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