On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen <roz...@geekspace.com> wrote: >> Apple and Microsoft have paid up royalties on these things ... > > ... which has me wondering: how does Ubuntu get away with shipping all > of the stuff necessary to do DVD-authoring!?
While I've never touched Ubuntu's "DVD authoring" stuff, I can add some additional speculations, in addition to maddog's very cogent points: At a lower level, a DVD is just a filesystem. They don't have to be restricted using anyone's special crypto, nor do they have to use any particular codec. In order for them to play in a consumer appliance which implements "DVD Video" and *only* DVD Video, the files have to have particular names and use particular codecs, but they still don't need special crypto. Many consumer appliance these days implement additional codecs, meaning the files just have to particular names if you don't care about broad compatibility. Your DVD will not meet "DVD Video" studio requirements, but presumably you're not interested in that, you just want the damn thing to play. It's *playing* the discs from the big studios that requires all the encumbered crypto and codecs. Legal technicalities may also enter into play. Sometimes the originator is technically in a non-US jurisdiction where they can publish something without paying fees. Sometimes it's legal to distribute but not to use. -- Ben _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/