[gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

>From media-video/avifile/avifile-0.7.34.20030319.ebuild:

x86? ( >=media-libs/divx4linux-20020418
       >=media-libs/win32codecs-0.90 )

Requiring these is bad for two reasons:

1. Both divx4linux and win32codecs consist of closed source software.

2. win32codecs ebuild consists of WMP, QT and other codecs which are 
downloaded from mplayer's website. AFAIK the mplayer team has not
obtained a redistribution license from either Microsoft or Apple,
which makes their distribution a violation of copyright law. Their
website is located in Hungary, which is a member state of WIPO (whose
treaties are the basis for most copyright laws around the world). 

Providing the win32codecs ebuild could be considered contributory 
copyright infringement.

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 24 April 2003 19:17, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> From media-video/avifile/avifile-0.7.34.20030319.ebuild:
>
> x86? ( >=media-libs/divx4linux-20020418
>
>        >=media-libs/win32codecs-0.90 )
>
> Requiring these is bad for two reasons:
>
> 1. Both divx4linux and win32codecs consist of closed source software.
>
> 2. win32codecs ebuild consists of WMP, QT and other codecs which are
> downloaded from mplayer's website. AFAIK the mplayer team has not
> obtained a redistribution license from either Microsoft or Apple,
> which makes their distribution a violation of copyright law. Their
> website is located in Hungary, which is a member state of WIPO (whose
> treaties are the basis for most copyright laws around the world).
>
> Providing the win32codecs ebuild could be considered contributory
> copyright infringement.

Maybe they should be marked RESTRICT="nomirror"

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Researcher
Mail: pauldv@cs.kun.nl
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour]

On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 19:50:49 +0200
Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> wrote:


> 
> Maybe they should be marked RESTRICT="nomirror"

But they would still be dependencies in that case. Maybe a "non-free"
USE flag could be useful for such situations. (Btw, is it possible to
have dependencies depending on several USE flags, like x86 & non-free
here?)


-- 
Thomas de Grenier de Latour.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Bartosch Pixa]

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Jon Lech Johansen wrote:

|From media-video/avifile/avifile-0.7.34.20030319.ebuild:
|
|x86? ( >=media-libs/divx4linux-20020418
|       >=media-libs/win32codecs-0.90 )
|

maybe divx4linux can be replaced by xvid ? anyone ever tried that?

- --Bartosch Pixa

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Dan Armak]

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On Thursday 24 April 2003 21:01, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> (Btw, is it possible to
> have dependencies depending on several USE flags, like x86 & non-free
> here?)

For 2 use flags, yes, see example with x86 and scanner flags in kdegraphics 
ebuild. For three or more flags I'm not sure.


-- 
Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux developer (KDE)
Matan, Israel
Public GPG key: http://cvs.gentoo.org/~danarmak/danarmak-gpg-public.key

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Todd Berman]

Honestly, giving the mplayer peoples preoccupation with the legality of
what they are doing, if they are providing the downloading, I have no
doubt it is completely legal.

I know OpenDivx (not sure if this is what divx4linux is based on or not)
had a no binary-distribution license, but src was acceptable. Im hunting
around on the mplayer site right now to try to find a definative answer.

--Todd

On Thu, 24 Apr 2003, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:

> On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 19:50:49 +0200
> Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Maybe they should be marked RESTRICT="nomirror"
>
> But they would still be dependencies in that case. Maybe a "non-free"
> USE flag could be useful for such situations. (Btw, is it possible to
> have dependencies depending on several USE flags, like x86 & non-free
> here?)
>
>
> --
> Thomas de Grenier de Latour.
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour]

On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 14:14:07 -0400 (EDT)
Todd Berman <tberman@insideyou.org> wrote:

> 
> Honestly, giving the mplayer peoples preoccupation with the legality
> of what they are doing, if they are providing the downloading, I have
> no doubt it is completely legal.
> 

I have no doubt neither. The point is not legality but more a matter of
personal choice. What I propose with this USE flag is a way to avoid
ebuilds for free softwares to hardly depend on non-free software, in
order to allow people who want it to build a 100% free system. 

But the problem is that it would be a lot of work: we should determine
what are the free and the non-free licenses used in Gentoo (there are
currently 208 license in portage!), to list free packages currently
depending on non-free packages (this is the easiest part, doable with a
few scripts), and to modify their ebuilds (doable by hand for a fews
tens ebuilds, but not hundreds. And I have no idea of how many such
ebuilds we would find).


