Will Hollywood EVER learn - trying to stop VLC playing commercial DVD

jimbo45 · 14 Jul 2014

Hi there

What's up with the Hollywood studios these days -- EMBRACE digital technology - don't fight it. - There's some rear guard action now to declare VLC as illegal software because it can play pirated movies -- Well you might just as well declare GUNS and CARS illegal because they both can KILL people.

Well what are they going to do with Ms's movie player or PowerDvd because both these can ALSO play pirated content. It's not the software but the users - and if Hollywood was more open to playing their content on mobile devices or allowing people to PAY for legal streaming they could kill a lot of piracy at one stretch.

No point going after particular software -- I suppose they think going after a small number of developers who are producing very FINE AND FREE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE used by millions around the world Hollywood bosses and their smarmy Lawyers think they are looking good. They won't win BTW.

Nothing in this post suggests you should PIRATE content - but there's nothing wrong in being able to watch content you've paid for on whatever device you find convenient - and these days that includes Laptops, tablets and mobile phones, to say nothing of live streams too.

Cheers
jimbo

Fantail · 14 Jul 2014

I like KMPlayer. Except for the installer which prompts with crapware.

SIW2 · 14 Jul 2014

@fantail,

Interesting sig.

SIW2 · 14 Jul 2014

@Jimbo,

Part of the crazy system we are in.

We have been moved from having a market economy, to being a market economy.

If we don't sort it out now, it is all going to go horribly wrong.

There are some small signs people are starting to see what has happened. E.G. there are calls for rail franchises to be brought under national control as they come up for renewal.Some are starting to understand the system is only working for a small proportion of the population. Maybe, just maybe, everyone else will wake up.

King Arthur · 14 Jul 2014

jimbo45 said:

No point going after particular software -- I suppose they think going after a small number of developers who are producing very FINE AND FREE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE used by millions around the world Hollywood bosses and their smarmy Lawyers think they are looking good. They won't win BTW.

They can win if they go after the fine folks over at FFmpeg, the guys that develop the libavcodec library that VLC and many other media players and filters like ffdshow and LAVFilters rely on to encode and decode all kinds of video and audio.

Going after individual players like VLC is ultimately a zero-sum game as someone can just write up another player or filter implementing and using libavcodec for largely the same results.

In fact, I'm sure Hollywood can find dirt to shut FFmpeg down if they really wanted to. There have been allegations that libavcodec runs afoul of software patents and/or were developed in part from illegal forms of reverse engineering.

Just to be clear, I agree with you that draconian measures like this lead to nowhere and only earn the resentment of people everywhere. However, if Hollywood wants to be draconian they might as well and should go after the source of their migraines.

jimbo45 said:

Well what are they going to do with Ms's movie player or PowerDvd because both these can ALSO play pirated content.

I could be mistaken, but I believe the marking difference here is that WMP and PowerDVD both pay licensing fees for their capabilities to decode and playback DVDs/BDs. Contrast VLC which uses a free and open source implementation of the required libraries (libdvdcss) and consequently doesn't pay licensing fees.

In fact, wasn't the licensing fees why MS decided to axe DVD playback capability from WMP in Windows 8 unless you went out and bought the Media Center addon pack or whatever it was called?

Layback Bear · 14 Jul 2014

As sure as I'm typing this Hollywood and any other company that is having billions of dollars stolen from them will continue to develop anything they can to try and stop the counterfeiting and stealing.
You can blame that on the thieves doing such things.
The rest of us will have to pay the price for everything that is stolen.

I see no reason to blame the people, companies, industries that have been stolen from. I blame the thieves. The more they steal the higher the price for the rest of us.

It's very easy.
If some one steals half of the corn crop the other half of the corn crop will double in price. That is the price the rest of us will have to pay.

So when someone finds something that is legal to use a torrent and grandmother uses P2P to send letter to her grandchild thats fine.

What are the 100 million other people using such things for.
Who is kiddy who.

I do believe that VLC and other such program can be made to move Gone with the Wind to your cell phone with out braking the copyright if the developers want to. You just buy a copy for your cell phone.

The people who buy things will always pay for what others have stolen. It's always been that way and always will be.

You buy one copy you get one copy; sounds fair to me.
You want more copies you buy more copies; sound fair to me.

