Okay, I've got so many things going in my life at the moment (including a new house :-) that I can't do everything myself, so I'm soliciting the UUG and LDSOSS to consider picking up on this project.
EDL is cool. I read and hear about problems with inappropriate media *all the time* in church and in the Daily Universe. I'm getting sick of it, because technology can eliminate inappropriate content from movies. We just need to put the technology in the hands of the people. It needs to be accessible. It needs to be usable. And we can't wait on the Hollywood conglomerate to prioritize the commoditization of such technology. Enter MythTV, Knoppix, MPlayer+EDL, and Filmwatch. The whole thing could be called ``Linfilm'' or something. Imagine a CD that transforms a PC into a content-filtering general media player. When it's time for the family to sit down to watch a movie, they pop the CD into the drive, reboot, pop the DVD into the drive, select their content filtering preferences, and push `Play'. How to remaster a Knoppix CD: http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/KnoppixRemasteringHowto There. It's really all right there at our fingertips. Now all we need is a project name, a web site and server, and a small group of dedicated developers to actually put the dang thing together. It will take some courage, because the project involves distributing DeCSS. It may require a legal defense fund, if the MPAA or the Director's Guild of America decides to get nasty. But we are in the right for wanting to use the technology in this manner, and as far as I know, justice still prevails in this country. It is within the realm of our civil liberties to be empowered to watch movies however we want to watch them on our own equipment and in our own homes. Everyone knows that the DMCA is flawed, and in a true democratic republic, we should not be afraid to stand up to flawed legislation for righteous purposes. The playing of media content is a minefield of patents. I don't know if this project would potentially infringe on any patents, but I am tempted to take Linus Torvald's attitude toward that issue. If anyone here is intimidated by this sort of thing, you may as well stop using GNU/Linux altogether, because your distro is almost certainly infringing numerous patents already. Thankfully, patent-for-profit folks tend to ignore academic and philanthropic efforts, because they aren't a source of potential revenue. So, in other words, it will take some guts to do this. You have to be willing to stand up for what is right and best for the community, even in the face of hostile legislation and patent-wielding individuals and corporations. It would be fantastic if we could get BYU to sponsor this as an academic project and to legally indemnify all who work on it. It's not likely that it will ever run into legal trouble, but there is always that possibility. Just some thoughts. I'm not in this to make money, and I don't mean to start a revolution or anything. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm still from the school of thought that a small group of dedicated people can get together and do something neat in this country. I for one just want to use Free Software technology to help people. Mike -- Copyright is nothing more than a temporary loan from the public domain.
pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature
____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
