On 9/11/05, Yorick Cool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Larry Lessig? Larry Rosen? Séverine Dussollier? Etienne Montero?
> Dave MacGowan? Pam Samuelson?
Are you saying these people are on record in believing that the GPL
"works" in the sense we are discussing -- forbidding the distribution,
on terms
On 9/10/05, Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
> > I have verbal assurance from the Mozilla folks that it is, actually,
> > regardless of what the various copyright statements in the tree
> > currently claim.
>
> I don't know who assured you of that, but it's not tr
On 9/9/05, John Hasler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If I find that Nokia is selling phones that infringe my copyright by
> violating the terms of the license on my software I should not have to fly
> to Finland to sue them. Fortunately, I do not, even in the absence of a
> choice of venue clause.
On 9/9/05, David Nusinow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Part of the issue with the existing framework of personal jurisdiction is
> that we don't seem to have a clear idea what it actually is. I haven't seen
> any links to documents explaining how jurisdiction is actually determined
> in real life ca
On 9/9/05, Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I am acutely disinterested in that debate because it's long and
> boring, but there's a lot of law professors who like it and think that
> the GPL does work. I suggest you go argue with them instead.
Name one other than Mr. Moglen.
- Michael
On 8/6/05, Diego Biurrun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 06, 2005 at 01:15:22AM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> > It's controversial to say that RMS is occasionally reported to behave
> > eccentrically? And that being a conference speaker doesn't
&g
On 8/6/05, Henning Sprang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It's in fact an interesting question if there is somebody alive and
> reading mail in debian-legal. Or do we need to prove that fai is a
> debian package? - dpkg/apt-cache should do that better than us. Or is it
> a subscribed-only list that do
On 8/4/05, Diego Biurrun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 03, 2005 at 07:24:33PM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> > If a public figure as remarkable as RMS does not choose to gather
> > sizable donations to his preferred charity in return for his speaking
> >
On 8/5/05, Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Michael K. Edwards wrote:
>
> >a self-selected crew of ideologues with brazen contempt
> >for real-world law and no fiduciary relationship to anyone is not too
> >swift -- whether or not they have law degrees (
On 8/4/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Nevertheless, intellectual property is fundamentally different from
> real property, and the differences, in the general case, make it
> impossible to determine the boundaries of intellectual property.
It's a _little_ more abstract than real prop
I wrote:
> RMS may sincerely
> believe that the GPL is a successful hack around contract law and the
> limits courts have imposed on other software copyright holders; but I
> don't see how a court could possibly agree with him.
Not to be paranoid or anything, but a reminder-disclaimer: The
I wrote:
> They're a sidetrack to be sure; but kind of an interesting sidetrack.
> His personal history and philosophy strike me as more reminiscent of
> Dominic de Guzman or Benedict of Nursia than any modern figure. In
> any case, I certainly intended no slur on RMS by that, nor on any
> partici
On 8/3/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> There's probably a lesson in here somewhere.
>
> "information" is also a term used to describe how people
> communicate.
Indeed, among other things; and it is a term sufficiently broad and
vague as to have very little utility in law.
> You try
On 8/3/05, Diego Biurrun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That would again be news to me. I've just given two talks at LinuxTag
> (the biggest Linux-related event in Europe) and all I got was two nights
> in a hotel room. That's what all the speakers get, some do get part of
> or all of their travel
On 8/3/05, Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I consider it a "grievous error" to claim that RMS "preach[es] the
> economic superiority of the free software system". You were not calling
> for an inquiry of any kind in that statement; you were simply snarking.
