hmm...
I don't use Mint myself, but from what I recall of their site when I was doing an install for a friend, I believe they offer a stripped version of the LiveCD as well as a LiveCD with all of the restricted formats included. The idea is that people in countries where software patents, etc. aren't enforced, or people that don't really care about such things, can get it all out of the box, while people that can't have those things installed can make sure they don't. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but did you make sure you downloaded the fully-loaded image?