Well look, the sensible thing is not to get too worked up over the legalities.
I think CD protection in general is going to become more prevelant even in audio CDs, so eventually if you worried too much about it, this would prevent a project like this from ever existing. To my mind this is all part of MS and big business' DRM plans, that much to MS' glee are apparently set to destroy the potential for Linux to act as a desktop OS, or for it to have any multi-media capacity at all. Deliberate or not (and perhaps from MS' and other's stand point, its purely beneficial) that is exactly the direction we're headed in. At some point or other though something has to give. Either Linux gets consigned to the dustbin of history and never lives up to its full potential as a desktop/multi-media OS, or people organise and prepare to engage in some form of civil resistance. This whole DRM thing is simply eating into the functionality of Linux - and it looks set in the near future to get much worse. (Palladium andyone?) I think however it's too early to be giving up on it and putting our hands up and offerring to surrender. Like I said, things are going to get much tougher in the near future for everyone. This was always going to be a fight. You will have to be prepared for that - and be prepared to deal with the concequences. Q ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthieu Weber" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 2:36 PM Subject: Re: [Freevo-users] Legal issues [Was: audio.cdbackup] On Mon 28.07.2003 at 02:41:32PM +0200, Dirk Meyer wrote: > Aubin Paul wrote: > > It's completely foolish, but your fair use rights are overridden by > > the prohibition against circumventing copy protection. Audio CDs have > > no copy protection, so you're not circumventing anything, hence fair > > use takes over. > > They are testing copy protected audio cds in Germany right now. I bet > until the end they have the same in Canada for all new stuff. Same in France (where I'm from) and in Finland (where I live). Or do you think about yet another Audio CD protection system? > > The main thing is that I don't think Freevo should ever include the > > vobcopy binary with dvdcss support, but just point you to where you > > can get it if you're in the (increasingly few) countries where it's > > allowed. > > Don't ship anything with Freevo that may be illegal. I'm also not > happy with the mplayer shipped with Freevo, because this mplayer > contains DeCSS and in 3 days for now, it's illegal in Germany to > distribute software that can bypass copyprotection. [1]. MPlayer, as is, is infringing patents about MPEG4 in the U.S. (and Japan too), because of ffmpeg and xvid. But this is still legal in Europe (but might become illegal after the vote in the European Parliament in September :( ). One solution is to host the runtime in a country which has not such restrictions, or tell people to get and compile their own mplayer if they want to watch DVDs, and distribute an mplayer without DeCSS. And tell U.S. citizens that they are not allowed to download mplayer anyway. I know this is not user-friendly, since it will break the "0 config" feature of Freevo. > Yes, we in Germany beat you guys in America in this point of stupidity > :-( DMCA in USA *is* that stupid too, AFAIK. But France is following the same path than Germany. Only Finland refused the EUCD at first (but it will come anyway later I suppose). > Footnotes: > [1] This law is very stupid, and I hope it will change back. I buy a > DVD, I buy a DVD-ROM, but I'm not allowed to watch my DVD with > mplayer. Actually you are, if you pay the right to do so... Matthieu -- (~._.~) Matthieu Weber - Université de Jyväskylä (~._.~) ( ? ) email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ( ? ) ()- -() public key id : 452AE0AD ()- -() (_)-(_) "Humor ist, wenn man trotzdem lacht (Germain Muller)" (_)-(_) ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by: Free pre-built ASP.NET sites including Data Reports, E-commerce, Portals, and Forums are available now. Download today and enter to win an XBOX or Visual Studio .NET. http://aspnet.click-url.com/go/psa00100003ave/direct;at.aspnet_072303_01/01 _______________________________________________ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by: Free pre-built ASP.NET sites including Data Reports, E-commerce, Portals, and Forums are available now. Download today and enter to win an XBOX or Visual Studio .NET. http://aspnet.click-url.com/go/psa00100003ave/direct;at.aspnet_072303_01/01 _______________________________________________ Freevo-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
