically intended to tell people how they can use the media. That ranges from the devices that it can be accessed with to where you can watch it (region encoding). This is done to do everything from locking a customer into a particular platform to controlling prices on a regional basis.

There are also other issues in the mix. In broadly licensed standards, such as those used by DVD players, there are patents and royalties. Noone was actually saying that you couldn't play DVDs on Linux. They were simply saying that you couldn't play DVDs on Linux without paying royalties to the people who developed the DVD standards. As things stand today, I believe that you can buy properly licensed DVD player software for Linux.

Alas, the issues surrounding this stuff are often more complex than they are portrayed.
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