I will make the more practical suggestion that if you disagree with it don't participate. I'm not violating any code of conduct here. Thanks.


It appears to be against the eula, not necessarily illegal. You certainly cant take one song out of a metallica discograpy for free. It says you cannot disassemble the software which removing .dlls certainly is. Where is the local law that supersedes that then, as you have highlighted it?

XavierP pointed out that in the UK the law is not the same on the DvD's?

Lets take a look at that quote for a minute. When I read that, my understanding is "We don't include those files because we would get sued."

Without being intellectually dishonest, doe's anyone else feel thats not a decent interpretation? If so what does it mean?

Hehehe....

There's a very thin line between what's legal and what's not, but trust me, we're not the one's who are crossing it. I.E.- Federal copyright laws do allow copying for archival purposes; EULAs, DRM, and copy protection schemes do not.

Disassembling software does not entail using certain components for other purposes. They are strictly referring to the code. And Linux devs make double-damn sure they're not breaking any laws before they release anything. I guarantee it.

The Medibuntu case is a good one as it illustrates this perfectly. In some countries, the Medibuntu packages are illegal. Therefore, If Ubuntu wanted to create a "full" distro with those packages they would need a UK/European Ubuntu and a US Ubuntu and a South America Ubuntu and so on. If you have a case where a package is legal in one US state, but not in another you would need further localisation and so on. Much easier and more efficient to create a distro with offending packages stripped out and put elsewhere. That way, if you install libdvdcss your self, it is you that violates the law of your land and not Canonical.

Excellent post. I'd like to add that Canonical goes one step further- When I ran:

A window opened that stated:


libdvdcss is not included, and AFAIK, all other components are legal, here.

Cheers