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Do "Illegal" Codecs Actually Scare Linux Users?
jammag writes "In this article, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes points out why he keeps giving money to Microsoft and Apple despite the clear advantages of Linux: the scary legalese dialogs you have to click through to install codecs for common multimedia formats. Quoting: 'Despite strong points that go far beyond price, Linux falls short when it comes to legally supporting file formats such as MP3, WMA/WMV and DVDs.' He talks about using Ubuntu and booting up Totem Movie Player, only to be confronted with a burst of legalese about what a hardened criminal he'll be if he uses Totem without a license. This problem is 'a deal breaker' for him."
No.
This isn't the same; this is "by using this software you MAY in fact be breaking the law, and assume all responsibility." Not quite "copying this software is illegal."
Fluendo currently sells MPEG2, MPEG4, Dolby AC3 and Windows Media codecs legally. They also give you the MP3 codec free of charge.
If you want peace of mind and avoid being a criminal in countries with silly laws, then these may be something for you.
Does that even work on a stock Debian install? I don't think so.... You first need to change your /etc/apt/sources.list to include "non-free" repositories.
Remember, you only have to wait 4 more years for the MP3 patent to become public:
The various patents claimed to cover MP3 by different patent-holders have many different expiration dates, ranging from 2007 to 2017 in the U.S. [9]. However, U.S. patents can only last up to 20 years, and MP3 was released as a specification in 1991, so if U.S. courts applied U.S. law, no patent could apply beyond 2011 to MP3 itself.[10] In the U.S., any patent claiming to cover the fundamentals of MP3 after 2012 should (by law) be struck down as an invalid patent, due to the existence of published prior art (the MP3 specification) more than a year before the patent's filing. If it had been published earlier (such as in public drafts), the latest date would be even earlier. However, it is unclear if U.S. courts would enforce this. The situation in other countries that permit software patents is similar.
--From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3
PowerDVD for Linux
The owners of the mp3 codec only want a cut of profits from people who want to sell mp3 encoders/decoders. From their FAQ at http://www.webcitation.org/5MeUrGbFN
"...no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with associated annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00..."
I just checked on a Debian Lenny box that didn't have w32codecs already installed, and no, it does not. No muss, no fuss, no scary language. Didn't even need to cross my fingers or invoke executive privilege.
I am not a crackpot.
My blog
Since always?
Check out the wikipedia page or the patent licensing page for more info.
Why would you assume it's an ANSI standard and freely available?
IIRC, anyone is allowed to take the standard, write a codec for it, and play mp3s as much as they like, legally, for either a royalty fee per copy or US $50 000. The license fees are here. (When it says US $2.50 - $5.00 per unit I presume it's per copy of the codec, not per song).
I believe the technical term is "RAND" (Reasonable and Non Discriminatory) licensing: Thomson S.A and the Fraunhofer Institute are playing nice, they don't refuse anyone who wants to license their invention (they have that monopoly right because it's a patent), and they don't change their mind about the license price when they don't like you (they have that monopoly right because it's a patent).
There's only one catch, that RAND doesn't resonate with F/LOSS software at all.
This is why it matters that standards are not only open but that also RAND is out of the question if you want to allow FLOSS to use your patented standard; Suppose you ask a license fee of only $5.00 per copy of the software distributed, who's going to pay it? Licenses such as the FSF's GPL state that (paragraph 10 GPL3)
But, you want everyone who copies your program to pay you the $5.00 so you can pay Thomson back their rightful royalties! Do you see the problem? Suddenly you need an administration organisation to count who has downloaded the FLOSS program. And you are not allowed to sanction them if they don't comply because the license forbids you that. And you'd need to monitor everyone who downloaded it to see whether they copy the program further (which is their right by the GPL anyway) otherwise YOU piss off Thomson. etc. etc. It's a nightmare.
This is why there are no legal GPL'ed mp3 players. Incidentally, I think this is also why some British linux and mac users complain that the BBC wants to use a proprietary video standard which they can't be allowed to play.
Think about using Ogg/Vorbis and Ogg/Theora, will you?
Now let's see if we can also tie in the raging ODF - OOXML battle and then this fanboi will shut up :-)
AFAIK, this is why there is such a difference between "real open" data interchange standards such as ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) which is free to use because Sun have made an irrevocable patent pledge that they won't sue anyone ever for implementing ODF, and on the other hand OOXML (ISO *DRAFT* international standard 29500) where Microsoft states that they'll grant a R.a.n.D license for Office XML Schema. So it's all good, you see!
Can you still see under which walnut shell the pea is?
If I'm not horribly mistaken:
Office XML (R.a.n.D licensed)
=
Office 2003 XML
!=
Office 2007 XML
which is
Office Open XML (= nothing to do with OpenOffice.org which uses Open Document Format)
No worries!
I actually think they've amended their ways because on this page it states in quite reasonable terms that Office Open XML 1.0 (ECMA-376) is now a Covered Specification. Still I wouldn't trust it as far as I can throw a printed 6000 page document because on that same page it says:
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
AAC players do require the payment of royalties, unfortunately.
If you want a free, royalty-free, codec comparable to AAC or MP3, the only choice right now is OGG.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Sure, but isn't that usually limited to the amount paid for the product? So if you buy Windows for $100, and you are sued for patent infringement, Microsoft at most supplies $100 for your legal defense.
Royalties are frequenlt a fixed amount per product instance, not a percentage of the price.
I guess people learned not to do that from SpyGlass, which sold Internet Explorer to Microsoft for a percentage of the revenue. Microsoft gave it away and didn't pay a cent.
You can't patent a mathmatical/logical algorithm. It's part of the paperwork in what is/is not patentable. A patent is supposed to be on an implimentation of a solution, not the concept of how to solve the problem. Thus, you can patent your design of an electric motor, but you can't patent the concept of an electric motor. The only reason software patents are allowed now is because the USPTO & The Fed court that governs patents don't read anything.
How many patents are there on razor blades? I count 8 on the razor I used this morning. How many are there on the MP3 Algorithm? ISTR there is only 1. Why? because the concept was patented not the implimentation.
The problem with software patents is that in order to provide more protection than copyright, they have to patent concepts not implimentations. As soon as they do that, they become broad enough to kill off whole swaths of programming that they don't even touch in the implimentation.
TITLE 35--PATENTS, PART III--PATENTS AND PROTECTION OF PATENT RIGHTS, CHAPTER 28--INFRINGEMENT OF PATENTS has section 271 that says among other things "Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent."
the whoever includes end-users and uses includes mere use. So your assertation that there is no law is clearly erroneous.
If it's such a "deal breaker" he could do as I have done and buy a legal codec pack from Fluendo for properly licensed, good quality MP3, Windows Media, AC3 & MPEG support for GStreamer.
CN=poolmeister.OU=lurkers.CN=slashdot
One issue might be that I am talking usa law and you are talking uk law. In usa, use of a patented codec by an end-user without authority would be *direct* infringement. What case law do you have that suggests otherwise? I think Selden threating to sue people who bought Ford's Model Ts seem to indicate that in the usa that end-users can be held liable ... and it's been that way since at least 1903. I sure have not heard of any updates on that aspect. Please tell me where I am wrong.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem