In its continued effort to have a seamless and slick user experience, Canonical made the hard choice to offer the sale and support for proprietary codecs that users had to actually purchase for Ubuntu. This is not a fight Canonical can fight alone, and they are sure to get some grief for the decision. From the article, "This week, Canonical opened sales of legal multimedia codecs and DVD playback software to all Ubuntu users, regardless of whether the distribution was pre-installed on a purchased system or downloaded gratis from an Ubuntu mirror. Fluendo handles the bulk of the codecs using the GStreamer framework. CyberLink offers DVD playback through a Linux version of its PowerDVD software...Some will see this as another example of how proprietary formats are hopelessly broken, defy the law, and use the freely available but legally questionable codecs without a word. There are others who will be reminded (or discover for the first time) that the laws governing technology and intellectual property need revision, and rather than circumventing the law, will push for change.""
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