The German Law and the GordianKnot package

[LigH]

Dear GordianKnot developers and users,

some people seem to have a kind of special talent of pointing to possible sources of risk. As some of you may know, in Germany it is not allowed to circumvent copy protection techniques, or talking about how to do it, since August 2003. And it is not allowed to use software which is able to.

GordianKnot itself is not able to remove any copy protection, because it is just a GUI. But the only way to download it is in a bundle which contains several programs, and some of them are able to. So, we start to be afraid that downloading the GordianKnot package is not allowed from Germany any more.

Therefore I wonder if it could be useful to split the package into bundles of "harmless" and "risky" tools (from this point of view); and similar to Maven's tool, which does not need to ship with that special plugin or DLL version, may it even be useful to get a "light version" from LightningUK!'s tool, which is currently included in the GordianKnot package?

(Similar to computer games being produced in a special version for the German market, which do not show red blood to avoid blacklisting.)

Sometimes, there are reasons to think about perverted ideas... :mad:

[len0x]

Are we talking only about removing DVDDecrypter & Vstrip from the package ?

I wonder if you are not allowed to use such tools how can you use GK at all... (process avi or tv rips only ?) Allow to download them seperately still doen't help coz you have to use them anyway.

From legal point of view - you don't have to install DVDDecrypter from GK package (since it is option in installer), so by putting disclaimer that only install this program if the law of your country allows that we can eliminiate possible problems? Or someone can correct me?

[Kika]

By now, it is not illegal to download such Programs, only the use is an illegal thing. Like LigH wrote it is also illegal to write about the usage of Ripping-Tools and to provide Links to such Tools.

So, if any German user downloads the package from an US-Server (or anywhere else in the world), that's not an illegal action.

(hm, the German Law is a bit crazy... ;) )

[schnuffix]

Same thing with all bundles like Gordian Knot, e.g. DVX (includes DVD Decrypter). So there will be no articles, no books no nothing in the German press about these products. :(

[stax76]

Same thing with all bundles like Gordian Knot, e.g. DVX (includes DVD Decrypter). So there will be no articles, no books no nothing in the German press about these products


I read only online press but so far there was no press or advertisement for DVX anyway except a entry at mpegx I think. In case of DVX and I believe also Gordian Knot, it's possible to configure it manually. In DVX there will be a indication if it's the proper version of a certain program. The AviSynth filter description xml files are only in the SysPack, without these descriptions there is no syntax highlighting in the script editor, no filter dialog and no filter description editor but there are two possibilities to get these files without downloading the whole SysPack. A easy way to setup the programs required for DVX is to install DVX and then run jernst's update plugin which downloads and installs all required packages, the AviSynth package includes the filter descriptions, it's possible to disable packages like DVD Decryptor. The other possibility is to copy the filter descriptions from the program AviSynthEditor to the AviSynth plugin directory

Anyway, I believe it was already before illegal to copy DVD's you don't own, or to say it more genteelly to backup DVD's with in most cases only imaginary originals

Personally I'm not very surprised about this new law, almost every second title story in the PC press was like "copy DVD's illegal in one minute", or "download movies and music illegal in one minute", or "hack pay TV in one minute", I guess that's the kind of stuff people like to read

[LigH]

Okay - sorry for misunderstanding the rules a little bit: As long as "getting" the software is not as illegal for me as "using" it, it probably won't be such a big problem anymore. At least, I do not have to use a ripper to remove copyright protection, I can also use its routines to only strip program chains and content streams if the DVD was not protected, and then I could just filecopy the VOBs. :rolleyes:

It looks a bit like current guides would have to be written like "I can't tell you how to get the VOBs from your DVD to your HDD; but once they are there, I can continue to tell you how to process them further using GordianKnot and the tools used by it...". I even read that one other board describes in detail how to configure rippers to switch off copyright protection removement technologies! :D