No, of course the guy who downloads a .GIF wouldn't pay. That would be
silly. :) But in theory Paul S. (or whoever creates the images) would have
to pay as the guy who does the compression. Or do I still have it wrong?
Here's the article on slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/29/0722236.shtml. (Warning, there's a
LOT of user comments, so its a big page.)
OK, here's what I've gathered from subsequent pages... UniSys (the GIF guys)
want a licence fee from software developers that use their compression
routine AND from "web sites" (does this mean owner, creater, who?) that have
.GIFs from a questionable source (not necesarily created by software from
developers who paid the licence fee).
--PBr
> -----Original Message-----
> From:Dave Bradley [SMTP:daveb@...]
> Sent:Friday, May 26, 2000 9:19 AM
> To:motm@egroups.com
> Subject:RE: [motm] How come UniSys is not rich?
>
> > The only problem is that the .GIF compression routine is copyright'ed,
> so
> > you're theoretically supposed to pay whenever you use the compression
> > routine. Search http://www.slashdot.org for details, I don't
> > remember them
> > clearly. At the same time, I highly doubt that the owner of the
> > copyrights
> > is going to search out every "illegal" user and prosecute.
> >
>
> Actually, I believe the end user doesn't pay, it's the software maker who
> includes the compression algorithms which must pay.
>