Mandriva: We will not go to Canossa

Posted Jun 20, 2007 13:53 UTC (Wed) by pharm (guest, #22305)
In reply to: Mandriva: We will not go to Canossa by ipes
Parent article: Mandriva: We will not go to Canossa

What about libdvdcss?

They almost certainly can't include libdvdcss in the US due to the DMCA. In the EU, things are a bit different, especially since the Finns have declared that CSS is not an effective protection system (and a legal argument can be made that it therefore no longer falls under the EU equivalent of the DMCA).

Likewise, full multimedia support depends on your attitude to the mp3 related patents that (IIRC) Fraunhofer claims to hold. Again, the US and the EU differ in this respect: it might be perfectly legal to distribute lame (for instance) in the EU, but not in the US. Things might be different again in other parts of the world. You'd be correct if you concluded from this that deciding what you can and can't legally put in your Linux distribution is a hard problem.

Don't count on it yet

Posted Jun 20, 2007 20:48 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

especially since the Finns have declared that CSS is not an effective protection system

That was a decision from the lowest level court ("käräjäoikeus") that is of course being appealed to the next level ("hovioikeus"). It is anyone's guess how it will fare there. I suspect it will be appealed all the way to the highest court ("korkein oikeus"), and if that decision is favourable, only then you really can say we have a firm precedent.