[MPlayer-users] DeCSS legal status

[Christof Buergi]

Am Donnerstag, 27. März 2003 04.28 schrieb Roberto De Leo:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read
> DOCS/bugreports.html] Hi,
> I wonder if you have any idea about the current DeCSS legal status in
> the US and in Europe.

In the US, and probably in some european countrys, DeCSS is possibly 
considered to be a "copyright circumvention device", and thus illegal. 
I say "possibly", since there is no completed case yet. Another issue 
are the title keys stored in the DeCSS code. Those might infringe 
copyright, but it's quite easy to get rid of them, and they are not 
really needed.

> I am distributing a MPlayer binary version with DVD support inside my
> MoviX distros (movix.sf.net) and I am starting to believe that this
> may not be legal everywhere and therefore I am a little worried about
> it, but before getting rid of the DVD support [or probably only of
> the DeCSS support, even though I am not really sure I know how to do
> that since MPlayer dows not link libcss.so] I am trying to collect as
> many info as possible.

If you want to get rid of DeCSS, you must remove libmpdvdkit2, and 
compile against libdvdread instead. If someone still wants DeCSS 
support in MPlayer, he can easily get this by acquiring libdvdcss.

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