[vlc] Re: copy protection

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

 Hello,

Le Mercredi 3 Novembre 2004 04:03, John Murphy a écrit :
> I'm an independant videographer. I would like to distribute my movies
> with the VLC player. Is there a way to protect the content from being
> copied and redistributed?

Absolutely not. In fact the VLC has built-in support for copy and 
re-streaming. You might consider building a version of the VLC without 
these features, but advanced users would still be able to copy the 
stream by building their own version with copying capability.

> Some sort of copy protection or digital rights management.
> If not, can you recommend someone who could modify 
> the player for me and at what cost.

People might be able to implement DRM in the VLC, and build a version of 
the VLC without copy capability. However, the VLC is distributed under 
the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). As such, if you 
happen to implement DRM into VLC, any of your customer to whom you 
sold/provided your DRM-enabled VLC would have a right to request the 
source to that implementation. Odds are that one user will do so, 
backport *legally* the descrambling/whatever feature back into our 
mainline VLC, and obtain *legally* a VLC that is able to copy and 
redistribute your movies.

While copying and redistributing your movies might be illegal, it will 
be technically feasible.

I'd suggest you read the licensing terms carefully or ask a lawyer 
before you go further. While I'm not lawyer myself, I believe you can't 
really do what you want.


-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.simphalempin.com/home/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc/attachments/20041103/6e4945d0/attachment.sig>