> And you were called out for
On 8/3/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think his point is that because of the nature of ideas -- that they don't
> exist in and of themselves, but are abstracts used to describe
> communication between people -- that it's impossible to codify
> property rights protecting them. There
On 8/3/05, Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > In any case, there's a perfectly good argument that for
> > Debian to piss off the FSF is not a good idea whether or not they have
> > a legal leg to stand on. I personally would be ashamed to lend my
> > good name to their conduct in recent
On 8/3/05, Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I may not be much in the legal department, but you are now commenting on
> a field I am trained in. Suffice it to say that you have not thought
> seriously about the implications of your conflation of ethics and
> economics--or that if you have,
On 8/3/05, Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It could be the case that everyone who disagrees with you whom you think
> should know better has ulterior motives. However, I think you need to
> consider the possibility that you simply do not understand the subject
> matter as well as you thi
On 8/3/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 8/2/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Mostly I care about the freedom to pursue what is for me
> > both an intellectual interest and a trade, on terms which more or less
> > refle
On 8/2/05, Patrick Herzig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> RMS doesn't preach the economic superiority of free software. If you
> fail to understand even such a well-explained position I wonder what
> your references to all kinds of precedents and such are worth.
You've got a fair point, in that RMS d
I wrote:
> So yes, inquiring minds want to know.
And this inquiring mind is now satisfied as to what probably pays
RMS's rent lately -- the ~$268K Takeda Award he received in 2001.
(You couldn't keep a family in Cambridge for four years on that, but
RMS doesn't have that problem.) Me, I'd be kin
On 8/2/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 8/2/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I'm just telling you how it looks to me, and pointing you to where I
> > got what evidence I have so that you can judge for yourself. The FSF
> &
I wrote:
> There's a lot of money to be made in this
> area (although it's a pretty hard life if you have close friends and
> like your home); and if RMS had a way of laundering the money ("don't
> give it to me; but donate to the FSF if you like") so as to appear
> saintly, he wouldn't be th
On 8/2/05, Diego Biurrun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That RMS gets paid for all the speeches he gives would indeed be news.
> I have first-hand knowledge that he follows invitations to speak about
> free software when provided free travel and lodging.
Do you know the numbers? As I wrote, I don't
On 8/1/05, Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So you believe that posting your life story to debian-legal qualifies
> as "grounding in real-world law"?
It qualifies as a reminder to anyone who's considering taking me
seriously that they're doing so based on the arguments I raise and
whate
On 8/1/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Myself, I would no more redistribute a peer-to-peer client offered
> under a license like BitTorrent's than I would play Russian Roulette
> with a loaded Uzi. But YMMV.
I suppose I should explain that. I may or m
On 8/1/05, Michael Poole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I have not meant to equate DFSG freeness with what can go into Debian,
> but DFSG freeness is an important threshold issue. If my messages
> misled on that point, I apologize. There are other factors to
> consider, but this thread was original
On 8/1/05, Michael Poole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> All rambling and ad hominem attacks aside, DFSG analysis is not at all
> about risk; it is about determining whether or not the license imposes
> non-free restrictions or requirements on licensees. Argument from
> authority will not change that
On 8/1/05, Michael Poole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The law that creates the warranty also allows its disclaimer; it
> allows a developer to refuse the cost that the law incurs. In that
> way, the disclaimer reverts the cost balance to its state in the
> absense of the law. This is distinct fro
It amuses me to make the comparison between Mr. Kellogg's credentials
and my own. I am no undergrad either; shedding that status took me
four tries, two universities, and just over seven years. I graduated
in Physics with no distinction to speak of, in December 1995, and it
was rather an anticlim
On 7/31/05, Francesco Poli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Maybe a license that fits Michael's needs, but definitely *not* a
> DFSG-free one: unfortunately, at the moment, there are no CC licenses
> that comply with the DFSG...
I do not, at present, need a license at all; I am perfectly content
with
I wrote:
> The contributory / direct infringement difference is kind of
> interesting from a tactical point of view ...
followed by some discussion about the Micro Star opinion that was more
inarticulate than usual.
The point I was trying to make, in sentences of 25 words or less: The
important p
On 7/30/05, Sean Kellogg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
> ... choice-of-venue clauses just keep people from playing
> the venue shopping game.
