[linux-dvb] Re: software decoding of crypted channels ?

[Martin Springer <springer@convergence.de>]

h.berlioz@freesurf.fr writes:

[...]

>  The driver developers are working for Convergence, which is a
>  member of the Linux TV Alliance.  I don't think they are totally
>  free. Will they be allowed to continue the development of the
>  driver ?

I don't see any reason why the driver developers should not be allowed
to continue improving the driver.

I appreciate your decision to withdraw your project, though I don't
think that it will help much in the long term. If it is technically
feasible, sooner or later some stupid idiot will distribute an
emulator and then the industry will try to blame the Linux community
for knowing too much about Conditional Access. Somehow this reminds me
of DeCSS.

We started linuxtv.org in 1999 because we wanted to establish an open
platform for the creation, distribution and reception for digital
television. At that time, not many people outside of companies like
Canal+, Beta Research or OpenTV had any idea of what digital
television could be good for and Linux was considered an operating
system for web servers.

More than 2 years have passed and in my opinion we (the linuxtv.org
community) have done a pretty good job. Today, many companies share
our vision that digital television should be based on open standards
and the reliable Linux operating system (needless to say that Linux is
so reliable because it is free software licensed under the GPL).

It will take some time until the people who today are concerned that
pay tv will be cracked because of the Linux developments will
understand that open source cryptography is the only way to create a
secure platform (if a secure platform is possible at all).

Sometimes I doubt that the industry is even interested in a secure
platform. One the one hand, companies make big money selling insecure
encryption platforms (based on patents and trade secrets) and on the
other side crackers make money by selling cracked smart cards.

This is not our business.

yours
-- 
Martin Springer, Chief Evangelist                 
convergence integrated media gmbh      GPG Key-ID  1024D/8EFE7B2F
Rosenthaler Str. 51                    ph/ +49 (0)30- 72 62 06 73
D-10178 Berlin                         fx/ +49 (0)30- 72 62 06 55


-- 
Info:
To unsubscribe send a mail to listar@linuxtv.org with "unsubscribe linux-dvb" as subject.