mplayer - Closed for patent infringement

THE movie player, http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

Quote:

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Closed for patent infringement

This site has been shut down because of numerous patent violations in MPlayer. The other free software multimedia players are next.

The European commission has just passed its directive on software patents, violating democratic rules and procedures to the sole benefit of big non-European corporations and Ireland and to the detriment of small and medium sized businesses (which comprise 99% of the European software industry) and free software.

The European parliament will now be taking the last stand against software patents in a voting for which an absolute majority is needed. Such a majority is hard to come by in a parliament with a low attendance level.

But not all is lost yet as long as you decide it is time to make a difference and take action. This is our last opportunity to fend off software patents worldwide, there will be no second chance for the foreseeable future. Contact your local EU representatives and educate them why software patents are bad and why they must attend that parliament session to vote against them. For in-depth information and starting points to get active visit software patent page of the FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) and NoSoftwarePatents.com.

Wish us luck, we will need it.

Enter the MPlayer homepage while it is still available.

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note: ireland is a tax haven for large multinationals such as microsoft, google, dell, intel. others are coming all the time. i think mcafee is one the latest. http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=9562094

you can find @europarl.eu.int email addresses of irish meps from this site, if anyone wants to annoy them about software patents. other email addresses are available from their respective websites.
http://www.europarl.ie/meps/

Thanks for posting this...made me remember about mplayer. Just downloaded it :P What a kick ass movie player+

ac

same here !!! ROCKN!!

no problem lads. you should get it while you can. just incase it is shutdown by the politicians.

it would suck if only wmp could play wmv, and quicktime only the .mov format and real etc.

THE movie player, mplayer does it all !

Ahhh but the Site isn't closed.. yet.. is it..?

There is no law passed by the Parlament yet is there.. ?

so why the hysterics.. is it to improve their site Hit rate or download rate? are they being ignored that much..

And if the LAW is Passed.. won't it also protect Euro-Companies as well. protect them against the theiving multinational mega co's, It is a double edge sword..

I won't argue fair or unfair on patents.. but these guys are playing the "Prima donna"

it may protect small and medium sized euro-companies, like you said, but according to the article linked from the nosoftwarepatents site, large corporations and "holding companies" are the ones to benefit, whilst small companies get crushed.

regardless, it should F free software in the A, without lube. that's why the hysterics.

some examples, perhaps:
in the long run, who has the most money for R&D? large multinationals. so they should have a much greater chance of getting their first and patenting the idea - when it comes to video formats, text formats etc, which they can easily push on the market and make it "the standard". from my understanding of the situation it would mean that the guys (and gals) who do, for e.g., the Open Office software couldn't include code that opened MS .doc files (and excel, ppoint etc) without paying ms money, as ms would patent that format. so the OO lads would have to not support .doc formats or start to charge so they could pay off ms.

of course, they could patent the .sxw format, but i'd seriously doubt that ms would include .sxw support - they are that arrogant.

there's alot of buisness-type-heads out there that are fuming at the people who give away free stuff. they are constantly trying to find angles to force the people who are comfortably using the free stuff, to use something that costs money.

what about the people that are responsible for marvelous magical software like wine and cedega? are they going to have to pay ms too because they are writing code that translates directx and other parts of the ms OS and maps them onto linux OS calls? won't this price ultimately translate to the end users, us?

most of the people in power these days, especially the MEPs from ireland, would have grown up in an age when computing wasn't even as popular as it in now in their dreams. i fear that most of these power hungry shite-hawks, who only learned how to send email a year ago, have no right to make such a serious law with far reaching implications on something they have no idea about, other than "" well, if we support this law, company X said they would open a plant in our country thereby creating Y jobs""

there will be consequences, if that's how you spell it.

found these links
http://www.european-patent-office.or...pc/e/ar52.html
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index.html

from here
http://www.linuxquestions.org/news/linux301110.html