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Freeware is illegal and it pays to steal code and intellectual property - says MpegTV LLC company December 03, 2004 [General] | By Edward J. R. So you have some freeware in your Microsoft Smartphone or Pocket PC and you think everything is OK? Well, don't be so sure. Soon a police officer may ask you "show me your mobile!" and send you behind bars! Since we have been popularizing this allegedly free software at this very web site, we feel obliged to publish this information. MpegTV LLC is wide known in Windows Mobile community - because they were providing MPEG players named "PocketTV" for almost all possible mobile devices based on Windows CE, including Microsoft Smartphone and even winning software awards for these players. Now they say, that BetaPlayer freeware program for smartphone and Pocket PC - i.e. another media player - is illegal in several respects. It is well known fact that embedding MP3 technology in non-commercial product doesn't involve a need to pay license fees. So if somebody is offering FREE MP3 player software it's perfectly legal. So why BetaPlayer - currently one of the most widely used audio and video players for Windows Mobile is illegal? After all we have been publishing several news item about it. We wouldn't do that if we knew that it's illegal... Here is what Pocket TV says: * * * * * msmobiles.com: so you are saying that the best media player for Windows Mobile - the free BetaPlayer - is an illegal hack? Betaplayer can play all video and all audio formats, including MP3... Pocket TV: yes, i think it's an illegal hack, but not because it can play MP3. it's OK to have a free software that plays MP3 - this does not apply to PocketTV, which is distributing a commercial version (the freewas version can be considered as advertising for the commercial one, so the free MP3 license does not apply). yes, i think Betaplayer is an illegal hack because for different reasons. one is that implements some technologies that are subject to patent royalties (and that do not have exemptions for free software). another one is that it contains code that have been stolen (or "borrowed" from other projects) and where the original copyright notices have been removed. for example some people familiar with the ffmpeg source code told me they found several pieces of the source code of ffmpeg litterally copied into some Betaplayer source files, without the original copyright notices. copying copyrighted source code without the permission of the author is illegal, even from an open source project to another opensource project. so the code in Betaplayer is not very "clean" in terms of copyrights, you could say. the fact that the author is in hungary and that the project is opensource (and not making much revenues except for some donations) probably makes it very hard enforce the copyrights of the people who's code has been borrowed by Betaplayer. nonetheless, Betaplayer works very well, and it is a remarkable piece of work. too bad it is not as clean as it looks, as far as source code copyrights are concerned. also, it claims it is GPL but it does not fully comply with the GPL license terms, but that's a minor point compared to the rest. but in some cases, it pays to steal code and intellectual property. you certainely recall the story of winamp, the most famous MP3 software player at the time. winamp was developed by a kid in arizona (his company was called nullsoft) using a critical piece of source code from an MP3 decoder called AMP developed by a student called Tomislav Uzelac in hungary. at one point, the winamp project got purchased by AOL and AOL, with the american winamp author settled the copyright lawsuit with the original author by giving Tomislav an undisclosed amount of cash (maybe $10 millions) of the 130 millions dollars or so payed by AOL for winamp. as a result, everyone was happy, and the people who made the most money in that story were the thieves! * * * * * Related links:  Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later) [ 16 Comments ]
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