About MPEG2 and DVDs

[Samuel Hocevar <sam@via.ecp.fr>]

   Hello,

   I plan to package vlc [1], an MPEG2 player which can also play DVDs.
There is no MPEG2 Layer 3 support, nor is DeCSS included, so I do not
think there are any legal issues with including it in Debian (the
license is 100% GPL, no parts of the MPEG group's reference decoder have
been included), though I'd appreciate any comments about this.

   My main concern is with CSS [2]. DeCSS [3] is not included, but (as I
happen to be one of the main developers), I'd like to add support for it
so that everyone can freely play all DVDs. I see several options :

 - no CSS support at all
 - integrate DeCSS. This would put it at least in non-US, or even into
  non-free or (even worse) not be legal in most countries outside
  Europe and would therefore not be possible at all. One of the problems
  is that DeCSS includes a cracked key from Xing.
 - implement a brute force algorithm that has been found and which
  lets you crack the CSS key of a single disk in a few seconds. I think
  this one would be legal everywhere, but not sure.

   Has anyone got a clue about what could decently be included into
Debian ?

Thanks for any pointers,
Sam.
[1] http://www.videolan.org/ - the VideoLAN project
[2] http://www.opendvd.org/ - about legal issues of DVD playback
[3] http://www.linuxvideo.org/ - the Linux DVD effort
-- 
Samuel Hocevar <sam@via.ecp.fr> - http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/
     Do not try and fight the Cabal. That's impossible.
  Instead only try to realize the truth. There is no Cabal.