Is there actually anywhere in the world that a choice-of-venue clause
in a contract of adhesion is worth the paper it isn't written on? I
wouldn't thi
On 7/30/05, Ken Arromdee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> By this reasoning, if linking is normally a breach of rights, I could give you
> some BSD licensed software and do exactly the same thing. I am estopped from
> suing you for linking with my BSD software, but I can still prevent other
> people f
On 7/30/05, Francesco Poli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Well, let's say "Almost All Rights Reserved".
> Anyway, it's still really far away from a DFSG-free document: that's
> basically what I meant...
Oddly enough, there is some useful knowledge out there that is not
currently available in a DFSG-
On 7/30/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I count four issues the judge considered, with a bit of detail on each
> of those issues.
I didn't say six "issues". I said "six reasons why it would be
inappropriate to grant a preliminary injunction for breach of the GPL
terms, any one of whi
On 7/29/05, Francesco Poli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In other words, "All Rights Reserved"... :-(
I did say that I would be happy to give you advance permission to
circulate a reasonable number of copies privately, which would leave
me with no recourse against you unless you set out to misappr
On 7/29/05, Ken Arromdee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> While that's true, the right of users to link the software in private isn't
> a personal-use safe harbor--it's explicitly allowed by the GPL.
>
> If the GPL lets the user do it, it isn't infringement at all. You can't
> have contributory infri
On 7/28/05, Francesco Poli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What do you mean "freely available"?
> Should I request a copy, which license would you send it under?
None whatsoever. :-) Just like sending you a paper copy in the mail,
with no obligation of confidentiality as such; the copy is yours, fe
On 7/28/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> For example, take Progress v. MySql -- here, the "stop
> distribution" penalty was not used in part because Progress
> didn't have anything else -- it would have been destroyed
> by this penalty. And, Progress had agreed in court to release
> th
On 7/28/05, Ken Arromdee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Jul 2005, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> > You Are Wrong. Under US law, this is Contributory Infringement, which
> > carries a full array of jail terms. SCOTUS just upheld it against
> > Grokster a few weeks ago. Providing an automated syst
On 7/28/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I don't think that the point is that people would be going to jail for
> violating the GPL.
"Violating the GPL" doesn't mean anything. The GPL is not a statute.
It's just an offer of contract. The only way to "enforce" it is for a
party with
On 7/27/05, Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Excuse me for asking, but why is this monograph not freely available?
> Surely, as a non-lawyer, you have no hope of profiting from it, and
> having a succint, linkable statement of your arguments would do wonders
> for preventing such go-around
On 7/27/05, Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Does such compilation in itself give Debian any rights on its own, or is
> the compilation seen as non-copyrightable?
The collective work (special case of compilation) that is a Debian CD
is copyrightable. The copyright covers the creative exp
On 7/27/05, Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 10:05 -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães wrote:
> > First of all, Debian GNU/Linux is *NOT* a derivative work of
> > OpenSSL, GStreamer, nor any of its plugins. A derivative work has a
> > definition in the statute (in the US
I wrote:
> ... only those few d-l participants with actual legal credentials seem to
> agree with me ...
Er, that overreaches a bit in both directions; sorry. I'm more
strident on the topic than the people with credentials are, and there
are certainly other d-l regulars who question the FSF FAQ'
On 7/26/05, Michael Poole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
> A compilation or collective work under US law is not necessarily a
> derivative work of any of its components. The GPL's use of
> "derivative" and "derived" is fuzzy in this sense, which is one reason
> the terms from copyright law are
Summary: There is a real concern with the integrity of the patent
process underlying the Federal Circuit's refusal to condone summary
patent invalidation without an adequate scrutiny for triable questions
of fact.
On 7/26/05, Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hmm. Sticking to patents
I wrote, in response to Prof. de Rezende:
> Yes, all very lovely, I've read Douglas Hofstadter's books too. ...
