Freespire's Google ads: "What is Ubuntu Missing?"

[Conrad Knauer]

On 10/8/06, Jan Claeys <lists at janc.be> wrote:

> > CSS isn't a great tool to prevent piracy
> > anymore but it does slow things down markedly
>
> *bzzzt*
>
> CSS is a tool to make sure you didn't look at US DVDs before a movie has
> been shown in cinemas and on TV in your country.  It is _not_ and has
> never been intended to be an anti-piracy tool.

As far as I know, it was not only an anti-piracy tool, but also an
anti-fair use tool (defective by design :)

As per http://www.dvd-copy.com/reference/IEEE-doc-copyproc.pdf

"The purpose of CSS is twofold. First and foremost, it prevents
byte-for-byte copies of an MPEG stream from being playable since such
copies will not include the keys. Second, it provides a reason for
manufacturers to make compliant devices, since CSS scrambled disks
will not play on noncompliant devices. Anyone wishing to build
compliant devices must obtain a license, which contains the
requirement that the rest of the copy-protection system be
implemented."

(link via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Scrambling_System)

Once you've decrypted the CSS, you can dispense with the other DRM
'features', one of which (and I think its what you're thinking of) is
region coding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code

The other is Macrovison which tries to prevent analog copying:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrovision

CK