Update: Just Push Play
For the past two months, I have been working on a beginners-level consumer book on Ubuntu 7.04, Feisty Fawn. It's been a bit hectic, but now I am about finished and ready to send the last chapter to the publisher. (I'll tell you the title later; we're still trying to pin it down.)
The final chapter (for me, not the book) is documenting the Automatix2 installer for Ubuntu (as well as Debian 4.0, MEPIS; plus the family of *buntu flavors).
And while Automatix2 is really useful, there is one part of it I have never liked: the fact that we have to use it to get DVD playback capabilities.
I know, I know: it's not Automatix' developers fault, and I know there are plenty of other ways to pull in the right codecs to play DVDs on Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution. What I don't like is the fact that we have to sneak around to do it.
Unlicensed DVD players are forbidden to download or use if you are a resident of the United States, in case you haven't heard, because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998. The DMCA forbids the sale of any unlicensed encryption technology and in order to read or rip a DVD movie, you need to decrypt its copy protection. So, no US-legal DVD software for Linux, because most of that software is not using the licensed codecs and decryption technology.
Which means if I want to tell people how to run their own DVDs in their PCs, I have to make sure they understand the legal ramifications in the US--just to play a movie they have rented or they own.
There is hope on the horizon: back in February, Linspire and Canonical (Ubuntu's commercial vendor) announced a partnership that would, among other things, make the Linspire and Freespire distributions Ubuntu-based and give Ubuntu users access to Linspire's Click n' Run (CNR) downloading services, which include legal, licensed software to play DVDs.
Update: When I first wrote this blog this afternoon, no word on when this announcement will be made; the CNR site said second quarter of 2007, after the Feisty release. But a newsletter release today from Linspire's Kevin Carmony coincidentally shed some needed light on CNR's timing:
"The CNR.com Timeline:
- "Early May - CNR.com Testing--Very soon, the Freespire community will be asked to help start testing the new CNR.com site and CNR plug-in from within the Freespire Alpha and Beta builds. (If you'd like to participate in this testing, please visit the Freespire.org website to learn how to get involved.)
- "Early June--CNR.com Goes Live for Freespire and Linspire Users--Linspire Users 5.0 or higher, and Freespire users 1.0 or higher, will be able to download the new CNR plug-in and start using the new CNR.com.
- "Mid June--CNR Plug-in for Ubuntu Users--Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) users will be able to download a CNR plug-in and start using CNR.com.
- "CNR Plug-in for Debian, OpenSUSE and Fedora users--In the months that follow, plug-ins will be made available for these three other popular Linux distributions..."
So, now it's for sure there will not be a CNR chapter for this book. Maybe the next edition.
The good news is that finally Linux users will have a cheap, legal means to do something they should have been able to do years ago, no thanks to the lobbyists at the Motion Picture Association of America.
Soon, Linux users will be able to insert their favorite DVD and just push play.
how can you possibly suggest the use of something so heinous and wrong as automatix?
g**damned newb idiots.
It would appear that, after reading the post by "why me," I can probably tell him why. The article answered a couple of questions I had about when CNR was coming.
Thanks
well the first comment is certainly constructive,i agree that some parts of automatix are bad, because they mess up the package management system to a degree but the codecs which is what this article is about carry no such overhead, and are required (and legal) in many parts of the worlds just not the US. expecting users to play hit and run with mediubuntu and synaptic is not acceptable, and automatix is by no means perfect, but its the best option newbies have until they know aaptitude like us old timers.
....installer for Ubuntu (as well as Debian 4.0, MEPIS, and the rest of the *buntu flavors)....
Did you seriously mean to say that Debian, etc. are flavors of Ubuntu or are you just ill-informed?
Pardon me. As soon as I posted, I realized perhaps it was poor wording that caused me to read the sentence with the meaning that I did. Do you mean the rest of the *buntu flavors, in addition to the other distributions? I suggest a review your book draft for other items like this or you'll start a flame war for sure.
You have pointed out the main problem with hard copy books about Linux distros. Because the nature of the Linux OS, its applications and its interfaces, are works in progress, books such as yours are usually out of date before they are published.
I'd rather see you publish on a medium like Lulu so we could buy the most recent hard copy and download pay for updates before the next version came out.
Utilising this type of publishing strategy would make your book a really useful and up to date service for the Ubuntu community.
Why me: Threats of bodily harm removed; too much humor for one day. As for your pertinent question, trust me, I gave plenty of warning about what could happen with Automatix. And touted CNR's coming quite a bit.
I'm not sure why there is so much controversy over automatix, people who are simply not going to dig deeply enough into thier linux installation are trying to play movies on their computer's DVD drive, automatix is enabling that. There is nothing in the world wrong with it, especially if the alternatives include not watching DVDs or digging through the garbage codec posting sites of the world, hoping you don't accidentily compromise your new Linux machine, especially since security issues like that are part of the driving force that moved you to try Linux. What I can't believe is the degree to which people are willing to accept the DMCA, clearly in the wrong in this case. There is clearly no crime being committed when someone watches a DVD on their Linux box, but it has been outlawed because the possibility of harm to the movie manufacturer, that computer could be used to harvest their valuable IP. And as such people who want to watch movies on their Linux machines probably find Peer To Peer services much more convenient, having all that difficult DRM stripped out by a helpful p2p community member. I wonder if that makes the Special Interest Groups, lobbyists and congress accessories to the pirating of that movie.