Entertaining open source

Beware of raining frogs: an unimpeachably excellent article on DeCSS has appeared in the mainstream media. In DVD-Piracy Paranoia Proves Counterproductive (TechNews.com), Rob Pegoraro hits the trifecta, noting that:

These unauthorized DVD programs handle a variety of useful tasks. They allow you to jump past the FBI warning that licensed playback software must display before showing the movie. They let you breeze by the otherwise unskippable commercials that some movie studios are fond of shoving into their DVDs. They can ignore the “region controls” that prevent you from watching the movie you bought in Paris on the player you picked up here.

And:

I could use this program to copy rented DVDs at will, but I have no such interest. Rather, this program is useful to me because it lets me move movies I own to my laptop’s hard drive, then leave the external DVD/CD-RW drive at home when I travel.

In other words, this unauthorized, unlicensed software makes DVDs more valuable and useful to me.

And don’t forget:

You don’t need DeCSS to steal a DVD; you can create a “disc image,” an exact, bit-for-bit copy, and use that to make new copies.

Oh, and:

[P]rogrammers of unauthorized DVD software are performing an interesting economic service by determining what features customers would enjoy if the capabilities of DVD players were not locked down by licensing dictates.

Wait, that’s a quadrifecta. My apologies. In any case, who is this Pegoraro guy, and how the hell did he get into print? It’s almost enough to make you think the vast IP absolutist conspiracy might be, like, fallible. Cool.

Filed under: technology