I've said this a number of times, but here we go again: 1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed 2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed. 3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.
The issue here is a matter of policy - namely, we go after pirates, not customers. That's the reason for the apology. It has nothing to do with perjury, as no perjury was committed. It's quite likely that the project was illegal under the DMCA. After the takedown notice was sent, we (before any publicity at all) started the process to grant them permission, in order to avoid any potential issues.
The bigger issue here is that the DMCA is a bad law. Yeah, an employee screwed up. He broke policy - we go after pirates, not customers. The fact that a takedown is legal doesn't make it right.
1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed 2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed. 3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.
The employee (the CEO) broke policy - we go after pirates, not customers. That is the reason for the apology. The takedown was legal, but the DMCA is a bad law, and shouldn't be used in this way.
It still was against our corporate policy, hence the apology and reinstatement.
If you look at my posthistory, you will see that this is something that I take very seriously in this company.
Unfortunately, some of the people in the company come from other backgrounds, where things are done differently. I have to keep explaining internally _why_ we don't have EULAs, and why they are a bad thing in the first place. FWIW, the employee who sent this is a former DivX employee - they have a slightly different attitude to IP rights.
I am a Director in the company, and I will not allow CoreCodec to use the DMCA as a bludgeoning tool, no matter how legal it may be. The DMCA is a bad law, and the employee broke policy. The issue has been addressed, the employee has been dealt with, and polices have been put in place to see it doesn't happen again.
The DMCA does, in fact, have exemptions for reverse-engineering, provided that any copyright infringement done is done only to the extent necessary for creating interoperable software.
This was, for example, a lot of the problem with BnetD - they copied some icons that didn't need to be.
The courts have further limited it to things that aren't "circumvention devices" - for example, while DeCSS exists solely for interoperability purposes, it was deemed that that exemption didn't apply.
Regardless, the project has been granted an exemption, making the issue moot. Ultimately, it would be up to the courts to decide whether this qualified, and CoreCodec's policy is to go after pirates, not customers.
I know that CoreAVC claims to be super optimised, but is it really that much better? I have always assumed that they were just milking those Windows users that didn't know of ffdshow.
Yes. In fact, in many cases, we're faster than the hardware acceleration built into the video cards.
I have a demo I like to do where I take a Clevo D900k laptop, downclock it to 1GHZ, and do realtime decoding of 1080p H.264. For high-definition video on older hardware, it really makes a difference. Or, for laptop users, more efficient decoder translates directly to longer battery life.
As for ffmpeg, we're quite aware of it. We used it in the open-source version of our mobile player. It's not that one is "better" than the other - it mainly depends on your needs. If you want "free" (libre) software, ffmpeg is better. If you want every last bit of performance, CoreAVC is the way to go.
We pay a lot of money for patents, and developers have to eat. Our standard version is $8, despite the dollar dropping a lot in value over the past 2 years. That hardly counts as "milking".
FWIW, we did the "donation" game for some time, and had all of our software open-source. It takes developers to make a great product, and hiring people requires money. Given how many people in the SlashDot crowd are paid programmers, it always surprises me how opposed people get to selling software.
They're hoping to avoid a perjury prosecution, and unfortunately it looks like it's going to work.
I've said this a number of times, but here we go again: 1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed 2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed. 3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.
The issue here is a matter of policy - namely, we go after pirates, not customers. That's the reason for the apology. It has nothing to do with perjury, as no perjury was committed. It's quite likely that the project was illegal under the DMCA. After the takedown notice was sent, we (before any publicity at all) started the process to grant them permission, in order to avoid any potential issues.
There were better ways to handle it, but there was no malice involved.
The lawyer sends out the takedown notice under the pain of perjury - so b admitting that the notice was a lie, the lawyer can now be tried in court.
Please, before you post things like this, have the decency to read the facts (and the law).
1) The DMCA states that you must have a "good faith" belief that the rights are being infringed. 2) The DMCA also states that you must certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are believed to infringe.
This is because you can know with certainty who you work for, but it's up to the court to determine whether infringement actually occurred.
