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Date:      Sat, 20 Jan 2001 21:56:01 -0800 (PST)
From:      Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com>
To:        freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: DVD playback
Message-ID:  <200101210556.f0L5u1F73910@medusa.kfu.com>

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I got xine running and have tested it out with a couple of unencrypted DVDs
(pr0n seems to be mostly unencrypted. Once again, adult entertainment leads
the traditional industry in understanding technology). It seems to work
pretty well modulo some bugs, although it takes most of an Athlon 600
to do it, and I can't get it really to do anything except play the individual
vob files (dvd://vts_nn_m.vob).

It would be naughty to suggest that I have done anything more than this.
However, speaking in a purely hypothetical vane, I can suggest one thing
that would be something someone would have to overcome.

Pioneer used to make a drive called a 303. They currently make a drive
that is model 305. The major difference between the two is that the 305
has region locking in the drive itself. The 303 did not. The wrinkle is
that the 305 must be told at least once (and no more than 5 times) which
region to accept. If you never tell it, it will petulently refuse to play
any region locked media at all. If someone were to wish to be naughty,
one would have to plug their DVD drive into a Windows box and set the
region once before attempting to use DeCSS or other naughty software
to playback encrypted media. Of course, this would not be required on a
drive without region locking, but all drives now come with it, unfortunately.

I have not read the DMCA. I hope it dies in the courts. Fair use would suggest
that it would be legal to set up a decrypting service for people's DVDs.
Mail in a region 2 DVD and $20 and get back your DVD and a copy of it as an
MPEG-4 CD-R. So long as the conversion house doesn't preserve a copy of
it, this would be as legal as PAL-to-NTSC conversion for personal use (which
I believe *is* legal, isn't it?).

IANAL, of course.


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