Slashdot Mirror
Dolby Tells NetBSD Project: Don't Decode AC3
Mycroft writes: "There's a new entrant into the open source DVD legal battle: Dolby Laboratories. The NetBSD Project received this letter demanding that links to the open source ac3dec package be removed. What's next?" Probably what's next are yet more letters sent to every other project which enables decoding of content on platforms unsupported by the format licensors. Remember, you don't buy anything anymore -- you license it.
They claim what??? Last time I checked the INS was as active as ever along the Rio Grande, NAFTA or no NAFTA.
The EU, on the other hand, does allow people to move freely between countries. Thumbs up for them.
Oh, please spear me this...
I'm a Dane. You know, some guys pretty close to Sweden and Finland. The danish government is "social democrat", but is neither especially socially minded or respectful of democratic ideals.
Denmark has the higest tax pressure in the world - a study from our ministry of tax from 1999 shows that for people living in their own house, the real taxation is 74,6%. Eat that!
I would love to move to the US, but it is a little hard to say goodbye to all you know and love (minus stupid politicians, of course).
Lastly, spare me the romantic babble about socialism having great "pros". That idealistic hogwash about equality can only be realized through force and opression, due to one simple thing:
That we humans are born different.
PS: A lot of people here are mistaking the US system - it's not capitalism (not in it's pure form) - it's liberalism.
It's all vey well hating them, but without them you wouldn't have any mp3s...
This is obviously a hoax. A lawyer would never have written the following sentence:
"considers the unauthorized use and distribution of the AC-3 technologies a direct threat and will pursue their legal right to extent permissible by law"
Multiple grammar errors and ambiguous reference in the same sentence? This letter was obviously penned by CmdrTaco.
You don't fool me!
You can get my code when you pry it from my cold dead hand.
In other news, the populace of the world collectively threw up their hands as Corporations began the patenting and licensing of water to the human race.
Russia commented this afternoon, stating that they didnt' give a flying fuck.
Hong Kong stated that they had been pirating that for years, and would continue to whether we liked it or not.
China closed all relations, stating that, "We may be brutal, but you guys are just plain insane."
Canada dropped all pretense and joined the US.
Communism can work - for people who live in communes. Is the philosophy of communities such as monastries, convents etc not "pure" communism where the individual own nothing, the community owns everything and everyone performs their role for benefit of the community as a whole? However this "ideal" way of life probably does not scale very well at all.
Actually, yes. They created the mechanism, and allow other people to use it through a license. The patented mechanism has legal protection from using the mechanism without getting the license. This is just like RSA inc. requiring licenses for the RSA algorythim(sp) when it was still covered under their patent. Now that the patent expired, anyone can use the algorythim.
Virtually, Edward Wolpert
What did you expect? This reeks of the whole MPAA/CSS mess, especially when the two technologies are so related. I am expecting a similar outcome, unless the AC3 decoder guys buckle early.
Guess what we need help for.
Oddly, I don't see many Swedes or Finns , good socialists they are, lining up at our borders or dying to get into our country. Perhaps socialism isn't as evil as it's made out to be, or capitalism as good as it's made out to be?
Exactly. The Finnish and Swedish systems are largely based on socialism, and I feel that that's a good thing. It creates equality between the rich and the poor.
In my opinion, Communism is an ideal system, but unfortunately it just doesn't work with humans - too many temptations and corruption. That's why I'm not suggesting Communism as a governmental system, but think of the idea behind it - everybody does the same amount of work and gets the same amount of reward. (disclamer: I am not a communist, however I try to think about all ideologies objectively.)
I consider Socialism as a "milder form" of communism, and it has many benefits, but of course also negative sides. Taxes are high, and consequently also prices are high. That's one thing that is often complained about Finland. But have you every tried being sick in Finland? Medical care is extremely cheap, given to all citizens by the goverment.
In the US as I understand it, you have to pay for everything yourself or by an insurance. Those who can't afford an insurance are in a very bad situation.
(OK, nowadays after the recession a lot of cuts have been made in Finland, and many have turned to the private sector for medical care. Many complain that not enough funding is given to health care, but still you can get it. I, for instance, don't remember ever using a private hospital in Finland - and I'm not from a very poor family.
Remember, too, that our beloved Linus is from Finland, and though he lives in the US, AFAIK he has no intensions on applying for US citizenship.
I doubt, therefore I may be.
Never going to happen. I doubt the open source movement has enough clout to go up against movie studios. As we see with Ogg Voris, even if you provide a superior encoding standard (AC3 sounds pretty damn good), what are the chances that movie studios will switch and encode to your spec? Then movie theatres will have to buy new hardware, etc.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
@whatever.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
So what are you, a Carolinian?
Maybe if NetBSD nicely asked Dolby for a free licence to use their tech, they'd grant it.
Corporate officers are rarely held accountable for decisions their company makes. It is usually the CFO who has the most to risk for any accounting hi-jinks he/she might do.
Did the CEO for Kerr-McGee ever really face heat for what happened to Karen Silkwood? Did the owners of Perdue Farms ever face the heat for the chicken processing plant (which had very few, and many were locked from the inside, emergency exits) that caught fire a few years ago, ala Triangle Skirt Company in NYC, really face much heat? Or look at Johns-Manville.
What did they do in the face of billions of asbestos liability lawsuits? They filed Chapter 11, and reorganized. Hence, no Johns-Manville to sue any more.
Or how about the town in nw Montana that had an Asbestos mine, where of course most of the people worked, where the town for about 40 years *KNOWINGLY* did nothing about its asbestos releases, and continues to deny any responsibility for *suprise!* the huge amounts of asbestosis found in that community now (and for a LONG time)?
It is slightly different here in the US. Maybe if we had more of a sense of Bushido (no pun intended), where if a company causes a significant damage its CEO resigns in disgrace or kills himself. But the company still goes on.
The only ways to really get at a company are financially. Since a company is a legal construct, you can't really keep it in jail for 50 years, off the streets. The only real thing you can do is either get the govment to go after it, again, financially, or somehow have investors who file "due dilligence" and other lawsuits to suck the company dry.
I wish if I robbed a bank or murdered someone I could simply just file bankrupcy and reorganize, or get certain high-profile lawyers/shills to "represent" me in the Court of Public Opinion.
Until recently [I can't find them now] the entire AC3 specs were available online from Dobly's very own website. I downloaded them myself. Nowhere attached to these specs did it ever say the reader had to pay Dobly to implement the standard. Unless they can point to specific patents, they cannot take anyone to court over this. They gave their technology away with no restrictions.
Ogg handles up to 256 simultaneous channels at once. At high-bitrates (192kbit/sec) I can't tell it from CD Audio.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Software patents are still against the rules in Europe. Move the software there and Dolby has no recourse.
The preceding paragraph was a tongue at cheek poke at the DMCA and attempt to render it as anything but is illegal according to the DMCA. Furthermore to take away any meaning from the paragraph that is not desired by the writer is expressly forbidden by the DMCA.
Furthermore the reading of the above disclaimer constitutes agreement to all rules outlined herein (and any I should make up in the future).
The preceding paragraph is legally binding according to the UCITA bill. Passed in Maryland where this post was written.
We interrupt this post to tell you that those responsible for the UCITA and the DMCA have been sacked.
Terribly sorry, this post is being interrupted again to tell you that we cannot according to the DMCA decode the english that the DMCA and UCITA bills are written in, in order to introduce them as evidence for rightful termination. Those who were to sack the resposible parties have been sacked.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Licenses are modeled on an adaptive basis relative to your business plan
Kinda like Vinny the local loanshark adapts your payment plan based on which body parts he's cracked with a Louisville Slugger in the last week.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
Agreed - certainly not 90% - but it *is* ready to go.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Yes, as someone without health insurance in the US, I can't get sick, or I will become bankrupt.
However, emergency rooms still must take me in and treat me regardless of my ability to pay, if I get injured in a car then car insurance covers it, if I get injured at work then workers compensation covers it. So it's not like if I get hit by a car while walking everyone has to leave me by the side of the road while I bleed to death.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
I'm up for liscensing a turkey sandwich... anyone else in? ;)
(just wait.... it's coming...)
more to the point above, I can't see socialism being the answer... way I see it, this is more like socialism than pure capitalism.
I belive this statement is at least year old. Linux and BSD are both used widely in commerce.
Linux is acually "ready for desktop" too, IMHO. Just look at new KDE, GNOME, and at games Loki is releasing.
linking should be the same legally is telling someone where to find some information. That should never be illegal.
If it is, then we need to lobby the governemnts to make it explicitly protected as free speech.
In their cease&desist, they babble on about "intellectual property" -- but they never quite specify what the intellectual property is they are protecting. It is apparently pretending to be a notification under 17 USC 512 (c)(3) (which concerns copyright only, not patent), but it lacks several elements of such notification -- most obviously the boilerplate about the information being accurate under the penalty of perjury. If it's intended to be about patent violation, they somehow failed to include the patent number, without which an evaluation of the claims in the letter is not possible. Besides, if it's about patents, source code can hardly be covered; many patent filings include source code as a description of the invention. If Dolby was trying to honestly stop infringement rather than just try to frighten people into submission with legal mumbo-jumbo, they would have either (a) Identified the patent infringed, if any or (b) Wrote a proper DMCA notification letter in the case of a copyright violation.
a lawsuit.
:)
I can't believe this hasn't come up already.
Bladeenc has similar troubles with the frauenhoffer people. (I hope I misspelled that. I hate those bastards.)
Anyhow, I think their solution is simply not to distribute the binary. The source itself can't infringe, I think was the rationale.
In which case I would think that their friendly letter is the "toss it in the trash" type of letter.
Thoughts?
I'm going to figure out a way to combine 6 lines of text into a single line. I'll call this "micro text." Then I'll invent a specialized lens which makes the text visible to the naked eye. I'll get a patent for this lens, then license it. Anyone who doesn't pay me with a licensing fee may not view said micro text. I've already begun implementing my methods in advanced photocopiers, via the shrink button. For more information on this and other groundbreaking technologies send your queries to: Old Pink c/o The Funny Farm
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
it's about having a LICENSE. God you fucking people are amazingly stupid.
I totally agree with you. This wasn't meant to be philisophical; I was just trying to inject some humor... Anyhow, if they're being this absurd with this whole thing, then I wouldn't put it past Dolby to find a hole in the agreements with JVC... :-)
Cheers.
Chances are they paid for the ability to descramble it.
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Would you post this 353 times please? thank you.
Isn't what has been done here exactly what was done with IBM's bios all those years ago? Black box reverse engineering. The author of the software has presumably not had access to the actual spec, but has instead worked out how to emulate it?
The fucking linux crybabies hate the phrase "OS X" because it means their precious little pile of penguin shit won't be "the number one UNIX" as of about the end of this year.
The EU is preparing changes for the patent laws. If you are a European, please help us inform the citizens. To help inform we intend to make a free film explaining the problems. The film will be available via the Internet. Read more about this initiative. As we have so far been focused on turning the Danish oppinion most of our stuff is in Danish. We need your help to change this.
For an english talk on software patents listen to RMS in India.
Eurolinux also have some stuff in english.
The exact point of patent law is to prevent from distributing any such invention, for profit or for free.
The stated intent of patent law is to encourage people to spend the time and money to develop expensive processes that benefit mankind, but I'm not sure those incentives are necessary in the software world.
Please route all accusations of communist leanings to /dev/null.
Continuously re-examining our laws and how they apply to our changing society is a sign of a thriving, participatory government "of the people".
Socialism is an ideal - a concept. What many Americans fail to understand is that so is Capitalism. Both have very good pros, and obvious drawbacks, and both are incredibly susceptable to corruption.
Americans don't have a true, beneficial capitalism. It is but an idea, and fully impractical as it will always be warped and twisted for private gain.
Heh, the problem is that one can patent an algorithm to start with. Not sure how worldwide that is though, perhaps one can patent algorithms in most countries. For example actual program code is not possible to patent on amy countries. Oh well.
I wonder what dodo there in Legal didn't realize that NetBSD's business plan is to "build the best and most portable (ported?) free UNIX-like OS and give it away free with complete source code with no restrictions for commercial use or extension".
I wonder what licensing terms they have that are amenable to those goals?
If Dolby is going to tell me I can't decode content encoded with their process in any way, and on any platform I choose, when I have legally purchased that content, then they're going to have to deal with me telling them to pound sand while I go do what I have always been able to do--use the things I purchase in the way I see fit.
Along the way, yes, many of us are trying to get the government to wake up, stop kissing corporate america's private parts, and make patent law at least somewhat rational again. In the meantime, civil disobedience is the word of the day. Presumably I'm not the only person who just went out to download the AC3 code just because of this issue, when in fact I probably never would have done so otherwise.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Any word on whether streaming AC3 over IEC958 is covered by their patents?
The fact that nearly all of the material on the SSLUG web site is in a language (Danish) that 98% of Europeans do not understand, tells me something about the grip on reality that the SSLUG people have, and about their chances of success.
If it's cleanroom, tell 'em to fuck off directly.