Regardless, CoreAVC For Linux does break copy protection, making it potentially a "circumvention device". This is why the DMCA takedown was sent.
That being said, we have a policy of going after pirates, not customers. That is why the takedown was wrong, and why we apologized.
How could he have believed ANYTHING? He didn't verify whether or not it was an infringing item or if it breached a circumvention measure. This isn't a mistake of a nature that would have been viewed kindly by a Court in the old way of doing things.
For what it's worth, CoreAVC for Linux does, in fact break the copy protection in CoreAVC. This potentially makes it a "circumvention device".
That being said, it is our policy to go after pirates, not customers. As such, this DMCA takedown was legally valid, but against our policy. Controls have been put in place to ensure it doesn't happen again.
I have to think that this is just massive damage control. Imagine what their inboxes looked like over this fiasco
No, this wasn't just "damage control". We reallydo care about user's rights.
The CoreAVC on Linux project did break the copy protection in CoreAVC; a DMCA takedown was sent because of this, despite our internal policy of going after pirates, not customers. I _personally_ called up the person responsable at 4AM, and reamed him a new one. As long as I am a director in the company, I will not allow this sort of stuff to go on. It is a violation of policy, and poor business practice. We go after pirates, not customers.
Including dongeling it to your current hardware config. Actually, it's tied to the windows product ID. Re-install windows, and the old serial number still works just fine.
This is designed to be "unique enough" that users can't copy all over the place, and was a direct response to the codec being used in large numbers of "Codec Packs".
Nuff said on "CEO" claim. And it's about as Inc. as my toosh. This is a fly-by-night outfight that lies, cheats, steals, and covers it up as best he (betaboy) can. Only thing is, he's an idiot that lies so much he can't keep it straight himself. Those that uncover this are banned and forum threads deleted. Inc.? Webpage cites registered trademark status but nowhere is such a trademark registered. Webpage cites patents pending, but patents pending on what? It's all a sham based on previously-done but modified open source projects.
And you who claim to be "director", you have a real name?
It would appear that you're re-posting the same troll, so I'm going to link to my answer to the last one. Yes, I have a name - it's in the post.
Although you are an anonymous coward, I am still going to respond. Perhaps I'm feeding a troll here, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
For the record, my name is Carlos Averett. I'm not particularly hard to find - I used to go by "cyt0plas" here and on other sites. I have anti-EULA posts going back several years.
Nuff said on "CEO" claim. And it's about as Inc. as my toosh. The CEO, "betaboy", as you put it, is Dan Marlin. I'm sorry if his handle isn't "manly" enough for you. As for the ",Inc." part, we are incorporated. It is part of the legal name, and serves to identify that this is a legal entity, and that it is a corporation (as opposed to, for example, an LLC.)
This is a fly-by-night outfight that lies, cheats, steals, and covers it up as best he (betaboy) can. This is a strange claim to make - our customers come by the web site, and buy our products. Our products do what they claim to do, and Do them very well. We have never refused to give a refund. If selling software is "theft", I guess we stand guilty.
As for the "fly-by-night" aspect, we have multimedia software (written by us) for PalmOS, Symbian, Linux, OS X, Windows CE/Mobile, and Windows NT2+. We run on ARM, MIPS, x86, x64. This is the result of years and years of in-house development.
Only thing is, he's an idiot that lies so much he can't keep it straight himself. We're a company, and made up of a number of different people. Sometimes, this leads to differences of opinion and/or policy. It happens. Since I am not, for example, Dan Marlin, you shouldn't really be surprised if he says different things than me. If you really don't believe it, our "Contact US" page is at http://www.corecodec.com/contact-us.html . Heck, we can set up a conference call.
Those that uncover this are banned and forum threads deleted. Disjointed, irrelevant, factually incorrect threads (such as this one) get deleted in our forums. A couple of Google searches show your post to be utterly false. So, don't be surprised when we delete threads like this from our forums. It's hardly some "mass censorship" on our part when we delete posts by trolls.
Webpage cites registered trademark status but nowhere is such a trademark registered. Well, this one is bogus. Check Tess if you don't believe me. Do an advanced search for "CoreCodec". We currently hold trademarks on Matroska, CoreAVC, CoreCodec, BetaPlayer, CorePlayer, CorePhone, CoreOS, and the CoreCodec logo.