This was a cheap shot, and I'm ashamed to re-read it. I didn't mean
by this that Prof. de Rezende was not right to ground the "algorithms
are mathematics" perspective in the primary lit
On 7/24/05, Pedro A.D.Rezende <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Algorthms are, in a general sense, semiotics, for the step-by-step
> problem solving procedure processes data. When the processing is to be
> done by a digital computer, the instruction set in which the algorithm
> can be encoded sets and e
[Note to d-l readers: the subject is tongue-in-cheek, mmmkay? Film reference.]
On 7/24/05, Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> > Patent is not copyright; you don't obtain a monopoly on describing
> > your method, you obtain a
Yep, here's the associated politics:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?m=20050311
and especially:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1775159,00.asp
It will play well to the cheap seats if Microsoft can cram a few
obvious stupidities of its own through the examination process (which,
as we have
And while we're naming and shaming IP law firms who should, in my
non-lawyer opinion, know better, let's add Lee & Hayes PLLC:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='20030028685'.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030028685&RS=DN/2003
The prospect of this patent application resulting in a patent that can
be successfully litigated is zero. (IANAL, TINLA.)
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220040230959%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20040230959&RS=D
On 7/23/05, Loïc Minier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> With the recent clarifications on software patents in Europe, would it
> be possible to distribute encoders packages from Europe?
Very inadvisable without an encouraging opinion from competent
counsel, which (IANAL, TINLA) you won't get withou
On 7/22/05, Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In other words, we'll take something as source that we know isn't,
> because we like nVidia. ...
Hey, I didn't say I liked the idea myself. I'm just calling it like I
see it. I would say that the core functionality of the nv driver is
not m
On 7/22/05, Jeff King <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Let's say I write a program in C code and compile it to assembly
> language, which I distribute. Somebody else writes an equivalent program
> directly in assembly language and distributes it. The distributed
> products contain the same amount of in
On 7/22/05, Florian Weimer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It makes it very hard to fix bugs in the pregenerated files.
> Look at the gsfonts mess, it's pretty instructive.
That's an argument from maintainability, not from freeness. The two
are, in my view anyway, distinct though related judgments.
On 7/21/05, Rich Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think you mean:
>
> The story that is circulated now about the tweaking of the S-box is
> that it was to make DES more resistant to differential cryptanalysis,
> which was unknown at the time.
I tend to give Bruce Schneier a certain amo
On 7/21/05, Arnoud Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> US Patent class 705 is full of such patents where the examiner
> wasn't "on the ball". Only very recently have I seen US office
> actions where the examiner talks about "technological progress".
Oh, I agree with you completely that this is
On 7/21/05, Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip stuff where I agree with Don 100%]
> ITYM Freedom 1 (the second) or possibly Freedom 3 (the last). In
> either case, in this situation, you've got everything that the
> original author has to be able to modify the work. You're not being
> r
On 7/21/05, Arnoud Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The example I gave earlier is
> http://legal.european-patent-office.org/dg3/pdf/t950931eu1.pdf
> which is European patent application
> http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?IDX=EP0332770
> that was rejected for being a business method as such. A
On 20 Jul 2005 23:14:28 GMT, MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If the EPO is an artefact of the EPC, it can't be "the people
> who wrote that law" so why is EPO reinterpreting the EPC?
> Is it actually known whether the drafters meant the claimed
> "you can patent maths as part of a machine" view
Summary: I can still find no substantive difference between US and
EPO law on software patentability.
On 7/20/05, Arnoud Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip good stuff]
> For contributory infringement you need additional evidence.
