unity-design team mailing list archive

[Shane Fagan <shanepatrickfagan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2010-05-26 at 00:00 +0200, Conscious User wrote:
> > The problem with DVDs compared to MP3s is that they require paying for
> > DVD playback and for MP3s you get 100 free licences so unless you are
> > going for a huge deployment your not braking any laws. 
> > So DVD playback is pay per licence but MP3 is 100 free so its fine in
> > most cases. 
> 
> I was always confused by this.
> 
> 1 - What is "deployment"? The mp3 patent holders clearly define it?
> The number of machines running Ubuntu, with the gstreamer-ugly
> plugins, in countries where the patents hold is certainly higher
> than 100. And it was Canonical who made those installations easy
> by giving installation medias for free and hosting the plugins
> in official repositories.

If you install the software yourself its fine. If its preinstalled by a
manufacturer they have to pay if they go over 100 licences. Thats about
it really.

> 
> 2 - To which extend the argument of "not installing by default" is
> legally safe? Playing DVD without paying licenses is illegal, but
> that does not stop Ubuntu packages for laying the libdvdcss there.
> Why turning this script into a GUI with a disclaimer would suddenly
> turn it illegal?

libdvdread is the package you mean I think. We can install that because
its just a package to install packages from medibuntu's repo. So thats
why we can ship it. So when the script is run it fetches the software
for you. That still doesnt mean its legal to use it in some countries
but they generally dont chance little people around.

> 
> Sorry for the probably ignorant questions from an user who is not
> a lawyer, but I never fully understood this subject. :)

No problem, I read up on it a little in college but its all about how
the patent holders licence the technology. So its a case by case thing.
Like MPEG-LA allow free usage of the H.264 codec for web usage till 2016
but still charge for it for everything else. Microsoft had to shell out
for MP3 codecs a year or so after Windows XP was released because they
broke copyright when they distributed it. There are loads of examples so
I wont bore you but its something we really have to be careful about.

> 
> (sorry, guys, if you think this is slightly off-topic, but this also
> concerns usability, as in making those playbacks easy while legal)
It is offtopic so we should stop. Hopefully that cleared it up anyway.


--fagan