“IBM this week eliminated the Linux multimedia gap with the
release of the T22 ThinkPad. Big Blue’s latest offering is the
first commercially available Linux computer with the ability to
play back DVDs.
“There is no love lost between the communities of Open Source
and the Motion Picture Association of America, especially since the
MPAA hauled a Web site operator into court for merely linking to a
few lines of code that bypassed the DVD location restriction
features. The court decided that DVD’s not-so-secret workings were
protected by copyright.”
“Using existing Open Source solutions to provide DVD playback
under Linux was out of the question for IBM. The challenge for Big
Blue’s mobile computing division was to create a solution that
could preserve the copy protection essential to avoiding an MPAA
lawsuit.”