[ bigvlada @ 24.06.2013. 07:00 ] @
| JDownloader Court Ruling Worries Open Source Software Developers This week news broke that the popular JDownloader download tool had been declared illegal by a German court. The headline was open for debate since the court only took exception to one particular and long-since removed feature which allowed the downloading of encrypted video streams. However, the ruling has concerned the creators of JDownloader who say that it represents a threat to the development of Open Source Software. Downloading files from the web can be achieved via many routes but for some a download manager is the best solution.One of the most popular is JDownloader, a Java-based tool that works on Windows, Linux and Mac. Among other features it can download videos, pull files from countless file-hosting sites and finish things off by automatically extracting them.This week JDownloader found itself at the center of a controversy when news broke that the Hamburg Regional Court had banned the software. That statement turned out to be a little overbroad and was soon corrected, however the problem was still fairly serious.The Regional Court had ruled against a feature present in an earlier beta (not official) version of JDownloader 2 which enabled the downloading of copyrighted and protected RTMPE streams. The Court decided that this represented a circumvention of an “effective technological measure” under Section 95a of Germany’s Copyright Act.As a result the Court issued a preliminary injunction against JDownloader2 and threatened its makers, Appwork, with a 250,000 euro fine for “production, distribution and possession” of the Open Source Software. http://torrentfreak.com/jdownl...ce-software-developers-130622/ |
