libdvdcss

libdvdcss is a free, highly portable library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the CSS system. It is part of the VideoLAN project and is used by VLC and all other open source DVD players such as Ogle, xine-based players and MPlayer.

libdvdcss is designed to be platform independent, with versions for GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, BSD and Solaris. It is released under the GNU GPL.

libdvdcss is not to be confused with DeCSS. While DeCSS uses a cracked DVD player key to perform authentication, libdvdcss uses a generated list of possible player keys. If none of them work (for instance, when the DVD drive enforces region coding) a brute force algorithm is tried so the region code of a DVD is ignored. Unlike DeCSS, libdvdcss has never been fought over in a courtroom.

In many countries it is forbidden to sell or document programs that provide ways around copy protection systems. CSS is not a copy protection system, but rather primarily a region-control market segmentation system. Despite this fact, many Linux distributions do not contain libdvdcss (for example Debian, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu) due to fears of running afoul of DMCA-style laws. In most of these cases, the library can be easily downloaded from the Internet. In other cases some distributions refrain from preloading libdvdcss onto their install discs but it is available in their software repositories.

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