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VLC 1.1 Forced To Drop Shoutcast Due To AOL Anti-OSS Provision
The folks over at VideoLAN are in the process of releasing version 1.1.0 of VLC, and one of the major changes is the removal of SHOUTcast, a media-streaming module from AOL-owned Nullsoft. "During the last year, the VLC developers have received several injunctions by e-mail from employees at AOL, asking us to either comply to a license not compatible with free software or remove the SHOUTcast capability in VLC." Within the license is a clause prohibiting the distribution of SHOUTcast with any product whose own license requires that it be "disclosed or distributed in source code form," "licensed for the purpose of making derivative works," or "redistributable at no charge." The license would also force VideoLAN to bundle Nullsoft adware with VLC. Update: 06/22 00:52 GMT by H : The 1.1 release is ready from their site; you can also read up on the release information.
to say fuck you AOL. Seriously quit being a dick.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
You'd think those guys would seize any opportunity to stay relevant. It's one thing to shoot yourself in the foot, another to do it when you're inches from death.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
AOL wants to flex what little muscle it has left and try to have an impact on something? KMA AOL, VLC is going to cast your SHOUTcast aside. No one will miss it, and more importantly, no one will miss AOL when it fades off into the sunset.
I ask out of genuine curiosity -- if anyone has a compelling reason why any attention should be paid to AOL, please explain.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Reverse engineering and design for interoperability is legal in the US. Unless there is an active patent or AOL's code is incorporated into VLC they don't have a leg to stand on and are just engaging in bully tactics. Considering that this is AOL I'm not surprised that they're likely to shift to the SCO business model and squeeze all they can from the fumes of their diminished empire.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Because that would be wrong. Open source software needs to set an example by respecting the licenses under which code is provided. Otherwise, we have no moral authority to go after companies that violate the GPL and demand that they post their code. DVD decoding is a bit different story, because of the fuzzyness of various laws that protect content, and your ability to use it in ways to make it compatible with your system.
Seriously, is anyone using this? With the horrible memories I have of AOL I would not use anything they made and I would think most people feel similarly.
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
Make it a separately installed "plug-in". What's the problem? Do the same with any other module of questionable legality.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I wonder; the EU might make email address portability mandatory if we start shouting loud enough about this. Would you like that AOL? Do you really want to annoy us?
Is this really feasible?
Software and stuff uses the host part of the address to know where to send it, would there have to be a kind of secondary DNS system for email addresses or would it just be made mandatory that all existing servers are modified to do a kind of transparent forwarding.
Also if some server shut down then that would cause a lot of problems
And I'm sure that their overpriced drugs and the people who are being gouged for them are paying for all of that crapola. I'd rather they turn around and subsidize the cost for some of their lower income customers, but we all know *that* isn't about to happen.
I grew up with industry schwag as well, but that industry was far better off when it couldn't direct market to patients. Turns doctors into mere "prescribers".
Pharma is out of control in the US -- and they're more bloated and less "innovative" than ever.
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
You don't even have to look the the future: I am the author of an alternative browser for the iPhone that formats pages for easy reading on the small screen.
I was recently contacted by a website owner informing me that my browser would be blocked from accessing their website because it does not display web pages in exactly the way they had intended.
What is the point in using a format (HTML) that is designed to be interpreted in many different ways, depending on who is reading it, if you need exact control over your content? There are better tools for that job.
Having AOL say "you can't bundle our stuff" is right up there with Real Media saying the same thing. Who the f* cares? I mean really. Good bye, good riddance.
I would be very careful with such broad assertions. Actually, some countries (like Germany and many others) worsened their Copyright laws significantly in the last couple of years, mimicking the US-DMCA w.r.t. anti-circumvention measures. DeCSS could very well be illegal there... but fortunately, they don't seem to care enforcing those anti-circumvention measures all that much (though they still could, if the US government puts enough pressure on them).
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Seriously AOL, are you that determined to drive every last customer away?
>The 'license issue' you quoted also basically says 'if your software license imposes restrictions that are anti-closed source software, then we don't want to play with you.' This is pretty much identical to the point of GPL but in the other direction. Same stupid constraint, you're just pointing it out like you license is different than there. Same rule, just used by the other side. Get used to it, they are just doing to you what you want to do to them, you have nothing to bitch about here.
Hardly.
The GPL is a license that applies to code that the original author has decided to release as GPL. That is all that it applies to.
In contrast, AOL are trying to make their terms for distributing code which implements SHOUTCAST apply to code which AOL did not write (i.e. AOL are trying to set terms for code which VLC wrote).
This is akin to the makers of a Harry Potter movie tring to stop production of the TV series Merlin, just because the latter is about a young male wizard.
That is a no-no by AOL. AOL seriously need to look at what copyright law actually says.
But that's a completely absurd thing to expect.
It would mean that once you have a customer, you're now obligated basically forever to handle all the traffic that comes to their address -- and after a certain number of customers, that can become quite a bit -- for free. Suddenly its not just your paid customers who are eating up your bandwidth, but *past* customers too?
Now sure, AOL has plenty of bandwidth. But still, that's not the point. The design of the email system isn't like phone numbers-- there's not a centralized and organized series of exchanges which route where numbers need to go and arrange for them to arrive at their proper destination... there's just "aol.com". AOL /has/ to receive and process that mail. And now you think they should forward that off forever?
Sure, it'd be *nice* of them, as a service.
Obligating someone to serve a former-customer forever is sort of silly though, even if they are dicks to said former-customer. The remedy to being the customer of a dick, is to stop being their customer.
If the potential cost of someone not finding you at your new email address is worth more then dealing with a dick-- you're free to make that choice.
VLC's comment that the SHOUTcast Toolbar is spyware is not accurate. The SHOUTcast Toolbar is not spyware. The SHOUTcast toolbar may only be downloaded by a user upon their prior consent.
Where consent is identified by a checkbox buried on next-to-final page in the installer of "partner software" that is ticked by default?
C'mon, this is 2010. Any bundled browser toolbar is malware (whether it's spyware is debatable) pretty much by definition.
Funny, you weren't labelled troll but that's because there are scads of self-abnegating troll idiots who hate GPL and they'll mod you to the stratosphere.
The point is that the Shoutcast protocol is not copyrightable and the DMCA doesn't apply because its reverse engineering is required for interoperability.
Therefore this license is not liked because it's pointless: rewrite the code to the protocol specification and it's done.
But enjoy your GPL haterade.
I should make one minor correction:
"despite the fact that encrypting a DVD in no way prevents you from making copies of it (copies of encrypted bits play just like the original)."
This is true - if you can copy it. But there is another factor that prevents you from copying it. It is not just player software that needs a CSS licence - the drives themselves contain a small part of the required capability, and so must also be licenced. The licence requires that all consumer level DVD-writers are made to be physically incapable of writing the CSS key block, which is vital in order to play back any CSS encrypted disk.
So you can't just do a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD onto a DVD-R. Not with any equipment that's cheap or easy to obtain, anyway. It has firmware and/or hardware locks that prevent it writing a CSS disk.
There is no reason you can't bit-for-bit *press* a DVD copy, if you're working on a large enough scale to justify the expense of a pressing run and have access to a factory owner who'll accept a bit of cash under the table to not look into just what you are making. But this situation is confined to organised crime.
As an added countermeasure, studios are careful to make sure that all DVD movie releases are at least a little over 4.4GB (Or 4.7, depending on your definition of the 'G'), even if it means padding a bit. Just a little too large to fit on a plain DVD-R. You could use a dual-layer disk, but that would mean slightly more cost.