If it's not, well, let that be a lesson to you.
AC-3 is NOT encrypted, unless it's been run through CSS. (At least not the last time I checked.) Therefore, this isn't a DMCA case. It's a patent litigation covering an algorithm. If it's a cleanroom implementation (which I assume it is, as I don't know of any tech docs on AC-3), then this should be cool.
Also, does Dolby have a product in the BSD space? If not, then this is a little unfair... besides, how big is the NetBSD market compared to Dolby's market anyways?
Spoken like a true American.
So, the letter said that ac3dec infringed on Dolby'd intellectual property rights, but didn't specify what rights that was -- it said that AC3 had been registered with the patent and trademark office, but didn't list a patent number.
I think I would send a letter back asking exactly which patent or copyright work was being infringed. As it is, it sounds like the letter is just a scare tactic with no meat behind it.
oh wait, 5 of my speakers just went dead! Dolby Owns my Stereo!!! AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
The EU isn't a nation either,its a bunch of smaller ones....try having a real comparison.
The automobile industry already overpays its workers a hefty margin in relation to the diffculty and skill required for the job. In any other market, an equally skilled worker would generally make 25-50% less than an automobile worker.
This situation has led to the greatly rising cost of automobiles in the last 30 years, and the loss of sales to foreign cars, despite the fact that the foreign cars have overseas shipping costs and high tariffs.
Every time a powerful Union loses a battle, I cheer. Unions have their place in blocking corporate greed... but many (most?) Unions go beyond defense, and take the offense, gouging their companies for more and more money and concessions, instituting draconian 'union only' clauses, and in general becoming worse than the companies they claim to be fighting.
The Raven"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
It's called the European Union, or have you not been reading papers and watching the news for the last decade?
Greetings, Christina. I am interested in obtaining an AC3 license. I intend to use an independently developed, open-source, free AC3 decoder. My business plan is to listen to AC3 soundtracks of movies which I have purchased - all in the privacy of my own home. Maximum expected viewing audience is 4 humans and one dog. Expected revenues per annum range between USD 0.00 and 25.00 (in the form of beer provided by friends who come to visit). Based on these projections, I would be happy to pay a licensing fee of USD 0.00 to 0.25. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for developing AC3. Arnim
I suppose now we need an open source equivalent to Dolby's AC-3 encoding.
Oh, well... They pushed. Should we shove back?
...but just because you want something for free doesn't mean you have the right to it. Guess what? The United States has patent laws. Guess what? That means you can't violate someone's algorithms. Is this Dolby's fault, for wanting to protect their property as the law says they have the right to do? Or should you be running for government so you can change the policy instead?
Those who don't remember Napster and doomed to repeat it...
Yeah, but sometimes generalization is the only way to get your point across. I surely noticed differences between the different countries in my recent trip, but you can't go presenting evidence on a country by country basis. On the whole, European medical care is more socialized than the US's - and it tends to work better.
If it's patented, then you can't reproduce it without paying whatever royalties the patent owner wants, period.
..which also means that software which falls under the patent MUST be commercial unless the patent is licensed freely to all. Otherwise, the developers cannot pay the licensing fees to the patent holder. This is the old system that we're trying to get away from! Do you really want to PAY for the ability to playback DVD's in the free OS of your choosing, when people have already written free software to do so in their spare time?
As much as I feel that things that are obvious should not be patented, Even I agree that something so difficult to do should be afforded patent protection.
This 'middle ground' approach doesn't work for several reasons: 1.) No idea stands on its own; it is the culmination of previous knowledge. 2.) What is hard for you might be very easy for someone else. 3.) Anyone with similar previous knowledge to the patent holder would likely come up with a nearly identical solution if given the same problem independently. So it's a matter of who got asked to find a solution first. Innovation is a process, not a product.
I'm not an expert on AC3, but ac3dec is a rather small piece of code. What does AC3 do? If I'm no mistaken, it is merely method of taking several compressed audio streams and multiplexing them together with a SMPTE timing signal so that the decoder can piece them back together in synch with say.. a seperate video signal. The AC3 signal would of course also send a packet of data to let the decoder know how many channels, what bitrate, etc. None of the technologies going into AC3 are new, so the patent is merely on the combination of these technologies in one place. The funny thing is, I've never read the AC3 docs, but for all I know, I just "re-invented" AC3 in this post, minus the implementation. Catch my drift?
By all means, I am NOT against research and development firms like Dolby. However, IMO an ethical way to fund research without patents might go as follows:
Manufacturers (1 or many): "We see a market for a product that does -this-, but don't have the needed R&D."
R&D Firm: "OK, we'll research this for you guys for a one time fee of $this much money. In comparison, our competitor, SomeOther R&D will do the same research for a cheaper initial price, but demand patent royalties for every product sold."
Manufacturers: "We can't afford $this much money right now"
R&D Firm: "Then we will negotiate with your competitors and split the research cost equally among you, since you all want the same thing. Or you can form an industry consortium to handle this (ala MPEG)."
Manufacturers: "Ok, that works for us, we make all our money off selling final products anyways."
This way, manufacturers get what they need and stick to what they're good at (economies of scale), the R&D people get paid big $$$, open standards are formed naturally (why pay to repeat similar research?), and free software/hardware hackers can do whatever they please. What about free-riders? That is irrelevant--they must still own a means of production to do business. If they can produce the final product cheaper or better than the original guys, good for them. This approach even works for software. (although many would argue correctly that software research, in the few cases when actually necessary, is no different from mathematical research and should not be patentable) Indeed, both closed and open business models can benefit from contracted software research if it is truly needed.
Give Capitalism a chance. It really does work if you let it.
Not quite as bad as DeCSS.
;)
Dolby makes their money developing a new tech (Note that it's actually something innovative when they do, not some lame attempt to grab patents) and then licensing it.
And it's probably a mostly justifiable software patent at the core of this. Dolby did spend a lot of time making AC3 sound good, so they probably are entitled to some money if you are making money off of it.
Which most likely means that, since FreeBSD isn't exactly making money, that they'll have to sign a few pieces of paper and be done with it.
Or we'll have a downloadable DVD player on a site in a country that doesn't have the DMCA (Also known as the "We shoot the messenger and are damn proud of it law") or Software Patents in their lawbook. And hardcore whacko geeks will replace their flashy Dolby Digital amplifiers with relics left over from the 70s.
Gentoo Sucks
There was a time when 24 hours would have killed me. Bad idea...
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
While Dolby might have a case in claiming that the distribution of a decoder is illigal (considering the fact that they have the patent) the use of the unlicensed decoder is not illigal. The same goes for the DeCSS case. It might be that under the totally bizarre DMCA it's illigal to make a decoder, it's not illigal to use it, since the content is (still) mine too watch.
Add to that the fact that its arguable that for academic purposes one can develope a decoder, we are only stuck with the distribution issue and the DeCSS case teaches us that stopping the distribution of a piece of source code is simply impossible.
-- Please put this in your sig if you think
In a land of lawlessness, the just must become outlaws.
Or something.
I just love source control systems...
-- Colin
The United States has patent laws. Guess what? That means you can't violate someone's algorithms.
Untrue. The Unitied States Patent Laws explicitly state that i can implement someone's patented algorithms if such the implementation is derived wholly through clean-room reverse-engineering and done wholly and entirely for the purposes of product compatibility-- as dolby drivers for BSD would be.
You've gotten a little bit of truth mixed up with mostly fiction. Even before LLCs were invented, business owners could escape the same amount of personal liability by incorporating. LLC's had the advantage of offering the same kind of limited liability with more favorable tax treatment. Small businesses generally don't incorporate anymore. I think with that correction, your post is based on a faulty premise and goes nowhere.
I'd be amazed if anyone working on ac3dec cares about Dolby's compatability trademark, or is willing or even able to spend the kind of money Dolby would want. And ac3dec couldn't be Free Software if its license were to forbid certain applications (like embedded players).
"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
they can do whatever the hell they want with their licensing schemes... it's whether or not they'll hold water in court that you should really be worried about...
i dont give a fuck, i buy stuff, i'll do whatever the fuck i want with it. since i live in a technically 3rd world country, the government has more pressing things to take care of than mere copyright protection. fuck y'all! i'll pirate till i die!
The examples cited did not go to the supreme court and are not of consequence.
Just a small point, but LLC is a generic that includes ALL corporations, not just what the US refers to as an LLC (Close Corpoation to various other parts of the world). Public, private and other companies or corporations are all limited liability.
Second, US is fairly unique in allowing lawyers, accountants and doctors to practice under LLCs -- in most parts of the world these professions in particular are restricted to practicing in partnerships for a number of ethical and legal reasons.
Third, while a LLC is not a "get out of jail free" card, it is often employed as one. The mere fact that the people responsible for running the company aren't playing with their own money, and know that everyone has a limit to how much they can be held responsible for, leads to greater risk taking, often with disasterous consequences.
Refer to the dot bomb: you take excessive risk with other peoples' money, in the hope of excessive reward. In your wake you leave excessive debt, which is *wait for it* the creditor's problem -- not yours, and not the investors. So long as you did your fideciary duty and were not actually reckless in trading, the "corporate officers" aren't responsible either.
While the dot-com slump has left thousands of investors in the IT sector out of pocket, it has had equally serious (but often overlooked) consequences for other market sectors that have had to absorb the bad debts left by dot bombs.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
Funny how so many USians treat Europe as a single country with a single set of laws and usages...
-- Colin
As a Finn I often find the US conception of socialism more than slightly odd.
Addmittedly we don't have a Thatcher-Reagan economy and our right-wing parties start to the left of the Democrats. Still socialism is not the right term if you ask me. Such terms as the welfare state or social democracy are more suited.
We do have extensive social security, public education and public health services. Trade unions are also major political organizations instead of mob gangs. This still doesn't mean that the workers control the means of production as our friend Karl Marx put it.
Only a few things like trains and the state alcohol resale monopoly (still exists!) are still mostly or completely owned by the government. Except for the national broadcasting company nearly everything is on the privatization list.
We do have more governmental control in many areas (radio licensing, .fi domans, etc.), but our economy is still a market one. I have no great craving for total economic liberalism as Adam Smiths invisible hand theory has been disproved over and over again.
From www.m-w.com:
"Capitalism - an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market."
Of course, maybe that's my problem if capitalism really means "property[power] concetrated into the hands of the few" then I've been reading the wrong dictionary.
So, "libertarian capitalists", are for the "free" market, unfortuneately everyone has a different definition of "free". Personally I think free means, only a few simple rules that equally apply to everyone and don't attempt to favor the big over the little or the strong over the weak or vice versa. Most importantly, libertarians favor the government staying out of production/distribution and any other "economic" affairs as much as possible. In fact, libertarians are for having a weak little government that can't do much more than keep people from hurting each other, or mucking about with each other's property. Of course things always get dicey when "property" goes into the equation.
Corporations are always trying to get more out of this: "Please, gov'ment protect our land, please gov'ment protect our banks. please, gov'ment protect our ideas." It's funny, but you never heard the settlers or individualist entrepreneurs whining for more government assistance. Instead, a settler would be saying: "Please gov'ment, let me protect myself and my property, and let my peers[fellow man] judge when I've done wrong."
Of course, a corporation is just a bunch of people who want to use money (not effort) to get more money... The only difference between them and those on the street with a hand out are that they have some money to begin with, and know how to keep it when they get it.
when digital started becoming popular, many of the companies that developed technologies that shuffled digital media around didn't envision a day when the average user would be able to shuffle that digital content around with the facility that peer to peer and the Internet provides.
now that we can do that, they've basically realized that they've been caught with their pants down, and now they're trying to not only prevent the next logical step in the digital media revolution (the 'loosening up' of content), they're poised to roll back the rights we used to have. they're going to try to roll out set top boxes that can decide whether or not we can tape a television broadcast, e-book readers that won't let friends share novels or libraries lend books, movies that we have to pay for each time we watch 'em, etc.
that's why open source software is such a boon to consumers.. only an organization of individuals can really undermine what is becoming a corperate war on our current techie way of life.
hack on, boys and girls!
Just raise the taxes on crack.
I know how amazingly great the American media is when it comes to world issues, so as an Englishman allow me to clue you in: Britian, France and the Netherlands currently have massive numbers of imigrants, most of them entering illegally and some of them risking their lives by entering in extremly dangerous ways, entering and attempting to enter the country.
The number of people entering the UK at least is in the millions over the last year or so. Spend some time in Dover and then tell us that there arn't people queing up to enter all these Socialist countries.
I think you mean Animal Farm.
> The more socialized health care system in Europe has a mandantory 24 hour waiting period prior to antibiotic use
Cite? This isn't true of the National Health Service in Britain (or at least it wasn't last time I had an ear infection, and I'd be surprised if it was introduced without any publicity).
(There are campaigns to educate people and reduce unnecessary antibiotic use.)
rant
The EU is preparing changes for the patent laws. If you are a European, please help us inform the citizens. To help inform we intend to make a free film explaining the problems. The film will be available via the Internet. Read more about this initiative. As we have so far been focused on turning the Danish oppinion most of our stuff is in Danish. We need your help to change this.