It's all a sham based on previously-done but modified open source projects. We wrote players. The (mobile) players originally used open-source decoders, and were released as open-source. The decoders were slow.
We have some phenomenal developers, and developers (unsurprisingly) want to be paid. Good developers want to be paid well. It happens, and that's a good thing. So, we re-did the decoders, removed all the open-source code, paid all the patent fees, and put out a legal player that can be used by companies, and in products. It's more efficient than any other software product, and often faster than hardware solutions on the same device (Google "CoreAVC Benchmarks") if you don't believe me.
Some of our projects are still open-source (Matroska, for example), and we are in the process of reworking and releasing several of our internal projects (Enterprise-grade Certificate Authority) as open-source. I make no apologies for wanting to pay the developers well - they certainly earn it. This does take money, and selling software is a reasonable way to earn it.
Technically, this project didn't contain CoreAVC code. It did, however, break the copy protection in such a way that it was possibly a "circumvention device" under the DMCA. CoreAVC for linux could be copied to any of a number of computers without the copy protection kicking in.
That being said, we have a corporate policy of being Anti-EULA, and Pro-End User. The DMCA takedown was done in good faith, but it was slightly excessive. The employee who sent the takedown (the CEO) went through the process of granting permission after the takedown, not because of any bad publicity, but rather because he felt it was technically illegal, but not morally objectionable.
There were better ways to handle this particular case, but there was no fraud, deceit, bad faith, or any attempt to shut down alternative uses of our software. We host (and produce) open-source code, and have absolutely no problem with our customers using their purchased software as they desire, providing they aren't distributing more copies than they purchased, or distributing modified versions of our (non-open-source) code.
FWIW, we have a Linux version in the works - we have no objection to Linux, or even to our customers making the Windows version working on Linux. They are, after all, still our customers.
Well, CoreAVC is "advanced technology" - we're the fastest commercially available software H.264 decoder.
As for being "anti-linux", that's certainly not the case. We have ported our software to the iPhone, OS X, Linux, etc.
The main reason for not selling a Linux version of the software yet is that there are a lot of distributions and players to support, and a lot of testing to do. We have one working internally, and will be selling it when we get it up to the same quality and reliability as our other products.
As I stated elsewhere in this thread, the DMCA requires a statement that you have a "good faith" belief that the use is infringing, and certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the company holding the rights that are infringed.
CoreAVC for linux involved reverse-engineering of the copy protection in CoreAVC, and hard-coding serial numbers for Windows and CoreAVC in a virtual registry to bypass such copy protection. Now, the DMCA does offer an exemption for reverse-engineering for the purposes of creating interoperable software, provided such use isn't itself a "circumvention device". The CEO was under the impression that CoreAVC for linux was, in fact, violating the DMCA. Ultimately, it would be up to a court to decide. He had a good-faith belief this was infringing, and after the takedown was sent, he took steps to get them permission so it could be restored. Unfortunately, failure to protect your IP can make it difficult to enforce in other cases.
Whether or not it was technically a violation, the sending of the DMCA in this particular case was not appropriate. We have a very user-friendly approach to copyright law, and our "EULA" is designed around this philosophy. We believe in going after pirates, not customers that are using the software in unusual ways. Unfortunately, it's difficult to have a company where everyone has the knowledge of an IP attorney, especially given we have people in France, Hungary, the US, and other countries. Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, state to state.
The DMCA is very much broken, but this takedown notice was not in keeping with company policy. An employee got a little ahead of himself.
The US future may be fixable, but between the food shortages, and the housing crisis, our economy (and our freedoms) aren't getting fixed anytime soon.
Of course, we're in good company - given the 681 TRILLION derivatives market, it's going to take the entire world economy with us.
They are issued under penalty of perjury. So if you just don't like the name because you think it violates your trademark, issuing a takedown notice is not a good idea.
The DMCA takedown had nothing to do with perjury; rather, it had to do with reverse-engineering and the fact that the software hard-codes a serial number to bypass copy protection, potentially making it a "circumvention device".
