MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Open-source Mplayer site closed for patent infringement

Alexander Turcic · 03-14-2005, 03:13 PM

When I visited the home page of the multimedia player MPlayer today, I was welcomed with the following shocking notice: "This site has been shut down because of numerous patent violations in MPlayer. The other free software multimedia players are next." It is not said in what ways the player is violating European patents, but I assume it has to do with the decoding of MPEG2 streams.

I wonder how this development might effect open-source players for mobile devices, such as Picard's outstanding software BetaPlayer...

03-14-2005, 03:13 PM	#1
Alexander Turcic Fully Converged Posts: 18,175 Karma: 14021202 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Switzerland Device: Too many to count here.	Open-source Mplayer site closed for patent infringement When I visited the home page of the multimedia player MPlayer today, I was welcomed with the following shocking notice: "This site has been shut down because of numerous patent violations in MPlayer. The other free software multimedia players are next." It is not said in what ways the player is violating European patents, but I assume it has to do with the decoding of MPEG2 streams. I wonder how this development might effect open-source players for mobile devices, such as Picard's outstanding software BetaPlayer...