Re: [libreplanet-discuss] LibRay solves what problem?

[Will Hill]

On Saturday 23 January 2016, J.B. Nicholson wrote:
> On fsf-community-team@gnu.org Tobias Platen wrote :
> > Bluray has the same problem, therefore LibRay (http://lib-ray.org/) has
> > been created as a replacement.
>
> Thanks for the pointer, but I'm unclear about what problem LibRay aims to
> solve. I've read http://lib-ray.org/reasons.html but I'm still left
> wondering whom will LibRay help? And how LibRay will help more than
> delivering a Matroska file using free software-compatible (if not free
> software-favorable) codecs?
>
> Is LibRay solving a non-problem by pursuing a physical means of conveying
> movie data when the trend seems (to my mind) to be moving toward
> network-based delivery?

The libray people explain the problem reasonably well, they want to distribute 
high definition video without digital restrictions.  Their explanation of the 
problems with Blue Ray seems clear enough, and the links provided will tell 
you how nasty the technology is.  To parse what they wrote, 

/*********** http://lib-ray.org/reasons.html *********
[Blue Ray digital restrictions are] clearly antithetical to your needs if you 
are a free culture movie, television, or web video producer. ... With DVD you 
could [avoid restrictions] you just made an unencrypted "all region" 
disk. ... Not so with Blu-Ray. ... As a video producer, I cannot get a 
non-DRM version of a Blu-Ray disk replicated ... It's a contract violation, 
and it's illegal (due to patent law) to build a competing replication 
business using the same physical technology. 

For those of us who want to produce free culture high-definition video 
[either] sacrifice our ethics and ideology and release on the locked down 
format anyway or we don't release HD video at all ... [or] build a new 
standard that respects freedom.
********* end http://lib-ray.org/reasons.html **********/

I agree with them.  It would be nice to have a container format that provides 
menus and other things for video producers.  I'd be happy to buy physical 
media that VLC and other free software video software knows how to play.   A 
set top box would also be nice.  This is the the same sort of problem that 
ODF solved.  The formats pushed on us by big publishers and software owners 
are openly hostile and awful to use.