For an english talk on software patents listen to RMS in India.
Eurolinux also have some stuff in english.
The EU is preparing changes for the patent laws. If you are a European, please help us inform the citizens. To help inform we intend to make a free film explaining the problems. The film will be available via the Internet. Read more about this initiative. As we have so far been focused on turning the Danish oppinion most of our stuff is in Danish. We need your help to change this.
For an english talk on software patents listen to RMS in India.
Eurolinux also have some stuff in english.
Sweden a socialist country? This must be misconception. Sweden has, since WWII been ruled mostly by the Social Democratic Party (whose agenda seems quite similar to the British Labour these days). But the economic system is capitalism, pure and simple. Sure, the state taxes us more than the US government, and provides more services, but that does not make the economy socialistic!
You are right, arguments about people "lining up" to go somewhere are deceptive, as different governments and countries have different immigration policies that make such actions easier or more difficult, depending.
... the citizens could then easilly vote with their feet en mass, which would become an important check on their government's power that is, right now, largely missing. Given the control-freaks who are attracted to high places of power I don't see this kind of individual freedom coming anytime soon.
I should point out that Switzerland is not Sweden (Sweden is known for being socialist to a large degree, Switzerland is about as capitalist as they come).
Furthermore, Switzerland, like much of Europe, and like the United States, is very protective of its borders. Anyone wishing to emigrate to Switzerland better have a huge pile of cash to buy their citizenship or marry a Swiss citizen (at which point you get to enjoy the indignity of having the Swiss police perform surprise inspections on your home to confirm that you do, in fact, live with your spouse).
I do not know what the immigration policies of Sweden are, but I suspect, given that the entire society pays for those unable to make their own ends meet that they at least require you to be able to make a comfortable living, without taking a job away frome a Swede of course.
It would be nice if countries with similar standards of living (e.g. Western Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) would open their borders and allow people to move freely from one location to another a la the European Union, but this would undermine governments' ability to coerce their citizenry into ways of life they have chosen for them
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Even if you are right, which I don't admit, it doesn't change the fact that there are some disturbing trends emerging. I agree with you with respect to the right to copy. But I take issue with the notion that you "never did buy copywritten content." In the past, because of the manner in which books and music and the like were distributed, there was a physical medium, and you could sell that or give it to a friend, or listen to it or read it as many times as you want. To suggest that the owner of the book or record would have to pay seperately for each viewing, or that he or she could not legally sell the medium would seem silly. Possesion of the medium was assumed to convey a right to use it in its normal fashion. This right was not practically, or, I think, legally revocable.
What is happening now, thanks to the DMCA, is that those who make money from distributing copyrighted content, are moving towards a pay-per-view or pay-per-use payment scheme for everything. The day may come when all television programming is pay per view, for example. Microsoft is reportedly planning on releasing its newest OS version on time-limited terms. After the initial licensing period expires, you will have to pay more money! Even some textual materials are being distributed under these sorts of terms. (For example, the IEEE puts a time limit on some of its technical materials and if the licensee doesn't want to pay additional fees, he or she is obliged to return the original and all copies made by any means.)
I, for one, don't like all this and don't want it. Especially when it comes to textual materials, I feel that for tradition's sake, if no other, textual materials should always be distributed on terms similar to those of a book. The notion of paying every time I read something is so abhorrent to me that I cannot adequately express it in words.
With a combination of legal and technical measures, it may be possible to transition to this pay-per-view, pay-per-use billing scheme, but I think that consumers need to decide if they wish to allow this to happen.
Also, since I am honest and don't "pirate" anything, I resent all intrusive anti-pirating technology and the blocking of technology which would allow me to engage in non-infringing uses of copyrighted works (deCSS).
This turned into more of a rant than a genuine response, but I'll just post it anyway.
MM
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
capitalism may suck, but it's the best system we have - it suits human nature perfectly.
Until humans stop being spineless, greedy, snivelling, backstabbing arseholes, capitalism it is.
I once angrily spouted out at a family gathering, "I hate capitalism, but I still want to own my own stuff!" What I didn't realize then is that I actually hated our current system, which technically isn't pure capitalism, or rather, doesn't capture capitalism's ideal of everyone fighting fairly and letting the markets take a logical course of action. Silly me, I used to think logic drove us humans. But what's the alternative? Socialism? Eww.
I've been waiting for forever for a good test lawsuit like this-- someone being threatened for linking to something which may be of dubious legality, but doesn't have the OOH COPYRIGHT PIRATE 2600 HACKER!! connotations that DeCSS did.
We need a firm legal precedent to be set showing that hyperlinks are always free speech, even if they link illegal content.. hopefully BSD and the EFF will give us that.
I'm getting a little sick of this notion that everything should be free.
Have you actually read any post on Slashdot that expresses that notion? I haven't. Why don't you read people's opinions before attacking them?
Of course, a lot of us are getting a little sick of this notion that information should be subject to extraordinary property laws. Laws that allow the "owner" of some piece of information to prohibit me from communicating that information to someone else. Laws as unreasonable as this should be resisted by all means, including civil disobedience.
Then move to Denmark or Finland.. Only Norway and Sweden has that crazy idea that socialism means the government should prevent people from doing "bad" things.(like drinking alcohol,start new business, etc.)
I denmark we have MORE freedom the US, not just no DMCA and corrupt politician, but the wellfare system means we have the right to choose out own education and is not limited to what our parents can afford.
It's been an argument I've used for a while now. Any human authority system, even as close to ideals as possible is corruptable. People will find ways like water will errode rocks. Sure, a great leader may ensure stability for a while, but the world is always shifting and changing.
The differences between countries and governments is often not the system, but mentality of the people. That's why the people in russia gets abused time and time again. It's in their mentality/karma. It's also why there are so many wars at Balkan. The people there have a different mentality/history.
So, what needs to change is your mentality. The world can be nasty, but are you part of the problem or part of the solution? Think about that.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
The AC3 format isn't sold to anyone. Content encoded in the AC3 format is sold to consumers, who can do with it what they want, provided that they don't independantly break any laws with it (you're not allowed to murder someone with a DVD, e.g.). You also can't use someone's patented method to decode the content just because you own the content.
The customer may have no right to use something they've purchased because they don't know any way to use it other than the patented method. If they can come up with a way to decode it without violating Dolby's patents, they are free to. If they have a license to use Dolby's decoding method (by way of having a licensed player), they are free to use that.
The important point here is that it's not the "Disney still owns your DVDs" idea in this case, but the "Dolby owns the usual method for decoding DVDs" idea. Dolby doesn't care about the ownership of the content.
The only problem with this is that they are already using these products. If I have a copy of some GPLed program, the original creator of the software can't come and say, "oh by the way, that software now has a new license, you owe my $1,000 dollars." Once you license a piece of software to someone in a certain way, you can't go back and change that license. This would be the same as Microsoft saying - "if you've ever used one of our products, you can only use our products." They've now modified the licensing scheme. And that just sucks.
Warning, cape does not enable user to fly
I've been in Denmark several times, and I have several friends from Denmark. I don't see anything about Denmark that is a lot more compelling than the rest of Europe.
hrmm, no offense but have you ever worked in an R&D environment. By working in such an environment you agree to offer the company a Right of First Refusal for any idea/etc you come up with. All patents must have a real person stated as the inventor, but this really means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I agree that the term should be limited, and that copyright has been slowly increasing over the yrs. Patents on the other have not increased to the degree copyright has, and it'd be difficult to convince me why to change it. I work for a drug company, and from the time you get a priority date to the time the patent expires, you have to:
do preclinical work (6months-1yr)
PhaseI (1 yr)
Phase II (1 yr)
Phase III (1-5yrs)
then get approval from the FDA.
Your time is already dwindling down, and even w/ a court granted extension, you may only get 8 yrs of commericial practice which cost you 100s of millions of dollars to produce, of which a large percentage of drugs fail. You can't reasonably tell me that there shouldn't be some commerical benefit for this?
You are right though regarding copyright. The term doesn't seem very limiting anymore. I highly doubt that a movie I watch in the theatre today will be royalty free by the time I die.
LLC's are a form of corporation suited towards professionals like lawyers, accountants and doctors who traditionally function with Limited Partnerships.
Partnerships are unwieldly in practice for a number of reasons.
Stating that a corporation contradicts common law sits on very shaky ground, if any. Pooling together of resources to fit business needs has been practiced for thousands of years. The modern corporation is the direct decendant of the shipping guilds of 1000-2000 years ago and the join-stock companies of 600 years ago.
Your fundamental point, that a corporation is little more than a get out of jail free card is just plain wrong. Corporate officers can and are held responsible for any number of things.
I would seriously recommend that you look at a business law textbook or read up on the history of the corporation from somewhere other than Indymedia or some other left-wing rag.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
perhaps snipers on the rooftops?
So I guess Dolby will politely ask JVC to recall my DVD player and pull the AC3 decoder out of it since the ability to decode AC3 streams exists in there? Who knows, I might reverse engineer the whole thing!!!
The EU is preparing changes for the patent laws. If you are a European, please help us inform the citizens. To help inform we intend to make a free film explaining the problems. The film will be available via the Internet. Read more about this initiative. As we have so far been focused on turning the Danish oppinion most of our stuff is in Danish. We need your help to change this.
For an english talk on software patents listen to RMS in India.
Eurolinux also have some stuff in english.
"hack on, boys and girls!"
A thought just occurred to me.
With this upcoming "battle", how will this influence the cracking community and their relationship with the "oppressed" community?
I feel a novel coming on.
If my post wasnt clear enough, Im pro-Dolby on this one.
Start flaming me if you want, just do it so that I understand where I go wrong.
So is there any way for me to send Dolby Digital to my stereo system? I have an optical cable connecting the two (An XITEL/MD PORT DG 2). This could be really cool ;)
My other car is first.
they have jobs with a good company
Good defined as what? Willing to destroy them if they demand to be given a more-fair share of the companies profits (raise).
there's a labour market and not a labour monopoly
Most people, myself included feel that *PEOPLE* shouldnt be subject to the whims of a 'labour market'. Capitalist Free Markets are an artifical construct which can and should be regulated (ie: conditions created from both inside and outside). I am not a believer, nor a follower, of the idea that free markets create better communities. They do not - they enable a new ruling (monied) class to subjicate those without.... witness Ford's move you quoted. This is the purpose of Unions... to help restore a little sanity and balance. A Union will enable a group of labourers to negotiate a wage with their employers.
workers will realise that unions are just as evil as monopsonist employers.
You are a troll, an idiot or both.
Full Disclosure: I work for Ford Canada and am not in a Union.
If Dolby hold the patent in the UK, then they could well be violating UK law, UK law provides legal defence against "groundless threats" made by patent holders against sellers, users and middlemen who may as a result of being threatened stop using the product regardless of whether the patent claim is valid or not. I assume NetBSD has at least one mirror in the UK, which means that UK law could be applicable as the letter refered to _all mirrors_. (Incidently also notice the UK address at the bottom of page 1 of the letter.)
t utes/patents.htm) for details of remedies.
See section 70 of the 1977 Patents Act (http://www.butterworths.co.uk/academic/lloyd/Sta
IANAL
-- Conexant/Rockwell Modem HOWTO http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Conexant+Rockwell-modem
Or even just make copyrights and patents "non-transferable" rights. So that the original author or inventor (whether a "real live" person or coroporation) obtains these rights, may licence patentable inventions or grant (or withhold) permission to make copies of copyrightable works, but may not sell or otherwise dispose of the patent or copyright.
Alternatively remove the right of copyright and patent holders to prevent publication or licencing . So that if a "mass market" copyright work (eg book, DVD, music CD) goes "out of print" then the copyright owner loses the right to prevent copying and the work enters the public domain. Different rules would have to apply to "one off" creations such as paintings. Similarly with patents, it would not be possible for a company to buy (or otherwise obtain) a patent for the purpose of preventing the invention from being implemented (eg because the implementation of the invention would impact on their business.)
defending a product from being used by the masses. There once was a time when widespread recognition and free popularity was a good thing. The more people have access to decoders, be it hardware or software, the more people will _WANT_ that AC3 goodness in the first place, which means Dolby will be marketing more encoders at their high price tag. This threat will only make the BSD people grow spiteful of Dolby. You don't score customers by walking all over them (unless you're Microsoft).
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Thank you for dis-mis-informing me. I got this mistaken notion from slashdot. I guess I should have known better than to believe it without checking up on it.
MM
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
So what you're saying is that Linux is ready for general use on the desktop, provided the desktop is ready for Linux?
Yeah, now not to be funny, but people arn't going to use Linux if they have to shell out $$$'s for new hardware to run it on properly. It wouldn't wash.
Linux isn't ready for installation on the desktop or usage on the desktop. I have KDE2 running right here, and there is no way I would expect anyone without several years experience with computers (And some experience with Unix at that) to be able to install, configure & yes, trouble shoot Linux.
