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."

Comments

Can You Blame Him

[Luscious868]

With all the noise the RIAA and MPAA are making about copyright violations (and the subsequent lawsuits) can you blame him? If Linux ever starts making serious dents into Microsoft's market share, how long until they begin employing similar tactics?

Shrug

[Durrok]

If there is no legal (or affordable) way for me to obtain the software/video/etc I would likeI pirate it. I watch a fair share of anime and typically the only way to get certain series or to not have to wait a few years for it to come stateside is to download the fan subs and then watch them with my "illegal codes" on my linux box. I never lost any sleep about it, not sure why anyone else would even blink at it. It certainly does not solve the problem at hand but it is an effective workaround for the time being.

AAC and MP4

[goombah99]

So why do people think that Linux players and community shun AAC or H264? here on slashdot posters tend to tout MP3. I think it's the conflation of AAC and fairplay DRM. Or simply that AAC permits DRM at all. But shouldn't people really embrace AAC precisely because it lacks MP3's player royalties?

Re:Then pay for the Fluendo codecs

[AeroIllini]

So if these plugins don't work on my system...

If I buy the Fluendo codecs but don't download them, and install my distro's version instead, is that still legal?

Is there an IP lawyer in the house?

My Rant

[ImaLamer]

I don't feel bad because I've already paid for all of these 'illegal' codecs over and over again. I've bought numerous DVD players, computer DVD drives, video cards which decode mpeg*, a hardware WMV/AVI/DIVX/MPEG* player, an ATSC tv (mpeg again), dvd software packages (windvd, et. al.), computers with Windows (and the licenses for many of their codecs), and more.

For one PC I had to pay premiums on the video card, optical drives, motherboard and 3 pieces of software because of some 'illegal' codec that demands such a premium. Take decoding off video cards and the prices would drop. I'm not afraid because on this Ubuntu laptop I've a copy of Vista, shrunk to a 5 gig partition. Don't I keep some of those rights?

How many times do I have to pay for these same licenses? It's mainly MPEG-2, DVD which is the same, and any proprietary MPEG-4 codec (HDWMV, Divx, et. al.) I don't fear or feel bad about 'stealing' these codecs because I have paid for them a million times. I've played along, my choice of OS shouldn't stop me from continuing to take advantage of these codecs. Besides the video card is doing the lifting and NVidia has already paid that premium because it decodes most of these 'illegal' codecs natively (now a days).

Do I feel bad?

No.

Re:That is what Ogg is for

[fractoid]

I've never once had Windows find and install a codec for me when I click on the 'find codec on ma intarwebs' button. On the other hand, Ubuntu does it perfectly. All I have to do is click "I'm not in America and/or I'm in ur netwerks stealin ur codex". Also note that often the 'codec packs' you download to install DivX, xvid etc. contain at least some copyright-infringing code anyway. For example, "DivX ;-)" is the MS MPEG4 codec, hacked to read/write files in the AVI file format.

Re:Not just linux

[LingNoi]

With a recent Supreme court decision in AT&T Vs. Microsoft the usa is now on par with EU and UK concerning software patents.

No its not. It is irrelevant to bring up the AT&T as it has nothing to do with the US patent laws being on par with EU and UK laws. If they are then you are saying that software patents in the US are now all void in which case we can download medic codecs as much as Americans want!

The laws of the US and the UK on software patents are extremely different I don't know where the hell you figured otherwise because of some lame AT&T case to do with the exporting of patents outside the US doesn't change the laws outside of the US.

Actually a few more allow software as part of the patented invention including the UK

Irrelevant since a media codec is a purely software invention anything on an operating system is purely software. You can not hold a patent on software alone in the UK.

The UK in theory might be one of them so please don't be so smug.

I know you're trying your best to FUD this up, but just stop trolling. Its lame that you have gone to these lengths.

Software patents don't exist in the UK. Software patents don't exist in the EU. I know you want them to for the sake of "winning" an internet argument but they don't. They will never reverse this decision in the UK so whatever bullshit you want to reply to this go ahead but the US doesn't dictate patent law to the world just because of some courtroom case on American soil.

Putting fingers in your ears and saying it's someone elses problem doesn't help.

Help with what? There is no problem at all. Its all just a lame excuse just so the author of the article can go "see, Linux is still not good enough".

This isn't the first negative Linux article written by the author.