what is legal and what's illegal in the USA?

[bone2006]

I'm wonder how can I tell what's legal and what's illegal to run in the USA. Is running Linux Mint illegal in the USA or Mepis? Which parts are illegal?
I was reading something about you cannot play DVD at all in linux or it's illegal, is there truth behind that?

[starcraft.man]

I'm wonder how can I tell what's legal and what's illegal to run in the USA. Is running Linux Mint illegal in the USA or Mepis? Which parts are illegal?
I was reading something about you cannot play DVD at all in linux or it's illegal, is there truth behind that?

I love being Canadian, has perks.

The legality of these things is complicated, it mostly just has to do with codecs and DVD playback and their incenses (i.e. paying fees to patent holders to have). Unless your a stickler for the law and never jaywalked or ran a red you've nothing to be concerned with (nobody is gonna track ya down). The world will zealously burn and crucify those horrible pirates IMO long before they track down those dastardly codec people, heaven forbid they should have means to play back video and audio.

If your that concerned about legality, VLC is the solution for you. It plays everything.

That's my 2 cents. There are a lot worse things happening in the world IMO than codec issues for Linux, seems people get far too caught up on the issue really.

Oh and on a related note, how many copies of Windows have you paid for in your life? I've gone through at least 10 or more, seems like I did my license paying for codecs enough...

[newbie2]

If your that concerned about legality, VLC is the solution for you. It plays everything.

talking about moron-politics and vlc.... not only in the usa (http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=39587) ... :p

[KillMyBrain]

I too recommend VLC media player...it works pretty smoothly. Though sometimes it lags or it won't play something...though overall it's pretty great for free ware

[starcraft.man]

talking about moron-politics and vlc.... not only in the usa (http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=39587) ... :p

Oh for heaven's sake... all this stupidity about codecs. Since when did Ubuntu come with VLC though? Did I miss something? I've always installed it manually...

Anyway, I'm glad that's the French and not Canadians...

I'll be blunt. If your like most people and you've run red lights or skipped stop signs or even sped when there wasn't a cop around to catch you, I see little reason why you should be that concerned about codecs. The same "no one is gonna see you do it" applies, if your a stickler for law that's another thing. Then you'll want some paid distro of Linux. Business are of course another matter since they are subject to inspection by the software alliance, is it?

[pheonixind]

DVD's (the protected ones) cannot be played on Linux in the US untill we get soemthing like LinDVD in the US. You can run any version/Distro of Linux in the US, but any media associated with Windows, such as MPEG formats are illegal to run in the US. (Thank you legal system for not knowing what you rule on)

If you run Ubuntu or a branch, to stay legal, the only repo you can use without fear or question is the standard Ubuntu supported repo and some of the commercial repo's for the free ware. (aka Adobe reader for x86_32)

[karellen]

I too recommend VLC media player...it works pretty smoothly. Though sometimes it lags or it won't play something...though overall it's pretty great for free ware

vlc is my video player of choice in both ubuntu and windows

[LowSky]

here's my take on it

If I can play a movie that I paid for in my DVD player without a problem, then I should be able to play it in my DVD player on my computer. If I want to make a back up copy of a DVD I should be able to. If they really did not want me to they would stop making the product or not allow the product (the DVD-ROM) to be licenced to be built into a computer.

One of the biggest idiot companies out there is Sony, they actually own a record label and also own the copyright on CD's, and they also sell computer that come standard with burners which they make as well. sony also makes their own burining software. but to cover their butts they also develope some of the cruelest DRM technology out there that acts like a virus.
Talk about hipocrits

[tech9]

everything is illegal here - JK - or sometimes it seems like it

[Darkhack]

A politicians job isn't to understand technology... merely enforce regulations on it. Thankfully Ted Stevens was there to save us all from the clogged tubes.

[bone2006]

I wasn't just talking about codecs, but maybe that's what the original post seemed like. What about flash? I'm assuming some distros package it and some don't because of legality?

I don't think it has to do with being FOSS, because Richard Stallman goes on and on about how ubuntu doesn't have software that's 100% free and open source, so I'm going to come to the conclusion that flash not being included has nothing to do with it being closed or priority, what's illegal about packaging it?

The law on DVD play back seems kind of silly. Why does Mepis package their distro so that you can play back DVDs? He's an American that was living in west viriginia, even though he was thinking about moving to another state (talking about the main developer warren). Almost all of his distros are on university ftp servers. So he's packing software that is illegal to install in the USA and he's developing it in the USA?

hum....... wonder why this is confusing. It's easy to understand copying windows xp and distributing it is illegal, but there seems to be too many gray areas. Just doesn't make sense to me that if you have softare that plays DVDs in linux and a person is creating a distro in the USA, it's being posted on unversities in the USA seems like they would be breaking the law or at least playing with fire if it's really that illegal.

I've been using VLC for years on windows, but never got the idea that since it's packaged with encoding/decoding libraries that it's now legal? Where did this come from? Isn't libdvdcss considered illegal in the USA

Here's what I find at wikipedia for VLC
It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library.
I

[jrusso2]

Until someone takes it to court no one knows whats legal or illegal. VLC is probably illegal too since under that definition since it has to use some kind of reverse engineered codecs.

[tech9]

Until someone takes it to court no one knows whats legal or illegal. VLC is probably illegal too since under that definition since it has to use some kind of reverse engineered codecs.

doubt it!