I did tried to do a thorough digging around to find out what the issues were behind this package. Turns out there is a still outstanding "Needs Packaging" bug on Debian for this, at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=515850 .
The package seems to have been rejected once, last year, with the rejection statement here: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/2011-July/020408.html .
The reasons for rejection were that the package depends on libquicktime, which is not in Debian anymore, and the fact that the copyright file didn't actually describe the copyright situation very well; however, the packager was encouraged to fix those issues and try again, though there doesn't seem to have been any movement on that front. Crucially, it seems that the problematic files with the copyright header stating
NOT for public distribution until verified and approved by
the MPEG/audio committee.
can be assumed to be under a statement http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/mpeg-pointers-and-resources/ implies that MSSG
software is considered "public-domain" nowadays. This would make the package redistributable under the GPL2+, and fit for universe, not multiverse.
It seems the package is also considered free by Fedora, because even though it cannot ship in Fedora proper because of patent issues, it is in the *Free* component of RPMFusion, which follows the same copyright policies as Fedora itself (otherwise it goes into non-free): see here http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/releases/16/Everything/i386/os/repoview/mjpegtools.html .
I tried to find the discussion about the copyright issues on their bugzilla, but I wasn't able to do so. If anyone is able to find its wherabouts, it would be helpful to post it here so we can see their reasoning.
In short, I think this package should be moved to universe, as should any packages which eventually might depend on this one.
Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.