> Contributory infringement is knowingly selling or supply
On 7/19/05, Monty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 19, 2005 at 04:05:59PM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> > That's mighty cool. Can you say anything about the Mercora encoder's
> > psycho-acoustic bits
>
> In fact, I can't say much about
I wrote, with regard to aspersions cast by Nathanael on the competence
and consistency of judicial opinions in intellectual property arenas:
> I am glad that I do not live in the dystopic fantasy world you
> describe, with incompetent judges obsessed by sophomoric deductions
> from Plato and easil
I wrote:
> I am not "pro-software-patent". I think that the USPTO (and, from the
> look of it, the EPO) are doing a profoundly incompetent job of
> filtering out the trivial and the erroneous from _all_ kinds of patent
> applications, not just those which permit an implementation in terms
> of a V
On 7/19/05, Monty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ehmer's work is cited but we don't actually use Ehmer's data. The
> curves you see in the tonemasking are directly from the ears of yours
> truly measured repeatedly over the space of a month and pessimistic
> mean taken. There's a 4kHz notch there t
On 7/19/05, Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[an assessment with which I agree almost 100%]
The game "GFingerPoken" (which I have played and really quite enjoy)
is definitely a "derivative work" of its artwork. It's a complex work
that integrally incorporates substantial portions of a p
On 7/19/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 7/19/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I think you're missing Arnoud's point. It's not math, it's an
> > application of math to the problem domain of message encryption.
On 7/19/05, Arnoud Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> > Unfortunately, that's a distinction without a difference. If you're
> > prohibited from making a computer program implementing the algorithm, you're
> > prohibited from writing a formal description of the algori
On 7/19/05, Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Arnoud Engelfriet wrote:
> >I agree with you that the distinction may seem artificial. But it
> >does seem logical to me to say "you can't patent A XOR B but you can
> >patent a computer program that does that."
> If you can patent the class
On 7/19/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 7/18/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > If the question is, "is it remotely plausible that Fraunhofer claims
> > to have patented the Discrete Cosine Transform or its application to
> >
On 7/19/05, Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Arnaud Engelfriet wrote:
> >Here's a claim that would _not_ be maths as such under European law:
> >"A method of encrypting a bitstream A using a key B that is the
> >same length as A, comprising computing A XOR B".
>
> That *is* math. If
On 7/18/05, Ryan Schultz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Monday 18 July 2005 11:12 pm, you wrote:
> > >FWIW, I would not touch SNEeSe or any fragment derived from it with a
> > >ten-foot pole unless they can tell you where sneese.dat came from and
> > >what's in it.
> >
> > Well file(1) said it is
On 7/18/05, Sean Kellogg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Sigh. The original paragraph had a little parenthetical note about how some
> software is not actually copyrighted. In addition to U.S. Government works,
> software that does not comprise expression is also non-copyrighted, as was
> discussed
Summary: it looks to me like current US and European law on the
patentability of math, software, and business methods are already
very, very closely aligned. Gripe, if you like, about the USPTO's
ignorance of the prior art in software-intensive fields, and about the
unholy alliance between patent
On 7/18/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Are you suggesting that the use of time -> frequency domain mapping
> is not ostensibly covered by the presumptively valid patents?
If you want to know what I am suggesting, with regard to a particular
patent from the Fraunhofer suite (which I h
On 7/18/05, Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[consistently sane and well-judged things about MP3 and patents generally]
It does, however, strike me that it would be prudent for someone
appropriately qualified (as I am not) to look closely at the claims of
US #5,579,430 and, generally, the
On 7/18/05, Humberto Massa Guimarães <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ditto, for Brasil. Software patents are explicitly excluded in our
> Industrial Property (= Patents + Trademarks) Act (Law 9279/96),
> section 10, V: "
[snip]
> Obviously, only inventions (or utility models) can be patented.
Now tha
On 7/18/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 7/18/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On 7/18/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Are you suggesting that the use of time -> frequency domain mapping
> > > is n
On 7/16/05, Diego Biurrun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> According to Mr Ravicher the odds are not that bad. Why give in before
> the battle even started? What if there is no problem? Software will not
> remain free if you don't defend it and you will not keep your freedom
> if you are not willing
On 7/16/05, Diego Biurrun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> DTS Inc. used a European patent to go after VideoLAN.
One with a US equivalent, paint by numbers. Presumably they used its
EP number in the C&D to the VideoLAN folks because they're in France.
C'est la même chose.
