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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.
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.
It's all vey well hating them, but without them you wouldn't have any mp3s...
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
There was a time when 24 hours would have killed me. Bad idea...
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
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
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.
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.
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
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.
"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.
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
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.
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
([1] which is why "anarcho-capitalism" or "libertarian capitalism" is ultimately self-defeating; keeping property concentrated into the hand of the few requires a strong state.)
Your conclusions would be true, if libertarianism had as one of it's goals keeping property concentrated into the hand of the few.
However, it has no such goal, so you've managed to completely bungle your logic.
Libertarianism's goal is to have a weak central state, period. How much or how little property individuals retain is wholly up to the individuals.
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!
What on earth are you talking about? Could you provide a citation, please?
The point of patents is that "clean-room reverse-engineering" is neither necessary nor is it a defense. If I hold a patent on something, you may not use that method even if you independantly thought it up. You certainly don't need to reverse-engineer it, because the patent spells the innovation out in detail. That's what patents are for.
Now, perhaps you're referring to non-patented things like trade secrets, where reverse-engineering is fine. (Well, except in UCITA jurisdictions where it's prevented by a shrinkwrap license.)
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
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.
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.
Actually, the only actual grammatical mistake in this sentence is the de-genderizing of the unincluded nominative subject (the word that goes before considers). Since "considers" is written in the third-person, singular conjugation, it is inconsistent for the writer to use the word "their" on the second line. The person should have used the word "its." Otherwise, excepting the period at the end of the sentence (that I assume was there from the start), there are not grammatical mistakes. You're probably thinking there should be a comma after "threat," but this is not the case because you're not separating two complete clauses: there's no subject after "threat." Secondly, you do not need to write the definite article preceding the word "extent" (which would read to the extent). If you see anything I've missed, I'd be glad to hear it, but this is really a sound sentence.
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.
No, there's no agreement you enter when you buy a CD or DVD, unless you're buying CDs with shrinkwrap licenses, unlike the rest of us.
The thing that says you can't copy it is a little thing called copyright law. You may have heard of it.
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
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?
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.
I will move to Europe or Asia as soon as our borders fall.
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.
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.
If ya'll can do it for free, what does Dolby have to offer anyone?
Nothing.
So fucking what. Corporations have no inherent right to exist.
If JoeBob Hacker can code up a compatible format, good for him.
Saying noone should have the right to code an AC3 CODEC is like saying Samba should be banned because it replaces NT SMB servers, or Linux should be banned because it can replace Solaris.
It's not about "open source" or "free software" it's about my freedom to code any goddamned thing I want.
C-X C-S
Oh, and if that was just a troll, Click Here.
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.
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?
I do have a problem with this sentence, however:
Otherwise, excepting the period at the end of the sentence (that I assume was there from the start), there are not grammatical mistakes.
This sentence is syntactically correct; however, so are the winning entries in the IOCCC contest. I would rewrite as:
Otherwise, this sentence appears to contain no grammatical mistakes, excepting the lack of period at the end of the end of the sentence (which I assume was present in the original).
This more clearly conveys your intent as well as avoiding the generally awkward passive voice.
</pedant>
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.
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
So we offer them the same deal Microsoft gave SpyGlass Technologies for their browser - a cut of the profits from all sales.
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
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.
Why didn't FreeBSD also get a letter? (or did it? I'm not in the lists).
marotti.com
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.
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/
Hopefully not Parisites. Lawyers? Maybe.
Hmm, what's this on the back of my "Snatch" DVD? It says, in fine print, "unauthorized reporoduction, distribution or exhibition violates federal laws with severe penalties". Wait a minute, I think there's some on my Pulp Fiction DVD as well! It says "This DVD is for home viewing only. It is not licensed for any other use." Oh heavens, what does that small text on the back of my Clockwork Orange DVD say? Oh yes, it says "Federal law provides severe civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized reproduction, distribution or exhibition of copyright motion pictures, video tapes or video discs."
In other words, yes there IS fine print on just about every DVD you'll buy that explicity states what you can and can't do with your DVD. Even if it's not explicity stated there are still laws in place that prevent you from doing "whatever the hell you want" with your DVD. Ever wonder what those funny little FBI warnings say? They tell you that it's illegal to make unauthorized copies of your movie! Well what do you know.
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
I was looking for:
... 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;
rights instead of right
Actually, the singular is correct. United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.
The Congress shall have Power
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.
"Capitalism" and "free markets" are not the same thing.
The opposite of capitalism - in which a minority of people (the capitalists), backed by state force[1], control "the means of production" - is socialism, in which "the workers" or "the people" control the means of production.
The opposite of a free market system (where production is determined by market forces) is a command economy (where production is determined by government fiat).
There can be capitalist command economies (the US during the Depression and WWII would be close to this) and socialist free markets (don't know of any national examples, but co-ops, collectives, employee-owned corporations, and similar institutions can function quite well in our market economy).
([1] which is why "anarcho-capitalism" or "libertarian capitalism" is ultimately self-defeating; keeping property concentrated into the hand of the few requires a strong state.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for everything else that has been tried"
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?
Uhm, perhaps we should license a couple of distinguished politicians.
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
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.
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.
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."
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.
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
Seems to me it was plenty good for workers. Mexican workers, anyway: they have jobs with a good company. Even for US workers it may be a good thing: perhaps they will realise that they do not have a deathgrip on their employers--there's a labour market and not a labour monopoly, as before. Perh. the unions will realise that they need to compete. Or perh. workers will realise that unions are just as evil as monopsonist employers.
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.
No, in this case the words people "bandy about" would
be "first sale doctrine". Basically if IP were to be
acknowledged as property then first sale doctrine
must apply to it. I think most people equate
property and first sale and hold this to be self
evident.
Don't know which variety of religious right you've encountered lately. Certainly not the one I have.
That would make you clueless.