You buy one car you get one car. Sounds fair to me.
You want more cars you buy more cars. Sounds fair to me also.
Why do so many think because it comes off the internet or a computer can be used they can steal it and then make copies of the stolen property.

If you buy Gone with the Wind and want more copies; you buy more copies.

jimbo45 · 15 Jul 2014

Layback Bear said:

As sure as I'm typing this Hollywood and any other company that is having billions of dollars stolen from them will continue to develop anything they can to try and stop the counterfeiting and stealing.
You can blame that on the thieves doing such things.
The rest of us will have to pay the price for everything that is stolen.

I see no reason to blame the people, companies, industries that have been stolen from. I blame the thieves. The more they steal the higher the price for the rest of us.

It's very easy.
If some one steals half of the corn crop the other half of the corn crop will double in price. That is the price the rest of us will have to pay.

So when someone finds something that is legal to use a torrent and grandmother uses P2P to send letter to her grandchild thats fine.

What are the 100 million other people using such things for.
Who is kiddy who.

I do believe that VLC and other such program can be made to move Gone with the Wind to your cell phone with out braking the copyright if the developers want to. You just buy a copy for your cell phone.

The people who buy things will always pay for what others have stolen. It's always been that way and always will be.

You buy one copy you get one copy; sounds fair to me.
You want more copies you buy more copies; sound fair to me.

You buy one car you get one car. Sounds fair to me.
You want more cars you buy more cars. Sounds fair to me also.
Why do so many think because it comes off the internet or a computer can be used they can steal it and then make copies of the stolen property.

If you buy Gone with the Wind and want more copies; you buy more copies.

Hi there.

That analogy actually doesn't wash in real life -- so are you telling me that if you BUY a commercial DVD and play it at home you can't play it at a friend's house either. (I'm writing about the PLAYER not the content BTW).

Do you play any music on various different portable devices -- nobody sees anything wrong with that either. You don't buy 4 different copies of song X do you. --I'm sure nobody else does either.

Playing a DVD on a computer is totally mainstream - and people the world over when travelling have done this for YEARS. NOBODY here is advocating downloading and playing PIRATE DVD's.

If someone develops free LEGAL software so I can play content that I've PAID FOR rather than be forced mafia style to BUY an INFERIOR software product at a high price then everything the US says about embracing FREE AND OPEN markets and COMPETITION is just a HUGE BIG LIE and maybe the courts can start arresting people trying to preserve these monopolies.

What about Free software like the GIMP which is almost as good for most people as the incredible expensive (but in this case still excellent) Photoshop.

If we shut down anybody competing "with the big boys" we might just as well go back to the caves.

I can't see how VLC player in any way encourages piracy -- if people have got pirate DVD's then they can be played on any other player too. The best way to STOP Piracy is to make content more easily available and charge realistic prices.

A good model is SPOTIFY music streaming service-- Spotify is getting 100,000's of subscribers now at a reasonably cheap rate -- many of these people would formerly have pirated music -- and Spotify pays the musicians as well --win win for everybody.

Cheers
jimbo

King Arthur · 15 Jul 2014

jimbo45 said:

If someone develops free LEGAL software so I can play content that I've PAID FOR rather than be forced mafia style to BUY an INFERIOR software product at a high price then everything the US says about embracing FREE AND OPEN markets and COMPETITION is just a HUGE BIG LIE and maybe the courts can start arresting people trying to preserve these monopolies.

...

I can't see how VLC player in any way encourages piracy -- if people have got pirate DVD's then they can be played on any other player too. The best way to STOP Piracy is to make content more easily available and charge realistic prices.

Here in lies the "gray-zone" that makes the debate difficult to resolve. Libraries like libavcodec and libdvdcss have shaky legal grounds because of their nature. As I mentioned, libavcodec which is used for the majority of video/audio decoding has allegations of being written with illegally reverse-engineered code and/or infringing software patents.

With regards to DVDs and VLC, the libdvdcss library that VLC uses to decode DVDs has built-in capabilities for brute-forcing through encryption technology and bypassing region-locking, on top of not paying licensing fees to have the right to decode DVDs. This again is shaky legal ground.

Contrast programs you mentioned like GIMP, they don't need to potentially do shady things like reverse-engineering or bruteforcing through encryption/DRM schemes and thus are on safe legal grounds.