It was still done by an overzealous employee, and was a mistake.
FWIW, if you read the DMCA:
(3) Elements of notification. --
(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following:
(v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
In other words, a DMCA requires a statement under penalty of perjury that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner, and a "good faith" belief that the use is infringing.
Since this claim was made under the DMCA, he would have had to be reverse engineering something related to copy protection. Perhaps there is some sort of product activation that had to be hacked around to get the codec working on a non-windows platform?
CoreAVC features copy protection. With CoreAVC for linux, they hard-code the windows product ID, and the serial # in a "Virtual" registry. Technically, it's a violation of the DMCA in the sense that it's potentially a "circumvention device". It would probably fit under the exemption for reverse-engineering for the purpose of creating interoperable software. That being said, the DMCA takedown was the result of an overzealous employee, and should not have been sent.
Its use of takedown notices to suppress Linux and other OSS operating systems ability to get advanced technology because if the OSS OSes gain traction they could lose the control they have over multimedia and users could regain fair use rights.
Um, no.
The takedown had nothing at all to do with Microsoft, Linux, or DRM. CoreCodec has no problem with "fair use" rights, and uses no DRM in their decoders. So, since CoreAVC doesn't support DRM on Windows, why would it matter if it's ported to Linux?
Seems there was evidence the writer of CoreAVC-for-linux reverse engineered their codec to get his patch working, they have since given him permission to do so, the DMCA take-down has been withdrawn.
Although it was reverse-engineered, US case law protects the right to reverse-engineer. The DMCA also offers specific exemptions for reverse-engineering for the purpose of creating interoperable software, provided such use is not for the purposes of a "circumvention device". The takedown was the result of an overzealous employee, and should not have happened.
An official statement will be coming out later today.
A gigabyte is exactly one billion bites, hence the name "Giga".
Um, no. A kilobyte is exactly 1024 bytes. It's "close enough" to 1000, hence the term "kilo". Why bother making up a whole bunch of new prefixes when there's one that already exists, especially given that it's blindingly obvious that the original meaning makes no sense in context?
Since measurements are conventions of man to begin with, they mean what people define them to mean. The original definition of kilobyte was 1024, since 1000 bytes is an largely useless number in base 2. If we were working in base 10, it would make sense. Terms are redefined based on context all the time - after all, what does a "metric tonne" have to do with pounds, anyway? As in this case, there was a term (ton) that was "close enough" to what they wanted, so they used it.
Once they were (wrongly or not) used and understood to mean 1024, saying "kilo always means 1000, and can never mean anything else" is senseless pedantry.
Creative (and other companies) attempted to redefine a commonly used and understood term, and did so for the purpose of making their product appear to be larger than it actually was. It was not done because it provided a more meaningful, or useful measurement. It made the companies that did it look bigger than the companies that didn't, and everyone decided to play "keep up with the joneses".
The unfortunate consequence is that people have had the EULA wool pulled over their eyes for so long, that it has become accepted practice. Accepted enough that courts (in the US at least) seem to feel compelled to allow them to continue to be used (abused?) this way.
That's why with my software company, I don't let them do EULAs, and yell at them when I catch them trying. Sometimes, we're contractually obligated (patent licenses, mainly) to throw some things in, but those are rare.
FWIW, I just found out that the latest windows release has one in it - I'm going to make sure it's removed.
I'm thinking of using something along the lines of:
This is a license, not a contract. You are not required to accept it.
If you have purchased this software, you have the right to use it.
For jurisdictions which require a license to utilize computer software, we grant you a license to perform any action which would be permitted under United States copyright law.
US copyright law protects the right to reverse-engineer, modify, and sell or otherwise transfer your software.
US copyright law does not permit distribution of more copies than you have purchased, nor to distribution of modified "derivative works".
This software comes with no warranties, to the maximum extent permitted by law.
