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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?"
It's not the file format that's patented.
The problem is that the patents are for the actual compression and decompression algorithms. These can and often are patented - MP3 is not an isolated case. Here's a list of the patents involved.
The whole thing's actually quite a mess, with several different companies claiming patents on bits and pieces of the codec. This is one of the reasons why you don't usually see MP3 codecs in the free Linux distributions as standard.
The problem for SanDisk is that they're a US-based company, and the US allows software patents. Sisvel would struggle to be able to pull this on an EU-based company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3
Der Post ist hiermit beschlagnahmt. Melden Sie sich unverzüglich bei der nächsten Gestapo-Geschäftsstelle.
Then go and make another codec that can compete with the commercial versions that prevail on the open market and give it away for free.
kind of like this?
http://www.vorbis.com/
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
I'm actually really glad I purchased a SanDisk MP3 player now!
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
I think you're a little confused about capitalism. Cartels (the essential problem behind proprietary format adoption) are inimical to capitalism. They are the opposite of competition. When a proprietary format becomes the de facto standard due not to its superiority, but due to its selection by the established companies, it's not a success of capitalism.
I've noticed a lot of pseudo-capitalists like to bandy out the insult of "communism" when they want to endorse anticompetitive systems. It's actually the opposite, though; these people are far closer to practical "communists" (desiring centralized control by whoever already has the money or power) than those they attack.
How much are proprietary format licensing fees pushing up the cost of consumer goods?
In this case, 75 cents per hardware MP3 decoder, with a minumum of $15,000 per year. Personally, I'm more worried about royalty payments' inherent incompatability with free software, seeing as you can't keep track of who's copied it to who by its very nature.
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.
--
Arizona Web Design
You've just explained why technology is moving so slowly nowadays.
Did you know perpendicular recording for hard disks was developed in 1976 but is only now being implemented? It's because patent law has caused hard drive makers to sit on the technology and wait for the patent to expire before researching its implementation - which, just so you know, is long before the production phase.
Many patent holders are now stuck waiting for someone to implement their ideas, while industrialists are waiting for their patents to expire. The patent holders get no money and the technology they came up with, never makes it to market for over 20 years.
The makers of the mp3 patent, thus, took advantage of something called submarine patents. They let the technology fall into the wild, where people use their technology for a while, and then they nail them with the mp3 patent when the product goes commercial and is heavily entrenched. Also see: Unisys and GIF.
Now you have companies like Intellectual Ventures which amass zillions of patents intending to ensnare anyone who blunders into their mine field.
BTW a great deal of our economy is now engulfed in patent litigation. Fear of patent litigation is slowing a lot of innovation because practically any business model based on cutting edge work is vulnerable to a lawsuit over an infringement of an obscure or broad brushing patent.
Let me put it this way for your Conservative mind:
If Frauhoff (sp?) had enforced their patent from day one, you would not be seeing mp3's in existence now, or at any time until after the patent ran out.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
There should be mod points for +1/2 "Funny but no one will understand it"
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!
Germany's courts and officials are noted for this kind of thing. Very easy there to get somebody's show booth shut down with scant allegations of trademark or copyright infringement.
So, license fee issues for the MP3 playback algorithm seem to the basis for Sisvel's aggressive legal actions against SanDisk. The strange thing in all this, while the issue is still in German court and hotly disputed by SanDisk, is that all SanDisk's MP3 players at the stand at IFA have already been seized by the German authorities. Earlier this year I attended the ANGA Cable (CATV) trade show in Cologne, Germany, and there the Stand of Hyunday Digital which is selling STB's was completely stripped from all STBs on display two days in a row. Allegedly because MPEG license fees had not been paid for those boxes by that company. It seems like we have a trend here to put some serious thumbscrews on manufacturers that exibit at trade shows in Germany.
While many still use mp3's in 2010 lossless music is starting to really catch on. Everyone has connections with a good amount more bandwidth, so downloading the much larger files isn't that much of a hassle anymore. Apples' iTunes started the trend around 2008 by heavily promoting its lossless codec and making the majority of its tracks available in it. It will even transcode from lossless to mp3 for your iPod. I have a feeling in a few more years mp3 is going to feel like tapes in respect to CD's.
Oh, and if anyone is curious about me, I work in law enforcement. I was sent back on the case of one of the most wanted time-criminals of 2010, John Titor.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
novel algorithm for decoding MP3. Such a thing, if it existed (which it probably cannot)
Actually, novel algorithms exist for both encoding and decoding. It's then believable that Sandisk built their MP3 players without any Frauenhoffer code.
This is more like the .GIF debacle - where a company claims responsibility for all code that creates or reads the format they designed. It's obviously bullshit, but apparently Frauenhoffer don't take US victories for free-and-open use as precedent.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
If you find any one of these things to be true, maybe take a moment to analyze your stance? If you find your first reaction to positive comments on Ogg to be one of anger, maybe do that analysis?
If there's anyone out there who dislikes Ogg and who isn't attached to MP3, it would be good to get your perspective. Please speak out.
It doesn't help that advocates of Ogg often have strong opinions about the values of using Ogg. But don't let another person's attitude deflect you from really thinking through Ogg's value for yourself. Having a chip-on-your-shoulder reaction is the essence of fanboyism.
The quality is comparable. The hardware/processing footprint is comparable. There are no technical downsides. (Don't correct me to tell me how Ogg is much better -- I'm understating the point for a reason.) Ogg detractors often get these points wrong. Unapologetically unresearched inaccuracy is another sign of fanboyism.
Adding Ogg to your hardware is easy enough -- there are over 100 models of portable player listed on just this page. So if you want to use Ogg, either as a manufacturer or a consumer, there's no problem. (If you want to keep using your old MP3s -- go ahead. Just file your new Ogg files alongside them.)
Unlike MP3, however, Ogg is public domain.
So, all things even, Ogg beats out MP3. So, even if Ogg weren't quite as good as MP3, it should be supported for the (lack of) licensing. You won't get shenanigans like what this article's about. You can implement your own software. You can build your own hardware without incrementing its cost by the royalties + insurance against litigation. (Well, likely you'll still be paying those for the other formats your player supports.) You can improve the format. You can distribute, sell, or stream Ogg files without liability.
The manufacturers support it and there are many communities using it. There is no reason to encode another MP3.
Ogg: highly recommended.
(Disclaimer: I personally don't use Ogg Vorbis much. My music's all lossless.)