Re: MPlayer revisited
MJ Ray wrote:
> I'm not quite sure what sort of statement about patents will
> convince ftpmasters. Maybe knowing what patents held by who are
> definitely infringed by mplayer is good, especially if none of
> them are actively enforced, or maybe it is bad.
<ObligatoryIAmNotALawyerDisclosure />
This seems like a potentially bad idea, actually. I certainly can't
cite specific laws, but I seem to recall from similar discussions that
if a patent holder can prove a patent was violated in full knowledge of
the violation, he is entitled to triple damages. In the course of
researching patents possibly violated by MPlayer, one would surely
uncover the presence of the same patents in code already in Debian --
the already-mentioned Xine, Avifile, etc.
regards,
--
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu> Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544
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