codec support

[Darryl Moore]

On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 16:54 -0700, Corey Burger wrote:

> It is not hard to see. Simply look at the installed files in the
> w32codecs package. You can even md5 sum them against the ones
> quicktime/realplayer/etc. installer. There is not source code for them
> publicly available. As such, they are illegal in any country with
> respects copyright law. And we should respect copyright law, because
> our house is built of it too.
> 

Thanks. And yes and no. Copyright law has its limits though. "Fair
Dealings" in Canada and "Fair Use" in the State. Also there may be
issues of anti-competitive business practices which could take
precedence over copyright law. Probably more likely in Europe than in
this country. I don't believe our beloved Competition Bureau has had
squat to say about DRM, Microsoft or CSS, unlike a lot of European
countries or even the States. 

It is one thing to respect any law when it is a reasonable one. It is
quite another when that law is unfair or is being used to unreasonably.
Ask Henry Morgentaler, Mahatma Gandhi, or Martin Luther King.


> As for a Canadian only version Ubuntu, I have very mixed feelings
> about it. It is a possiblity, but I would need some strong convincing.
> 


Just like the term of copyright is different in canada then the states,
therefore we need different ways to record what is or is not in the
public domain.

http://www.accesscopyright.ca/resources.asp?a=198

We also need FLOSS software which respects Canada's very different
intellectual monopoly laws.