Watchin’ DVDs

Watching a DVD in Linux is a bit of a legal quagmire if you live in the United States. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other issues make it tricky for any open source program to navigate the licensing maze when it comes to movies that are encoded or protected in various fashions. However, not all DVDs have such countermeasures enabled: There are DVDs that Americans can watch under Linux with no trouble. (Note that I say watch, and not copy or pirate.)