-- 
Thomas de Grenier de Latour.

--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Todd Berman]

Although I think this is a very admirable goal, and something that would
be great, I would have to point out that many many desktop users would not
find this worthwhile as the nvidia kernel drivers are NOT OSS. :) Just a
minor point I thought worth mentioning

--Todd

On Thu, 24 Apr 2003, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:

> On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 14:14:07 -0400 (EDT)
> Todd Berman <tberman@insideyou.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > Honestly, giving the mplayer peoples preoccupation with the legality
> > of what they are doing, if they are providing the downloading, I have
> > no doubt it is completely legal.
> >
>
> I have no doubt neither. The point is not legality but more a matter of
> personal choice. What I propose with this USE flag is a way to avoid
> ebuilds for free softwares to hardly depend on non-free software, in
> order to allow people who want it to build a 100% free system.
>
> But the problem is that it would be a lot of work: we should determine
> what are the free and the non-free licenses used in Gentoo (there are
> currently 208 license in portage!), to list free packages currently
> depending on non-free packages (this is the easiest part, doable with a
> few scripts), and to modify their ebuilds (doable by hand for a fews
> tens ebuilds, but not hundreds. And I have no idea of how many such
> ebuilds we would find).
>
>
> --
> Thomas de Grenier de Latour.
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Martin Schlemmer]

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On Thu, 2003-04-24 at 20:04, Bartosch Pixa wrote:

> maybe divx4linux can be replaced by xvid ? anyone ever tried that?
> 

The opensource codecs in mplayer *should* have similar quality in
decoding divx5 streams as the divx4linux lib (and I think they
are from a few versions past preferred to the divx4linux one
when mplayer picks a codec to use).  Encoding however in divx5
is another issue .. you need divx4linux.

Guess we could only depend on divx4linux if mencoder is build ...

As for win32codes ... most users will probably want this.


-- 

Martin Schlemmer
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop/System Team Developer
Cape Town, South Africa




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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Fredrik Jagenheim]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 08:01:24PM +0200, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 19:50:49 +0200
> Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> > Maybe they should be marked RESTRICT="nomirror"
> 
> But they would still be dependencies in that case. Maybe a "non-free"
> USE flag could be useful for such situations. 

Ugh, this was one of the reasons I moved away from debian. Too much
time spent on political issues and trying to be political correct and
'pure'. I like the gentoo way of giving me the programs I need here
and now. With debian there was always a bunch of unoffical dpkg sites
which had to reside in sources.list to get some files which were
deemed 'unappropiate' for the offical Debian.

Moving down the path of free/non-free will soon make you end up on the
road of insanity. Who's to decide what's non-free and not? Perhaps an
easy way to dump the LICENSE field in the ebuild you're about to
install, but adding a USE flag for it seems to overdo a non-issue I
think.

//H

-- 
To segfault is human; to bluescreen moronic. 

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 02:14:07PM -0400, Todd Berman (tberman@insideyou.org) wrote:
> Honestly, giving the mplayer peoples preoccupation with the legality of
> what they are doing, if they are providing the downloading, I have no
> doubt it is completely legal.

>From their discussions in mplayer-dev-eng and mplayer-users, I can only
conclude that they are ignorant of copyright law. Here's one example
which is relevant to this thread: 

Alexey Morozov (user), <20020610032848.GX8690@sig.novosoft.ru>:
... "strictly speaking codecs on mplayerhq.hu are illegal" ... "No, I
don't want to say you should remove it immediately, but probably there's
a legal problem here" 

A'rpi (dev) response <200206101054.g5AAsXO5010229@mail.mplayerhq.hu>:
"i'm not a lawyer, but teh avifile guys discussed this topic very long,
about a year ago, and get the result of it's somehow legal. note that
you can get the win32 codecs from m$ without having to accept any
license."

This is most likely what A'rpi is referring to:
http://avifile.sourceforge.net/about.htm

"Many DLLs are available without having to accept any license agreement
at all ( DivX ;-), all DirectShow codecs ), what obviously means that
any kind of activity with them is acceptable."

The second part of that avifile statement is patently incorrect.
Copyrighted works which do not include a license are still protected by
copyright law, and redistributing said works would be copyright
infringement. 

