Licensing of mp3 decoders
Hi folks, as a part of my Application i looked at the mpg123 package and took also a look to mpg321. Inside of this analysis i took a look to the homepage of thompson. There is a pricing list for every decoder that is able to play mp3 files [1]. This means for every decoder program round about 0.75 $ for every copy of the decoder. I wasn't able to find any exception of this fee. According to the DFSG this makes every mp3 decoder non-free or even undistributable. Searching through debian-legal archives I wasn't able to find any good answer why we are contrary to the regulations of the mp3 patent. Maybe (I'm not sure about this) we could move mpg321 to non-US but I don't think this makes mp3 decoders more legal. Currently its not the practise of thompsons to ask developers of free mp3 decoders for a fee, but this could change in the future. So we need a solution of this problem. formorer [1] http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/index.html -- Alexander "formorer" Wirt KeyID: BC7D020A EMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 28651245 WWW: http://www.formorer.de Encrypted and Signed Email preferred. signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil
Re: Licensing of mp3 decoders
On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 02:38:42PM +0200, Alexander Wirt wrote: > as a part of my Application i looked at the mpg123 package and took also > a look to mpg321. Inside of this analysis i took a look to the homepage > of thompson. There is a pricing list for every decoder that is able to > play mp3 files [1]. This means for every decoder program round about > 0.75 $ for every copy of the decoder. I wasn't able to find any > exception of this fee. Those are fees for people who are using their patents. Their patents are on mp3 encoding, not decoding. We don't ship any mp3 encoders, thusly we are not bound to follow their royalty scheme (and frankly, it's highly dubious whether anybody is; people pay because they're stupid and don't want to fight it in court). > According to the DFSG this makes every mp3 decoder non-free or even > undistributable. It doesn't, actually. Although it might make it non-distributable under US law, and some other countries which honour the relevant patents. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing, `. `' | Imperial College, `- -><- | London, UK pgp9CRSfkf1Dj.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Licensing of mp3 decoders
Am Son, 2003-05-11 um 15.49 schrieb Andrew Suffield: > On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 02:38:42PM +0200, Alexander Wirt wrote: > > as a part of my Application i looked at the mpg123 package and took also > > a look to mpg321. Inside of this analysis i took a look to the homepage > > of thompson. There is a pricing list for every decoder that is able to > > play mp3 files [1]. This means for every decoder program round about > > 0.75 $ for every copy of the decoder. I wasn't able to find any > > exception of this fee. > > Those are fees for people who are using their patents. Their patents > are on mp3 encoding, not decoding. We don't ship any mp3 encoders, > thusly we are not bound to follow their royalty scheme (and frankly, > it's highly dubious whether anybody is; people pay because they're > stupid and don't want to fight it in court). > Thats a point where I'm not sure. Thompson sayed they could get the fee, also for decoders. So I think if not removing, we should, at least, move any decoder to non-US. Far away from the US Law :) > > According to the DFSG this makes every mp3 decoder non-free or even > > undistributable. > > It doesn't, actually. Although it might make it non-distributable > under US law, and some other countries which honour the relevant > patents. As I said above alex -- Alexander "formorer" Wirt KeyID: BC7D020A EMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 28651245 WWW: http://www.formorer.de Encrypted and Signed Email preferred. signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software? (Was: query from Georg Greve of GNU about Debian's opinion of the FDL
Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Note that the "distortion or mutilation" has to hurt the > > honor or reputation of the author. Here in the Netherlands > > this is the case if the owner of a house decides to put up > > new blinds in a color the architect does not like. > > Since people will know this wasn't the architect's design, how does it > damage his honor or reputation? People that pass by the house do not know whether the blinds were the architect's design or not. They might remember that the house was designed by him, and then conclude that he was very stupid for putting those ugly blinds on the house. And that thus harms his reputation. It's extremely silly but that's the argument. Dutch lawyers may want to look it up: Gerechtshof 's Hertogenbosch 24 feb 1993, AMI 1994, 116. The court noted that demolishing the house would not violate the architect's moral rights. This has been used in some cases to force architects to accept certain changes. Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > As I read the law, it says that there are some rights over the work > which the artist *cannot* renounce. You would have it that if the > artist uses a certain form of license, the rights have been > effectively renounced. If that were a correct interpretation, then > there would be nothing that cannot be renounced. Moral rights indeed cannot be renounced. The motivation is that if they could, every author would be forced to renounce them every time. Moral rights are restricted in that the courts must find the violation must harm the author's honor or reputation. This is not the same as being able to restrict all forms of reuse. I would say that with free software, a modified verison of the program adds to the author's honor, since honor and reputation in the free software community are based on your code and its reuse. > The purpose of the law is, for example, to say that if an artist sells > a painting, the purchaser cannot tear it up, destroy it, sprinkle more > paint across the surface, and the like. A recent post also gave the > example of an architect, who can prevent the homeowner from making > changes that violate the "integrity" of his work. If it harms the author's reputation, he has the right to stop the modification. The basis of author's rights is that an author is the "owner" of a work. It's not just a government-granted temporary monopoly, but a natural right to control a work. > Now the law says that the artist *cannot* relinquish this right. He > has a *permanent* right to prevent such things being done with his > work, and that this *permanent* right is one that his heirs can > inherit. The law says that the artist *cannot* sell this right. He > has it *no matter what*. As far as I know, the heirs must follow the author's intentions when applying the inherited moral right. They cannot decide for themselves whether *they* like the change, they must guess whether the now deceased author would have liked it. Heirs unfortunately sometimes do things to works that the author probably would not have liked (like publishing unpublished works he considered not good enough). Strangely enough no one can do anything about that. > Now you are saying that if the artist releases the work under a free > software license, he has in effect relinquished those rights which the > law says he cannot. By giving a copyright license you don't give up your moral rights. It would be unreasonable to say that if you license a work for publication, you could then assert your moral right to stop that publication. I would argue that if the publication license were general like with free software, you couldn't stop any further publication. The interesting case of course is with modifications. Free software can be incorporated in new (free) software that has an entirely different purpose. If you make some library and I incorporate it in a program that makes child pornography or is used for nazi propaganda, you couldn't do anything about that by using your free software license. But I think you could assert your moral right if being associated with child pornographers or nazis would hurt your honor or reputation. And thus you could stop me from distributing the program. Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/
Re: Licensing of mp3 decoders
> > > According to the DFSG this makes every mp3 decoder non-free or even > > > undistributable. > > > > It doesn't, actually. Although it might make it non-distributable > > under US law, and some other countries which honour the relevant > > patents. > > As I said above > the decision made several months back was "let's wait and see". Red Hat removed mp3 support from their distro and their users have not been too happy with this. We obviously could take the "patents are bad and we refuse to support them" stance and remove the mp3 players as well. However no one has made it clear that *decoders* fall under the claims of Thomson and company or that they are actively enforcing them. If they actually cared, I suspect xmms and several other groups would have been contacted by lawyers by now. As Andrew noted, there are also legal avenues of defense as well. The patent is held in Germany which means there is no safe place to keep the packages if we decide to (re)move them.
Re: Questioning the Public Domain'ness of certain data
On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 01:19:16AM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote: > Scripsit Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Sec. 105. - Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works > > > Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of > > the United States Government, but the United States Government is not > > precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by > > assignment, bequest, or otherwise. > > Does that also prevent the U.S. government from claiming copyright > protection (as a civil party) on their work in other jurisdictions? > "This title" seems to refer to situations where the copyright > protection would be granted by U.S. law. I *guess* that the answer to your question is "yes", until and unless Congress passes a law amending Title 17, or placing a law into a different Title, asserting copyright protection for the U.S. government in foreign jurisdictions. -- G. Branden Robinson| Human beings rarely imagine a god Debian GNU/Linux | that behaves any better than a [EMAIL PROTECTED] | spoiled child. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Robert Heinlein pgppuP8BEAsU3.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Questioning the Public Domain'ness of certain data
Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Scripsit Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Sec. 105. - Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works > > > Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of > > the United States Government, but the United States Government is not > > precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by > > assignment, bequest, or otherwise. > > Does that also prevent the U.S. government from claiming copyright > protection (as a civil party) on their work in other jurisdictions? > "This title" seems to refer to situations where the copyright > protection would be granted by U.S. law. Yes. The basic rule is that works produced by the US Government are simply public domain.
