xine is free software. "free software" is somewhat related to being
"open-source". However, the meaning of "free software" goes further than just
that: it is about the freedom of users of software. If you have the time, please
read what the free software foundation says about the topics of freedom and
software at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.

There is a very special threat to freedom when it comes to DVDs: the movie
industry is making huge efforts to restrict playback of DVDs to controlled
devices. Most DVDs that are currently sold are encrypted in a proprietary way -
and in some countries (most notably the USA, but most EU countries will most
likely enter the circle as well), it is possibly illegal to decrypt them -
even for private viewing. Hopefully most people will agree that this is a very
questionable way to treat customers. The xine project team condemns these
efforts of the movie industry - trying to prevent loss of sales in such a way
surely shows a lot of disrespect towards all their honest customers. On the
other hand, the xine project team is against breaking existing law. No one knows
exactly if it is actually illegal anywhere in the world to write, own and use
software for viewing encrypted DVDs. But as this is an unclear topic (that seems
potentially very dangerous), xine does not contain any specific code for
decrypting DVDs. It seems, however, that third parties are working on such
extensions. Possibly in some places it is legal to use these. Whichever way -
you will not be able to play encrypted DVDs with xine out-of-the-box.

Please note that this is not a bug or 'missing feature', but a genuine legal
problem. It would be great to solve the problem (i.e. convincing America and/or
the movie industry that they are really annoying and unnecessarily unfair to
customers as well as users and developers of free software), but including code
to decrypt DVDs in xine won't solve this problem. We therefore invite all xine
users to fight decisions of their governments regarding the criminalization of
DVD playback and fair use of information in general with all available means
your legal system provides you with.