I've mailed the legal department at Apple, Microsoft and Real and asked
if the mplayer project has distribution licenses for their codecs. I'll
inform the list of any response.
 
> I know OpenDivx (not sure if this is what divx4linux is based on or not)
> had a no binary-distribution license, but src was acceptable. Im hunting
> around on the mplayer site right now to try to find a definative answer.

divx4linux is the binary only codec from divx.com. avifile ebuild
shouldn't require it.

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Tony Clark]

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On Friday 25 April 2003 03.02, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2003 at 02:14:07PM -0400, Todd Berman 
(tberman@insideyou.org) wrote:
> > Honestly, giving the mplayer peoples preoccupation with the legality of
> > what they are doing, if they are providing the downloading, I have no
> > doubt it is completely legal.
>
> From their discussions in mplayer-dev-eng and mplayer-users, I can only
> conclude that they are ignorant of copyright law. Here's one example
> which is relevant to this thread:
Before making a storm in a teacup why haven't you gone to microsoft's site and 
see what you have to chick to download or licensing terms, cause if you did 
you would see it is nada, ingenting,nothing etc, at least from the link I 
first found.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=73C47878-20D0-4C1A-96F4-177D7E0074B7

tony
- -- 
Contract ASIC and FPGA design.
Telephone +46 702 894 667
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x633E2623

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 06:57:42AM +0200, Tony Clark (tclark@telia.com) wrote:
> Before making a storm in a teacup why haven't you gone to microsoft's site and
 
> see what you have to chick to download or licensing terms, cause if you did 
> you would see it is nada, ingenting,nothing etc, at least from the link I 
> first found.
> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=73C47878-20D0-4C1A-96F4-177D7E0074B7

I haven't disputed that some codecs are legally available with no
license.

Copyrighted works which do not include a license are still protected by
copyright law, and redistributing said works would be copyright
infringement.

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Tony Clark]

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On Friday 25 April 2003 14.44, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 06:57:42AM +0200, Tony Clark (tclark@telia.com) 
wrote:
> > Before making a storm in a teacup why haven't you gone to microsoft's
> > site and
> >
> > see what you have to chick to download or licensing terms, cause if you
> > did you would see it is nada, ingenting,nothing etc, at least from the
> > link I first found.
> > http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=7
> >3C47878-20D0-4C1A-96F4-177D7E0074B7
>
> I haven't disputed that some codecs are legally available with no
> license.
>
> Copyrighted works which do not include a license are still protected by
> copyright law, and redistributing said works would be copyright
> infringement.
Which town, state, country, continent are you talking about?  To the best of 
my knowledge (poor), in Australia, you have to actually indicate the work is 
copywrite.  This is done by placing a C in a circle with the date on the 
document/code or writing the word "copywrite", by whom and the date.  While I 
am Australian, I currently live in Sweden and have no idea what is required 
by law here!  Maybe it's the same, maybe not!

I can buy legally codine and paracetomol, mixed,  without a doctors 
prescription in Australia, with a prescription in Sweden but in the 
Philippines, it would be totally illegal and I could go to goal for having it 
in my possesson.

This is really off-topic on a technical list like gentoo-dev but would 
probabley be quite ok on a list like debian-legal.  I have no interest in 
your legal options and rather you keep them too a list where the subject 
would be on topic or in private, at least that way you don't taint everyone 
with your views legally.  If you requested information I trust you have done 
it on a personal interest basis only and not implicated a whole lot of 
innocent people who read Gentoo-dev.

Sorry for the totally off topic post and the views expressed are my own and 
are of no legal value anywhere.

tony
- -- 
Contract ASIC and FPGA design.
Telephone +46 702 894 667
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x633E2623

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 09:44:54PM +0200, Tony Clark (tclark@telia.com) wrote:
> > Copyrighted works which do not include a license are still protected by
> > copyright law, and redistributing said works would be copyright
> > infringement.
> Which town, state, country, continent are you talking about?  

I am talking about most of WIPO's member states [1]. Requiring copyright
notices is not allowed under the Berne convention [2]. 

Many of the win32 codecs in question contain copyright notices where one
would expect to find them: in the PE header. 

> This is really off-topic on a technical list like gentoo-dev

There is no gentoo-legal. I would consider it off-topic if there was a
more appropriate gentoo list for this discussion, or if official Gentoo
policy is to ignore copyright issues. 

