[Mageia-dev] Mageia repository sections, licenses, restrictions, firmware etc

[Olivier Méjean]

Le mardi 12 octobre 2010 20:37:07, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit :
> 2010/10/12 Olivier Méjean <omejean at yahoo.fr>:
> > Free and non-free is pretty simple, once we have agreed on what's free
> > and what's not !
> > 
> > For example, Lame is a free software (GPL) but i may not be free
> > according to patents if software patents are legal and it depends on the
> > country.
> 
> Yes, but there is a third group: software which may be illegal to be
> used in certain countries. This has nothing to do with free or
> non-free. For example, friends of the movie industry claim that
> libdvdcss is illegal in Germany, other legal experts claim just the
> opposite. This issue never went to court because IMO the movie
> industry does not want to risk a court decision against them (like in
> France). So they keep publishing FUD about this and it's up to the
> user to decide which side he thinks is right - not a good idea in a
> legal issue.

There have been a trial in Finland http://www.turre.com/2007/05/finnish-court-
rules-css-protection-used-in-dvds-ineffective where the court declare that css 
protection was ineffective where european legislation EUCD says that it was 
illegal to circumvent effective protection. 

In France a group called stopdrm who wanted to test our judicial system about 
the question of DRM, there was no trial since the attorney closed the case (in 
french "classé sans suite")

So i think we can say for European Union that libdvdcss is legal (i take the 
risk to say it !)

Maybe a workaround would be to use timezone to determine the country and for 
some country disable the installation of codec and other nice things.

Olivier