[ltp] FYI -- New ThinkPad T22 model for Linux includes DVD movie playback

[Les Bell]

Vivek Dasmohapatra wrote:

>>
One question: Does this software respect zoning? What happens to those of
us outside zone 1 [or whichever zone the US is in]?
<<

Good question: as someone who lives in Australia but travels extensively,
I'd hope that I could replay DVD's that I acquire wherever my travels take
me. The whole zone thing strikes me as an unnatural restraint on trade, and
governments are starting to think the same way - witness New Zealand, where
I understand supply of zone-crippled DVD players is now illegal.

On the bigger issue, I think the open source movement is going to have to
work through this at a very high level, dealing with the ethical issues.
The use of digital media and technology makes loss-free copying possible
and opens up the possibility of theft of artists' work. If an artist
*chooses* to make their music available for free download, great. But if
they don't, I have to respect that, and I will not download music being
"shared" by others, just as I will not make pirate copies of Microsoft
software (seriously).

However, I've noticed that not everyone is able to resist temptation, and
so copyright owners - or their distributors - have the right, I guess, to
implement technology to make it difficult or impossible to copy works. The
stupid thing is, CSS doesn't do a damn thing to stop copying, but only
makes it difficult to play media that you legitimately own on hardware that
is technically capable of it. That's really, really, dumb, causes the CSS
companies to lose the respect of customers, and makes it that much easier
for some to justify whatever they have to do to defeat it.

Best,

--- Les [http://www.lesbell.com.au]


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