Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] BC2000 redux
From: Peter Surda (shurdeek_AT_panorama.sth.ac.at)
Date: Fri Sep 14 2001 - 17:20:24 EEST
On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 08:17:20AM -0400, Dave Phillips wrote:
> Greetings:
Hi
> Further comment: Which media player authors have been assaulted by the
> MPAA ?
Dunno, but Microsoft politely asked Avery Lee to drop ASF support in
VirtualDub, because it was patented. avifile and mplayer developers (I
consider myself one of them as well) are in the same danger. It helps somewhat
that most of them don't live in USA, but still.
As for MPAA, I suppose vlc is in danger (although hosted in France), because
it allows DVD playback without explicitely activating Macrovision (i.e. it
doesn't care about Macrovision).
I am in danger as well (although I'm not in US and don't plan to go there).
ATI originally supplied the TV-Out docs to their cards to XF86 developers
(years ago), however shortly afterwards they found out the users can't be
forced not to disable Macrovision, they pulled the docs. So there was no
TV-Out on ATI under linux for many years. A couple of weeks ago I made a patch
that enables TV-Out support on ATI r128-based cards, using a trick I observed.
During programming of this patch, a XF86 developer helped me on IRC and when I
was done he asked about this at ATI directly. Their immediate reaction was
that this violates DMCA, because Macrovision isn't enabled. What's REALLY SICK
about this is that no matter what I want, I can't enable it because the
information required to do this is private property of ATI and they repeatedly
refused to supply this information to either official XF86 developers or me.
So basically I'm in a Catch-22 situation: if I don't have the information, I'm
in danger of being sued, but at the same time it if forbidden for me to
acquire this information.
DMCA is sick piece of crap that serves only one purpose: it gives certain
monopolistic companies and organisations a tool to eliminate all competition,
and as a bonus to harass innocent people.
Software patents OTOH aren't bad per se, however they assume that the one who
develops software plans to earn money on selling licenses. This assumption
doesn't fit open-source. Therefore open-source developers should be exempt
from this.
Bye,
Peter Surda (Shurdeek) <shurdeek_AT_panorama.sth.ac.at>, ICQ 10236103, +436505122023
--
The computer revolution is over. The computers won.
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