post-install media formats wizard

[Dane Mutters]

On Monday 20 March 2006 12:00 pm, Santiago Roza wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Therrol Jezierski <therrol at gmail.com> wrote:
> > well, I guess at this point we have to decide what is more important.
> > Trusting out users or stoping illegal activities.
>
> now "stopping illegal activities" is one of our obligations?  since
> when we became "team ubuntu: world patent police"?
>
> people here have already stated powerful reasons *not* to guess the
> suitability of the multimedia assistant directly, so i'd like to sum
> them up and add a few more:
> - laws change, so we can't have the assistant hardcoded to a country
> list (which will become outdated).
> - people travel to another countries, so we shouldn't forbid them to
> re-run the assistant just because they installed ubuntu in a
> patent-encumbered country.
> - guessing the patent status from the country depends on the
> installer, so the code wouldn't be portable to another distributions.
> - and last but not least... ok we're not supposed to encourage illegal
> activities, but afaik we're not the ones responsible for police-like
> surveillance and control.
>
>
> --
> Santiago Roza
> Departamento I+D - Thymbra
> santiago.roza at thymbra.com


	I agree wholeheartedly with Santiago.  Our role should not be to determine 
what is legal for each of our users.  That's the users' responsibility.  If 
they choose to violate patent law, that's their problem.  Furthermore, what 
happens if we get it wrong?  If we essentially tell the user that it's legal 
to do something, and it's not, then it's our responsibility to pay for the 
transgressed law.  I think it's much better to let the individual decide what 
to do, but help them to at least know that in some countries ("check your 
local laws") it may be illegal.

	--Dane