Easy. If your password is "secret", type "s", then something random, like "jd#'2;Knfn>", then highlight those last characters (except for the "s"), and type "e". Continue until done. Takes a while but is fairly safe. No, not really. I wrote a keylogger a number of years back, and it monitored changes in both text selection and the clipboard, as well as keypresses and window title changes. This was done in VB a _long_ time ago (GetAsyncKeyState API, or something like that) - doing it in a modern programming language is easy.
I've also seen keyloggers that hook in to the Microsoft CryptoAPI - when you submit a form using SSL (in IE, etc.) - it actually pulls out the input from the form fields by parsing the HTTP request headers.
Slashdot Mirror
I've said this a number of times, but here we go again:
1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed
2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed.
3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.
The issue here is a matter of policy - namely, we go after pirates, not customers. That's the reason for the apology. It has nothing to do with perjury, as no perjury was committed. It's quite likely that the project was illegal under the DMCA. After the takedown notice was sent, we (before any publicity at all) started the process to grant them permission, in order to avoid any potential issues.
The bigger issue here is that the DMCA is a bad law. Yeah, an employee screwed up. He broke policy - we go after pirates, not customers. The fact that a takedown is legal doesn't make it right.
1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed
2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed.
3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.
The employee (the CEO) broke policy - we go after pirates, not customers. That is the reason for the apology. The takedown was legal, but the DMCA is a bad law, and shouldn't be used in this way.
There was no circumvention of protection measures.
Yes, actually, there was.
It still was against our corporate policy, hence the apology and reinstatement.
If you look at my post history, you will see that this is something that I take very seriously in this company.
Unfortunately, some of the people in the company come from other backgrounds, where things are done differently. I have to keep explaining internally _why_ we don't have EULAs, and why they are a bad thing in the first place. FWIW, the employee who sent this is a former DivX employee - they have a slightly different attitude to IP rights.
I am a Director in the company, and I will not allow CoreCodec to use the DMCA as a bludgeoning tool, no matter how legal it may be. The DMCA is a bad law, and the employee broke policy. The issue has been addressed, the employee has been dealt with, and polices have been put in place to see it doesn't happen again.
The parent post is correct.
The DMCA does, in fact, have exemptions for reverse-engineering, provided that any copyright infringement done is done only to the extent necessary for creating interoperable software.
This was, for example, a lot of the problem with BnetD - they copied some icons that didn't need to be.
The courts have further limited it to things that aren't "circumvention devices" - for example, while DeCSS exists solely for interoperability purposes, it was deemed that that exemption didn't apply.
Regardless, the project has been granted an exemption, making the issue moot. Ultimately, it would be up to the courts to decide whether this qualified, and CoreCodec's policy is to go after pirates, not customers.
The project is re-instated.
I know that CoreAVC claims to be super optimised, but is it really that much better? I have always assumed that they were just milking those Windows users that didn't know of ffdshow.
Yes. In fact, in many cases, we're faster than the hardware acceleration built into the video cards.
I have a demo I like to do where I take a Clevo D900k laptop, downclock it to 1GHZ, and do realtime decoding of 1080p H.264. For high-definition video on older hardware, it really makes a difference. Or, for laptop users, more efficient decoder translates directly to longer battery life.
As for ffmpeg, we're quite aware of it. We used it in the open-source version of our mobile player. It's not that one is "better" than the other - it mainly depends on your needs. If you want "free" (libre) software, ffmpeg is better. If you want every last bit of performance, CoreAVC is the way to go.
We pay a lot of money for patents, and developers have to eat. Our standard version is $8, despite the dollar dropping a lot in value over the past 2 years. That hardly counts as "milking".
FWIW, we did the "donation" game for some time, and had all of our software open-source. It takes developers to make a great product, and hiring people requires money. Given how many people in the SlashDot crowd are paid programmers, it always surprises me how opposed people get to selling software.
They're hoping to avoid a perjury prosecution, and unfortunately it looks like it's going to work.
I've said this a number of times, but here we go again:
1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed
2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed.
3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.
The issue here is a matter of policy - namely, we go after pirates, not customers. That's the reason for the apology. It has nothing to do with perjury, as no perjury was committed. It's quite likely that the project was illegal under the DMCA. After the takedown notice was sent, we (before any publicity at all) started the process to grant them permission, in order to avoid any potential issues.
