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While I am not an expert in this subject, I did research it a while
back.<br>
<br>
The main issue was that the patent holder of the mp3 encoding/decoding
process decided to use his (actually, it was a group of people who made
it, but I think it was one person who had filed the patents) right to
extract money from people using it. Legally he was entitled to a small
fee for every <b>decoder </b>that was being created, as well as
certain fees from large organizations encoding MP3 files. Many small
freeware mp3 decoders went belly-up, as did many small shareware ones.<br>
<br>
The reason I tracked this down was because a mission organization
wanted to digitize Gospel audio material in over 5,000 languages and
dialects and have it downloadable. I contacted the person and asked
him about royalties and such and got no answer. After checking around
a bit, they did not have a license structure that covered the
distribution of free, unlicensed material.<br>
<br>
The main reason that mp3 and dvd decoders are not included in a number
of distributions is not because they are technically illegal, but
because the battle has not yet been fought to a conclusion. Most of
the software that has been termed illegal for one sort or other was
dealt with fairly gracefully on the Internet (for example, when certain
encryption algorithms could not be exported internationally, there were
ways to do it.) While there has always been a "black market" in
illegal software, it usually has been obvious that it was done
subversively. When it has been proven to be truly illegal, it has
dried up a fair bit and no longer incorporated in distros.<br>
<br>
So the use of mp3 technology, either as an encoder or decoder is in a
gray area. Mainly the patent holder went after the large organizations
making millions of the patent, orgs like Sony, or online music
distribution places. There had been a small stink about the patent at
the personal level, but that dried up pretty quickly. I currently do
not know where that stands. But the fact that some major distributions
have it built in means that the legal battle still has not clarified
that at the personal level.<br>
<br>
- Tim Young<br>
<br>
Don Parris wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid6692614405082902034be1d5bf@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">You lost me here. Since when has playing the MP3 format been illegal
under GNU/Linux? If you can point me to the source of that info, I'd
much appreciate it. My thinking is that, if you already have an MP3
file (legally obtained), it should be no problem to make it playable
under GNU/Linux. I don't know about WMA. There may be some sort of
license issue with producing MP3 files, but I don't think it should be
a problem to play them.
I haven't had any problems at all playing MP3's under SUSE, though I
rip my CD's to Ogg-Vorbis. Still, if playing MP3's under GNU/Linux is
illegal, it was enabled by default by SUSE - I didn't do anything
special to make that happen.
Don
</pre>
</blockquote>
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