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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.
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!
NetBSD's site probably got overloaded. For everyone who wants to see the letter, just head on over to Google's cache (that's http://google.com/search?q=cache:FNOrsKwxyws:netbs d.org//Letters/20010803-dolby.html&hl=en for the goatse paranoid).
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
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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!!!
Thank you. I'm glad someone understands.
The OpenSource rhetoric goes something like this: There is something that someone else spent years and millions of $$$s creating it. Why shouldn't we have it for free.
Ok, so they argue, we ONLY want it to decode the data. Well if that is possible, then the geeks will be screaming that now we want to ENCODE as well. If ya'll can do it for free, what does Dolby have to offer anyone?
clif
I bet /. 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.
.gifs, and Frauenhofer has the god-given right to prevent you from encoding/decoding MP3s. It maybe LEGALLY fine, but in my eyes morally bankrupt.
Yes, but only because MS would resell your code, copyright it as their own, prevent EVERYBODY else from using your code in their projects, and then reap the profits. Even if your fictional "Open Source" code is BSD and not GPL, this is wrong (and illegal).
Dolby is being held to a different standard because there IS a different standard. And when you say stuff like "It is entirely their perogative, [sic] to control who can use it", you are assuming the reader agrees that this is a fundamental right. Many of us happen to think government enforced monopolies are bad, no matter what.
And even if you ARE a DMCA moderate who thinks the "circumvention" clause is hunky dory, since when is AC3 a copy control device?
I am assuming you think UNISYS has the god-given right to prevent you from viewing
You've obviously never invented anything worthwhile before, because if you had, you would know that it takes at least 1-2 years just to get an idea from the patent stage to a business where it brings in capital. Too bad most of you communist dorks wont ever know this fact. America needs more entrepreneurs, not idealists.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. NetBSD is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
NetBSD is dying
Yetanother crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on top of of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all long. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. NetBSD is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
*BSD is dying
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.NetBSD is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
*BSD is dying