[1] http://www.wipo.org/members/members/index.html
[2] http://www.wipo.int/treaties/ip/berne/index.html

Leaving the legal issue aside for a moment, there is still a technical
issue.  

How about a "css" USE keyword for closed source software?

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Christian Skarby]

>> This is really off-topic on a technical list like gentoo-dev
>
> There is no gentoo-legal. I would consider it off-topic if there was a
> more appropriate gentoo list for this discussion, or if official Gentoo
> policy is to ignore copyright issues.

Official Gentoo policy is availiable here. 0

[0] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/contract.xml

First I am not a lawyer, and second -dev should not be used for excessive
non-technical discussions, nevertheless I believe that we all, every one
of us, are in responsiblilty to the Gentoo Linux Social Contract. And thus
the only right thing to do, is to alert each other when we see possible
legal pit falls.

No fence, but I have reasons to believe that Jon has more insight to
copyright issues than most (at least normal) writers on dev-. If we are in
doubt about the legality of any part of avifile, then we might consider to
speak with a lawyer in order to keep Gentoo OSI-compatible. After all, the
last thing "we" want, is to end up in court...

> How about a "css" USE keyword for closed source software?
Funny how many different terms that "css" could be an abbreviation of ;p

Christian




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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Sat, Apr 26, 2003 at 07:23:52AM +0200, Tony Clark (tclark@telia.com) wrote:
> These are 2 different things.
> 1.  Copywrite has been claimed.
> 2.  The copywrite holder has the right to determine if and how any 
> reproduction can be made.
> No argument with either of these, except where an included license conflicted 
> with other laws of the land in question.  In Australia you can region code a 
> DVD all you want but I believe now, you are not allowed to sell a dvd player 
> that supports region coding.  Australia's fair use laws override parts of the 
> license pertaining to region coding thus rendering region coding illegal in 
> priciple there.  Australia is a member of both bodies you mentioned below.  

Region coding is not covered by any WIPO treaties or conventions which
Australia is a signatory to. 

A quick search did not reveal any news articles supporting your view
that region coding is currently illegal in Australia, only that it's
being (or was) investigated by the ACCC as a possible violation of the 
Trade Practices Act (not fair use laws): 

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-03-28-002-04-PS-CY

Anyway, how is this relevant to the win32 codecs distribution issue?

> Both the WIPO and Berne convention leave a number of things to be determined 
> by members.  eg "Mod chips" can be sold, purchased and used legally in 
> Australia, in the USA and UK selling such devices is illegal.  In the USA 
> using such a device is illegal.  Don't know about the UK.  

Mod chips are not covered by any WIPO treaties or conventions which
Australia is a signatory to. Circumvention devices are covered by the
WIPO Copyright Treaty. WCT is the basis for EUCD, which the UK has not
yet implemented:

http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/notices/copy_direct2.htm 

The law applied in Sony v. Channel Technology was Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988. 

I don't see how this is relevant either.

> I had a quick read of the Berne Convention and I didn't notice anything that 
> supports your view on "Requiring copywrite..."  I didn't read it all, just 
> the articals that I thought may include such a statement, so could you point 
> me to the relevant artical.

Article 5(2).

> > How about a "css" USE keyword for closed source software?
> Why?  It doesn't address anything technical, just a personal perference maybe.  
Doesn't address anything technical? We'll have to agree to disagree on this
one. 

> I do know where your coming from and you have my support on that issue.  I 
> believe where legal areas are grey, it's better to not to emphesise them by 
> bringing special notice to the fact they are grey.  This only makes people 
> want to seek black or white clarification which is nice if it concludes that 
> what your doing is ok but hell and undefendable if it isn't.

I haven't pointed out any grey areas. What are you talking about?

The legal issue at hand is very simple:

The mplayer project (and Gentoo mirrors) is distributing win32 codecs
which are copyrighted by Microsoft, Apple and others. Which license
agreements permit this distribution? 

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Martin Schlemmer]

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On Mon, 2003-04-28 at 01:43, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:

> The legal issue at hand is very simple:
> 
> The mplayer project (and Gentoo mirrors) is distributing win32 codecs
> which are copyrighted by Microsoft, Apple and others. Which license
> agreements permit this distribution? 

Right, so we just change it not to mirror, and remove all the tarballs
on the mirrors.