There were better ways to handle it, but there was no malice involved.
The lawyer sends out the takedown notice under the pain of perjury - so b admitting that the notice was a lie, the lawyer can now be tried in court.
Please, before you post things like this, have the decency to read the facts (and the law).
1) The DMCA states that you must have a "good faith" belief that the rights are being infringed.
2) The DMCA also states that you must certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are believed to infringe.
This is because you can know with certainty who you work for, but it's up to the court to determine whether infringement actually occurred.
Regardless, CoreAVC For Linux does break copy protection, making it potentially a "circumvention device". This is why the DMCA takedown was sent.
That being said, we have a policy of going after pirates, not customers. That is why the takedown was wrong, and why we apologized.
How could he have believed ANYTHING? He didn't verify whether or not it was an infringing item or if it breached a circumvention measure. This isn't a mistake of a nature that would have been viewed kindly by a Court in the old way of doing things.
For what it's worth, CoreAVC for Linux does, in fact break the copy protection in CoreAVC. This potentially makes it a "circumvention device".
That being said, it is our policy to go after pirates, not customers. As such, this DMCA takedown was legally valid, but against our policy. Controls have been put in place to ensure it doesn't happen again.
I have to think that this is just massive damage control. Imagine what their inboxes looked like over this fiasco
No, this wasn't just "damage control". We really do care about user's rights.
The CoreAVC on Linux project did break the copy protection in CoreAVC; a DMCA takedown was sent because of this, despite our internal policy of going after pirates, not customers. I _personally_ called up the person responsable at 4AM, and reamed him a new one. As long as I am a director in the company, I will not allow this sort of stuff to go on. It is a violation of policy, and poor business practice. We go after pirates, not customers.
Including dongeling it to your current hardware config.
Actually, it's tied to the windows product ID. Re-install windows, and the old serial number still works just fine.
This is designed to be "unique enough" that users can't copy all over the place, and was a direct response to the codec being used in large numbers of "Codec Packs".
It would appear that you're re-posting the same troll, so I'm going to link to my answer to the last one. Yes, I have a name - it's in the post.
Although you are an anonymous coward, I am still going to respond. Perhaps I'm feeding a troll here, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
For the record, my name is Carlos Averett. I'm not particularly hard to find - I used to go by "cyt0plas" here and on other sites. I have anti-EULA posts going back several years.
Nuff said on "CEO" claim. And it's about as Inc. as my toosh.
The CEO, "betaboy", as you put it, is Dan Marlin. I'm sorry if his handle isn't "manly" enough for you. As for the ",Inc." part, we are incorporated. It is part of the legal name, and serves to identify that this is a legal entity, and that it is a corporation (as opposed to, for example, an LLC.)
This is a fly-by-night outfight that lies, cheats, steals, and covers it up as best he (betaboy) can.
This is a strange claim to make - our customers come by the web site, and buy our products. Our products do what they claim to do, and Do them very well. We have never refused to give a refund. If selling software is "theft", I guess we stand guilty.
As for the "fly-by-night" aspect, we have multimedia software (written by us) for PalmOS, Symbian, Linux, OS X, Windows CE/Mobile, and Windows NT2+. We run on ARM, MIPS, x86, x64. This is the result of years and years of in-house development.
Only thing is, he's an idiot that lies so much he can't keep it straight himself.
We're a company, and made up of a number of different people. Sometimes, this leads to differences of opinion and/or policy. It happens. Since I am not, for example, Dan Marlin, you shouldn't really be surprised if he says different things than me. If you really don't believe it, our "Contact US" page is at http://www.corecodec.com/contact-us.html . Heck, we can set up a conference call.
Those that uncover this are banned and forum threads deleted.
Disjointed, irrelevant, factually incorrect threads (such as this one) get deleted in our forums. A couple of Google searches show your post to be utterly false. So, don't be surprised when we delete threads like this from our forums. It's hardly some "mass censorship" on our part when we delete posts by trolls.
Webpage cites registered trademark status but nowhere is such a trademark registered.
