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The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

iis.fraunhofer.de

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Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#251

Post by hackinthebochs »

bogositosius wrote: post #213
hackinthebochs wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that person now has to sell their idea packaged in a finished product to see any return on their idea. If you could patent it and license it, you could make money on the idea while leaving the work of developing a polished product to the experts at delivering products to end users.

Ideas in the software world are essentially worthless. Execution (your ability to implement the idea) is what actually matters. So, forgive me if I'm not losing sleep over the person who has to actually do work to see "return on their idea."

The same can be said about inventions in any sphere. But that's exactly what patents correct for; to give value to ideas independent of them being productized. And so your point is not at all an argument against software patents.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#252

Post by hackinthebochs »

bogositosius wrote: post #211
hackinthebochs wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debating software patents with silicon valley types is a losing battle. They're the types who would stand to profit from someones non-obvious software invention not being patentable, and so most such people are unsurprisingly against software patents. There's little nuance involved beyond that.

What is a "Silicon Valley type"?

People who see themselves as entrepreneurs/hustlers/hackers, in contrast to scientists/inventors/researchers.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#253

Post by pgeorgi »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #143
TD-Linux wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not believing in software patents is unlikely to change a court's mind. Instead, support formats that are royalty free from the start - Vorbis, Opus, and Codec2, for example.

The major trouble with patents, and the thing that puts them in a special category of nuisance all of their own, is that it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered until each particular claim to the contrary has been hashed out in court, at ruinous expense. And there is no legal proscription against patent owners letting you think you were safe for years, and then popping up to cream off the f…

"it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered until each particular claim to the contrary has been hashed out in court, at ruinous expense"

That applies to MP3 (and all of MPEG and other 'licensed' systems) as well. See for example Sisvel's MP3 related patents that led to raids on MP3 players at the Cebit fair.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#254

Post by midnightclubbed »

rangibaby wrote: post #204
midnightclubbed wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conker's Bad Fur Day. I dont think Perfect Dark used that code, they used adpcm for their speech as I remember.

The reason I mentioned it is I distinctly remembered the MP3 copyright notice from the first screen of the game: https://i.warosu.org/data/vr/img/0015/50/1397802118061.png

Haha, I guess they did use my mp3 code - your memory is better than mine!

I see they have the Miles audio copyright in there too despite not only using it for the mp3 license.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#255

Post by iplaw »

cookiecaper wrote: post #69
magila wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy doesn't quite fit. Copyright covers both the source code, which is more analogous to the schematics than the manual, and the binaries. If a physical machine is not under patent protection you can strait up copy it and start manufacturing your own version. With software you have to go through an extra "clean room" step to get around copyright. In practice the clean room reverse engineering process is rare…

Yes, this is a major issue in copyright law. In practice, there is no distinction between the patent-eligible invention (the machine) and the copyright-eligible "creative work" (the manual, or the code, in this case). That means that copyrights can be exerted in very menacing ways, like requiring users to bypass a copy protection mechanism in order to do required maintenance, as John Deere has done. That enables John…

Saying that there is no distinction isn't correct.

The scope of a patent is much broader than a single coded implementation. The copyright doesn't protect the functional aspects of the code, it only protects it as a written work. However, companies have managed to twist the concept of infringement via reproduction, and bypassing of copy protection.

Accessing a copy of code stored in memory is now considered creation of an unauthorized reproduction, bypassing copy protection under DMCA, and/or the like.

This type of protection shouldn't exist apart from preventing partial and wholesale copying and redistribution, paralleling the treatment of novels, etc. If I own a novel, I can do whatever I want to do with that book. I can write on it, annotate the margins, remove pages, make photocopies of parts of the book for personal use, etc.

With code, I can't do this? Why?

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#256

Post by NoGravitas »

voltagex_ wrote: post #125
TD-Linux wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If buying from iTunes, you can choose ALAC, which is royalty free. Patent-encumbered audio codecs are popular at this point because of network effects, not technical superiority. There are many ways to reduce the network effect, even without changing music buying habits. For example If you're a website designer, include a royalty-free audio format as one of your srcs. As a bonus, you'll save some bandwidth.

How do I "choose" ALAC? I thought only select albums were available losslessly. Support Bandcamp. Support Databeats (storefront for many drum 'n' bass labels). Hell, support Beatport and Juno, even though they insist on huge markups for WAV/FLAC.

I'm loving Bandcamp so much. Buy an album once, you get FLAC, plus any other formats you might want (yes, you can always encode FLAC to anything else, but the convenience of just downloading the oggs is nice). I can't imagine buying music from anywhere that doesn't do this now.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#257

Post by NoGravitas »

virmundi wrote: post #141
microwavecamera wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your right and it works. People used to say the same thing about Linux and open source software.

I wish that worked here. You'd have to establish an open source media group with direct hooks into the i* platform. Then you'd have to get major acts on that platform.

No one is making you use that platform?

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#258

Post by robotresearcher »

beedogs wrote: post #173
TD-Linux wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not believing in software patents is unlikely to change a court's mind. Instead, support formats that are royalty free from the start - Vorbis, Opus, and Codec2, for example.

Or just keep using MP3 and ignoring these idiotic patents. This has worked for me for 20 years; why would I do anything differently now?

You are paying for the patents whether you ignore them or not.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#259

Post by paulrpotts »

wfunction wrote: post #180
ryukafalz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest thing, IMO, is just to buy your music on CD and rip it to a free format yourself. Some indie artists release their work online in free formats, but for mainstream artists a physical copy is often the only way.

And pay like 10x more + shipping because you only wanted 1 song on the CD?

I'm not saying it is ideal, but the used CD market is hugely depressed right now. I buy a ton of used CDs at various downscale businesses and rip them into iTunes with Apple Lossless. Some of the stores will run them through the disc cleaner/polisher as a matter of course and they rip fine.

I'd love to be able to buy DRM-free 24/96 lossless versions of all the music I actually want but buying used CDs for under $2 apiece seems like a reasonable compromise to me. For the moment if I can't find particular albums on CD in the used market I either buy them from eBay sellers or do without. The remaining chain retail vendors for CDs such as Best Buy have a pretty hopelessly bad selection these days.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#260

Post by chc »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #251
bogositosius wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas in the software world are essentially worthless. Execution (your ability to implement the idea) is what actually matters. So, forgive me if I'm not losing sleep over the person who has to actually do work to see "return on their idea."

The same can be said about inventions in any sphere. But that's exactly what patents correct for; to give value to ideas independent of them being productized. And so your point is not at all an argument against software patents.

Patents are not meant to be a way to stake a claim on an idea (https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/can-you-patent-an-idea) — they're a system where you get a temporary monopoly in exchange for sharing a novel, non-obvious and non-abstract invention.
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