Greetings to all

[Corey Burger]

On 10/13/07, R. Wood <rw at ncf.ca> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Allegedly, on Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 11:00:44PM -0700, Corey Burger stated:
> > On 10/12/07, helane wrote:
> > > also are libdvdcss2 and w32codecs legal in canada? or as us not
> > > completely legal to use in ubuntu...
> >
> > Yes for libdvdcss2 (they only violate patents) and no for
> > w32codecs(this is completely illegal everywhere, as it is direct copys
> > of the actual code written by Real, MS, etc.)
> >
> > Corey
>
> Hi,
>
> IANAL but I don't think Corey is either :-)  I would be very careful
> about making such categorical statements as above (e.g. "w32codecs [...]
> this is completely illegal everywhere") unless you are *very* sure of
> the *complete* legal details of what you are claiming.
>
> I can understand that there may be some legal issues with 'w32codecs',
> but to claim that it is "completely illegal everywhere" seems like an
> exagerrated statement to me frankly.  I expect the actual status of this
> collection of software is more complex than the above statement
> suggests.

No, the actual status of these codecs is that they violate copyright
law, which, as per the Berne Convention, is pretty much the same (at
least, for this), everywhere.

w32codecs is NOT code written by anybody in the free software world
and is not under the GPL or any OSI/FSF license, unlike libdvdcss2
(which is maintained by the vlc people). The actual code of these
codecs is written by Real, MS, etc and are thus under whatever
license.

Now, having said that, there are places where some of the w32codecs
may be legal. For instance, if you copy them off your Windows install,
it is possible, not having read the EULAs, that you might not be
violating the license they are under.

Regardless, they are no longer needed, with the sole exception of Real Player.

Corey