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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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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
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!
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.
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.
Instead, we should consider each patent on its merits,and the benefits to HUMANITY amd to the INVENTOR of making it public. Each patent, each idea should be separately considered becuase ideas have a different ranges of applicability, monetary gain, use, and worth.
In this way, I consider IP not to be a single idea, contrary to what everyone automatically assumes. IP rights are not natural rights, and they should have have any defaults.
For example - consider the idea of modern sanitation. Although that idea is now in the public domain, how should we reward that engineer (supposing he was still alive) who though up this idea, which everyone, the public is benefitting from? Certainly he should be paid. But do you think he has grounds to DENY anyone the benefits of the flushing toilet or sewage treatment?
Any kind of control you impose on this has very little to do with something else, like say, In-Vitro-Fertilization.
So back on topic. What about the Dolby AC3 patent? Consider what the world will be like without Dolby AC3. Then consider what it is worth to the public, whether this balances practice of paying Dolby for x years for use of that technology. And whatever system you put in place, please ensure that both all parties commit to the deal.
Is this so hard to understand? Or do you believe that only the inventors have the right to demand anything they want?
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.
There can be no such thing as 'pure capitalism' if by that you mean a truly free market.
Specifically, under a free market, individuals (in a truly free market there can be no other legal entity) are always free to make private agreements, or pacts. Those pacts, taken to their logical conclusion, lead, in effect, to government in the favour of the pact-making parites. Power begets power. Herein lies the problem with 'libertarianism', if I read it correctly.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Read it closer. They claimed that NetBSD was linking to it (irrelevant that the files are offshore). If there was a link anywhere on the US site to the JP site, according to them, it counts as infringement.
Liberty in your lifetime
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.
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.
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.
This isn't a DCMA issue. It's a patent issue, and it's a good patent. They actually created something new and protected it. It's not like many of the bogus patents of late. The ability to encode 6 channels of discrete audio in one signal doesn't qualify as "obvious".
This sig intentionally left justified.
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.
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
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
I am sick and tired of this completely retarded meme.
The purpose of the GPL is NOT to prevent people from making money from your code. In fact, feel free to take ANY of the GPL'd code i've written and attempt to resell it.
The purpose of the GPL is to make sure *I* (and everybody else) can use my code any way they please, DESPITE the fact that you a) use it and b) resell it. e.g. YOU can't copyright it. YOU cant patent it. YOU can't prevent me from giving away my (or anyone elses) GPL'd code.
And some of us DO believe the right of ownership ends when you cross from atoms to bits. YOU know that. I know that. So why are you even prefacing your argument with that statement, when you KNOW most of the readers here will immediately dismiss it offhand, thus completely invalidating your rant?
The GREAT thing about bits is that they CAN be copied perfectly, verbatim, at no cost, and without the degradation of the original bits. Why not harness that property rather than mindlessly hack it until it LOOKS like an artificial scarcity?
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?
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.
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.
*sigh* The freedoms taken away by the GPL are not the same as the freedoms taken away by these corporations.
How about this, dark-skinned people have the right to be free, sure, but what about my right to own slaves? I mean, arguing about freedom for blacks is just like arguing about freedom for slaveowners, right?
(I'm not trying to make the Stallmanesque connection between corporations and slavery or anything, just trying to pick an extreme example)
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.
- Mycroft