Delirium wrote:
I don't think that's true. Debian's legal
team is pretty conservative
(read: paranoid) on these matters, and Debian currently includes
mp3-playback software in the main distribution (package 'xmms', among
others). Mp3-encoding software is not part of Debian due to patent
issues, but playback software is, so it seems their legal team has
determined there aren't any problems with playback.
I think this is relevant, but not necessarily definitive. Even if
playback is legal, but encoding is not legal, there's still a huge
problem, just not *as* huge.
I favor a careful cost/benefit analysis, except of course there is no
mathematical way to actually measure the costs and benefits.
--Jimbo