The VideoLAN Forums

We have converted out Cable TV infrastructure over to an IPTV solution. We want to suggest VLC to our students as the default player for the tv streams. However, our legal department is requiring us to make a "legal" version of the player/plugin available to our students (whether they use ours or yours is up to them). Basically we need to remove the ability to play encrypted DVD's.

I have read that this done through the libdvdcss.dll but that dll does not seem to exist on my platform. Does this mean it is embedded into the core code and the only way to remove it is with a recompile?

We really only need to make available a modified version of the plugin installer. Is there a simple way to modify the package and remove the ability to playback encrypted DVD's?

There are no DLLs on Macs, since that's a Windows-only thingie. Regardless, there are dynamic libraries on Macs and that's why libdvdcss is called "vlc_libdvdcss.dylib" on this platform. You can easily remove it from VLC's plugin and create a new pkg-container using PackageMaker.

Anyway, please note that VLC also incorporates code, which may be covered by software patents. Therefore, you may need to pay royalties if you use and redistribute VLC, so consult your lawyer in case of any questions.