It's Illegal To Watch Your DVDs
By Justin Breithaupt
What? Is that really true? It depends on what you watch your DVDs on and if they are Blue Ray or standard DVDs. I met a man who spent a great amount of money on a High Definition TV, and then on a Windows 7 Laptop with a connector for his TV. He bought these products with the understanding that he could watch his Blue Ray DVDs on his High Definition TV. When he stuck in his Blue Ray DVD into the Laptop it played fine in the Laptop Screen. He then purchased a cable for his TV and plugged it in. The DVD immediately stopped playing and a message came up on the screen letting him know it is not legal for him to watch his movie on his TV because it is copy written and protected by law. He could have been a potential criminal copying and selling illegal copies of his DVDs. The RIAA and Microsoft decided that my honest friend who bought his devices and movies legitimately should not have the right to use these devices to watch his movies any way he likes. This is only the beginning. According to the article I read here:http://www.defectivebydesign.org/mpaa-drm-tv the MPAA wants to take away our rights and abilities to record live TV to watch later and take control over all our devices we use to watch video and listen to audio in our home including Satellite receivers, TVs, VCRs, DVD Players, etc. The list does not end. What should come as more of a shock is that Microsoft is getting sueed by many other countries in anti-trust lawsuits for doing these things they have already done to us. Our Government officials however have decided not to sue or stop Microsoft for doing these things to us. Of course it's not just Microsoft. It's also Apple and Sony as well as anyone who produces Blue Ray DVD players. It's not the manufacturer's fault that they do this of course but rather the ones who legally force them to build these restrictions into their hardware. Does anyone remember when DVDs first came out? You had to have a program like WinDVD in order to decrypt the encrypted video so you could play it. You had to pay for this software if you didn't get it with your computer. Microsoft tried to convince everyone that without this player it was illegal to watch DVDs. We who use Linux knew better. We made and used libdvd to watch our DVDs without any restrictions. We could also download copies of them directly to our computers to watch later as it should be. Like DVDs use to be Blue Ray also does not play on Linux. Back to my customer who bought the Blue Ray DVD hardware and High Definition TV. I decided to try to watch the Blue Ray DVD on his TV using Linux. I figured I would have total control over his Laptop if I used Linux and I was right. After installing Linux onto his Laptop I discovered that there was no DVD player that could play Blue Ray for Linux but that each Blue Ray DVD contains an encrypted password that unlocks the content of the disk. You can find these keys on sites like these: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120988 . Using DumpHD (found here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=123111 ) with the keys I was then able to strip off all the encryption and download the content of the entire Blue Ray DVD to his Laptop Hard Drive. This took 20 Gbs for one disk. Using VLC I was then able to watch the extracted video on his HD TV which was the original intent when he purchased the equipment. Ridiculous isn't it. I'm not even sure if what I did to watch that video was legal or illegal and to be perfectly honest I don't care because it's a violation of our freedom of speech. If we can't listen then what is the use of free speech?
So I encourage you not to buy Blue Ray DVDs or DVD players and don't support any of the companies I mentioned that contribute to this ridiculous struggle for control. Also please go tohttp://www.defectivebydesign.org/mpaa-drm-tv and follow the instructions to send a letter to the FCC to stop any more of this nonsense.
