I'm pretty sure some of the codecs are legal, and some are not. It's not something I particularly worry about. Most of them can't even be purchased even if I wanted to, or gave a damn about software patents. If that concerns you, you're probably better off with proprietary operating systems.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no legal way to watch a DVD on a linux computer. Screw that.
Actually, because of the illegality aspect (in the US and Japan at least), Fluendo offers GStreamer codec plugins that provide native support for many proprietary media formats (costs €28 around $40). This pack gives you GStreamer plugins for the following:
* Windows Media Audio Decoder
* Windows Media Video Decoder
* Windows Media ASF Demuxer
* Windows Media MMS Networking
* MPEG2 Video Decoder
* MPEG4 Video Decoder
* MPEG2 Program Stream and Transport Stream demuxer
* MPEG4 ISO Demuxer
* MP3 Audio Decoder
* AC3 Audio Decoder
Not that i am going to buy them, as i have Windows, and Linux is something to experiment on, and the legal codec issue is one aspect that challenges it. I can use it with the multimedia handicap.
Here is couple other possibly legal options to play such. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1177279/how_to_get_free_legal_multimedia_codecs.html?cat=15
I have also read that OpenSUSE comes with mp3 playback out of the box, due to having a contract with a company in kind of the same way as adobe has with it’s adobe flash player. The distributor pays money to a company like Fluendo, then they ship with the non-free codecs by default. At least that’s one poster’;s take.
Tthere is controversy here as to whether using a player like VLC is legal under Linux, versus encoding, which would not be
“The combination of CSS decryption software and use of formats covered by software patents places a fully-functional MPlayer in the legal bind shared by most open source multimedia players. In the past MPlayer used to include OpenDivX, a GPL-incompatible decoder library. This has since been removed, making MPlayer use only GPL-Like or BSD-like licenses. Usage of patented codecs in free software however is a still pending potential problem affecting FFmpeg, MPlayer and similar software when used in countries where software patents apply.” - Wikipedia
As for software patents, while i like and support open source and freeware, i see software patents as justified, for as some people write books for a living, others write code, and both deserve to be paid for their work just as much as a mechanic does. The problem is that because you can cheaply duplicate compiled code, so the time and labor put into it is less appreciated.
I do see the typical (and legal) limit of one archive copy of software or media as unreasonable, due to the more vulnerable condition of code.