Comments on: Boxee vs. the DMCA

By: dmca - StartTags.com

dmca - StartTags.com — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:05:41 +0000

[...] attracted! DMCA Takedown T-shirt (Thanks, Dennis!) 7. Cory Doctorow on November 6, 2009 11:51 AM …Boxee vs. the DMCA Technology Liberation FrontThanks to the DMCA, one of its most inportant featuresthe ability to play and rip DVDsis illegal. [...]

By: laptop battery

laptop battery — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:51:46 +0000

Hope to be better. Better means more features.

By: laptop battery

laptop battery — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:51:46 +0000

Hope to be better. Better means more features.

By: Ven

Ven — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:19:19 +0000

Primary legal issues with Boxee are the same as with XBMC: libdvdcss, various non-open-format codecs and dlls used for playback and encoding, UPnP, and other borrowed source base.

Some of these issues can be addressed by running Boxee on Windows, MacOS, or Linspire, which come with licensed codecs and CSS decryption libraries. As long as you are using a licensed equivalent of libdvdcss, you can play DVDs and legally archive them to hard drive. The archival technology must do a bit-for-bit copy of the DVD to preserve the CSS. In Linux, a simple "dd" command will do it, as long as the disk is playing.

By: Ven

Ven — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:19:19 +0000

By: Dave H

Dave H — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:13:28 +0000

I look forward to when I can cut the cord myself. You see, the thing keeping me from cutting the cord is the fact that Time Warner is the only broadband option available in my area. The (up to) 7 Mbps connection I pay for gets bashed down to below 2 Mbps in the evening. This makes watching video on sites like Hulu an exercise in buffering. Only sites like that have video delivery that adapts to bandwidth fluctuations are watchable for me at this point (ABC.com's browser plugin is the only one that does this that I've found so far). Because TW's network in my area can't handle the load in my area, they're keeping me as a cable TV subscriber! I'd love to change to someone who can provider better speeds, but there is not option.

I've never heard of this Boxee before, thanks for pointing it out. It's good to know that some are at least still trying to put out innovative media solutions outside of the standard channels, even if they do get punished for it in the end.

By: Don Marti

Don Marti — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:54:44 +0000

Hollywood just thinks they're beating up on technology companies. They're just lending their political juice to the licensors of the DRM system to beat up on the other technology companies.

By: Ben R.

Ben R. — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:39:20 +0000

I use boxee at home and it will play everything I have so far thrown at it including DvD media.

It is really a bigger threat to cable companies rather than content owners. Two years from now when a $100 set-top box is available that will stream Hulu, Netflix, the new TV.com, and perhaps even premium channels, why buy a remarkably overpriced bundled cable package?

By: Tim Lee

Tim Lee — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:43:05 +0000

All the information I've been able to find suggests that Boxee plays DVDs. DVDs are DRMed media. So no, I don't think they've avoided the problem, although maybe the DVD cartel will choose not to sue.

I certainly agree that the other features of Boxee are great, and they may not have DMCA problems. I do think consumers would be more interested in these kinds of boxes if they came with media-streaming capabilities and the ability to play/rip movies they already own.

By: Berin Szoka

Berin Szoka — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:24:11 +0000

The video description of Boxee on boxee.tv says that Boxee works for all non-DRM media. So it sounds like they've chosen to avoid the problem you're describing—no?

Of course, I was commenting not on Boxee's ability to play a wide range of media, but specifically its ability to aggregate content from multiple IVPDs (Hulu, Netflix, etc.) into one easy-to-use interface. Of course, it might turn out to be the case that the "killer app" would be to marry this functionality with the other functionality in Boxee, potentially including the ability to play DRMed media.