If you use Linux on your desktop, good for you. Just don't think that 90% of the computer using populace will fall over themselves to use it as well.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
ac3 is the *standard* way to encode sound for DVDs. So if there is no open-source way to decode ac-3 then there will be no Standard DVD open source DVD player.
This is another hurdle.
So... welcome to the (other) world of non-open standards.
"DNA is God's contribution to the Open Source movement"
I found your signature interesting, it made me think of a news story I just read that was about the fact that certain sequences of DNA have been successfully copyrighted (a unique sequence found in a subject immune to HIV was one of the examples)
Oddly, I don't see many Swedes or Finns , good socialists they are
The Socialdemocratic party get some 25% of the votes every election. I suppose someone living in "the land of freedom" assume democracy doesn't exist anywhere else and that it is best achived by having two gigantic parties and presidential elections where you don't neccesarily win even if you get the most votes, but around here 25% socialists means 75% non-socialists.
I hate to post lame mee-too comments, but this post is RIGHT ON THE MONEY!
As a consumer, I've ALREADY paid Dolby their fair share through the purchase price of the DVD.
Sure the NetBSD people should have a discussion with dolby. Perhaps dolby is afraid the existence of open-source AC3 decoders will make it easier for some company to sell an unlicensed AC3 hardware decoder? Still doesn't make sense tho - just go after the crook who is making a profit off of unlicensed AC3 - not the good folks who are giving it away for free.
arnim
It isn't their software (is it? It didn't sound like it in the letter). It's just software that does something they don't want it to do.. Does copyright/patent law really say that they aren't supposed to have that?
I understand the DMCA and all that. But they're not claiming circumvention or anything, they're just saying its unlicensed. But is the ac3dec package Dolby's to license in the first place?
-Justin
Rather than everyone does same work/gets same pay, people who can/do work harder do so (and are expected to for the good of society), and other people get their share according to their 'needs'. (Real or fabricated).
Think of the biggest slack bastard you know, and give him five kids. His need is now greater, but his ability hasn't increased accordingly.
Those with talent and ability actually have a huge potential to come out screwed on this one - the stupid and needy come out on top. Read 1984 to find out how some animals can be more equal than others.
And no I'm not advocating a completely Darwinistic society either.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
LOL, the EU has 380 Million inhabitants, about 100 million more than the US. The US does encompass 3 times the area of the EU.
Don't know where you got your idea that the measly 280 million of the US are large in the grand scheme of things. The 380 million in the EU are calculated without counting the wannabe EU members like eastern Europe (180 million) or Turkey(100 million).
Don't believe me, check this.
No. America is a country. THERE IS NO CONTINENT CALLED AMERICA. There is a continent called North America, and another called South America. If you want to call Canadians "Americans", call us "North Americans". By at least local useage, the latter is correct while the former is not.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
No no no! No, I say, NO! That principle just does not work whatsoever, and that's exactly what's so worrying about it. The big corporations seem to have convinced most people of this, but a few moments' thought shows it cannot possibly work.
Say I invent... a new type of storage media, which is so inefficient it's laughable. According to you, I have the right to make money from it, no matter how poor my product is. Say I make only one unit, and try to sell it, but no-one buys, because it's so poor. Do I have the right to sue the market? Since, according to you, I have the right to make money from my invention, short of government subsidy, that's the only way that I can exercise my "right" to make money from my invention.
While this idea of patents and copyrights being in existence to facilitate the excercising of non-existent rights is a widely-held belief, who can blame the corporations from screwing us out of every last penny that they can? It's their "right" after all!
Dolby has invested sweat, and regular equity in this system. It is entirely their perrogative, to control who can use it.
/. would be up in arms, if MS could be proven to use open source code in one of their products in violation of the license. Why is Dolby being held to a different standard?
If you object to having to have a "licensed" playback device to use this media, by all means don't buy anything that uses this scheme.
Timothy phrased his comments such, that it sounds like the content creator is trying to limit playback on FreeBSD, which is completely wrong. This simply is a developer exercising their right to control how their code is used. I bet
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Before someone accuses me of being a karma whore - I'm already over the cap and sinking towards 50 fast!
I was wondering what Thomas Dolby was up to.....?
I find it funny sometimes that people think that they have the right to do anything they want with something they've paid money for.
When you buy a CD, a DVD, or hell, even an old VHS tape, yes, you do own the copy -- But part of that ownership states that you are prohibited from copying it, redistributing it, or rebroadcasting it without the consent of the manufacturer. When you exchange money for that item, you enter into an agreement. Plain and simple.
It's no different than when you lease a car, or even rent one. Yes, you pay money for it, and you put the gas in it, but you can't do whatever you want with it. You are paying for access, not ownership when you buy a DVD, and if you don't like it, don't friggin enter into the agreement by purchasing it.
Now, would anyone else like to whine about the fact they don't read the fine-print?
Bowie J. Poag
We? Who are you talking about? Slashdot has thousands of readers. Just because some of the loudest readers could be described as fanatics, don't assume all are. I would guess that a large number of us are much more pragmatic.
Is every bit of human endeavor going to be stifled by cease and desist letters or demands for royalties? You know, somebody should take out a patent on this technology that enables the encoding and storage of human phonetics (called the alphabet) onto a semi-permanent medium (paper) and sue these cocksuckers for violation every time they send out one of these asinine cease and desist letters. That'll learn 'em!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Ok, the letter from Dolby was none to clear about what the actual problem was, but I suspect it's a patent infringement, not copyright. As such, it has little or nothing to do with the DMCA.
Put plainly, if you develop an encoding/decoding standard, and intelligently patent key parts of that standard, you own it. Doesn't matter if anybody reverse-engineers it in a clean room. You still own it until the patent expires.
The only ways around the patent are to find a completely different way of decoding/encoding the data (very unlikely, if the patent attorney did his job), or doing everything in a country in which the invention is not patented, does not have extradition treaties (etc) with the US, and is not part of whatever the hell that international convention on IP is called. Such countries generally aren't good places to live or work, for other reasons.
Is Dolby in the wrong? I'd have to see the details of the patent to say. It may be genuine innovation, or it may be more along the lines of the Amazon one-click patent.
Ok, everyone now. Next DVD you put in, don't select Dolby Digtal 5.1, instead select DIGTAL DTS. There that'll teach them. IMHO DTS sounds better.
Linux is acually "ready for desktop" too, IMHO. Just look at new KDE, GNOME, and at games Loki is releasing.
Linux isn't ready for the desktop any more than it ever was. This was made acutely aware to me when I was installing Red Hat on a couple ex-Windows machines at my school. The X video driver didn't work quite right, and I spent several hours hunting the correct one down. Upon running the install script, I received an error that I recognized as false, saying that "X wasn't installed." I went into the install script, futzed for a minute, and it worked. This is on a run-of-the-mill, mail order Pentium 3 box. Its easy to say that this problem is simple, because for most of the folks at /. , it is. But my father, a fairly computer proficient man who is happy with his Mac, would never get that far. Most people wouldn't.
If you have to know anything about programming to keep the OS going, its not ready for the desktop. Who wants it there anyway? Keep the power, jack the lusers.
Later.
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/articles /08_1/McManis/html/text.html is a good read on Intellectual Property and Reverse Engineering law.
One more post on the journey to negative Karma history!
you're illegally decoding this sound.
a) password protect the file. now it's no longer "publicly accessible".
b) let the password "leak" onto some forum.
c) crack a wicked smile, knowing you've used a lawyer's own words against him. Got Freedom?
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
The story icon is a little confusing as the lawyergram in question didn't use the dreaded 'P' word even once. One would presume that if they had relevant patents that they would mention them, rather than referring to vague "intellectual property". Unless copyrighted material in directly included in the package, a simple "please go and fuck yourself" response would seem appropriate.
This is at least one of the most nicely worded threats I've read so far. Besides, they state right in the letter that they should be contacted to discuss licensing and they want to fully support the adoption of AC-3. So TALK TO THEM.
Typical open source response though.
"Look, a company sent us a letter and they're saying that they don't want to give everything away for free like we do. We must stop them and save the world from tyranny!"
Meanwhile, regardless of the OS the open source developers are using, they're using processors and other hardware created by big commercial entities. Maybe those hardware companies don't have a problem giving away all the specs or complete source code but THEY ARE SELLING HARDWARE, not software.
Taco had it right a few weeks ago when he slapped the hands of all the pro-linux groups.
I'm not exactly sure what the open source extremists want from the big guys. If they open their source code, would you use it after you spent years complaining their software sucked? Would you fix it for them, when you know you'd look like a hypocrit for helping a company you've previously bashed. Are you too lazy to find your own solutions for todays software solvable problems? Of course most of what open source is, is start with the idea from a big company, and then just write a program to duplicate all the functionality. Doesn't sound terribly creative to me. Besides, the big companies aren't taking any money away from you, because YOU'RE GIVING AWAY EVERYTHING FOR FREE! So what the hell is everybody complaining about.
for instance i got this a few months ago because my program ripped live365.com streams.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") prohibits the circumvention of "a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." 17 U.S.C. * 1201(a)(1)(A). As previously noted, Live365.com has designed its web site and related software to ensure that the streaming music it provides on its Internet radio stations complies with the provisions pertaining to the statutory license to publicly perform sound recordings under the Copyright Act. In so doing, Live365.com has taken precautions to preclude users from recording or storing transmissions of its Internet broadcasts. The player software designed to be used with Live365.com does not permit recording and, in fact, is designed to prevent it.
In contravention of this precaution, you have created software which enables users to store these broadcasts. This has circumvented a "technological measure" which "effectively controls access" to copyrighted works. See RealNetworks, Inc. v. Streambox, Inc., No. C99-2070P, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1889, at *18-19 (W.D. Wash. Jan. 18, 2000). Such manipulation of Live365's protective measures constitutes a violation of the provisions of the DMCA.
Ya, it's a load of bullshit, but unless you can afford to defend it you SoL.
-Jon
this is my sig.
How much would it cost to get a license for a free operating system? I know most people here don't support this thing, but I'm just curious how much it would cose NetBSD to license the technology. She caled their licensing terms 'adaptable' - I wonder how that translates to a free OS.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
It's not clear to me what Dolby lAbs is claiming rights to. They're not claiming rights to the content being encoded using AC3. They're claiming rights to the mechanism of encoding. IF they were claiming rights to the content being encoded then they'd have rights under the DMCA, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
If they're claiming rights to the actual encoding/decoding mechanism, then do they really have a leg to stand on here? Under what thory are they claiming IP rights to an implementation of an AC3 decoder developed through reverse-engineering? Perhaps I missed that section of the DMCA... I'll have to read it again more carefully.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Exactly. I've paid for access so I'm going to access it however I damn well please.
I really don't see why Dolby would have a problem with people cracking open their standard. It isn't useful for copying, you don't need to be able to open the audio stream to copy it. The only reason you'd want to decode the audio is if you planned on watching it which Dolby shouldn't have a problem with. Am I missing something obvious or is Dolby just being a jerk?
Guess what? I do. Guess what else? The seller doesn't have the right to change the terms of sale after the fact. Nor do they have the right to alter the terms under which goods are purchased without informing previous customers (who have entered into so-called contractural agreements with them) that they intend to alter those terms. One flaw in your analogy is that I have the option to choose to purchase the car outright and then do whatever the hell I want with it. I don't have that option where media is concerned.
I agree with your "if you don't like it, don't buy it" statement. I don't like it! And it'll be a cold day in hell before they get any more money out of me.
You're using her as bait, Master!
I'm getting a little sick of this notion that everything should be free. Dolby is fully within their rights to do whatever they damn well please with their technology. They developed it, they paid for it, and they own it.
The right of ownership doesn't end when you cross over from atoms to bits. That same right of ownership and property is what keeps me from taking the Linux source and making my own proprietary kernel. If someone did that, the Slashdot population would be shitting kittens for weeks and threatening to hang the company by their gonads. Dolby developed the AC3 standard, they have a right to expect the work they put into it to pay off, including charging to use it. Linus and Co. developed the Linux kernel, and they have a right to expect the work they put into it to pay off, including making it open for all to use.
It doesn't matter that ac3dec has uses other than piracy. It's still using someone elses property without their recompense or permission. While Dolby shouldn't sue over this issue (it would be pointless anyway, the genie's already out of the bottle...) there's no logical, rational justification for this crap about "corporations eroding our freedoms". It's as much a pile of bullshit as this "the GPL erodes your freedom" crap from Microsoft. When you create something, you have the right to do with it as you please, and just because you don't like what Dolby's doing with their product doesn't mean that you can force them to go along with your terms.
Download your copies everyone and put them on as many sites as you can and start sending e-mail to Dolby with Links to it. Then maybe they can sue the people who wrote my e-mail software for delivering the info with illegal links to "illegal" software.
... YOU CAN'T WIN !!!
SCREW YOU DOLBY LEARN YOUR LESSON FROM DECSS
I'm not sure how many legs they have to stand on, but they do have a number of audio codec patents, several of which may be relevant. See specifically 5,583,962, 5,632,005 and 5,633,981. These are all registered internationally.
