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.
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
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.
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.
Unfortunately, I don't know much about either what AC3 is all about, or what the patents claim, but a quick patent search on delphion showed two patents related to it.
So I don't think a cleanroom implementation would help at all. But there could be a way to work around the patents...
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.
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.
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..
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?