The Multimedia Question

[David Nielsen]

fre, 20 07 2007 kl. 09:40 -0600, skrev Stephen John Smoogen:
> On 7/20/07, David Nielsen <david at lovesunix.net> wrote:
> > fre, 20 07 2007 kl. 00:41 -0700, skrev David Boles:
> > > on 7/19/2007 11:31 PM, Karsten Wade wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 22:30 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> "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
> > > >
> > > > Maybe a scary warning in simpletonese, like a pack of cigarettes:  "If
> > > > you smoke this MP3 codec, it will eat your brane and come back for
> > > > dessert."
> > >
> > > <lurk mode off>
> > >
> > > I have watched this thread, as well as many others like this, from the
> > > outside. As an ordinary user and not as programmer/maintainer/developer
> > > which I am not. An ordinary user point of view. Linux for a long time.
> > > Fedora since FC-2.
> > >
> > > I do understand the Fedora FOSS policy and I do agree with it.
> > >
> > > But what needs to be said, once again, by an ordinary user is this.
> > >
> > > Be careful what you offer to provide a 'lead to' or a 'go here for this'.
> > > Truly. Most, surely *not* all, of the people that want these types of
> > > codecs and plugins to play, for example, mp3 music files or DVDs movies,
> > > will be using these to listen to and play pirated (Bittorrent) music and
> > > movies. And most, again surely not all, would be more than happy to
> > > steal/violate/'call it whatever you wish' to be able to do so.
> > >
> > > Do you really want to promote that?
> > >
> > > Here I back out and put:
> > >
> > > <lurk mode on>
> >
> > Are you basically suggesting Fedora start becoming the thought police
> > here. "I'm sorry sir we object morally to what _might_ be your intend as
> > it _might_ be in violation with the law".
> >
> 
> Under some legal considerations, yes you are required to be the
> thought police. [Selling alcohol to someone who is obviously drunk and
> driving is illegal in many countries. Some have it that the penalty is
> the same as the drunk driving penalty: life to death. There are lots
> of other laws that come up with selling of narcotics etc. And the
> various anti-piracy groups have been pushing for similar rules
> depending on where you are in the world].
> 
> The legal question that comes up is how one promotes a service
> promoting someone to break the law. The safest route I can see is
> giving the user the chance to use fluendo. If that is not possible
> then this is the perfect place for the 'Ubuntu-style' sub-fork of
> Fedora to occur. Someone starts a company that takes Fedora source,
> and makes it Fubluna which has codecs etc included in it.

I hate to point out that:

A) The ill intend is clear in case of selling alcohol to intoxicated
people, that is not the case for codec support - the majority of people
are law abiding within reason and merely want CNN.com to play video when
they click on it, want their iPod to be able to play back their
collection of CDs or heaven forbid want to watch a DVD. To play back
YouTube videos with our free solutions (gnash, swfdec) e.g. you will
also need a FLV decoder. I think it's hardly fair equate all proprietary
codec use with copyright violation.. all of those are btw. fully legal
where I live and I did them within the past few hours using only Free
Software. Regardless the point is that the majority of use cases are not
playing content obtained by your friendly neighborhood torrent tracker,
we tend to ignore simply things like watching the news online or
partaking in this new fangled web 2.0 - you focused net, which Havoc and
friends are very keen on integrating with the desktop. We cannot with
one hand be integrating technologies like this and with the other hand
saying that they are evil and that we aren't going to at least attempt
to support them.

B) Unlike the cited scenerio, allowing people to play their data is not
(counter to what the RIAA would like you to believe) endangering anyones
life.

C) There is no reason to proactively adopting proposed laws just because
the RIAA wants you to, the requirement is following the actual law not
some totalitarian wet dream of the MPAA.

- David Nielsen
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Dette er en digitalt underskrevet brevdel
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/attachments/20070720/e89a7446/attachment.sig>