- Mycroft
I will move to Europe or Asia as soon as our borders fall.
http://www.linuxvideo.org/devel/data/ac3dec.tar.gz
From the looks of the link, the openac3 project is based at the University of Victoria. While south of the 49th parallel, the last time I checked the University of Victoria was still in Canada.
That said, what is the validity of software patents under CANADIAN law? Anyone (a Canadian IP lawyer, for example) have the answer to that burning question? If they aren't valid in Canada, it would appear that any claims Dolby has that their patent is being infringed by openac3 are pretty much moot.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
This is all pathetic, how can someone claim to have intelectual property rights on something that doesn't exist. It's a file format for gods sake, and what's in it, I'm sure have been in math books for a good long while. Next, will M$ claim to have IP right om the Word document format?
Fuck off! I'm leaving this planet..
Dolby is alleging patent infringement. This is completely different from MPAA and RIAA actions which have relied on the DMCA. The DMCA invokes criminal penalties for what amounts to reverse-engineering of unpatented scrambling techniques.
I am not saying this Dolby vs. BSD conflict is a good thing, but it is consistent with how I have always understood patents to work. It's nothing new.
And remember that if they don't enforce their patents, they lose them. Who knows, maybe they will work out a sweetheart deal with the BSD folks. Then Dobly won't loose their right to charge license fees to others who make commercial products.
In short, I wouldn't panic yet.
MM
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
OK guys, before everybody cries out loud here, they invented it, they own it. If you want to have a look at the 81 Patents related to AC3 and Dolby go to www.uspto.gov and conduct a search for yourself. Remember, it is THEIR IP, you cannot go and steal it. PERIOD! I can only agree with the previous author, since it is in Dolby's best interest to drive adoption, to work with Dolby Labs.
moderators: mod this parent down. GOTO the link, it's a blatant lie.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Only once the general public discovered the (remember this?) "Information Super-highway", did big-business suddenly become interested in throwing their money and their weight around in the micro-community.
Isn't it sad that they're using their money and their weight to wrest control of this technology from the very people who believed in it and nurtured it when it was unwanted.
--
"I'm not sure exactly what an AS/400 is, however, I'm pretty certain I wouldn't want one up my ass"
To Whom It May Concern:
1 &mode=thread
I'm Writing to inform you that we have recently discovered the presence of unlicensed downloadable content from your website:
slashdot.org
and:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/07/20620
Dolby Digital is the licensor for the AC-3 audio coding technology commonly referred to as Dolby Digital. From your website we were able to download software containing unlicensed AC-3 code components which may not be distributed under any terms absent a license agreement. The distribution of this software, whether directly of (or?) indirectly (via link to a remote URL), without such a license is unlawful as it infringes on the intellectual property rights of Dolby Laboratories. Civil liability for intellectual property infringement requires only that the offender reasonably believe that his actions are likely to result in the infringing use of another's property. Linking to a remote URL known to contain downloadable AC-3 material exposes you to the same liability as the offender providing the downloadable AC-3 file. Accordingly, the AC-3 software accessible from your site must be removed from public access immediatly
AC-3 code and its components are the exclusive property of Dolby Laboratories (San Francisco, California) and are registered as such with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Use and distribution of AC-3 technologies whether for commercial distribution, research, component development or other personal interest requires our issuance of a license tailored to your specific use or business model. Without a license, you may not distribute or utilize the AC-3 code or its components and doing so exposes you to civil liability including money damages.
If you are interested in obtaining an AC-3 license, I encourage you to contact Dolby Laboratories at SRF@dolby.com. Licenses are modeled on an adaptive basis relative to your business plan. Our goal is to provide inexpensive licensing arrangements to promote the use and adoption of the AC-3 technology.
Dolby Laboratories considers the unauthorized use and distribution of the AC-3 technologies a direct threat and will persue their legal right to extent permissible by law. Accordingly, and until a license agreement is issued, please remove all AC-3 code and code component material from your website (including all mirror sites, and links to off-site content) as well as all links directing click through traffic to known AC-3 material.
Please confirm your removal of the AC-3 material and all related links providing direct access to AC-3 products. We thank you in anticipation of your cooperation and encourage you to contact us to discuss licensing options.
Sincerely,
Christina L. Bonner
DOLBY LABORATORIES LICENSING CORPORATION
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Oooooo...the letter from Dolby Laboratories is signed by one 'Christina L. Bonner'...
...that's kinda hot.
So whats good with socialism?
- that warped theory (socialism) was disproven long ago, the people cheering on socialism is basically of the same fiber as that of the people still claiming that the earth is flat.
There is also Isrial. ":)
Dolby should be happy to let anyone build anything that can playback - playback is good, playback means their "standard" is supported, that their technology is building a following, and that things recorded with their technology are being played "properly." Recording, on the other hand... these folks make their living coming up with these technologies, and their main revenue stream is in the recording side of the industry. They should be willing to license a software player for free (or dirt cheap)(IANAL), but a recorder - that could be tricky. Not much hope there.
The big difference between this and DeCSS, IMHO, is the fact that without this, you can still listen to the music - it just won't be "Dolby-ized."
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
I downloaded the source and put it up on my website geocities.com/jefffreebsd/tmpmirror/
Bite Me Dolby
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Your naive attack on the tenets of open source (which has nothing to do with it anyway) does not address the issue of fair use and control when it applies to purchased media accessibility.
Look at it this way: there is already an established multichannel sound system with hardware support that competes with AC3 and which some feel is superior to it. It's called DTS, and few movies support it. The chances of a noname competitor coming in and having success where DTS is floundering seem small.
If it's patented, then you can't reproduce it without paying whatever royalties the patent owner wants, period.
As much as I feel that things that are obvious should not be patented, Even I agree that something so difficult to do should be afforded patent protection.
Also, read the tone of the letter. It's "please remove this and let's talk about what options we have, but if you don't we'll have to pursue legal means" as opposed to the "appear in court on this date" method which the people who don't have what I consider "patentable" technology tend to employ.
So I don't think a cleanroom implementation would help at all.
Very true. As I have pointed out in other threads underscoring the monumental stupidity in having government granted and enforced monopolies in a free market economic system, the vast majority of patent violations are a result of rediscovery (i.e. "clean room" implementations) rather than cribbing an existing patent or even reverse engineering an existing product.
But there could be a way to work around the patents...
Like, um, developing the software outside of the United States. Most of the rest of the world hasn't yet followed the American stupidity of granting patents on software (much less "business methods" or any of the numerous other methods IP Lawyers-as-judges have come up with to create artificial scarcity in the realm of ideas, stifle creativity and technological progress and, incidentally, line their own pockets and the pockets of their profession in the process).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
AC3 is patented. You can't give away a decoder for this reason.
If you already own a DVD player, you have the right to use the AC3 patents to play dvds, but you can't use your ac3 decoder and the dvd player at the same time....
You can describe how AC3 works, though, because patents are in the public domain. Patents only prevent you from _using_ something, not knowing how to do something.
Whether or not source code constitutes a _description_ or a _device_ is an interesting question...
You can certainly sell or give people an open source AC3 decoder, you just have to pay Dolby to do so.
Does NetBSD actually include this software in its distribution, or merely link to it? I know that RedHat certainly does NOT include the dvd decoding stuff, and for this reason precisely.
So we offer them the same deal Microsoft gave SpyGlass Technologies for their browser - a cut of the profits from all sales.
True, but they ain't G8. G8 = US, Canada, Russia, UK, France, Germany, Italy, + Japan. I think it's supposed to be the wealthiest 7 nations plus Russia.
Thus, if this algorithm is so great, those with content will license the technology to encode their material. This is easy to enforce and charge.
This solves the consumer problem since the consumer has already obtained the content--presumably through legal means--and should be allowed to decode or use that content in any way he sees fit. If it happens to be encoded using some algorithm, obviously it will be necessary to decode it. But the whole encoding/decoding process will be licensed by the encoder, not the decoder.
I am writing to inform you that we have recently discovered the presence of unlicense downloadable content accessible from your website:
(http://www.jp.netbsd.org/ja/JP/Documentation/P
Now, if I ping www.jp.netbsd.org, I get:
pigu.iri.cojp? Ha! The server is in Japan and belongs to the Japan NetBSD Users Group, not the NetBSD project. They should give the Dolby lawers a great big "Fuck off, you can't touch us" reply.
HH
Why not come up with an open alternative to AC3? I don't know much about it (so there may be technical reasons why this can't happen), but it seems that more and more we have opensource options available. GIFS->PNG, MP3->OGG, why not something for ac3 that doesn't infringe on existing copyrights/patents?
Actually, I've had to install RH71 on 6 boxes in the last few weeks. 2 were IBM PC's (with goofy win-stuff in them like your 'off-the-self' win-pc) and the others were straight x86 boxes with standard parts. While RH71 got everything right the first time (right down to the NICs) you problems with that off-the-shelf winbox are common. It's the hoakey boxes with win-specific haradware or (worse) mainboards that give grief like yours. I mean, what kind of vid card was it anyway? Does the manufacturer even still exist? Do they support the card for Linux.
Linux *is* ready for the desktop. We have 10's of linux boxes in constant use at work (thanks Applixware) and several dozen in constant se in nice, colde server rooms. I would never ask a Mac user to ue anything else, cuz they're happy with their Macs and that's cool, but dont bash an OS on your experiences with on winbox. You've obviously never tried a vanilla win9x install on a laptop...now *that's frustration!
Sorry for the off-topic post.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
I hate these idiots who post their self-portraits on slashdot and make it look like some other link!
In this case, the software is in Japan*. Not sure what the law is there on software patents. Anyone know?
HH
Pinging the server reveals that the site is hosted on pigu.iri.co.jp
Okay I know none of you want to pay for anything and deem Dolby as a corporate threat, but get real for a minute. This is Dolby you are screaming at, not MS. Dolby makes your world better. Remember that hiss on your tapes? If you explain to Dolby what you are doing and that your business model is not to profit off the spread of your technology, they just might help you out. All you cracker freaks forgot the Legion of Doom trial. Yes those putzes were smart computer freaks, but the lawyer was smarter. Why steal something and get sent to jail, when you can just buy it for pennies and have the whole power of the marketing vehicle behind you. LoD stole the 911 switch info from BellSouth, but their lawyer bought the complete manual from BellSouth Marketing for $10.00. The spread of technology is dependant on two things. First you solve the problem. Next you have to get the word out. I see a lot more things that have the Dolby Double-D, more than I see the MS logo, and Dolby is not the number one market cap company in the world. I'll pay the Dolby tax cause they actually did something I respect and don't jam it down your throat. You want Linux/GNU/BSD to get the same respect, then earn it. Instead of saying damn with their rights, why not ask will they help us change the world?. Imagine a Linux/GNU/BSD screen with the Dolby DD on it. Instant respect. I know you want to watch your movies on your boxes, but you might just have to ask first this time.
Who knows? it could be the next AC3. Or hell...make your own open codec.
Some one tell Dolby to slag off. Too many companies are doing this lately. They pulled the same BS when the DVD code was linked to, directly to their own site, they threatened to sue the webmaster pointing a link to it. This is no different than telling someone where the stars of Hollywood live, or how many pieces of artwork Bill Gates has in his house, or perhaps even a police speedtrap resulting in the public becoming more aware and prompting local speeding to be reduced just from the information being available, and no one has to profit. Too often businesses release propriatary information publicly and expect it to remain private. They hide behind the guise of licenses and courts to strongarm our freedom of speech. They're excersing their rights by providing information about some illegal source. Sounds like they're providing a valuable public service in my book.
This is an idea I sputtered on IRC a few moments ago, and really didn't get any interesting conversation. But...
Basically, would it be possible and hence beneficial for open source and small organizations to proactively restrict licenses on their own software/products on a case by case basis for big corporations? Perhaps the same way that licensing schemes enfroce embargos on high encryption "munitions" from certain countries.
For example: Dolby tells NetBSD they must have proper licensing to distribute ac3dec. Could the NetBSD project turn around and deny Dolby use of any NetBSD software? How about FreeBSD (or is it Open?) modifying the license of their OS such that Microsoft in particular could not use it on their many BSD production servers (such as Hotmail)?
It seems childish, but big corporations frequently act the same way. It's fighting fire with fire and I am convinced that many businesses depend on the fruit of open source. The obivous drawbacks on this idea are reduce acceptance in the mainstream and angering the public (Hotmail going away because a BSD project said 'no' to using their OS, for instance).
If we can't use their stuff, should they be allowed to use "ours'"?
Thoughts/ideas?
Why bother.
http://darkuncle.net/ac3dec/
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
Okay, privitization is not the same as licensing, but check this link from ProjectCensored out. Countries owning or controlling water supplies for other countries, huge revenues expected from selling water, etc. Not a pretty picture.
-- Argel
This isn't all that similar to the DVD problems, or DMCA problems. This is much like the GIF problems, except that Dolby's patents are probably valid and their behvior is honest.
You can patent encoding and decoding methods for a non-trivial format. You can then license the methods to people who want to use the format. Then people who want to encode or decode the format (using the standard methods) have to pay you for the privilege or wait until your patent expires.
