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SanDisk MP3 Players Seized in MP3 Licence Dispute
MrSteveSD writes "According to the BBC, German officials have seized Sandisk's MP3 players at the IFA show in Berlin. The Italian company Sisvel claims that Sandisk has refused to pay license fees for the MP3 codec. Sisvel President Roberto Dini has said that Sandisk could get an edge over competitors by not paying the fees. How much are proprietary format licensing fees pushing up the cost of consumer goods?"
And a farkin licensing fee or royalty compensation is A-O-Fuggin-K in my book.
The problem is when formats that we use to communicate are encumbered by patents.
It's not enough just to make something better. We've already done that: it's called Vorbis. The inventors of MP3 are now profiting not on the merit of their technology, but the sheer inertia that you get when one format is a dominant standard.
It's just like GIF: PNG is better than GIF is nearly every way, and yet the computing world was stuck paying Unisys for years for their inferior technology, simply because GIF was entrenched.
That's why we "communist buddies" insist on unencumbered standards when it comes to the protocols and formats we use to communicate. We're not interested in writing checks indefinitely for the privilege of sending data to other people, or putting it on devices. It would be one thing if these technologies competed on merit alone, and if you could quickly drop one when a better one became available, but it doesn't work that way.
Given the ubiquity of MP3, moving to OGG is probably not going to happen. 4 years is nowhere near as long as it would take an entire technogeneration to migrate away from MP3, and as MP3 becomes public domain in 4 years, just wait until then and MP3 will be just as or more "free" than OGG (public domain is "more free" than GPL, sort of).
MP3 quality is fine, and with flash memory prices in freefall, squeezing an extra 13.8% off the track size at a given quality level is going to be moot very soon, if it is not already.
Yours sincerely,
Mr. Reality Check.
I hate printers.
So, if I'm getting this right, a bunch of MP3 players (made in the far East where the relevant patents are in all probability null and void) are seized at a trade show in Germany (where the relevant patents are null and void: Germany is a member of the EU where mathematical operations are specifically excluded from patentability) are seized on the orders of an IP firm based in Italy (where the relevant patents are null and void: Italy is a member of the EU where maths is not patentable) on the grounds that they are in violation of patents?
The fact that the patents in question are null and void will hardly escape the attention of the courts. I don't know whether to expect some good arse-on-plate-handing action, or just a swift "Ting! Next, please!"
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!