On Tue 29.07.2003 at 11:32:50AM +0100, Q wrote: > 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.
I just wanted to point out that those guys are not afraid to sue hundreds of people at the same time, and will probably be stupid enough in the future to sue all Internet users because they might be using P2P systems. This was actually, as you said, not directly linked to our problem, it was only a illustration. > 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. There is one: pay for it. Watching CSS-protected DVD-Video requires the keys, you get the keys in a legal way only by paying the DVD Consortium a couple million bucks for the license. There is no other legal way to get the keys. Period. Yes, it's shrewd, it's designed to have people paying twice for what they are buying (you buy the DVD, and then you buy the right to watch it, even though this right is a fixed price you pay when buying a Home DVD-player). > 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? None. > 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. I don't like laws like DMCA and EUCD either. But you seem to think only about what *you* are risking using freevo (which is close to nothing). I am thinking about what *the Freevo project and its maintainers* risk when publishing the binaries in the U.S. or in Europe, which is a lot more than nothing if the shrewd guys mentionned above decice to take actions against projects like Freevo and mplayer. In this sense, the RIAA/MPAA trials from above show one thing: the downloaders are rather safe, but the uploaders are exposed to lawsuits. In terms of Freevo, it means that users like you are rather safe, but developpers and maintainers are exposed. > Personally I don't give a damn - and for those who do, given the long I already exposed in a previous mail my opinion about your messages: you seem to think only about yourself (or users in general) in this matter, not about the project and its maintainers. > 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. Yes, but the grey area was safe in the past years. It's less and less safe nowadays. > > In the mean time unless you are a pirate and are regularly downloading <my-life> A pirate is someone who attacks other ships on the sea, rob and kill people. Those who share cracked software or DivX/mp3/whatever are not robbing nor killing anyone. The word has been used only to make the act look more important than it is, and I really don't like it used that way </my-life> > illegal materials, I think it is unlikely that the RIAA or anyone else will > be putting very much effort into monitoring your activities. Downloaders are safe. ``Uploaders'' (or those who share/publish and directly threaten the business of the Majors) are sued. > 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. The problem already exists, in a large scale, and until a real solution is found, it is imho better to prevent than to cure. > 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. This is irrelevant in this discussion. The problem is violating the DMCA and EUCD by redistributing DeCSS as a part of the Freevo package, not other people sharing illegal copies of some music or movie. > 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. Absolutely. But those were not the risks I was writing about. I hope I have been able to make myself clear about what *exactly* I was worrying about. 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
