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8.1. Legal Restrictions
Ubuntu fully supports playback of music, videos and DVDs available in free and unrestricted formats. A number of multimedia formats are restricted by licenses and software patents in some jurisdictions. Ubuntu does not offer this capability by default for these formats but it easy to enable playing a variety of proprietary formats. This section will guide you through the patent and copyright restriction considerations for using proprietary file formats.
The license of the format is different from the license of the content itself. For example a video's content can be licensed under a Creative Commons license, and be available as MPEG file. While the content can be distributed freely, the format is proprietary and a software for playback may need to be licensed in some jurisdictions.
To understand the legal issues associated with the use of proprietary formats, you first need to understand the difference between free and non-free or proprietary formats.