Would you pay for legal codecs support via Linspire's CNR?

[Patrick]

Linspire is now opening up CNR to other distributions of linux and offering a means of purchasing legal codecs. Personally I would be willing to fork over say $10-$20 for a household license. If all the machines I own are covered I'd do it in a heartbeat.

[Tsuroerusu]

My answer is a yes, but with a little description to it.

For the fundemental question would I pay for codecs? Yes I would.

But I want to have a good offering that's polished and works elegantly with my distribution of choice, SUSE, without me having to fiddle around with all kinds of file association stuff and converting a Debian package into an RPM, and then hoping that original Deeeebian package, now I'm getting hate mail, actually was LSB-compliant. As SUSE is LSB-compliant, you could in theory take an LSB-compliant Debian package, and use alien to convert it into an RPM and feed that RPM to YaST. If I were to do this package conversion by myself, manually, no way I'd pay for this proprietary crap, if this was the case, I'll just add the long-time SUSE RPM repository known as Packman, to YaST and get the stuff for free, and then spend my time just installing MPlayer, libdvdcss, x264 and stuff like that.

And one other thing, if I am to pay for codecs, I want them globally available, in the sense that ANY of my applications can use them, so I'm not tied to one particular player. For example, I like this MPlayer frontend called KPlayer, because it has some awfully useful features, such as video image resizing with the scroll wheel on the mouse, and if I were to pay for codecs, I wanna be able to use them in KPlayer and not in some crappy proprietary bloated app like Windows Media Player or the Windows version of RealPlayer.

[Wally Balljacker]

I don't know if I would pay when I can get all that stuff for free, but Linux distros definitely do need to offer legit ways of playing DVDs, Windows Media files, and the like. If CNR was available for all the major distros, that would no doubt be a huge step forward for Linux on the desktop.

[Chess]

And one other thing, if I am to pay for codecs, I want them globally available, in the sense that ANY of my applications can use them, so I'm not tied to one particular player.

Yes, I would, and I agree with Tsuroerusu's point above. I definitely would not want to be tied to a single player of any kind.

[Tsuroerusu]

I agree with Tsuroerusu's point above. I definitely would not want to be tied to a single player of any kind.

Especially when it comes to RealPlayer man, holy crap that one just tossed the salad of a donkey. (Sorry if you just lost your lunch there )

[StoneChucker]

To the best of my knowledge, living in Canada, I'm not breaking the law by watching a DVD on a non-Windows or non-Macintosh OS. Until that changes, I won't pay for a solution created to be legal for one part of the world, unless it is far superior to any free solution I can find on the internet.

[Patrick]

To the best of my knowledge, living in Canada, I'm not breaking the law by watching a DVD on a non-Windows or non-Macintosh OS. Until that changes, I won't pay for a solution created to be legal for one part of the world, unless it is far superior to any free solution I can find on the internet.

I'm glad that the laws in your country aren't restrictive as those in the U.S.. For those of us in the linux community that do live in the U.S.A. this is a way for us to have 'legal' playback of proprietary codecs. This is big news for us.

[Judland]

I don't want this to get "political", but paying for this kind of service.... isn't that sort of like throwing the baby out with the bath water?

Being able to use DVDs that you've paid for the way you want to use them (in a personal nature) should be your right. Being forced to pay for this right, which should be yours in the first place, because these corporations believe in the guilty until proven (or paid) to be innocent is wrong, in my opinion.

Therefore, paying for such a service just because you can isn't sending the right message, is it? How can things change if we all just go along with it because it's easier?

Maybe I'm putting too much into this whole issue.

I know this is a neccessary evil for Linspire in order to make inroads into the home computing market, but that still doesn't make it right.

[Tsuroerusu]

I don't want this to get "political", but paying for this kind of service.... isn't that sort of like throwing the baby out with the bath water?

Being able to use DVDs that you've paid for the way you want to use them (in a personal nature) should be your right. Being forced to pay for this right, which should be yours in the first place, because these corporations believe in the guilty until proven (or paid) to be innocent is wrong, in my opinion.

Therefore, paying for such a service just because you can isn't sending the right message, is it? How can things change if we all just go along with it because it's easier?

Maybe I'm putting too much into this whole issue.

I know this is a neccessary evil for Linspire in order to make inroads into the home computing market, but that still doesn't make it right.

Well Judland, feel free to go change the DMCA and US patent laws any day, we're all waiting.

There's actually a DMCAII on the way, you'll hear more about that on this week's TLLTS

[Gomer_X]

I'm not paying for codecs now. Why would I want to pay in the future? I can play MP3s and DVDs for free. I'm not interested in Windows proprietary codecs. So far I haven't found a need for Quicktime, and I avoid Realplayer if I can.

I don't want to support closed formats any more than I have to, and I certainly don't want to pay for the priviledge.

[jsusanka]

what am I getting for my money?

one player that will be the only one that will play movies?
no way - I want my choice of players. but what is the choice on windows - windvd? not sure don't use windows.

mp3's aren't really a problem because we can already play them legally in the US with realplayer. so I am not really sure what we are getting.

wmv's - I won't touch them and I will not visit a site that uses them and will write the sysadmin of the site as too why.

back to movies - I will go to a movie occassionally and I don't really watch them at home or on my computer but with that said it is nice that the common joe can buy a legal dvd player for linux - I think the movie industry owes it to linux for the common user to play dvd's on linux systems - since they are using linux to get rich.

but I am still going to support and use ogg and players that support ogg.

this is still just more middlemen like the mpaa and riaa getting rich without having to really do anything except hire lawyers. and how many times am I going to pay for patents when I buy a movie or song? it is just ridiculous.

[Judland]

Well Judland, feel free to go change the DMCA and US patent laws any day, we're all waiting.

Why would I want to change the US patent laws? It's not my duty. I'm not American.

[Tsuroerusu]

Well Judland, feel free to go change the DMCA and US patent laws any day, we're all waiting.

Why would I want to change the US patent laws? It's not my duty. I'm not American.

I know that, but one of the big barriers to adoption in the US is the often poor out-of-the-box multimedia support, caused by patents and namely the DMCA.

[Judland]

I know that, but one of the big barriers to adoption in the US is the often poor out-of-the-box multimedia support, caused by patents and namely the DMCA.

Again, this affects me as a Canadian in what way?

[Tsuroerusu]

Again, this affects me as a Canadian in what way?

Well, we both know that the RIAA and MPAA are a bunch of greedy retarded bastards that doesn't know a shit about technology, I'm sure Canadian Recording Industry Association is pretty much the same, and I'm sure theyøre pushing laws that will outlaw DeCSS and stuff like that, it's just a matter of time, hell even France is adopting "an implementation" of the EUCD.

Note: This is my 1000th post! Weee!