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software? (Was: query from Georg Greve of GNU about Debian's opinion of the FDL
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > People that pass by the house do not know whether the blinds > were the architect's design or not. They might remember that > the house was designed by him, and then conclude that he was > very stupid for putting those ugly blinds on the house. And > that thus harms his reputation. > > It's extremely silly but that's the argument. Dutch lawyers may > want to look it up: Gerechtshof 's Hertogenbosch 24 feb 1993, > AMI 1994, 116. The court noted that demolishing the house would > not violate the architect's moral rights. This has been used > in some cases to force architects to accept certain changes. This is exactly why the concept of unrenouncable authors' "moral rights" offends me. If the architect wants the right to review any proposed changes, then that should be part of the contract of sale, and he will get a little less money, because he's imposing a restriction of such a sort. I believe that there *have* been cases where the owner of a work of art was told that outright destruction of the work would also violate the author's supposed moral rights.
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > As far as I know, the heirs must follow the author's intentions > when applying the inherited moral right. They cannot decide > for themselves whether *they* like the change, they must guess > whether the now deceased author would have liked it. But the author is dead. And people all the time guess wrong. For example, imagine a closeted gay author who died fifty years ago. His heirs are homophobic, and oppose the publication of any biography that accurately describes the man's life. And accordingly they oppose any use of his works in the biography. But the man himself might well, if he were alive today, rejoice in the more tolerant atmosphere we now share, deplore the bigotry of his heirs, and happily agree to publication. What the person thinks is defamatory, and what the heirs think, are simply not the same thing. Even if the heirs do their very best job, the whole point of the set up is that you *discount* what the author says, because the author *cannot* be deemed to be renouncing the right. If the heirs can convince a court, it won't matter at all whether they are right. > Heirs unfortunately sometimes do things to works that the author > probably would not have liked (like publishing unpublished works > he considered not good enough). Strangely enough no one can do > anything about that. Strangely? THE MAN IS DEAD. Dead men have no rights. How hard is this? > By giving a copyright license you don't give up your moral > rights. It would be unreasonable to say that if you license > a work for publication, you could then assert your moral > right to stop that publication. I would argue that if the > publication license were general like with free software, > you couldn't stop any further publication. I don't think that you *have* any such moral rights. I think it's a crazy and insane concept, and I will fight it tooth and nail. Among other things, it totally contradicts the notion of free software, especially given that these rights cannot be renounced. Thomas
Re: Licensing of mp3 decoders
On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 10:10:44AM -0700, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote: > If they actually cared, I suspect xmms and several other groups would have > been contacted by lawyers by now. As Andrew noted, there are also legal > avenues of defense as well. they claim us$ 0.75 per unit or some fix price (pc software, mp3 decoder) until 2001 they explicitely excluded "for free" (as in beer) software from the decoder fee, but they removed that when redesigning their site. see http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/index.html and http://web.archive.org/web/20001212023000/mp3licensing.com/royalty/swdec.html (the old terms) after someone mentioned that change about 1 year late on slashdot, redhat took out the mp3 decoders from their distro. but even the old terms would be a problem for distributions (even debian) as the "tax exempt" is only granted for "decoders distributed free-of-charge for personal use [how about usage in companies?] over the internet" [cd distributions of debian, yadayada] they probably won't go after the free players even despite of these facts. makes bad press (and alternatives even more attractive) and (potentially) reduces the user base. patrick mauritz -- the satisfaction of finishing is worth it all pgpWOw1yT3hPf.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Licensing of mp3 decoders
On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 10:45:44PM +0200, Patrick Mauritz wrote: > after someone mentioned that change about 1 year late on slashdot, The slashdot post was (as one would expect from a slashdot post) bogus; nothing changed. This was discussed here at the time; search the list archives. -- Glenn Maynard
Re: Licensing of mp3 decoders
On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 10:10:44AM -0700, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote: > The patent is held in Germany which means there is no safe place to keep the > packages if we decide to (re)move them. Hey, wait, I thought they *lost* that war... Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Gesetz! /me watches as this thread is smashed to bits by the mighty Gavel of Godwin -- G. Branden Robinson|It was a typical net.exercise -- a Debian GNU/Linux |screaming mob pounding on a greasy [EMAIL PROTECTED] |spot on the pavement, where used to http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |lie the carcass of a dead horse. pgpNMoXfmfnpE.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: motion to take action on the unhappy GNU FDL issue
Hi Zack,
On Sonntag 20 April 2003 03:19, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> I am not a Debian developer, but I am one of the upstream
> developers of a piece of software (GCC) that would be affected
> by this proposal, and so I would like to say that I
> wholeheartedly support it. I wrote a lot of the text in the
> cpp manual, at a time when its license was the old vague FSF-
> documentation license; I'm not at all happy with its
> relicensing under terms I don't consider to be free.