-- 

Martin Schlemmer
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop/System Team Developer
Cape Town, South Africa



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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Frantz Dhin]

On Mon, 2003-04-28 at 01:43, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:

> I haven't pointed out any grey areas. What are you talking about?
> 
> The legal issue at hand is very simple:
> 
> The mplayer project (and Gentoo mirrors) is distributing win32 codecs
> which are copyrighted by Microsoft, Apple and others. Which license
> agreements permit this distribution? 

Why are you carrying on this discussion here for-bloody-ever? There are
no lawyers here or noone even halfways qualified to have this
discussion, and you are certainly not one either.
I do not see why you are so hell bent on complaining on behalf of
Microsoft and Apple. If they have a problem they should have resource
enough to object for themselves. Furthermore I highly doubt there is
reason to fear a sudden $1 billion lawsuit from Microsoft for copyright
infringement. Even MS knows that all they need to do to rectify alleged
wrongdoings is to send a simple email to Daniel Robbins and matters will
be handled promptly. It is not black magic or chinese math to anyone
(except maybe people who like to argue for the sake of arguing). 

Regards
-F


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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Tony Clark]

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On Monday 28 April 2003 01.43, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 26, 2003 at 07:23:52AM +0200, Tony Clark (tclark@telia.com) 
wrote:
> > These are 2 different things.
Sorry everyone, I sent Jon a reply by email direct, Jon wants a public forum 
it seems.

tony

- -- 
Contract ASIC and FPGA design.
Telephone +46 702 894 667
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x633E2623

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[George Shapovalov]

On Sunday 27 April 2003 19:02, Frantz Dhin wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-04-28 at 01:43, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> > I haven't pointed out any grey areas. What are you talking about?
> Why are you carrying on this discussion here for-bloody-ever? There are
> no lawyers here or noone even halfways qualified to have this discussion, 
There might be, but you have a good point: gentoo-dev might not be the best 
place for this kind of discussion. However we do not have a dedicated list 
atm, may be its the time to create one? Say gentoo-legal?

We are big already and as an indication of this I see discussions related to 
legal issues coming up every now and then. Also it is my opinion, that we 
*should* be vary of [possible] legal issues. Sure it seems less inportant for 
thechnically minded person, thus a tendency to put such questions off. 
However discussing them timely (rather than waiting for bad things to come) 
can save us from some substantial grief further down the road...

George

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Fredrik Jagenheim]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 07:23:35AM +0200, Tony Clark wrote:
> Sorry everyone, I sent Jon a reply by email direct, Jon wants a public forum 
> it seems.

Which, in a twist of irony, makes /him/ guilty of copyright
infringement.

//H

-- 
To segfault is human; to bluescreen moronic. 

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 07:23:35AM +0200, Tony Clark (tclark@telia.com) wrote:
> Sorry everyone, I sent Jon a reply by email direct, Jon wants a public forum 
> it seems.

I apologize; I did not notice the mail was sent directly and not to the
list.

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 10:38:20AM +0200, Fredrik Jagenheim (humming@pobox.com) wrote:
> Which, in a twist of irony, makes /him/ guilty of copyright
> infringement.

Heard about fair use?

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 04:02:25AM +0200, Frantz Dhin (fd@redspot.dk) wrote:
> Why are you carrying on this discussion here for-bloody-ever? There are
> no lawyers here or noone even halfways qualified to have this
> discussion, and you are certainly not one either.

As someone who has been deeply involved in copyright issues for the last
3 years, I'd say I'm halfway qualified to discuss simple copyright
issues. I'm not a lawyer, but I have two. 

> I do not see why you are so hell bent on complaining on behalf of
> Microsoft and Apple. 

I don't see any moral difference between violating Microsoft's copyright
and violating Gentoo's copyright. As a Gentoo user I'm concerned about
the Gentoo project engaging in copyright infringement. 

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Fredrik Jagenheim]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 10:56:57AM +0200, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 10:38:20AM +0200, Fredrik Jagenheim (humming@pobox.com) wrote:
> > Which, in a twist of irony, makes /him/ guilty of copyright
> > infringement.
> 
> Heard about fair use?

Yeah, I know. Making a commentary on copyrighted works falls under the fair use
clause. I should've added a smiley on that.

OTOH, to get back to the real point; If you are giving away your
copyrighted works for free, for the intent purpose of all users to
freely use your program, without shipping a license, or even a note,
on how this program may be distributed, I think you've made it pretty
clear that, unless you tell the offending parties otherwise, you have
no problems with it being redistributed.

