Hello all, I have just asked on -mentors, and been referred to you for this question, so here I am. I am considering packaging a small (15K compressed) utility that extracts data from video dvd's. It does not link against libdvdcss, although it will use it if found. The program itself is GPL, so no problems with licensing, but I am wondering if this is legal for Debian to redistribute. It does not itself burn new dvd's, merely extracts the data from them in such a way that it is then easy to burn them to a new disc with `mkisofs -dvd-video` and dvdrecord.
The thing I am unsure about is the whole area of dvd ripping - does the DMCA & co. prohibit this sort of thing entirely, making it impossible for Debian to redistribute it? Is it legal to just extract to hard drive and file sharing is when one gets into problems? I see that transcode is not in Debian, so I am assuming there are some problems of this sort, although I am not sure. If someone who has familiarity with these issues cares to enlighten me, I would appreciate it. Please cc: me, as I am not subscribed to -legal. I have set the Reply-To: header to reflect this. TIA, -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ,''`. Stephen Gran | | : :' : [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | `. `' Debian user, admin, and developer | | `- http://www.debian.org | -----------------------------------------------------------------
pgp5aG5vSjUKC.pgp
Description: PGP signature