Well, this one is bogus. Check Tess if you don't believe me. Do an advanced search for "CoreCodec". We currently hold trademarks on Matroska, CoreAVC, CoreCodec, BetaPlayer, CorePlayer, CorePhone, CoreOS, and the CoreCodec logo.
It's all a sham based on previously-done but modified open source projects.
We wrote players. The (mobile) players originally used open-source decoders, and were released as open-source. The decoders were slow.
We have some phenomenal developers, and developers (unsurprisingly) want to be paid. Good developers want to be paid well. It happens, and that's a good thing. So, we re-did the decoders, removed all the open-source code, paid all the patent fees, and put out a legal player that can be used by companies, and in products. It's more efficient than any other software product, and often faster than hardware solutions on the same device (Google "CoreAVC Benchmarks") if you don't believe me.
Some of our projects are still open-source (Matroska, for example), and we are in the process of reworking and releasing several of our internal projects (Enterprise-grade Certificate Authority) as open-source. I make no apologies for wanting to pay the developers well - they certainly earn it. This does take money, and selling software is a reasonable way to earn it.
I am a Director for CoreCodec, Inc.
Technically, this project didn't contain CoreAVC code. It did, however, break the copy protection in such a way that it was possibly a "circumvention device" under the DMCA. CoreAVC for linux could be copied to any of a number of computers without the copy protection kicking in.
That being said, we have a corporate policy of being Anti-EULA, and Pro-End User. The DMCA takedown was done in good faith, but it was slightly excessive. The employee who sent the takedown (the CEO) went through the process of granting permission after the takedown, not because of any bad publicity, but rather because he felt it was technically illegal, but not morally objectionable.
There were better ways to handle this particular case, but there was no fraud, deceit, bad faith, or any attempt to shut down alternative uses of our software. We host (and produce) open-source code, and have absolutely no problem with our customers using their purchased software as they desire, providing they aren't distributing more copies than they purchased, or distributing modified versions of our (non-open-source) code.
FWIW, we have a Linux version in the works - we have no objection to Linux, or even to our customers making the Windows version working on Linux. They are, after all, still our customers.
Well, CoreAVC is "advanced technology" - we're the fastest commercially available software H.264 decoder.
As for being "anti-linux", that's certainly not the case. We have ported our software to the iPhone, OS X, Linux, etc.
The main reason for not selling a Linux version of the software yet is that there are a lot of distributions and players to support, and a lot of testing to do. We have one working internally, and will be selling it when we get it up to the same quality and reliability as our other products.
I am a Director for CoreCodec, Inc.
The CEO is, in fact, an employee, as am I.
As I stated elsewhere in this thread, the DMCA requires a statement that you have a "good faith" belief that the use is infringing, and certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the company holding the rights that are infringed.
CoreAVC for linux involved reverse-engineering of the copy protection in CoreAVC, and hard-coding serial numbers for Windows and CoreAVC in a virtual registry to bypass such copy protection. Now, the DMCA does offer an exemption for reverse-engineering for the purposes of creating interoperable software, provided such use isn't itself a "circumvention device". The CEO was under the impression that CoreAVC for linux was, in fact, violating the DMCA. Ultimately, it would be up to a court to decide. He had a good-faith belief this was infringing, and after the takedown was sent, he took steps to get them permission so it could be restored. Unfortunately, failure to protect your IP can make it difficult to enforce in other cases.
Whether or not it was technically a violation, the sending of the DMCA in this particular case was not appropriate. We have a very user-friendly approach to copyright law, and our "EULA" is designed around this philosophy. We believe in going after pirates, not customers that are using the software in unusual ways. Unfortunately, it's difficult to have a company where everyone has the knowledge of an IP attorney, especially given we have people in France, Hungary, the US, and other countries. Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, state to state.
The DMCA is very much broken, but this takedown notice was not in keeping with company policy. An employee got a little ahead of himself.
The US future may be fixable, but between the food shortages, and the housing crisis, our economy (and our freedoms) aren't getting fixed anytime soon.
Of course, we're in good company - given the 681 TRILLION derivatives market, it's going to take the entire world economy with us.
Ow.
