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This is the wrong approach...This is the wrong approach...Posted Nov 5, 2007 14:31 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46)In reply to: This is the wrong approach... by DonDiego Parent article: Codec Buddy in Fedora 8
You're right in that 'DeCSS' was the subject of the lawsuit, but the difference between it and libdvdcss is irrelevant given that it was about decryption -- or rather, circumventing access controls -- which both do. http://www.2600.com/news/112801-files/universal.html Far from being "squeaky clean", the defendants *lost* -- 'plantiffs are entitled to appropriate injunctive and declaratory relief' That was through the DMCA, rather than patents, but at its core it's still about the control of an idea rather than a specific implementation of an idea. What makes multimedia special is that there are powerful interests behind the scenes with a vested interest in keeping the status quo, and thus there's a great deal of money on the table. Where there's money, there's [the threat of] litigation. All of the recent mp3 lawsuit links I've come up with are from third parties claiming additional patent rights over and above what Thompson wants. Wikipedia has a decent summary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues In any case, Thompson wants $0.75 per decoder or $1.25 for a full codec. Multiply that by three for willful infringement, and then again by the number of Fedora installations (in the US, at least), and that's a lot of direct exposure for RedHat should they include an unlicensed mp3 decoder in Fedora, or possibly even just link to one. To say nothing of the recent third-party trolling going on.. With the CodecBuddy thing, Redhat can both cover their asses legally, and provide an user-friendly option for the users that demand a legal (ie properly-licensed) mp3 codec. Software Patents suck. F/OSS software normally just ignores them altogether (which is generally the sanest strategy, both legally and practically) In the case of multimedia, there's no way one can claim ignorance when the specs themselves mention the patents and their licensing requirements. The nice thing about CodecBuddy is that if Redhat's lawyers determine that they can legally link to a third-party repository to provide a F/OSS codec, it's a trivial change to make.
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This is the wrong approach... Posted Nov 7, 2007 22:50 UTC (Wed) by DonDiego (subscriber, #24141) [Link] You are right, I forgot about the 2600 case. I was just thinking of DVD Jon, who was sued at home in Norway but cleared of all charges and the appeal was thrown out. Then there were the Bunner and Pavlovich cases in which the defendants prevailed: http://w2.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/ Note that these cases ended much later than 2600. We have not seen another day in court for CSS circumvention since then. I believe the interested parties fear they might lose again and prefer to leverage FUD to attain their goals. There is an important difference between libdvdcss and DeCSS. DeCSS is based on a player key that was leaked out to the internet, while libdvdcss simply brute-forces the (weak) encryption and subsequently caches the key. libdvdcss was never the target of a lawsuit to the best of my knowledge and I believe that it would fare better than DeCSS.
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