A Correction on Linux DVD Players

by Tim Lee on May 8, 2006 · View Comments

Solveig Singleton has posted about an error she spotted in my Cato paper: Linspire does in fact sell a licensed DVD player. So it looks like I was wrong when I said that there are no software DVD players available for the Linux operating system.

I’m unhappy that I missed this. I spent several hours researching available DVD players, and I asked a friend of mine who administers Linux computers for a living, and while I found extensive informaiton about several players that required the (probably illegal) libdvdcss library, I didn’t find any information about Linspire’s player. My apologies for not researching the issue more thoroughly.

I have some thoughts about how the existence of Linspire affects my argument, and I want to comment on her analysis of the CSS issue, but I’m going to wait for her to post part two of her analysis before I do so. Singleton also says that I’m guilty of “breaches of professional ettiquette,” so I’m anxious to learn more about that.

View Comments Posted in: DMCA, DRM & Piracy

  • PLN
    My comment yesterday seems to have been eaten--are you sure the Linspire is legit? It claims to be based on the Xine player, but that's GPLd--and Linspire claims to be closed source. Isn't that a GPL violation? It would be amusing if the only 'legit' player were itself an infringing derivative work...
  • indyken

    Also, Turbo Linux from Japan sold a Cyberlink PowerDVD on Linux back in 2004.


    See their Press release.

  • Doug Lay
    Ouch. Well, no paper is perfect :)

    Clearly the issue isn't a lack of licensed Linux DVD players (after all, the TiVo units with DVD-R capability presumably include a CSS license), but a lack of licensed open source players. The requirement to "hide the keys" would appear to be completely incompatible with open source development - or am I missing something?

    Here's something that may cheer you up, if you haven't seen it already. One of the country's leading copyright lawyers dissing the DMCA:

    http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2006/04/dmca-s...
  • Urijah
    The Linspire player is only for Linspire 4.5+, not for any Linux distribution though, and Linspire is not fully GPL compliant, which makes it ideologically problematic for many people, (though Freespire is coming out soon--no idea if it will work with the player.) Also Linspire is really oriented to the beginner Linux user, and would is not attractive to the experienced Linux user.
  • PLN
    I'm a bit puzzled--I looked at Linspire's site, and it claims it is based on the Xine player. But the Xine player is GPLd--so wouldn't Linspire's player have to be, as well? Yet here it claims to be "closed source".

    Is this a GPL violation, or am I just being trigger-happy? It sure would be amusing if the only "legit" Linux player was actually an infringing derivative work.

    PLN
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