Posted by Eric Schwartz on 10/10/07 17:00

Don Del Grande <del_grande_news@earthlink.net> writes:
> Tell me, what's your opinion of the following theory of legalizing
> decrypting video discs:
> 1. I have the right to watch the movie on the (choose one: Blu-Ray,
> HD-DVD) disc I bought on whatever device I want;
> 2. I choose to watch it on my computer running Linux;
> 3. Linux is required to be open source - therefore, the decoding
> software must be open source, and therefore public information;

It falls down right there. The OS being open source has nothing to do
with whether or not any particular application running on it must be
open source as well. Just to pull a name out of my ass, Oracle runs
on a lot of Linux boxes, and it's not required to be open
source. (Good luck trying to tell Larry Ellison that it is... I'll
just wait here, shall I?)

As a matter of practice, DVD-decrypting software is available as open
source, but there's no reason it has to be.

-=Eric

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