Yeah, well I stilll think your overreacting. The RIAA and/or MPAA as you put it ,took a bumch of pirates to court - and no one is talking about piracy here. A lot of those cases have still to be proven anyway, so we would do better to wait and see what the outcome of all this was (even though I'm not convinced it's directly relevant to our situation) before go go about beating our chests in angst about what and what we are not allowed to do with any given linux application or OS.
Not that I'm saying people shouldn't work on the legalities, it would be cool if someone could come up with a legal way to watch DVD's and other media on Linux (although this would only cause others to eventually find a way to circumvent it) and then we could finally put this thing behind us and make it a non-issue. Again though I would have to wonder what would be the practical use of a HTPC system that was crippled by legalities and which ultimately couldn't do very much because of them? Most of the codecs (although not all) around today are licenced in some way or another, if you ripped everything out, at the end of the day you would probably end up with just a pretty GUI that simply sat there without doing anything useful at all.. As I have said previously perhaps 3 or so years ago might have been a good time to discuss these matters - and indeed until I mentioned it (although it wasn't the main focus of my question) it wasn't even an issue. However my impression now is that people appear to fall into two camps on this, those who are concenrned about the exact letter of the law and who are anxious to comply - and those who don't give a damn, think these laws are silly and absubed and and unjust and who are willing to accept ay 'percieved' risks in order to pursue as what they see as their inherant civil liberties. I guess its not hard to work out which camps both you and I fall into. Personally I don't give a damn - and for those who do, given the long standing legal status of these issues (as far as I know they have always been technically illegal under Linux) then maybe this isn't the best place for them to be? The status of MP3 and DVD playback on MS windows has at least always been pretty clear. If you wish to tie yourself up in legal knots, this is likely to be the only way (for now) that you will be able to resolve them. Admittedly this whole project exists in a grey area. But then it always has done - as do all similar projects of this nature. Given the seeming inability for developers to come up with a legal way to watch and play this media, I don't see how the situation can be resolved very quickly. In the mean time unless you are a pirate and are regularly downloading illegal materials, I think it is unlikely that the RIAA or anyone else will be putting very much effort into monitoring your activities. So basically my advice is don't create a problem until there is acutally a problem to deal with. Ultimately no one forces anyone to use any of the facilities provided by this project. If someone was so deeply worried about the implications of doing so, perhaps a legal warning advising them of the risks involved and warning them not to redistribute any recorded media would suffice. Until however we see a single sucessful prosecution of someone using a Linux operating system to backup their own legally owned media, the so called 'risks' involved are in my view heavily overstated. Q ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthieu Weber" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 8:42 AM Subject: Re: [Freevo-users] Legal issues [Was: audio.cdbackup] On Mon 28.07.2003 at 03:57:28PM +0100, Q wrote: > Lol, good stuff... So long as it means I can still do the things I want and > still make my own choices, that's fine by me. If things become illegal or > certain components become hard to find, well generally peeps always find a > way. All I would like to see it for it to be made super simple for users to > be able to put any functionality back in that cannot be directly supplied, > providing they can find the missing modules/codecs etc themselves. The problem is not for users to do illegal things, the problem is for the maintainers to give the users the clues on how to do the illegal things. Jon Johanson was not sued for having watched DVDs on his Linux box, but for having *published* on the Net how to do so. > I think the lawyers are going to have a hard time suing the entire Linux > community, though between SCO, MS Palladium and DRM, we may all be in for a > bit of a rough ride for the next couple of years. RIAA and/or MPAA has a couple of days ago sued 871 people at the same time for sharing files on P2P networks. I don't know how the U.S. justice system will absorb 871 trials at the same time, but RIAA/MPAA has done it. Matthieu -- (~._.~) Matthieu Weber - Universit� de Jyv�skyl� (~._.~) ( ? ) 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. 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