The DMCA takedown had nothing to do with perjury; rather, it had to do with reverse-engineering and the fact that the software hard-codes a serial number to bypass copy protection, potentially making it a "circumvention device".
It was still done by an overzealous employee, and was a mistake.
FWIW, if you read the DMCA:
In other words, a DMCA requires a statement under penalty of perjury that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner, and a "good faith" belief that the use is infringing.
Since this claim was made under the DMCA, he would have had to be reverse engineering something related to copy protection. Perhaps there is some sort of product activation that had to be hacked around to get the codec working on a non-windows platform?
CoreAVC features copy protection. With CoreAVC for linux, they hard-code the windows product ID, and the serial # in a "Virtual" registry. Technically, it's a violation of the DMCA in the sense that it's potentially a "circumvention device". It would probably fit under the exemption for reverse-engineering for the purpose of creating interoperable software. That being said, the DMCA takedown was the result of an overzealous employee, and should not have been sent.
Its use of takedown notices to suppress Linux and other OSS operating systems ability to get advanced technology because if the OSS OSes gain traction they could lose the control they have over multimedia and users could regain fair use rights.
Um, no.
The takedown had nothing at all to do with Microsoft, Linux, or DRM. CoreCodec has no problem with "fair use" rights, and uses no DRM in their decoders. So, since CoreAVC doesn't support DRM on Windows, why would it matter if it's ported to Linux?
It had nothing to do with trademarks. An overzealous employee was under the (mistaken) belief that reverse-engineering is illegal.
Well, perhaps they should host on CoreCodec's CoreForge open-source hosting site instead.
Seems there was evidence the writer of CoreAVC-for-linux reverse engineered their codec to get his patch working, they have since given him permission to do so, the DMCA take-down has been withdrawn.
Although it was reverse-engineered, US case law protects the right to reverse-engineer. The DMCA also offers specific exemptions for reverse-engineering for the purpose of creating interoperable software, provided such use is not for the purposes of a "circumvention device". The takedown was the result of an overzealous employee, and should not have happened.
An official statement will be coming out later today.
A gigabyte is exactly one billion bites, hence the name "Giga".
Um, no. A kilobyte is exactly 1024 bytes. It's "close enough" to 1000, hence the term "kilo". Why bother making up a whole bunch of new prefixes when there's one that already exists, especially given that it's blindingly obvious that the original meaning makes no sense in context?
Since measurements are conventions of man to begin with, they mean what people define them to mean. The original definition of kilobyte was 1024, since 1000 bytes is an largely useless number in base 2. If we were working in base 10, it would make sense. Terms are redefined based on context all the time - after all, what does a "metric tonne" have to do with pounds, anyway? As in this case, there was a term (ton) that was "close enough" to what they wanted, so they used it.
Once they were (wrongly or not) used and understood to mean 1024, saying "kilo always means 1000, and can never mean anything else" is senseless pedantry.
Creative (and other companies) attempted to redefine a commonly used and understood term, and did so for the purpose of making their product appear to be larger than it actually was. It was not done because it provided a more meaningful, or useful measurement. It made the companies that did it look bigger than the companies that didn't, and everyone decided to play "keep up with the joneses".
That's why with my software company, I don't let them do EULAs, and yell at them when I catch them trying. Sometimes, we're contractually obligated (patent licenses, mainly) to throw some things in, but those are rare.
FWIW, I just found out that the latest windows release has one in it - I'm going to make sure it's removed.
I'm thinking of using something along the lines of: This is a license, not a contract. You are not required to accept it.
If you have purchased this software, you have the right to use it.
For jurisdictions which require a license to utilize computer software, we grant you a license to perform any action which would be permitted under United States copyright law.
US copyright law protects the right to reverse-engineer, modify, and sell or otherwise transfer your software.
US copyright law does not permit distribution of more copies than you have purchased, nor to distribution of modified "derivative works".
This software comes with no warranties, to the maximum extent permitted by law.
I've also seen keyloggers that hook in to the Microsoft CryptoAPI - when you submit a form using SSL (in IE, etc.) - it actually pulls out the input from the form fields by parsing the HTTP request headers.