A cleanroom implementation is still in violation of the patents if it uses the same methods, because the point of patents is that there be no reason to reinvent something that someone has already invented, unless you come up with a better method.
The issues with GIF were that the patent holder didn't actually apply for a patent within the required time period after publishing it, published it without a "patent pending" warning (which essentially mean it's prior art), and did not inform the violator of the patent until the method had been incorporated into a 3rd party standard. These don't apply here: Dolby made the standard themselves and never pretended it was not patent-encumbered.
Of course, Dolby may well be willing to license the patents to FreeBSD (or to the ac3dec people) so long as the license on the software prevents commercial use. If they didn't bother the FreeBSD people, Sony could make a FreeBSD-based player that just used ac3dec and thus avoid needing a license for Dolby's technology. Since Dolby's business is figuring out good ways to encode things, they need to be able to make money at it. On the other hand, they might not mind having their technology used for free in places where it would simply not be used if payment was required; they don't lose any income they'd have, and they might gain income on the encoding side.
Why didn't FreeBSD also get a letter? (or did it? I'm not in the lists).
marotti.com
Bullshit. Look at most of Western Europe.
What we must not forget is that limited liability corporations are an invention of government. Before the LLC was invented by government, owners of a business were personally liable for all wrongdoings done by their business. The LLC grants the owners immunity from prosecution, thus allowing the LLC to gather funds from greater numbers of investers, thus allowing companies like Dolby to exist. And that's good. But let's not forget that Dolby is a creation of the government, and is the direct result of government intervention in our economy (i.e., the granting of immunity to the owners of businesses in direct contradiction of a thousand years of common law).
It's amusing the the boosters of capitalism turn a blind eye to this blatant interference of government into our own economy, all the while condemning other nations' governments' control over their own economies. But not surprising. Hypocrits never see the beam in their own eye when they turn to condemn the splinter in another's. The fact of the matter is that we practice "corporate socialism" rather than capitalism here in the United States. We give certain businesses special immunities or priviliges (such as their owners not being sue-able) in exchange for the benefits of that arrangement (being able to better concentrate capital to do things like, e.g, build multi-billion dollar fabs). The benefits have been enormous in terms of the ability of this country to muster resources and apply them to leading-edge technologies. This does not render it any less socialism, though.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Going against the general Slashdot hivemind, I agree with Dolby in this. AC-3 (Dolby Digital) is patented technology, actually has required research and is very good, effective and inventive .
White papers are available from Dolby's website, and the technology is free for all to look at, with some exceptions (uses some noise reduction methods not described in the freely available white papers).
And, if Dolby wants, they can charge license fees. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd grant the LinuxTV team a free license with restrictions. Dolby labs isn't evil, but they're a business and mostly IPR company that licenses technology for manufacturers of consumer electronics. They have their own professional devices, though. So the license might have eg. restrictions about using the technology in an embedded system (eg. Nokia MediaTerminal, but Nokia can afford the license if they want to).
Also, from my discussion with Dolby Labs at one time when I was considering writing Pro Logic & Pro Logic II codec I would say that they are friendly. They required that they get the code for review before I'm allowed to say that it is Dolby anything compatible, but assured me that if it's free, open source software, they wouldn't charge licensing fees.
"...Remember, you don't buy anything anymore -- you license it..."
That is a totally illogical statement. You never did buy copywritten content. The only thing you ever bought was the media upon which it came.
Example: A CD of music. Your $15.00 bought you: 1) a LICENSE to listen to the music and 2) the media upon which it was recorded (plus any packaging or ancillary materials packaged / distributed with it)
The license didn't give you the right to do whatever you wanted with the content (notice active word is "with" not "to".) but you could do whatever you wanted with the media / ancillary materials (not including copywriten content on the aforementioned anciallary materials). If you wanted to burn a CD or book, that is within your rights, copying the content however, except for archival purposes, is (generally) prohibited.
People here tend to bandy about the words "fair use" but seem to not have a concept of what the fair use clause in U.S. Copyright law pertains to and just what it can be used for. It is not a license to copy material or any such thing. It is (once again generally) applicable to commentary and review. (for more information on Fair Use see Title 17, 107
There are very few real things in this world...this isn't one of them.
Doesn't the letter start out with something to the effect of "linking to something infringing on patent is the same infringing on patent"? Even if Dolby has some patent on some spec that's entirely legit, isn't linking to the page offering the unlicensed implementation a free speech issue?
E.g., I could link to it here in this slashdot post. Is that the same?
I really didn't get a chance to read much before I lost the connection and then couldn't get back. Sorry if this is completely offbase.
No patents no bs.
I have made a few og files and notice no difference in quality between them and mp3. Of course a have a mediocre sound system.
http://saveie6.com/
This is funny.... According to Netcraft: The site www.dolby.com is running Stronghold/2.4.2 Apache/1.3.6 C2NetEU/2411 (Unix) PHP/4.0.3pl1 on BSD/OS.
I wonder whether Dolby can do anything if NetBSD just moves the pages abroad. (And the linked file,too)
Patent infringement makes baby Jesus cry!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Pardon me, but, Patents exist to ensure companies can make money off something -- without them, many products would never come to market.
AC3 is some pretty sweet technology and I know my home theater experience is better for having it. Why shouldn't Dolby be allowed to protect their investment?
Sure, I like being able to watch dvd's with full on 5.1 digital sound under my various free-software OS's, but this isn't even a DMCA issue. AC3 is not encrypted, and I have not yet heard of copyright protection issues with it.
Dolby Labs exists almost exclusivley on licensing kick-ass sound storage and reproduction standards. They took the hiss out of tapes and blasted our brains out in the theators. If you like that kind of thing, rethink whether patents are really bad... How many of those technologies would be in existence without patent law?
Don't like capitalism? then leave the country or try and change it... If you are trying to change it, I respect you, but please respect the laws untill they are changed. Otherwise, you clearly have no respect for the country and it's history.
--Just a silly canadian.
More Caffeine. NOW
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Perhaps Linux is ready for desktop -use-, but not for -installation-. Would schools etc. be happy to use Linux, if it came with a technician to install it? (for a lower price than a copy of Windows costs)
*FALSE*. If you fail to enforce a *PARTICULAR* violation of a patent for 6 years, you lose the right to sue for *THAT PARTICULAR* violation of the patent. However, you do not lose the right to sue for *OTHER* violations of the patent.
This is all quite plainly laid out in patent law and case law. See, e.g, the appropriate section of Title 35.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
AC-3 was developed in 1991. All those patents were filed more than a year later, and thus can't apply to AC-3. This is called prior art.
Dolby may have patents on AC-3, but those definately aren't.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for everything else that has been tried"
There's a lot of people on this list shouting about the fact that it's THEIR technology and Dolby have the right to license it as they choose. This is all very well, but it's not a necessarily a moral right - it's a legal right, and one who's motives stand right in the way of the open-source dream.
Just to remind you, a "free" OS is a benefit because you can modify the software for your needs and so so freely. This makes the software 100 times better. Even if you don't know how to program, chances are you can find someone who does, and for a small fee might even do it for you.
Now take Dolby's sound format. Yes, it's nice, and I'd be prepared to pay for it as a toy - a product, but it's likely to be more than that - it's likely to become UBIQUITOUS. Once a technology becomes ubiquitous, we're forced to use it, ie, we're forced to subscribe to a capitalist. You can say "well don't buy DVDs then". Now wait a cotton picking minute.. why should I stop watching DVDs, just because I feel uneasy encouraging the use of a system which takes away my freedom? I'd love to just be able to buy a plain old STEREO version of the same DVD if it means for a small lack of quality I can still watch the film, but this isn't the case. It will soon be the case that if I want to watch film X, I have to throw away the operating system I chose out of mere common sense 8 years ago.
I don't wish to restart the capitalist/socialist debate again, but how should this single organisation be allowed to gain to the point of being able to dictate (advertently or inadvertently) how I lead my life?
Software (or, a stream of 1s and 0s) should be free. Not because I'm a socialist, but because when it's not free, it's a liability on us all.
Sorry, but I don't subscribe to Dolby at this point in time.
Socialism? Eww.
Now, you're an admitted American, and (therefore) probably have very little idea of what goes on outside your borders, so allow me to clue you in a bit.
90% of the "First world"'s countries are Socialist.
Most (all?) of these countries have a higher standard of living than the US, including Canada, which was voted by the UN as the #1 country in the world for the eighth year running.
Maybe you just don't care about your sensitive data as much as I do: all my important textual data has been encrypted into a binary format according to the American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
That's right, Standard Code. This time-tested encryption codec converts my plaintext characters like 'A' and 'Z' into incomprehensible binary strings like '01000001' and '01011010', to keep them secure from the predations of evil hackers. Surely, any unauthorized device that would translate from this machine-dependent format into a human language, and even display the outputted stolen intellectual property to thieving computer hackers, would have to be illegal.
Okay, maybe all you Slashbots are just laughing at me right now, but can't you imagine one of us slipping this stuff past a judge?
I think she changed her name from boner to bonner... I sure did get a boner, when I bonde her. Sincerely, Christina L. Bone-her aka boner
Also note that the README file in question, at http://www.jp.netbsd.org/ja/JP/Documentation/Packa ges/list/audio/ac3dec/README.html, states that the code has security problems and recommends removing it. Why on Earth would Dolby sue NetBSD for linking to a page that suggests removal of the controversial software?
Anc even if AC3 is patented IN THE USA, just do the project in a nation like Taiwan that is not signed to either the Berne nor WIPO treaties and therefore is not bound by US or int'l patent law.
I have been saying that Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Anarchy, and some others are all based on having a utopian society. When I tell people this most are ok with the idea until you get to capitalism. *sigh*
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
It just happens to be BSD/OS. :-) (But at least by virtue of Apache and PHP they are benefiting from free software.)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I didn't buy it but I was charged sales tax. The states can't charge sales tax if what I am buying is a license. And stores do not have to charge sales tax.
What big company(s) might like to run a national promotion "No sales tax on the following items"? What states would like to step in and determine it is lawfully a sale?
Are any of them big enough to take on the troublemakers?
Look at the letterhead. I didn't see so much as one name there. Not even the name of a law firm to contact. Lots of snarling and noise from an anonymous coward. Yawn. I mean how much credence to you put in the words of a whiny demanding AC on SlashDot?
Here's a site:
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa/tools-source/ac3
I invite others to add further examples on this thread ...
Uhm, perhaps we should license a couple of distinguished politicians.
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
Let us not be so quick here people. I must agree with two things said by other posters:
In addition they provided us with an out- they said lets work out a licensing deal. Now, granted Dolby is not likely to provide us with the license free of charge as it would undermine the licenses that they are paid for and destroy the company (Dolby does not make items, the develop technology). In reviewing what Dolby said, what the package was meant for and what most people want it for we may have an opportunity here.
Perhaps we can convince Dolby Labs to provide to the Open Source Community (say one of our Open Source groups) a free license to provide decoding only to applications. This would let people who have purchased valid AC3 encoded material to enjoy it on their {insert favorite *nix flavor box}without damage or cost to Dolby. It appears that Dolby primarily makes the money on the encoding side and not the decoding side. They may also request/ or we may offer to limit the license for the use on *nix platforms only to avoid competition with their Windowz licensees.
Rather than being a group of rabid IP haters or attacking every company we should work with the company. Perhaps a reasonable deal worked out with as prestigious a company as Dolby Laboratories would send a message and form groundwork for deals with other companies.
Just my 2 cents.
Huh?
This brings us back to that RAMBUS, Microsoft etc. debate about whether members of industry standards organisations should be allowed to hold patents on the technology that is the subject of the industry standard.
Numerous links have already been posted to the standards organisation which publishes the AC-3 spec
A DVD player must have a CSS decoder and an AC3 decoder to function yet we're now told that we can implement neither ourselves and therefore cannot implement a DVD player as defined by industry standard - something is very wrong here.
I don't object to dolby holding / enforcing patents but I do object to their patented technology becoming a "required" industry standard for digital TV etc without some kind of zero royalty license.
I patent my methods to enforce licensing; enforcing the absence of fair use, backups, or otherwise legal duplication of my licensees content, because they don't want that, so I don't want it either.
Someone in Canada, creates an unlicensed decoder, and releases it to the public.
Why don't I like this? Why do I care?
It's because it violates my patent, why do I have a patent, see above.
So, an open-source group wants to license, my stuff, sure, I could grant a license, more money, but, I need to protect my primary licensees who create content, see top. I create a license that is untenable within an O.S. development environment or plainly refuse, either way, Hollywood (ie MGM), and Japan (ie JapanVideoCompany, Sony), my two main licensees receive enforcement of their monopoly on encoding/decoding processes through my monopoly.
I expect no legal challange to my monopoly, because patent laws give me the next twenty years to have my fun. If need be, I just point at all the companies who profit from my stuff and tell the US Gov, that people can pick and choose from all these people, the Gov, being stupid and corrupt (lobbyists everywhere) will roll over and everything is fine.
