[MPlayer-cygwin] win32 GUI

[Joseph Miller]

On Friday 17 September 2004 1:15 pm, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> Joseph Miller writes:
> > Not a problem, I just didn't see any reason to post the rest of the
> > player to this particular list.  It is basically a player for encrypted
> > content for the purposes of selling content, but not the player.  I will
> > happily release the source to anyone whom I release the player to, but
> > the implementation is not such that it would be beneficial to the general
> > public.  However, if anyone had any ideas about the best way to do this
> > with open source software that would be feasible, I would gladly work
> > towards a release for the general public.
>
> A few more details about what you consider feasible and/or what the
> problems you are facing consist of would help.
>
> Diego
>
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Our company will be making video demonstrations of AutoCAD(R) and will sell 
the demonstrations for profit.  In order to do this, we wanted to be able to 
provide media files in an encrypted format so that they would not be passed 
around the Internet through peer-to-peer filesharing or downloaded from 
public websites.  Using Microsoft's content licensing did not seem to be a 
cost-effective solution when we could modify MPlayer ourselves for a 
relatively low labor cost.  In order for a customer to play an encrypted 
file, they must enter a username/password which will be authenticated on our 
website, then their player will receive the key to decrypt the content.  They 
must re-authenticate each time they re-open the file, so the key is not 
stored on their disk and they cannot pass the key around or decrypt the 
content themselves.  This is an ok solution, but not ideal because we know 
that someone who is knowledgeable enough will be able to easily read our 
source code and write a program that will decrypt our files after a single 
authentication.  (On a side note, the user may obtain a different kind of key 
that they can use to play the file while not connected to the Internet, but 
it will only work on that specific computer so that it cannot be easily 
passed around.)

I can't think of an open source solution that would fix my concerns by making 
it reasonably difficult to decrypt these files while having access to their 
source code.  The only solution that I can think of that may work and would 
still be compatible with the GPL would be to have a separate program which 
decrypted the file and then piped the decrypted file into MPlayer.  This 
interaction would be considered "input to a program" instead of "linking to a 
program" but then you have to deal with running excess software, keeping the 
pipe from being intercepted, etc, etc.

For the reasons above I will not release our custom player to the general 
public, but only to those who purchase media from us in order to help keep it 
more contained.  I am not satisfied with this solution because I would rather 
release the player to everyone, and I know that eventually one of my 
customers will do that, but this will just have to work in the meantime until 
we come up with a better solution.  Any ideas or input would be welcome, but 
don't be too harsh on me as I already feel that I have slightly betrayed open 
source.  If someone would recommend something better I would gladly accept 
it.

-Joseph