can xvid binaries be hosted?

[ssjkakaroto]

hi there, after reading the letter that Rarewares received to remove the AAC encoders binaries i was wondering if the xvid binaries are legal or not, cuz i remember that there couldnt be any binaries at xvid.org, is this right or am i talking nonsense?

tia

[Sirber]

XviD devellop only source-code. They don't pay MPEG-LA, so binaries are illegal.

BTW, before you think about it, I'm not on the payroll of some well known company :devil:

[Animaniac]

I see no problem with the status quo of XviD binary distribution... In fact, I'm very grateful to Koepi, Umaniac, and Nic. Thanks a lot guys!

[ssjkakaroto]

of course i'm grateful too, but it would suck to see any of them receiving such letters :(

[kilg0r3]

if it came to that, we could still use tesla p2p to ditribute them.

[JohnV]

Originally posted by Sirber
XviD devellop only source-code. They don't pay MPEG-LA, so binaries are illegal.

BTW, before you think about it, I'm not on the payroll of some well known company :devil: Well, binaries are illegal in countries which recognize software patents. To my knowledge the binaries are perfectly legal for example in Brazil.

[temporance]

The issue of software vs. not-software patents is a tricky one. Distributing xvid could infringe non-software patents, even though it is software.

When people talk about software patents, they mean patenting something like moving a constant calculation outside of a for loop. This has no relevance outside of software.

The type of patent that xvid is likely to infringe could be some subtle clever bit of MPEG-4 motion estimation, for example. This patent would be infringed whether it is implemented in hardware or software.

So saying "my country doesn't recognise software patents" does not necessarily give you a green light. Having said that, it's very, very, very unlikely that an xvid user in any country would ever be sued for using it. Hosting it could be different - but remember the folks at MPEG-4 want to promote their standard - and xvid is certainly doing that :D
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[ssjkakaroto]

JohnV as i recall Roberto wasn't 100% that hosting AAC binaries in Brazil was completely legal, but fiscalization about this stuff here is very light so that's why he was hosting them here. I think a nice place to host all this stuff would be North Korea :p
JK of course