> Defend them (in court if
On 7/16/05, Diego Biurrun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 03:09:20AM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> >
> > If Debian and Thomson knock this domino over, someday even DeCSS may
> > be blessed by the powers that be. (Though IMHO the only
> >
On 7/16/05, Diego Biurrun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Software patents are not legal in Europe. Period. The European patent
> convention from 1972 explicitly excludes software from patentability.
> Attempts to pass legislation that would have allowed software to become
> patentable have failed.
(Just to make it clear: I'm aware that libmad is decode-only and that
the evidence is much less strong that MP3 decoding is within the scope
of the Fraunhofer patents than that encoding is.)
Cheers,
- Michael
On 7/16/05, Arnoud Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
>(5) An act which, apart from this subsection, would constitute an
>infringement of a patent for an invention shall not do so if -
>
>(a) it is done privately and for purposes which are not commercial;
OK, this makes sens
On 7/16/05, Arnoud Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Thomson's answer wasn't particularly surprising, since European
> patent law already contains an exemption for personal use of
> patented technology. Besides, there's no money to be gained from
> sueing individuals that use a patented techn
I wrote:
> Presumably you are also aware of patents 5,341,457 and 5,627,938,
> which Lucent has been seeking to enforce against Dolby AC-3. As your
> encoder appears to use Ehmer's tone masking techniques, which are also
> cited in the AC-3 standard definition, ...
I am of course aware that Ehmer
This came up in the course of a curiosity-driven review of the patent
status of various audio codecs, and also in a recent MPlayer thread.
It would probably be wise not to wait for a cease-and-desist letter
before quietly discontinuing the distribution of libdts. See
http://developers.videolan.or
Presumably you are also aware of patents 5,341,457 and 5,627,938,
which Lucent has been seeking to enforce against Dolby AC-3. As your
encoder appears to use Ehmer's tone masking techniques, which are also
cited in the AC-3 standard definition, that litigation may be of
interest -- particularly as
I wrote:
> By the way, where did you get the numbers in floor1_inverse_dB_table?
> If that's an important part of the psycho-acoustic magic, its
> provenance needs documenting, or it could get ugly in a court of fact
> when an "expert witness" lies with numbers. The general public can't
> tell wha
On 7/15/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Can you point me to a brief but technical summary of some of the Ogg
> Vorbis codecs? I would be curious to compare them against the MP3
> techniques, about which I know at least a little bit.
I am _not_ trying to crea
On 7/15/05, Rich Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 2. why was the opinion not to be divulged publically?
Whether or not the attorney requests that the opinion not be made
public, it tends to be wise to preserve attorney-client privilege at
the heart of a matter that may be litigated someday -- e
Thanks very much to Mr. Moffitt for weighing in!
On 7/15/05, Jack Moffitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just a quick note on this thread. Time seems to have erased the memory
> of Thompson going after everyone. 8hz-enc, bladeenc, lame, and many
> other projects have shut down (from cease and desi
(Follow-ups to debian-legal, please.)
FWIW, I would not touch SNEeSe or any fragment derived from it with a
ten-foot pole unless they can tell you where sneese.dat came from and
what's in it. My guess is that it is an infringing copy of the
contents of an SNES64 ROM and that the history of its in
I wrote:
> Personally, I would be little more inclined to rely on the continued
> availability of royalty-free open-source Ogg/Vorbis encoders than
> their MP3 equivalents without some indication that someone competent
> is on record as to the basis for a reasonable belief that they do not
> infrin
On 7/15/05, Florian Weimer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This clause resembles the extended copyleft provisions of the Affero
> General Public License. Has debian-legal reached consensus on that
> license?
For my own part, two words: Idiotic. Non-free.
(Gratuitously non-GPL-compatible, discrimi
Oh, and by the way: get the letter quoted at
http://ballsome.org/index.php/news/100 on corporate letterhead, and
Debian and most of its users are probably (IMHO, IANAL, TINLA) golden
WRT both MP3 encoding and decoding, anywhere that "reliance to one's
detriment" and "substantial non-infringing use"
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