Tim Lee

On Linux DVD Players

Ms. Singleton has wrapped up her two-part critique of me and my paper. She takes a few more personal jabs at me than I think was called for, but she also make some substantive arguments. I’m going to keep my focus on the latter.

Singleton makes two broad points: first, CSS licensing is not a barrier to the creation of Linux DVD players, and in any event, Linux DVD players are a tiny market so we shouldn’t be too concerned about them. And secondly, DRM is a more effective piracy deterrent than I say it is. I’ll address her first point here, and come back to the second point in a future post.

I want to start by stepping back for a bit of perspective. In my paper, I claimed there were no Linux software DVD players. It turns out that isn’t true. There appear to be two DVD-playing programs for desktop Linux operating systems: One for the Linspire version of Linux, and the other for TurboLinux. (She also mentions LinDVD, which is designed for proprietary set-top boxes, not general-purpose computers, which was what I was talking about the in the paper)


Now, what’s striking about these two players is that each is a proprietary player tied to a relatively obscure Linux distribution. As near as I can tell (Linspire’s DVD player doesn’t list system requirements) these players will only work with their respective versions of Linux. If you are a user of any of the dozens of other distros–including more popular ones such as SUSE, Debian, Red Hat, or Ubuntu–you’re out of luck.

So while it’s not true that there are no legel DVD players for Linux, it appears to be the case that the vast majority of Linux users don’t have a legal option for playing DVDs on their computers. More to the point, it’s definitely true that there are no legal open source DVD players, on Linux or any other platform.

The question we need to ask is, why? Singleton offers two reasons. First, she says that it’s such a trivial market that they can’t scrape together the $15,000 licensing fee. And second, open source developers have an ideological hostility to copy protection and so they aren’t willing to abide by the lincensing requirements:

Some open source developers don’t believe in DRM and the restrictions that it has been used to support. Some don’t want to hide keys.

I think this rather misses the point. By definition, it’s impossible for an open source project to “hide the keys” and remain open. What defines an open source project is that its source code is available for users to inspect and modify. Any encryption keys would be in the source code someplace, which means that anyone who wanted to know what they were could download the source and see. So “hiding the keys” is, by definition, impossible for an open source project.

Her response to that is presumably that if DRM and open source are incompatible, so much the worst for DRM. [Edit: I obviously mean "so much the worse for open source"]

Before I examine that argument, though, I need to establish a bit more background. Because in point of fact, the market for Linux DVD players is not tiny or obscure. There are several actively developed ones, including Ogle, MPlayer, and Xine. Each of them requires the use of libdvdcss, a library that decrypts CSS-encoded DVDs. Although it’s never been tested in court, libdvdcss is probably an illegal “circumvention device” under the DMCA, which is why it’s hosted on a server outside the United States.

It’s important to keep in mind that Ogle, MPlayer, and Xine are not “piracy tools” in any reasonable sense of the word. They’re designed for playing DVDs, not making illicit copies. Moreover, libdvdcss doesn’t have any keys to hide. The CSS encryption scheme isn’t very strong, and so libdvdcss cracks it using a brute-force method. This method would work even if the DVD CCA had succeeded in keeping all CSS encryption keys private.

So with all of that in mind, how do we evaluate this argument?

CSS is a standard like any other. It has competitive implications; those not willing to work with the standard must find a market niche outside of it. It isn’t the fault of that standard if the niche is a very small one. The relative obscurity of Linux players has little or nothing to do with the DMCA… Adherence to the view that content should be free and clear of restrictions will keep open source developers perpetually in niche markets.

What I’m concerned about isn’t the “obscurity” of DVD players–in point of fact, MPlayer and Xine are no more “obscure” than any other Linux software–but their illegality. The illegality of libdvdcss (and by implication the illegality of MPlayer, Xine, et al) are a direct and obvious consequence of the DMCA. If MPlayer or Xine were to raise $15,000 and purchase a license from the CCA, the only thing they’d get that they don’t already have is a promise by the CCA not to sue them under the DMCA.

To say that MPlayer and Xine are a niche market “outside the standard” is begging the question. The only reason they’re “outside” is that the DMCA has made them illegal. It has nothing to do with “the view that content should be free and clear of restrictions.” Even Linux users who are perfectly willing to pay for DVDs and refrain from making illicit copies are prohibited from watching them on open source players.

Now my question is, what function is served by banning MPlayer and Xine? Presumably her answer is that they have to be illegal for DRM to work, and functional DRM is more important than Linux users’ freedom to use open source DVD players. I think this is misguided, because I don’t think the DMCA does much to prevent piracy–that’s an argument of its own that I’ll elaborate on in a subsequent post. What I want to close this post with is some thoughts on why it matters.

The most important reason it matters, I think is that the interest of Linux users matter as much as the rest of us. I think it’s very easy for that to get lost in public policy debates, because most computer geeks are too busy writing code to work at think tanks or hire lobbyists. Forcing hundreds of thousands of people to break the law if they want to do something as innocuous as watch a DVD isn’t right.

But the impact could actually extend beyond Linux users. Open source operating systems serve as incubators for technologies that often later make their way to proprietary operating systems. Exhibit A here is Firefox, now the principle alternative to Microsoft’s browser, which was primarily developed by Linux users. But there are lots of other examples. A non-trivial number of people now use Open Office as an alternative to Microsoft Office. My nerdy (and beautiful) girlfriend points out that the GIMP, an open source PhotoShop alternative, and GAIM, an open instant messaging client, also now have widely used Windows versions. And Apple’s Mac OS X literally wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for open source software–literally dozens of major components of the operating system were developed by the open source community.