Has there been a version under the old license that already
included your changes? Has the old license been DFSG-approved,
or was it even GPL-compatible? If so, you could start
* a free (maybe even GPLed) fork from the old free version, and
* maybe also a fork of the non-free version that will function
more as a supplement to the free version than a full text,
and therefore has all of the unnecessary free stuff removed.
(Would the GFDL allow this?)
cu,
Thomas
}:o{#
--
http://mirror1.superhits.ch/~sloyment/
The debate on Invariant sections (long)
Hello, As a fool I have rushed in where angels fear to tread :-) I sent a couple of mails to Hans Reiser and Richard Stallman (RMS) on the issue of invariant sections (GFDL) and proper attribution (GPLv3?). The discussion with Hans revolved on issues regarding "social" vs. "legal" obligation. My opinion is summarised in (3) below (Hans did not respond this suggestion of "social" obligation). The response from RMS was very clear regarding the invariant sections clause in the GFDL. I wrote: I believe that GNU with the GFDL is headed for confrontation with the Debian Community (which forms a big part of the Free software community) over the issue of "invariant sections". RMS responded: > That description is misleading--we are not "headed" anywhere on this > issue. We are already there, and we have been there for many years. > We have been using invariant sections since the 80s, and we continue > to use them. > > Today some people in Debian object to the practice, but I don't think > their reasons are valid. I thought about the ethics of this issue > long ago, and decided that invariant sections are legitimate. So we > are not going to change the policy. So it does look like GNU is going to stick with the Invariant sections for a while. I would like to humbly (as a non-developer and occasional reader of debian-legal) make the following suggestions: 1. Debian should indicate in its documentation that (under the DFSG) the GFDL is free only if there are no invariant sections. 2. In addition, (indicate that) material that is under the GFDL and contains invariant sections that are already distributed by Debian separately (such as the GNU manifesto and the various licenses) *is* (as far as I can see from the GFDL) distributable by Debian but is non-free. Clearly a clarifying mail (regarding distributability) from GNU, or failing that from the author(s) of the documentation would help. 3. Indicate (on some DFSG related page) that Debian has encouraged(*) and continues to encourage the distribution of author supplied documents that accompany software even when such distribution is not legally mandated by the license or required in order for the software to function. (*) There are numerous cases such as "emacs", "vim" and the write-ups associated with various network sniffing tools. The point (3) would encourage authors from avoiding invariant sections or legally mandated advertising clauses. Thanks and regards, Kapil. -- The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst -- http://www.imsc.res.in/~kapil/gpg.html for my Public Key. -- 768D/FED1D08D 2000-02-19 Kapil Hari Paranjape <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 1024g/CECEB39B 2000-02-19 Kapil Hari Paranjape <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Key fingerprint = B6D2 F4F2 A37C B887 DFA2 9100 5F22 0D1D FED1 D08D -- pgpjxGEdSWtKh.pgp Description: PGP signature
未承諾広告※PCスタッフ募集
<事業者><送信者> JS Co.,Ltd. 港区西新橋2-22-1 JSA事業部 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- 特定商取引法施行規則 受け取りを希望しない場合の連絡方法 弊社からの広告メールの配信停止を希望の場合は、 ①下記ＵＲＬよりアドレスをお知らせください。 http://web-space.jp/jsa/kaijyo2.html ②件名を「配信停止」と書き換え このメールを返信してください。 その返信元のアドレスに対する配信は停止いたします。 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ★★PC在宅スタッフ募集★★ 【文章・データ入力スタッフの急募】 ★業務委託契約にてお仕事をお願いします★ ☆ 詳細・資料請求は下記URLから http://web-space.jp/jsa/ ☆ 在宅Word・Excelでお仕事の出来る方を募集しています。 【募集内容】 【時間】5時間／週 以上のお時間の取れる方 【収入】3〜15万円／月 位の収入を希望する方 （時給1,500円〜2,500円） ●１年以上継続できる方 ●キーボードの打てる方 ●ワードでお仕事をしたい方 ●エクセルでお仕事をしたい方 ★業務委託契約にて安定したお仕事が可能です★ ☆ 詳細・資料請求は下記URLから http://web-space.jp/jsa/ ☆