It would be a totally different thing if gentoo earned money on the
codecs (which the distribution doesn't), if there was a notice on how
redistribution is restricted (like all papers do) or if there was some
legal blurb that had to be clicked through (like the sun-jdk). Now
there is nothing of this, and as you have already sent mails to the
legal departments of apple and microsoft and made them aware of this
potential problem, I think we should just sit down and wait for their
reaction.

//H

-- 
To segfault is human; to bluescreen moronic. 

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 11:21:24AM +0200, Fredrik Jagenheim (humming@pobox.com) wrote:
> OTOH, to get back to the real point; If you are giving away your
> copyrighted works for free, for the intent purpose of all users to
> freely use your program, without shipping a license, or even a note,
> on how this program may be distributed, I think you've made it pretty
> clear that, unless you tell the offending parties otherwise, you have
> no problems with it being redistributed.

Explicit permission from the copyright owner is required to legally
redistribute:

http://kb.indiana.edu/data/ahmf.html
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/webcopyr.html

If the copyright owner has no problems with redistribution, they would
most likely include a simple license which permits redistribution so
that people wouldn't have to violate the law to do just that.

For instance:
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/eula.htm

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Fredrik Jagenheim]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 01:34:37PM +0200, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> Explicit permission from the copyright owner is required to legally
> redistribute:

Yes, but don't forget the reason for copyright to be there in the
first place; to protect the investment and make sure that you can make
money of that investment in the future. I think that by putting
something on the web for free download, without putting any
restrictions on it, they've made it clear that they don't mind if
these codecs are spread further. Not the same as, but quite similar
to, email and Usenet postings. Note how many companies, including
Microsoft and Apple, /do/ put restrictions on nearly everything else
they publish on the web.

If they did have any comments on gentoo mirroring their codecs, I
think that your initial letters to their legal deparments would have
atleast generated some response other than total silence.

Anyways, I doubt my gentoo-mirror is any faster than the Microsoft /
Apple sites, so I wouldn't exactly weep if portage downloaded the
codecs from those sites instead of the mirror. ;)

Oh, if only the world would've been run by people with common sense[1]
instead of lawyers... ;)

//H 
[1] Not that I'm known as an abundant source of 'common sense'.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 02:24:30PM +0200, Fredrik Jagenheim (humming@pobox.com) wrote:
> Yes, but don't forget the reason for copyright to be there in the
> first place; to protect the investment and make sure that you can make
> money of that investment in the future. I think that by putting
> something on the web for free download, without putting any
> restrictions on it, they've made it clear that they don't mind if
> these codecs are spread further. Not the same as, but quite similar
> to, email and Usenet postings. Note how many companies, including
> Microsoft and Apple, /do/ put restrictions on nearly everything else
> they publish on the web.

I tried installing the Microsoft codec packs today, including the one
Tony Clark pointed out, and they *are* subject to license agreements.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/codecdownload.aspx

WM9Codecs.exe:
* "Microsoft reserves all rights not expressly granted to you in this
Supplemental EULA."
* "You may reproduce, install and use one copy of the OS Components on
each of your computers that is running a validly-licensed copy of the
applicable OS Software, provided that you use each such additional copy
of the OS Components in accordance with the terms and conditions of this
Supplemental EULA."

wmpcdcs8.exe:
* "Reproduction. If you have multiple validly licensed copies of the
applicable OS Product, you may reproduce, install and use one copy of
the OS Components as part of such OS Product on all of your computers
running validly licensed copies of the applicable OS Product provided
that you use such additional copies of the OS Components in accordance
with the terms and conditions above. For each validly licensed copy of
the applicable OS Product, you also may reproduce one additional copy of
the OS Components solely for archival purposes or reinstallation of the
OS Components on the same computer as the OS Components were previously
installed.  Microsoft retains all right, title and interest in and to
the OS Components.  All rights not expressly granted are reserved by
Microsoft."

Also for reference:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player.aspx
MPSetup.exe:

* "Microsoft reserves all rights not expressly granted to you in this
Supplemental EULA."
* "You may reproduce, install and use one copy of the OS Components on
each of your computers that is running a validly licensed copy of the
applicable OS Software, provided that you use each such additional copy
of the OS Components in accordance with the terms and conditions of this
Supplemental EULA."

