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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So we offer them the same deal Microsoft gave SpyGlass Technologies for their browser - a cut of the profits from all sales.
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.
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.
In other words: validity of patents is not dependent on their enforcement. You can be as selective as you want. Trademarks, however, are invalidated by lack of enforcement..
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
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?
"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
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.
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.
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.