Shachar Shemesh wine-devel@shemesh.biz writes:
If the code in Wine still doesn't allow unprotected CDs from running, there can be no problem.
No, it's not that simple. By providing a replacement driver, you are circumventing a technical measure controlling access to the work. The fact is that without the driver you don't get access, and with the dummy Wine driver you do; since the dummy Wine driver is not an "authorized" way to get access it's circumvention. It doesn't matter at all whether it lets you use copied CDs or not.
Besides, I don't see how you could possibly prove that our implementation does exactly the same thing as the original one. Maybe the original doesn't only prevent copied CDs, maybe it also checks the phase of the moon or whatever, you have no way to make sure the protection is implemented correctly.
That's because of what DeCSS does. DeCSS is the circumvention device itself. It takes an encrypted DVD and produces unencrypted MPEGs. For example - I'm pretty sure that if you statically link Xine with libdecss, you will get a binary that is perfectly legal (region codes non-withstanding).
I'm not so sure. Since it decrypts DVDs in a way that is not authorized by the copyright holder, technically it's circumvention. It doesn't matter whether it lets you infringe copyright or not.
Remeber, the "chilling effect" is when we let the DMCA control what we do further than what it was meant to do to begin with. I can't see anyone taking you to court saying "look, it's true that with Wine you can't do anything that you can't do without, but it's an unlicensed version, so it's a DMCA violation".
Actually I think this is pretty likely. Nobody is going to go to the trouble of investigating exactly what the driver does, when it's much easier to simply send the lawyers and get rid of it; especially when we are dealing with a company like Macrovision that makes a living selling this snake oil^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcopy protection stuff. This is why it's important to not only make sure it is legal, but also make sure it looks obviously legitimate to a casual observer. The dummy driver fails that test.