Usual "forbidden items" explanation

[Keith G. Robertson-Turner]

Tim wrote:
> Tim:
>>> I've never got the applications that FC4 tried to use to play a DVD,
>>> by default, to work.
> 
> James Wilkinson:
>> Not surprising -- they're not meant to work for most DVDs. Supplying
>> the code to read most DVD's CSS may well be a violation of the USA's
>> DCMA, and the MPEG2 encoding is patented. So Fedora *can't* legally
>> supply open-source programs to play most DVDs.
> 
> I already knew about that, but what doesn't make sense is that:
> 
>  a. There's a default program to play something that it can't play.
>  b. That it doesn't manage to play non-protected DVDs.
> 
> If it could play non-protected discs, e.g. my own recordings, then I can
> see the sense in having a default player, but it doesn't.

I totally agree.

IMHO Totem seems to be an utter waste of space. Until I removed it from 
both FC4 and FC5, every time I clicked on anything multimedia, Totem 
would pop up, try to play the file, fail miserably, then complain it 
didn't have the right plugins. Problem is, AFAICT the *mysterious* 
plugins are simply not available.

Maybe you have to rebuild from source to enable the *evil* support for 
*bad* filetypes, who knows, who cares? All I know is it is a PITA and a 
total waste of space. Why it is even distributed with Fedora in its 
current crippled form, I really don't know - it just doesn't seem to 
play *any* filetypes at all; evil or otherwise.

Better to include *no* player, and state *clearly* in the default home 
page on the browser when you first run it (i.e. the "Welcome" page), 
that you need to get your multimedia player from from a civilized and 
democratic country beyond the reach of the damned American fascist DMCA.

-
K.