Re: debian-multimedia.org considered harmful
Romain Beauxis <toots@rastageeks.org> writes:
> 2012/3/18 Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org>:
>> On 03/18/2012 08:53 AM, Romain Beauxis wrote:
>>> It's a cliche comparison but still, CSS decryption is the knife and
>>> DMCA is the murder; the fact that murder is illegal does not imply
>>> that knives are.
>>>
>> Well, the whole concept of DMCA is to make knives illegal!
>> Please read a bit more about it before making such wrong statement here.
>
> That was a cliche, indeed. The main point remains: does using
> libdvdcss, for instance, for watching a DVD using a multimedia player
> installed in millions of other computers qualify as an "circumvention
> of technological barriers for using a digital good in certain ways
> which the rightsholders do not wish to allow."? Rightsholders
> certainly wish to allow DVDs owners to watch them privately...
The DMCA specifically forbids the distribution of tools that can be used
to circumvent copy protection or other technical limitations included in
the product. The same clause is included in the EU directive as well. It
appears that possession of tools that can be used to circumvent
technical limitations might not be illegal in all countries that have a
version of DMCA, but that doesn't really help Debian.
I'm not sure if it would help if all of the media players Debian
distributes were crippled so that they could be used to play dvd's via
libdvdcss but not copy them (or which is the tool to circumvent, the
decrypter or the copier).
--
Arto Jantunen
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