On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 7:28 AM, Urko Fernandez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 13:13 +0200, Bernie Innocenti wrote: > > The "download codecs yourself" (aka "[EMAIL PROTECTED]") is an > > I don't think you can call it piracy when all you are doing is using the > free implementation of a codec.
It depends how you define "piracy". Generally, piracy refers to copyright infringement and since there is no copyright infringement, it wouldn't be piracy. But this is splitting hairs; I don't think Bernie intended the "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" comment to be picked apart. > This is completely legal in some > countries, you are not stealing anything, as a matter of fact, even when > you download unlicensed codecs, you are still not stealing it, let alone > pirating it, it's just copyright infringement. It has nothing to do with copyright; it is _patent_ infringement, as Bernie described. If the codec implementation is truly free software, then under the terms of the copyright license, you are permitted to distribute it to whoever you want without infringing copyright. However, if the codec implementation uses patented ideas without a license or waiver from the patent holder, then the person distributing it (or possibly the person downloading it) is involved in patent infringement. Exactly who is infringing varies between countries and interpretations of laws within those countries, but some infringement is definitely occurring. This is assuming that the relevant patents are valid in your country and the distributor's country and that these countries enforce patent law. If that is not the case, then it is more difficult to determine if patent infringement is occurring. I will get into more detail about what "infringing" means in my reply to Bernie's message. I highly suggest reading about standard types of intellectual property law, specifically copyright, patent, and trademark law. This type of knowledge is especially relevant for open source developers, who seldom have access to professional lawyers. Of course, reading about it yourself if not equivalent to getting legal advice from a lawyer, but it's better than nothing. Here are some starting points: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark Denver _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
