kesuki's Journal: Debian and ubuntu 'silently' remove mp3 encoders.

I searched slashdot and google news for information about the 'removal' of encoders in debian and ubuntu's synaptic package manager, but found nothing recent, in fact the newest i could find was when bladeenc was discontinued. bladeenc was sued long before the author discontinued it, and the only recent news was about the mpaa suing people for online mp3 sharing, while contending mp3 ripping software was illegal.

the sudden removal of encoders from debian and ubuntu suggests that there have been recent actions made against the open source community, contending that their software is a violation of software patents held by Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson Consumer Electronics, but there is no news since when bladeenc was mirrored by former soviet union nations that have yet to adopt software patents.

meanwhile neither sourceforge nor download.com have taken down content they're mirroring, making them the exception to the 'mysterious' removal of mp3 encoders from linux.

apparently there was still a mirror of lame, at ftp.debian-unofficial.org/debian/pool/main/l/lame/
but all the official mirrors of mp3 encoders are gone, and synaptics shows no encoders for mp3 at all.

Re:

[kesuki]

well, i think ubuntu at the start included unofficial 'mp3' encoders in their synaptic's list (they now use 'multiverse' which is seperate from the normal debian unofficial software list) that would mean i was wrong about debian, and was referring to ubuntu.

i am fairly sure knoppix (which was also debian based) included encoders, but i have used knoppix less than debian and ubuntu and wasn't sure.

the point being now that ubuntu has made it harder to get mp3 encoders. software patents suck. not to mention