Dolby Tells NetBSD Project: Don't Decode AC3

Mycroft writes: "There's a new entrant into the open source DVD legal battle: Dolby Laboratories. The NetBSD Project received this letter demanding that links to the open source ac3dec package be removed. What's next?" Probably what's next are yet more letters sent to every other project which enables decoding of content on platforms unsupported by the format licensors. Remember, you don't buy anything anymore -- you license it.

Comments

The Simple Answer

[sPaKr]

You can get my code when you pry it from my cold dead hand.

Where Are They Now?

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

I was wondering what Thomas Dolby was up to.....?

Re:This is why licensing should stop.

[bnenning]

Since the government wouldn't interfere, anyone would be able to practice medicine. There goes your freedom from pertinent information about such situations.

Just because the government doesn't regulate something doesn't mean you have to go in blind. The computer industry is largely unregulated but there are plenty of sources offering reviews and certifications.

Public schools, public roads, federally inspected food and drugs, career licensing (doctors, lawyers, hairdressers, etc.) are all socialistic in nature.

Yes, and none of the work very well. Private schools consistently outperform public schools while spending less money, privately owned roads cost less and are better maintained, and FDA delays in approving drugs have resulted in thousands of deaths. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's usually better than the alternatives.

Re:This is why licensing should stop.

[Coz]

Private schools can cherry-pick their students, and can discriminate on a number of bases; privately owned roads are impossible to find in rural areas, apart from privately owned lands (How do we get to the next town? Through them thar woods, boys!); and the FDA has saved hundreds of thousands of lives by making people test drugs, and ordering the withdrawal of bad ones from the market.

It ain't perfect, but it's a darn sight better than not having anything.

Re:Lunch

[Mr. Slippery]

There can be no such thing as 'pure capitalism' if by that you mean a truly free market.

"Capitalism" and "free markets" are not the same thing.

The opposite of capitalism - in which a minority of people (the capitalists), backed by state force[1], control "the means of production" - is socialism, in which "the workers" or "the people" control the means of production.

The opposite of a free market system (where production is determined by market forces) is a command economy (where production is determined by government fiat).

There can be capitalist command economies (the US during the Depression and WWII would be close to this) and socialist free markets (don't know of any national examples, but co-ops, collectives, employee-owned corporations, and similar institutions can function quite well in our market economy).

([1] which is why "anarcho-capitalism" or "libertarian capitalism" is ultimately self-defeating; keeping property concentrated into the hand of the few requires a strong state.)

Re:*BSD is dying

[clarkgoble]

Doesn't OSX give *BSD strength? While Apple certainly has troubles, it seems that basing it's OS on BSD means that Darwin has a lot of support. What's more, the problems of Open Source software that *BSD faces most Linux face as well. With Apple supporting DVD playing in OSX 10.1 we'll have a Unix with far more important software than Linux.