Now normally, I don't feed trolls, but even your straw man is broken.
but part of that ownership states that you are prohibited from copying it, redistributing it, or rebroadcasting it
BZZT! Wrong, thank you for playing our game!
When I buy a CD/VHS tape/Book/DVD/whatever, I am prohibited (by copyright law) from redistributing (as in making a copy and giving it away) or broadcasting it, but I can copy it as much as I damned well want to
Before you troll somebody, please at least make your arguments technically correct.
Bad Troll! No biscuit for you!
Copying is considered fair use.
Socialism: It divides up everything evenly among the poeple... except any power.
http://www.mp3-tech.org/programmer/decoding.html
IANAL, but IIRC delaying before bringing suit in order to wreak greater havoc can backfire if the defendant can show that the plaintiff delayed excessively-- such delay is called laches, and can result in the plaintiff losing rights to equitable remedies (such as damages and injunction).
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
DUH!!!
If you want to use their technology, you pay up.
God, people. Stop whining.
This *exclusive right to use the concepts* is indeed property. But the intellectual concepts (ideas) themselves are not property. By using the phrase "intellectual property" we buy in to the myth that ideas can be owned. They can't. All that can be owned, according to the Constitution, is the exclusive right to USE an idea for a limited period of time.
In other words, we should use the phrase "Intellectual use rights" rather than "Intellectual property rights" because the the latter phrase says that ideas can be owned, while the former phrase says the truth -- that only the use of ideas can be owned, and that, only for a limited period of time (though the latest copyright extensions make a mockery of the term 'limited').
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
No. NAFTA and its recent followup FTAA are about one thing: freedom of capital. While the U.S. talks up free trade, the goal is to allow transnational corporations to freely move the capital about the two continents to maximize profit. That's it.
Normally, countries place restrictions on the movement of foreign capital across their borders. If a corporation builds a factory in another country and later sells that factory, they can't just take the money from the sale and pull it back to their home country without paying massive taxes, fees, and often must schedule the transfer over many years.
This causes many headaches for them as they can't just close a plant in one country and open it in another as needs warrent. Take a recent example. A strike was being planned at one of Ford's manufacturing plants where the workers were demanding higher wages. Instead of negotiating or dealing with the strike, Ford closed the plant, shipped all the equipment to Mexico, and reopened it in a matter of months. Bonus: the locals were willing to work for one tenth the wage of the U.S. workers. Good for Ford; bad for workers.
While the U.S. claims this brings freedom to workers as they can move about to find their work, the true effect is freedom for corporations from the threat of strikes or wage increases. Local wages rising? Fuck it, move to Ecuador. With enough U.S.-sponsored state terror the wages can be kept low and the workers effectively enslaved.
That's the goal of NAFTA and FTAA. More corporate welfare. It seems the corporations feel that things have gotten too cushy for the lowly wage-slave. Corporations want their "fair share," and the U.S. government is giving it to them.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
The biggest flaw with copyrights is that they last for the "life of the author plus x years". Well, "what happens when the 'author' is a company or corporation?" These did not exist when the law was worded.
The US CONSTITUTION, Art I, Sec. 8, states that:
[Congress shall have the power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
The life of a coproration is not comparable to the life of the individual (it may last decades, centuries, or longer) and thus violates the spirit of "limited times" as intended by the Constitution. Note that I define "limited time" as a time period that the average person can experience, not as 5 billion years, because the Constitution was meant to apply to people, not things with vastly longer lifespans.
For cryin' out loud, can you assholes (no pun intended) grow up?
As a software developer I certainly recognize the investment your company made in the AC3 technology, I'd like to suggest however that this is not the best use of your legal muscle.
The development community behind NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, and other open operating systems constitutes a very small user base. The technical skills necessary to even make use of the AC3 software are far beyond the casual user. The software does not facilitate the copying of copyrighted material, and is utterly useless on its own - it merely allows end-users to listen to material encoded using your technology. It does NOT allow users to create AC3-encoded content.
In pursuing this matter your company stands to gain little if anything: the software will simply move to a location that does not recognize software patents (like the EU), and Dolby will gain a reputation for beating up the academics (the AC3 decoder is maintained by the University of Waterloo). The recent example of Dr. Felton and his dealings with the RIAA shows that there is a strong public sentiment against such actions.
If I may, I'd like to suggest that you consider a restricted license to use the technology for non-commercial purposes on non-commercial operating systems.
Such license would not require your company to release any software, would not affect your core markets, and would generate much good will for the Dolby brand in the high-tech community.
Sincerely,
I've been involved with a Open Source game called Netrek for the past 9 years or so. Around 10 years ago someone came up with the bright idea of using Public Key Encryption to authenticate a client against a server to verify it's identity.
At the time the primary example of this type of technology was RSA, and they held a patent for it(that has subsequently expired).
This person sent them a letter and asked "Can I use RSA for our purpose?"
They said yes and granted a royalty free conditional license, as long as it's just for authentication and not any sort of data stream encryption.
It seems to me like it's worthwhile to at least ask before trying to implement. Implementing without permission is going to guarantee a letter like the one here.
... [the letter] said that AC3 had been registered with the patent and trademark office, but didn't list a patent number.
Maybe that's because AC3 is a registered TRADEMARK.
B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The New York DeCSS case governs linking to websites that provide access to the allegedly anticircumventing software.
And there was a case last year out of a Utah District Court involving the Mormon Church, and holding that links to copyrighted subject matter constituted a form of copyright infringement.
Explain that.
which provides that "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful PROCESS, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or ANY NEW AND USEFUL IMPROVEMENT thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title."
The letter says that the code contains licensed elements of their AC3 technology. They don't actually ever claim copyright or patent infringement against NetBSD or the ac3dec developer.
Are they claiming that the ac3dec package contains copywritten code owned by Dolby that was not properly licensed? Or are they claiming they have a software patent covering the decoding of the AC3 format? Or are they just using scare tactics to avoid having an open-source competitor to deal with, while they really have no legal basis to complain?
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
Didn't read page 2, eh?
The second page has a name and a signature. And I'm sure that if the NetBSD project decides to respond directly, they can call the number on the letterhead and find out how to get in touch with that person.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Yeah, yeah, shoot me. I barely got page 1 before the site was slashdotted.
In nougatmachine's rant he stated that he hated capitalism, but still wanted to own his own stuff - and hated our current system in part because it wasn't true to capitalism.
Actually, I think this is a fair point to make, and I'd like to take it one step further - Microsoft has touted the 'unAmerican' values of Linux, etc. when in fact they are destroying the idea of "personal property". With XP you don't own your OWN personal thoughts and opinions, as they are expressed using MS's OS/apps. Anything you create with thier tools can be interperated as their "property". How then, are we as Americans supposed to go about defending our property?
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
I might not like the consequences, but I CAN go and "steal" their I"P".
Please, locate the servers outside the US - somewhere in Europe for example, where this kind of stuff isn't illegal.
I see many people commenting here has no idea what AC3 is all about, and so say how it's Dolby's right to enforce their patent. Well, it could be, except that Dolby is trying to push AC3 as the standard digital surround format.
AC3 is a codec that is used as one of the standard audio formats in america, together with PCM. In Europe, they use PCM and MPEG audio. Well, DVD is a proprietary format, so they (the DVD people) have the right to select the codec they want, and licence it accordingly.
Unfortunately, AC3 is also the standard audio format selected to the american digital TV system. That means that it is a de juris standard, and that this standard is selected by government (FCC) which is elected by you people.
Dolby has claimed that it would licence AC3 under a fair licence. This was required as one of the steps of becomming the standard format.
If today we don't do anything, I doubt that in the future there will be anything like video4linux, since the audio decoding will need to decode AC3.
I have already brought up the topic on ask slashdot here, where you can read that Dolby will license AC-3 technology under reasonable terms
It occurs to me that if Dolby wants to force NetBSD not to link to ac3dec on patent grounds, why haven't we heard anything about potential or real legal actions taken against the ac3dec team itself? Technically, they're the people violating any patents Dolby has on AC-3 encoding and decoding, unless Dolby left open a gaping hole one could drive a truck through.
/dev/null. Thank you.
For now, NetBSD should - as others have suggested - ask Dolby Labs exactly which patents are being violated. After that, they should only do what a court orders them to do; the ball is in Dolby's court, and NetBSD shouldn't be their target. They must know the project does not belong to NetBSD, and it's really an issue that should be taken up with the proper people.
I really hope this doesn't result in Dolby acting like complete ogres - the ac3dec team isn't trying to make moolah off their decoding implementation or purposefully try to rip Dolby off or something evil. OTOH, if Dolby has patents on the implementation, they have the right under US and WIPO regulations to protect said patent. OYAH (yet another hand), does this mean people can be prevented from tinkering and programming with their computers if it might mean infringing on a patent?
I suspect IP laws will have to undergo a rather complicated change dealing with different uses of patents on non-physical objects and processes in order to preserve the ability of individuals to tinker with their computers and create free software availabe to all who can use it (a group that, based on my personal experiences, is far smaller than anyone is willing to admit), while still allowing another individual or corporation to protect their patents from being used by profit-oriented competitiors without proper compensation for any profits earned.
*aside*
I feel rather dirty after typing that for some reason, possibly because I'm starting to think the current system of patents, and much of IP law, is rather anachronistic. Might have worked fine in 1883, might have worked fine in 1953, might even have worked fine in 1973. Then the Information Revolution hit. At this point, I'd rather try to put a new, fresh IP structure in place, instead of try to put fixes on a rotting structure that's about to collapse under its own weight and is being twisted from its original purposes not to promote innovation and development, but to protect profit and moneymaking at any cost.
Now, what to replace the current structure with...will take a lot of thought, trial and error. But hey, change is never easy.
Please route all accusations of communist leanings to
*/aside*
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
of the childish maneuver of making up new rules in a game..
"Wait!! You're breathing my airspace and have therefore consented to my 'sux be you' methane-expulsion-license..fork over $9999 now or be harassed to the fullest extent of modern putridness"
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
I'm not saying Switzerland is not a nice place, but have you compared the number of people immigrating from here to there and vice versa by percentage of population?
I'm not sure what the figures are myself, but your argument seems rather weak and one-sided. By your very argument, capitalism must be better than socalism as there are fewer socalists not trying to get into America than there are Americans not trying to get into a socalist country!
As for your quote - I'm also giving my rebate to the EFF (plus extra, of course - we all owe the EFF a great deal). So why are you unhappy that Bush is giving some of your own money back so that you have more to donate to the EFF? That just doesn't make any sense. I'm pretty happy that I have more money to do what I think right rather than the government.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The quandary becomes (macroenomically) how to prevent deflation and (microeconomically) how to seek revenue and profit opportunities to shore up accumulation Both problems beget agressive solutions since capital must always constantly accumulate - or it dies at the rate of inflation and deflation results in a direct reduction of capital assets *despite* production. In other words for companies it becomes: how do we extend revenue generation out of and beyond production and into other areas like "branding", licensing, insurance, financing. etc. A quick perusal of annual reports will reveal that most automobile manufacturers have had numerous years where income from financial services and leasing of automobiles is much higher than income derived from production. The same goes for companies that build large buildings which can serve as collateral or income streams for the issuance of bonds, notes, selling of secondary mortgages etc. You see? Netscape's idea of making a product and giving it away to create opportunities for services isn't all that strange! (cars as loss-leaders for related financial and customer services).
To me this is a bit of a category error in the economy (and not in my brain! no! never!) brought about by technological advance. Or at least that's how it seems at this point - I may change my mind. To make it this clear imagine for example if - instead of "knowledge" or IP - another "composant" of production, viz. labour, was considered to be purely the property of the corporate interests that fund its reproduction. It is assumed that while your labour is being paid for (i.e. while you are on the job) - your employer owns what you produce. But what if your employer demanded a cut of the profit you make on your house, or a piece of the action from your kid's paper route? I mean after all they are the one that "invests", and "maintains" you and your family via your primary occupation so why shouldn't they own a percentage of *everything* you do and not just what you do while you are officially "on the job". Think of the vast legal apparatus that would be required to support this!
This is a bit like how IP works - at first glance it doesn't make sense and in practice it is a bundle of contradictions. After all, no company wants IP to be *totally* protected (say beyond the internal organizational limits of the firm) otherwise each production meeting would be reduced to an accounting of who thought of what and what percentage of the take on a particular product they were due etc. (a bit like the way movie production takes place!). But they do sort of want an endless upply of revenue for their own "innovations" - as I point out in other posting.
Given the crisis of capitalist production (yup the signs are everywhere) wherein it is more and more difficult to profit on the production of physical commodities (except in highly subsidized or regulated markets like agriculture or mining), and the shift of production into more and more "virtual" formats, the pressure to commodify fields of activity beyond labour, capital and land is intense. There is also a vast sloshing pool of capital (not well distributed) that provides ample motivation for legal services to pursue the protection of other than physical property by restricting the rights of competitors, purhcasers etc. -- in other words "regulating" markets in a fairly heavy handed way themselves. But hey, at least it's lawyers doing it and not the dreaded gov't so we can rest easy in the belief we live in a "free enterprise" economy rather than a "state regulated" one ...
