It isn't a copyright issue, it is a patent infringement issue,...
Sorry, my mistake.
and anyone that distributes infringing software can be sued. This means Red Hat (as the primary distributor) as well as all the Red Hat mirrors could be sued for distributing unlicensed MP3 software if MP3 software was included in the distribution.
If that's the case, why aren't other distributions, such as Mandrake, SuSE, etc., removing MP3 support like RH is? It looks like this is a moot issue, but it seems that there really isn't much concern from the rest of the Linux community concerning MP3 patent infrigement on this level.
Aa I understand it, the only time when distributing MP3 codecs is an issue is if they are part of a product that is being sold, if, like XMMS and winamp the product is distributed for free then there is no problem with including MP3 functionality, so while there is some ambiguity whether Red Hat could include MP3 players Fedora shouldn't have a problem, I could be wrong though
That was my understanding of it.
My biggest beef with it is why are other distro's "getting away with it", while if I choose to stick with RH or Fedora, I have to go out and bypass their stock RPM's?