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone/
QuickTimeInstaller.exe:

* "Apple reserves all rights not expressly granted to you."
* "Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.  This License allows you to
install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single computer at a
time. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more
than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software
available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at
the same time.  You may make one copy of the Apple Software in
machine-readable form for backup purposes only; provided that the backup
copy must include all copyright or other proprietary notices contained
on the original."

> If they did have any comments on gentoo mirroring their codecs, I
> think that your initial letters to their legal deparments would have
> atleast generated some response other than total silence.

It's been less than 3 working days.
 
-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Fredrik Jagenheim]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 10:18:35PM +0200, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> I tried installing the Microsoft codec packs today, including the one
> Tony Clark pointed out, and they *are* subject to license agreements.

Ack, the problems of not actually checking things yourself and instead
belive what you read. :)

> * "You may reproduce, install and use one copy of the OS Components on
> each of your computers that is running a validly-licensed copy of the
> applicable OS Software, provided that you use each such additional copy
> of the OS Components in accordance with the terms and conditions of this
> Supplemental EULA."

How would you interpret 'applicable OS Software'? Is Gentoo an
applicable OS for Win32 applications? It does run windows
applications, so I guess it could be interpreted that way. OTOH, it
can also be interpreted as you need a windows license to use, install
or reproduce the codecs.

Is 'applicable OS Software' defined somewhere in the EULA?

I don't see anywhere where they forbid you from copying this codec
though. Actually, as long as you only keep one copy of it on each
machine, 'you may reproduce' it.

Or am I reading it wrong?

> wmpcdcs8.exe:
> [... snippage of about the same license... ]
> installed.  Microsoft retains all right, title and interest in and to
> the OS Components.  All rights not expressly granted are reserved by
> Microsoft."

We're given the right to reproduce it, but not distribute it I guess?

> QuickTimeInstaller.exe:
> 
> * "Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.  This License allows you to
> install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single computer at a
> time. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more
> than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software
> available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at
> the same time. 

This one is not even a bordercase. It definetly forbids the user to
do anything with the quicktime installer. I assume it's from this file
the codecs are fetched?

>> [me about legal letters to apple & microsoft]
> It's been less than 3 working days.

I'm still in the 'wait and see' camp, even though you've convinced me
that we may have a problem. :)

//H

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Norberto BENSA]

[-- Attachment #1: signed data --]
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nbensa@venkman ~ $ date ; echo ${Fredrik Jagenheim}
Tuesday 29 April 2003 06:15 am

> On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 10:18:35PM +0200, Jon Lech Johansen wrote:
> > [eula from microsoft]
>
> How would you interpret 'applicable OS Software'? 

Heh... I was asking the same question.

> OTOH, it
> can also be interpreted as you need a windows license to use, install
> or reproduce the codecs.

I think that's the spirit of the EULA. But I have a Windows 95 license, does 
it count? :-)

Some where in the EULA posted by Jon, I read: "you need a Windows license and 
Windows running your system to be able to use this codecs." Maybe I'm wrong 
(IANAL) but read:

> > If you have multiple validly licensed copies of the
> > applicable OS Product, you may reproduce, install and use one copy of
> > the OS Components as part of such OS Product on all of your computers
> > running validly licensed copies of the applicable OS Product provided
> > that you use such additional copies of the OS Components in accordance
> > with the terms and conditions above.

"... on all of your computers running validly licensed copies of the 
applicable OS..."

Hmmmmm.


Regards,
Norberto

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Re: [gentoo-dev] avifile ebuild requires divx4linux and win32codecs on x86

[Jon Lech Johansen]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 11:15:24AM +0200, Fredrik Jagenheim (humming@pobox.com) wrote:
> Is 'applicable OS Software' defined somewhere in the EULA?

"The OS Components are provided to update, supplement, or replace
existing functionality of the applicable Microsoft software for which
the OS Components are designed (any such software referred to here as
"OS Software")."
 
> This one is not even a bordercase. It definetly forbids the user to
> do anything with the quicktime installer. I assume it's from this file
> the codecs are fetched?

qtmlClient.dll in qt6dlls.tar.bz2 is from the QuickTime SDK, while the
rest of the files are available as part of QuickTime Player.

-- 
Jon Lech Johansen
jon@member.fsf.org
nanocrew.net/blog/

Stat sua cuique dies, breve et inreparabile tempus
omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis,
hoc virtutis opus.

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