GStreamer Might Tackle DRM, Blu-Ray Support

[droste]

Germany is that bad? Is it only some places?

It is. You have some places with 100mbit _down_stream but no more than 10mbit upstream. But the pricing is ridiculous and you get down to 16kbits after a few GB of downloads.

Some places already have 100Mbit/s, slowly growing.

The Deutsche Telekom and some others throttle their customers connections when they reach certain limits but other ISPs don't so droste should switch his ISP asap.

See http://werdrosselt.de for more informations.

Look around to other countries near Germany. Germany is far behind regarding internet speeds and costs, it's not even funny anymore.

/edit:
And don't get me started on mobile internet...

[TheLexMachine]

I'm all for functional and easy Blu-Ray playback on Linux. I own hundreds of movies and having Blu-Ray playback on a multi-media notebook is something I want for my next laptop purchase so getting that on Linux would mean I could ditch Windows.

[V10lator]

Germany is that bad? Is it only some places?

Some places already have 100Mbit/s, slowly growing.

The Deutsche Telekom and some others throttle their customers connections when they reach certain limits but other ISPs don't so droste should switch his ISP asap.

See http://werdrosselt.de for more informations.

[curaga]

Germany is that bad? Is it only some places?

[droste]

May I ask why? When downloading a rip of it is faster?

If you already had free access to the disk via your local library, you can't really make the argument that downloading it instead is somehow wrong.

Because you payed at least 1.25$, a fee or taxes (depending on how the library is financed) And downloading is only an option if you're not living in a "internet developing country" like I do :-( 16kbits and they now want to limit it volume based (e.g. after xGB of downloads you get downgraded to 2kbits). So yeah, real BD support would be nice.

[Serge]

The link I provided to GPLv3 is my opinion to your words of "The problem is, DRM is fundamentally incompatible with open source." in #14.
It's possible to write a DRM in an open source way. From this aspect, not fundamentally incompatible.

I agree the rest of your saying, just as the 2nd part of my post saying: in the case of Blu-ray with an existing DRM, it could be another a closed-source implementation as their current DVD one.

The GPL protects the right to freely modify the works covered under it. Therefore, a GPL-covered implementation of DRM can be modified to remove the restrictions. The article you linked specifically goes on to state that the DMCA would not prohibit such behavior. To expand on this point a little: the DMCA has a clause which prohibits circumvention of what it calls "effective access control technology". Seems to me that, because the GPL requires the source code to be made available and because the GPL explicitly permits modifications to the program, the assumption is that no US judge would consider a GPL-covered implementation of DRM to be effective access control technology.

This, of course, only applies to the US. Other jurisdictions may have other laws covering "access control technologies" and DRM.

[erendorn]

It's also possible to build a car with rectangular wheels. Doesn't mean the concept is feasible, and it doesn't invalidate the fact that rectangles are fundamentally incompatible with the idea of wheeled transportation.

Please take a look at that and tell me how it wouldn't apply to a DRM scheme.

[curaga]

And? Who cares what they think? There are plenty of us that would like to get Bluray support so we could rip the free Bluray discs at the library and the $1.25 24 hour rentals from Redbox for our HTPC.

May I ask why? When downloading a rip of it is faster?

If you already had free access to the disk via your local library, you can't really make the argument that downloading it instead is somehow wrong.

[dee.]

The link I provided to GPLv3 is my opinion to your words of "The problem is, DRM is fundamentally incompatible with open source." in #14.
It's possible to write a DRM in an open source way. From this aspect, not fundamentally incompatible.

It's also possible to build a car with rectangular wheels. Doesn't mean the concept is feasible, and it doesn't invalidate the fact that rectangles are fundamentally incompatible with the idea of wheeled transportation.

[lovenemesis]

I think you're misunderstanding what that chapter means.

GPLv3 is designed specifically to prevent using laws against users in the form of DRM. That means if you write a DRM scheme and license it under GPLv3, then by the GPLv3 license, you can't sue anyone else for bypassing this DRM scheme, because the GPLv3 license protects users against DRM.

Now with blu-ray this is entirely different, we're talking about an existing DRM scheme, and in order to write an open-source implementation that would allow the use of DRM-restricted content, there's only two possible solutions: one, GStreamer figures out and breaks the DRM restriction, and writes an implementation to exploit its weakness, or two, GStreamer gets specs from blu-ray and uses them to implement their DRM scheme. But since doing an open source implementation would effectively nullify the DRM restriction, number two is never going to happen.

So the only way it could work would be a closed-source binary blob.

The link I provided to GPLv3 is my opinion to your words of "The problem is, DRM is fundamentally incompatible with open source." in #14.
It's possible to write a DRM in an open source way. From this aspect, not fundamentally incompatible.

I agree the rest of your saying, just as the 2nd part of my post saying: in the case of Blu-ray with an existing DRM, it could be another a closed-source implementation as their current DVD one.