[MPlayer-cygwin] win32 GUI

[Joey Parrish]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 01:59:52PM -0400, Joseph Miller wrote:
> 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.

Then there's also the -dump* options someone could use to dump the
content once decrypted.  If you decrypt after that stage, then a new
demuxer could be added to do the same thing...

--Joey

-- 
"I tell you:  one must still have chaos in oneself to give
birth to a dancing star!" --Nietzsche