TV application for the bttv driver allowing decoding I will also attach an ebuild for its plugins. without plugins xawdecode doesn't do much better then xawtv, but with the plugins xawdecode allows decoding of premiere (germany) and canal+ (france). I don't know if there are any legal issues in distributing these programs. As xawdecode can't do anything unusual without its plugins it shouldn't pose any problems. I'm not so sure about its plugins though. Anyway, they are useless as long as the file: key.txt is missing.
Created attachment 5018 [details] ebuild
Created attachment 5019 [details] plugins ebuild
Christian, can you find out about the legalities of this?
Sorry, I tried to find out, but did not get any useful answers. There is a strange law in France, which says that it is not allowed to decode Canal+. I also heard, that ISP hosting xawdecode were asked (by C+) to remove it from their servers, but it is possible that because of this the plugins were created (this is just a pure guess!). Anyway, even without the plugins, there is a real reason for using xawdecode instead of xawtv --> teletext. Their is also the interesting aspect, that gentoo would only provide the ebuild., which only installs xawdecode.
Doc, I need your legal insight on this bug please?
First of all, never qualify a law as "strange" because it doesn't fit into your path. The French Law applying to this piece of software is the "Law on the Liberty of Communication" aka. "Audiovisual Law" of 30 september 1986, as amended. Article 79-1 of said Law expressely prohibits the use, detention, creation or distribution of any mean that allows accessing TV programs that otherwise are restricted to a closed public. This is a criminal prohibition exposing anyone creating, distribution or using such mean to a sentence of 2 years of emprisonment and/or a fine of 30000 EURO (roughly $30000). I am not positive whether other Law systems have a disposition that well tailored to our case, but I am absolutely positive that the creation and distribution of such mean would still be restricted by common IP Law, be it local or international IP Law. Last but not least, said French based company Canal+ has already taken legal steps in the past to limit the distribution of xawdecode by delivering legal warrants to several ISPs hosting xawdecode. Similiar steps have been taken against other, similiar projects in the past 2 or 3 years. In the meantime, xawdecode has given up on their decryption code which is no longer distributed with the main source code. However, the code is still available as plugin. As far as I can see, the current (anything after 1.4.0) plain source code for xawdecode does not seem to fall into specific regulations, as it doesn't allow anything more than a normal TV set would do. Thus I guess we can safely put that ebuild into Portage. As for the plugin ebuild, it is definitely an illegal item and would expose Gentoo as well as their userbase to legal action. Looking alone at the risk taken for French Gentoo users, we couldn't afford making it publicly available. And as I said, even if you are not French, you may still be sued by any of the companies that could claim a breach of their encryption technology on behalf of common IP Law. The plugin ebuild should thus be discarded.
thanks christian, added to portage. (without plugins)