The one cool thing this points up is the fundamental lack of efficiency in this kind of arrangement. The incapacity of legacy capitalist organizations to scale to the task of collaborative "knowledge network" based economic development using this kind of "regulation" (it's market based - sort of - but it is "red tape" nonetheless) means OSS has a fundamental advantage:
And, yes, you can still make money. I mean how big, rich and revenue dependent does Dolby have to be in order to "innovate" for music listeners? How much bigger say compared to dozens of small Vorbis like creatures/companies? Permit me one more metaphor: mammals beat dinosaurs because then needed less space, less time, less food and were better at reproducing. Lots of smaller companies making less money may be more efficient and innovative and in any case means bad things for large companies with huge staff levels and lots of share-holders to piss off. The reaction? More aggressive marketing (often negative), more aggressive protection of IP, more aggressive pursuit of IP as a business strategy. ... etc. etc. more aggressive payola and influence vis-a-vis governments around the world to have them step in and enshrine the interests of large companies in law and treaties ... So I guess we shouldn't be surprised; at the same time perhaps there's reason for hope.
Of course on the whole dinosaur/mammal thing the meteor from outer space helped too ... hmm ....
... or call me ignorant. I've got my fire-proof suit on, so I'll ask this question (I suppose its been posed and answered several hundred times. How do software engineers/programmers/companies expect to pay their bills in an open-source environment where there is no IP or licensing? What do I have to gain if I/we write a bit of code or develop an algorithm and then give it to the world for free? Why did I spend all those hours thinking and creating? Also, what is the purpose of writing software to decrypt copyrighted information? To take something you have not paid for? To show the creators of said copyrighted information that their encryption scheme is not strong enough? Why then distribute the decryption software/algorithm to the world?
This is now false. There are many companies (RedHat, etc) which make a significant amount of money off of open source projects, and can afford to give money and resources back. Many of the best Linux companies are paying their programmers to develop free software.
Is it unreasonable to ask one of these companies to pay for the license? I think not. It sounds from the tone of the letter that Dolby is willing to negotiate. This can be one more way for the companies to give back to the open source movement on which they depend.
Of course, this is all based on the assumption that Dolby has a valid patent on decoding AC-3.
I can see it now, any format that is in any way encoded (even documented), if used by someone other than an approved licensee, is "illegal". Anyone that has a web site, ignore these requests, they WILL go away after you don't do anything. Bryan
Assuming that there even is a patent violation, is there anything in patent law that prevents linking to a patent violation?
-- Welcome to nowhere fast / nothing here ever lasts.
Given how broad some patents can be, why not patent the practice of sending cease-and-desist letters to those who are allegedly infringing on the patent? That would make someone rich...
AC-3 is a sophisticated multi-channel surround audio scheme invented by Dolby. It is most often used in professional broadcast equipment, like video servers, and it's not something that is simple or obvious, so Dolby has every right to patent it. We support AC-3 on the video servers that the company I work for builds, and we licensed the technology from Dolby to do so.
One example is: WO0145062. You can find a lot more. Just search http://ep.espacenet.com for the simple word 'Internet'. Then look at the patents starting with WO.
We intend to stop the software patents in Europe. Please help us: SSLUG
One example is: WO0145062. You can find a lot more. Just search http://ep.espacenet.com for the simple word 'Internet'. Then look at the patents starting with WO.
We intend to stop the software patents in Europe. Please help us: SSLUG
If you don't like Dolby's behavior, organize a protest. Boycott their products. Show up in front of their offices with signs, whatever.
And don't forget to vote based on candidate's views on IP. So long as we go along with it, they will always support IP because of payola^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions.
Bitching on slashdot, though -- that's worthless.
What absolutely everyone here has missed is that AC3 is part of the US HDTV standard. I thought that was the reason why Dolby openly published the AC3 specs on their site. Dolby is being evil here. Anything that is part of the US HDTV spec ought to be open for anyone to build a decoder.
Is she sexy enough to take NetBSD's core team to jail??
Comparing the US to any particular major first world nation except for perhaps Japan is stupid because we have over 280,000,000 people living in our borders. That means we have more people living here than in all of Western Europe and Canada combined and the territory of the contiguous states is almost equal to that of Canada. We are too big for you to compare us to smaller nations. Socialism can work in some countries in a purely economic standpoint, but not in the **personal** standpoint because it encourages conformity. I've found even the religious right to be more flexible in allowing individualism than most of the hardline lefties I've met. They are extremely intolerant of anyone that disagress with them, at least that is my experience. Even the religious right will often just consider you a lost soul and an idiot rather than vehemently despise you for your beliefs.
Enough of these *can* cause a company to evaluate its situation.
Hello,
I wish to submit some feedback regarding the open-source community and Dolby AC-3. I understand your generic action taken in contacting the NetBSD site in regards to their linking of ac3dec.
I think it would be in Dolby's best interests as a company to issue a license to the developers of ac3dec. This software is offered for free for use on a platform that does not have any competing commercial products. Thus, Dolby stands to lose nothing from allowing the development of an open-source UNIX Dolby decoding package.
There is a large battle taking place in the industry right now for control over media formats in the twenty-first century. Let's take the example of Fraunhoffer - the ones responsible for the industry-standard MP3 format. Fraunhoffer's iron fist approach to their technology is eventually going to cost them their market share - as formats such as the superior Ogg Vorbis (www.vorbis.com) have sprung up to appease the open source community's failing ability to use patented technologies.
Given some research, I think your company would find that the open source community does contain a significant amount of programmers/geeks in various fields. If the Dolby AC-3 standard is to continue as the market leader in as many areas as it is, these people cannot be alienated. Your company may have no interest in UNIX systems whatsoever, but many die-hard UNIX users also develop software for other platforms that is selling on the shelves, and would be interested in continuing to license AC-3 technology for their commercial products.
Just one man's opinion.
Chase
Picture this...
Your Dolby, you make millions. Something threatens to stop the income of millions. Obviously your going to want to keep your millions coming in.
"I'd just make it open source" of course you would, you'd lose millions restructuring your corperations, only to lose millions more when people finally realize that they don't need to pay for it. Your employee's lose their jobs, and your company is cut down to half its original size.
Everyone here has to realize that, yes, us geeks that understand all these things, ARE in the minority. And Joe Sixpack doesn't care less about if it was designed open source or not, he just wants it to work, and to work well. If he has to pay for something to have it work reliably, then he will.
oh god, I can feel the flames already - it feels like burning. I'll try to qwell my flambait post a bit...
I Do agree with Open Source, but these older corperations (Dolby) can't and more than likly won't turn to it... its to radical of an idea... but eventually that will change... *i hope*
Find Escorts, Strippers, Massage Parlours, Swingers
Unless the code itself is not NetBSD property (i.e., it was stolen outright), it would seem that NetBSD has the upper hand.
The following events must occur, however unlikely:
Party 1 creates a crappy data encryption scheme "S" designed to protect copyright. Party 1 doesn't realize that the method is so crappy it can be broken in "real time", without too much processor overhead at all.
Party 2, without Party 1's knowledge, discovers the easy crack "C" and spreads the word over the internet. Party 2 then spends some time dodging any DMCA enforcers that find out, or goes to prison. Either one will do fine. Note that Party 1 mustn't have known about this idea, otherwise it's conspiracy and the whole exercise is illegal.
Everybody Else then realizes that a network that uses scheme "S" for copyright protection is protected by the DMCA. Everybody Else then builds clients for said network encorporating crack "C", so that the data is essentially unencrypted. These clients are illegal under the DMCA, but Everybody Else doesn't give a damn. Everybody Else then goes ahead and freely trades copyrighted material over the network.
Big Business can't do a damned thing about what Everybody Else trades over the network, because the network itself is protected by the DMCA. Thus admitting that they know what is on the network is admitting to violating the DMCA. After all, a select few users might be using the non-cracked clients, and Big Business would be cracking into their data. Everybody Else is also violating the DMCA in a similar fashion, but they don't give a rat's ass.
So either 1) We get a network that no one can admit to using, and use it anyway, or 2) they amend the DMCA to not apply when "everybody's doing it", which pretty much destroys its power in any of the recently publicized cases, or 3) they just get rid of the DMCA altogether or at least stop enforcing it, or 4) case 1 but where individual users have their data / computers broken into to see which ones are using the cracked client, and are sent to prison, because someone makes some new amendment somewhere that says it's okay to collect evidence in this fashion. For case 4 to happen, I think the USA would have to be in such a state that a revolution was imminent anyway, so it's moot.
Again, these events are unlikely to take place any time soon, but the very fact that it would legally create a legal network that hackers can illegally use without getting caught by Big Business is rather humorous. The Feds would probably still look at the network (because you have no privacy from the Feds), but Big Business can't legally look for things to complain to the Feds about :) All thanks to our good friend the DMCA.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
Yes. I volunteer doing exactly that. They love it and it meant they got to use the P90s that were donated instead of the Mac LCs the district still hadn't replaced.
:) They still have a dark side(NT4), but there wasn't anything we could do to avoid the NT4 & Office 2k Premium licences.
District finally did come through with Compaq PIII's, and those run Debian much better than the P90's
- RustyTaco
I wish I knew a bit more about Patents than I do.. if I understand correctly, a Patent is basically a time-limited government-protected monopoly on a particular method of doing something, in return for publishing the steps of the method.
What I am wondering though is where that protection ends. I am under the impression that if money isn't made off of using a patent-protected method, there isn't any enforcement. This means that Dolby wouldn't go after the ac3dec guy, but would go after Linux and BSD distributions in order to try to get them to pony-up licensing fees.
Also, I'm fairly certain that the LiViD people queried Dolby once before for information on implementing ac3 (was it ac3dec itself?).. there was no reply, which means they made an honest attempt, which also means that dolby couldn't sue for any sort of previous or punative damages up until this point. Thats just my understanding on patent law, but I would hope that the BSD people would get professional legal advice themselves, and make sure that they do not distribute ac3dec themselves. I cannot read japanese, so I don't know if they are including it or just linking.
Rather I believe it's copyrighted. Adobe owns the copyright on PostScript and is free to change it as they like, but that doesn't stop anyone from buying a copy of the latest PS Manual and implementing to that spec, which, as far as I know, is how GS (and other PS clones available in various printers) came to be...
First off, since Dolby has offered to talk licensing, the authors of the code should. I expect Dolby would be conducive to talks, especially given the tone of the letter.
Secondly, is that Dolby makes cash from the Dolby Double D symbol on receivers and DVD players. They invest alot of money into continually refining their audio perceptual model. If BSD code is allowed to take the Dolby emblem, without some sort of revision of the licensing, then someone else can take the BSD code and incorporate it into a receiver, and place the Dolby symbol on their receiver without paying a dime to Dolby. This is Dolby's concern, of that I am sure. I expect Dolby would like to work out some deal where the code can only carry the Dolby compatible symbol/phrase/various trademarks/etc. if the code is not used in a embedded audio application (such as consumer equipment). They make money on the encoders, of course, but not nearly as much as the few 100,000 Dolby surround receivers sold here in the US and elsewhere every year.
Finally, I am glad that Dolby makes a tax on these components -- their perceptual models get better and better. Sure, its not audiophile grade, but it blows every other codec in existance out of the water (WM, MP3, blah, blag, blah), and it was first introduced years ago. DTS is decent, when I have heard it in theatres, so they are a alternative codec, however, if they weren't bottom rung player in the surround game, they'd be sending cease/desist letter too. If Dolby profits are removed, then the models do not improve, a new standard steps in that is closed completely, and stays on the film reel, and the consumers will be condemned to sucky present day tech forever.
TurboD
Following the patent link given previously ( http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06112009__ ) it looks to me as if they have patent on almost anything computer- and console-related. MPG* ( audio and video ), audio, video and program CDs and DVDs along with optical disks, hard disks ( medium which data/audio/tagged streams/video blah blah blah can be recorded onto ) I think y'all thinkin' people should move to Europe, and leave them droolin' idiots behind ;)
Time to remove AC-3 out of the new digital television standard, as there has been some misrepresentation. Dolby should remember the bucks flow from putting that dolby stamp/logo over end user equipment. if AC-3 is struck out - NOW then dolby would loose the next 40 years of branded eqipment. Just remember the BMAC fiasco.. Besides the Japanese should go after dolby, as they were the first to add spectral noise removal... prior art..
Doesn't OSX give *BSD strength? While Apple certainly has troubles, it seems that basing it's OS on BSD means that Darwin has a lot of support. What's more, the problems of Open Source software that *BSD faces most Linux face as well. With Apple supporting DVD playing in OSX 10.1 we'll have a Unix with far more important software than Linux.
It has a FFT reordering problem which makes fire crackles sound like water bubbling. You wouldn't notice it on an ordinary PC speaker system but it makes ac3dec useless for home theater systems. In that sense, Dolby doesn't want to have people distributing faulty decoders.
...but look what I DID find. MS holds the patent on in-car wireless internet. Patent #6202008. Sorry for the OT post.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
That would make you clueless.