Gregory Maxwell wrote:
I don't agree. If I take some content, place it in
a safe, and make it
illegal for people to open the safe unless they agree to pay me money
and abide by certain other conditions, and then distribute it
widely... Well.. I can *claim* all I want that the 'content' is free,
but that would a meaningless claim.
That's not even remotely close to the case here, though. We're not
talking about having content *only* in patent-encumbered formats, but in
offering a user the option to receive it in a patent-encumbered formats
while also having it available in a non-encumbered format as the
preferred format.
That is more analogous to taking some content, putting one copy of it up
freely on the internet, and the other copy in a safe. The fact that you
have a copy in a safe does not make the copy on the internet less free.
-Mark