VideoLAN might disappear !, The battle is not over... Options

[PatchWorKs]

During the night of 22nd to 23rd December 2005, while everybody is preparing for Christmas, the French Parliament will rule about the "DADVSI" law. This vote will be made with minimal discussion, as an "emergency" has been declared on this law.

This law is the French transcription of the european EUCD (European Union Copyright Directive) text, which itself comes from the american DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act).
The main goal of this law is to restrict the rights of digital content purchasers. It most notably forbids them from working around technical content protection measures.
Doing so, writing or publishing software allowing to do so, or even merely talking about ways to do so becomes an offence that can be punished with three years in jail.

VideoLAN is directly impacted, most notably for its DVD reading capability (all Linux DVD reading software has the same problem). Should this law be passed, this would seriously hinder VLC's development.

The french website eucd.info collects a large number of related articles and documentation

This post has been edited by PatchWorKs: Dec 4 2005, 16:04

[rjamorim]

"VideoLAN might disappear"

Ohhh, what a surprise. These guys are throwing activism and apocalyptical threats again.

Sickening

[eofor]

"VideoLAN might disappear"

It won't disappear, this only means that they might have to pay licensing fees like everyone else (QuickTime, Nero, Winamp, WMP, WinDVD, etc). What they're doing now is akin to standing on the streets handing out free photocopied chapters of "The Da Vinci Code", telling people "it's your responsibility to find out if this is illegal here, if it is you should contact the publishers yourself to make arrangements".

[MedO]

It won't disappear, this only means that they might have to pay licensing fees like everyone else (QuickTime, Nero, Winamp, WMP, WinDVD, etc). What they're doing now is akin to standing on the streets handing out free photocopied chapters of "The Da Vinci Code", telling people "it's your responsibility to find out if this is illegal here, if it is you should contact the publishers yourself to make arrangements".

They can't pay license fees afaik, because open source projects won't get a license. Also, the fees are paid per shipped unit or something, which is kind of impossible to do with F/OSS. At least I think I read this stuff somewhere...