“It all happened because DVD playback software for Linux
doesn’t exist. There are numerous DVD playback utilities for
Windows –WinDVD, ATI DVD, Compaq DVD, XingDVD — but nothing,
nada, zip for Linux players.“
“The Norwegians began trying to reverse-engineer Windows players
to figure out how to handle playback. But all of the players had an
encrypted decryption key … except one: XingDVD, from
RealNetworks’ subsidiary Xing Technologies, had failed to encrypt
its key because of an oversight.”
“Some people just wanted a DVD player, but others took it a step
further. They used the decryption key to create a tiny utility to
remove the encryption in a DVD movie, allowing for movies to be
illegally copied.”