If Xine and MPlayer weren’t illegal in the United States, there’s every reason to imagine they might offer a user-friendly Windows and Mac version, just as FireFox does. Apple might decide bundle it with its operating system. Google might distribute it with its Google Pack, as it does the FireFox browser. Linux distributions could bundle it with their operating system, making Linux that much more accessible to non-nerds wanting to try out a new OS. Perhaps most importantly, Americans wanting to contribute to the project wouldn’t have to worry that they were breaking the law.

Open source software isn’t just the cheapskate’s version of proprietary software. The open source development model has unique strengths that makes it superior for the development of some (certainly not all) kinds of software. It’s possible that DVD players are in that category. But as long as we ban open source DVD players, we’ll never know. Personally, I think that if we’re going to cut off a source of potential innovation (and DVD players are far from the only type of open source software banned by the DMCA) we should have a very good reason for doing so. As I’ll argue in another post, the anti-piracy justification Singleton offers fall well short of the mark.

Update: I’ve edited this post slightly for tone.

May 10, 2006 | Comments |

8 comments posted

  1. Posted by: Barry - 05/11/2006

    The MPAA has another reason besides piracy for trying to stifle open-source DVD player projects: if I can modify the code of DVD player software, then I can disable other key DRM features like region codes and UOP (user operation prohibited) flags. That means they wouldn’t be able to force me to wait until a DVD is released in my region before I buy it, and they wouldn’t be able to force me to watch additional advertising or the already boringly ubiquitous FBI warning.

    Note that neither of these DRM features have anything to do with piracy, yet they are still protected by the DMCA, wholly at the legitimate consumer’s expense.

  2. Posted by: Urijah - 05/11/2006

    “If Xine and MPlayer weren’t illegal in the United States, there’s every reason to imagine they might offer a user-friendly Windows and Mac version, just as FireFox does. Apple might decide bundle it with its operating system. Google might distribute it with its Google Pack, as it does the FireFox browser. Linux distributions could bundle it with their operating system…”

    Actually, there is another problem–MPEG-2 requires a royalty fee, $2.50 for each software installation. As far as I know, there is no open source-ware exception.

  3. Posted by: MikeT - 05/11/2006

    How about the fact that commercial pirates don’t use DeCSS and instead do high quality copies with professional DVD-pressing machines? DRM cannot protect against a machine that is capable of creating an exact replica of the media.

  4. Posted by: Doug Lay - 05/11/2006

    Singleton’s response completely ignores the argument made in your paper and elsewhere that the DMCA is essentially a protectionist mechanism - it protects established players against disruptive technologies. This, even more than the assault on Fair Use rights, is what has large segments of the technology community up in arms (increasingly large segments, I should say, since I don’t think the CEA loudly opposed the DMCA back in the days of the DeCSS case).

  5. Posted by: enigma_foundry - 05/11/2006

    Great piece, Tim. Well, I would second Doug Lay’s comments.

    I would though liike to comment further one one issue: Solveig states: “CSS is a standard like any other…”

    Well no, it is not a standard. It is a legally sanctioned monopoly, exactly the opposite of a standard.

    Note that many standards are open, for example .html. Usable, and one of the engines of growth of the internet.

  6. Posted by: GBGames - 05/11/2006

    The region encoding turns the movie industry into the definition of a cartel, as a friend of mine likes to say.

    I really liked this quote from Singleton: “The idea that there are two classes of content consumer, the determined pirate and the honest consumer, and nothing in between, is nonsense. There are in my experience precious few in the latter category, especially in certain age groups.”

    How about acknowledging the fact that most people don’t like being considered a criminal first? Treat your customers like criminals out to rip you off, and you’ll have criminals as customers.

  7. Posted by: Solveig Singleton - 05/15/2006

    -Small point: LinDVD was also supposed to be released as software as well as for a box, not sure what came of that.

    -Re Linux products, obscure and otherwise.
    If open source is inherently incompatible with DRM, well, there are going to be limits to the directions in which it will develop, DRM being but one application of some important security techniques. I don’t believe it is, however, or there wouldn’t be *any* licensed Linux players.

    The larger point is THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE that anyone involved in CSS licensing is suppressing Linux players or neglecting them.

    And the really larger point: the fundamental reason that the Linux players need to refer to DeCSS or otherwise illegally decrypted content OR license CSS is that no one is funding the production of unprotected content on a large scale. Anyone is free to do so, but they aren’t.
    That is the root of the problem. If you have a business model that relies on someone else’s content, but can’t or won’t support payment mechanisms, how fair is it to complain you’re being shut out of the market?

    -Repeat myself again. If the DRM/DMCA is short-changing customers to shore up failing business models…

    WHY are there no investors flocking to develop high-quality content that is not protected by DRM? IF there is another way, this is a HUGE opportunity for someone to make a lot of money. WHERE are the new business models? Grokster is just a distribution technology, it doesn’t PRODUCE content.

    How is one supposed to tie music or movies to services if anyone with a digital editor can untie them and post the untied content!!!!!

  8. Posted by: GBGames - 05/22/2006

    I don’t know, but audiolunchbox.com seems to be doing fine without DRM. Ask them how they manage to stay afloat when any of their customers can just redistribute their content.

    Oh right. Customers. As opposed to acting like their customers are criminals out to rip them off any chance they get. Fancy that.

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