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A double-edged sword

Whatever the reasons for the existence of the various forms of DRM, if you accept that the creators of a digital work should have their copyrights protected, then the concept of DRM is not inherently a bad thing. It can, after all, protect the work of the lone individual artist or programmer just as well as copyrights held by the large media companies; increasingly, independent artists are achieving critical and commercial success through the use of internet-based technologies. Unfortunately it is the manner in which DRM has been approached and applied by some of the big media companies that has earned it such a bad name.

Linus Torvalds, the original creator of Linux, says that he is not averse to DRM, although his arguments seem to be limited only to file signing. As he points out, digital file signing has been used for years by the open source community to protect the integrity of open source software downloads. It is doubtful that Torvalds would accept the modification of the Linux kernel to provide protected corridors for high definition (HD) content, as Microsoft have done in Windows Vista.

Linux and multimedia playback in general

Media players need to be able to play a range of compressed, encoded or protected formats, many of which are proprietary and require payment of a licence fee for their use. To allow for future-proofing against new formats and to provide a revenue stream back to the licence owners, media players are designed to accept plug-in CODECs (Coder Decoders) for these proprietary formats. Licence fees may either be paid by the media player manufacturer or, in some cases, individual CODEC plug-ins can be purchased by the end user; this proprietary business model does not fit comfortably with open source. Proprietary licensed media formats (as indicated in the Ubuntu help pages) include;

  • AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) – an audio compression format intended to replace MP3. Its best known use is as the default audio format for Apple's iPod, iTunes and iPhone. It is also used by Sony for the PlayStation 3.
  • MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) – a very popular lossy compression audio format. Although the ability to play MP3 files under Microsoft Windows is pretty much taken for granted, Microsoft pay a licence fee, as do the manufacturers of the various Windows applications that play MP3 format files, so the fees are paid 'at source' and the end user is not aware of them. Thomson Consumer Electronics claims to control licensing of the MP3 patents in many countries.
  • MPEG2 (Motion Picture Expert Group 2) compression – used for DVD and digital television transmissions. The standard for MPEG2 includes MP3 and AAC.
  • MPEG4 AVC / H.264 – used for HDTV transmissions and while Blu-ray discs use a variety of compression techniques such as MPEG-2 and VC-1 they also use H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.

The MPEG patent pool of approximately 640 patents held by one university and more than 20 corporations is managed and administered by the MPEG Licensing Authority, a private organisation. Some related patents are licensed by Audio MPEG, Inc.

  • WMA (Windows Media Audio) – a Microsoft proprietary format.
  • WMV (Windows Media Video) – a Microsoft proprietary format.
  • Apple QuickTime – an Apple proprietary format.

Many Linux distributions include GStreamer, the open source multimedia framework which forms the basis of many multimedia playback applications. GStreamer enables programming of a playback application by connecting together a chain of plug-ins such as file handlers, CODECs, and audio and video drivers. There are several hundred plug-ins for GStreamer which are grouped into the good, the bad and the ugly. Roughly speaking, good plug-ins are well written, properly documented and free open source code. Bad plug-ins are usually proprietary and ugly plug-ins may be proprietary, are often badly written and have no support.

GStreamer logo GStreamer illustrates the complications that arise when the open source community has to deal with licensing and proprietary technology. The GStreamer site has a page explaining the legal position of its plug-ins. GStreamer itself is licensed under the LGPL; this allows the bundling of proprietary software with GStreamer which the GPL would not.

As the Ubuntu help page on CODECs says "Many applications in Ubuntu use the GStreamer open source multimedia framework. The codec plug-ins for GStreamer are organised in different packages depending on the licensing that applies to the various codecs. You can see which codecs are contained in which plug-in on the GStreamer website."

Fluendo logo The Spanish company Fluendo states that it is "the pioneer company in gathering GStreamer expertise". Fluendo markets a number of proprietary multimedia products including their "Complete Set of Playback Plugins" package for 28 Euros, where they have paid the licensing fees for all of the 13 GStreamer compatible CODEC plug-ins in the package.

Patent and copyright law worldwide is inconsistent; some countries, India and the Philippines for example, do not recognise patents on software. Even where such patents are recognised, it is not universally clear what does and does not constitute patentable software. With copyright it is a different matter; most countries recognise software copyrights, although the actual legislation varies from country to country. This means that Linux distributions can get away with distributing CODECs that are copyright (or even patented in some countries) by merely adding the disclaimer that it is the end user's responsibility to comply with local patent and copyright law. It is common to find CODEC plug-in bundles distributed with an attached blanket GPL licence notice even though they may contain supposedly copyright CODECs. Some distributions take this more seriously than others and it is unfortunate that a distribution containing only open source licensed code won't be able to play many popular media formats.

Next: Linux and DVD

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