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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."
Well whether you want to get into or not is irrelevent, as it lies at the heart of this debate. That's why those legal notices are presented to the Linux users.
I pray to God you aren't a registered voter.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
Please NOTE that downloading and installing w32codecs, libdvdcss2 and other non-free codecs without paying a fee to the concerned authorities constitutes a CRIME in the United State of America.
The message continues like this for a couple more paragraphs and I'm left wondering: who are these codecs aimed at? People who just don't mind breaking the law (like file-sharers) or people who never read EULAs and dialog boxes and simply click the OK button?
Or.. uhm.. people who aren't Americans?
I'm sure I'll burn some karma here, but there are a lot of crazy laws in the world. The Chinese censorship, the Arabic ban on porn, the American DMCA. If you download a distro from a free part of the world, you can't expect it to fully comply with your particular regime out of the box.
Ubuntu is kind enough to warn Americans. You should consider yourself lucky, as this is far more heed than it would pay other yet-another-crazy-national-laws.