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 it (I know all about it but am under
> NDA).
Th
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 it (I know all about it but am under
NDA).
> or about how you approach the risk that loading
> a pa
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, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> OK -- how about this: Fraunhofer, AFAICT, has not attempted to patent
> any well-known technique of converting data from a time series to a
> frequency spectrum, nor the idea of applying such a technique to music
> compression, nor would
On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 12:54:04AM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> 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 als
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
> > music compression", the answer is "no"
On 7/19/05, Daniel James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Raul,
>
> > "avoiding distribution of software to avoid potential
> > but as yet non-existent challenges"
>
> To describe patent lawsuits as a non-existent challenge seems a little
> optimistic to me. If it were so, there would have been no
Hi Raul,
> "avoiding distribution of software to avoid potential
> but as yet non-existent challenges"
To describe patent lawsuits as a non-existent challenge seems a little
optimistic to me. If it were so, there would have been no point to
the recent campaign in Europe.
Basing estimates of w
On 7/18/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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 m
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
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>In any case, I don't think denying our users access to files they have every
>legal right to use is an appropriate way to try to kill off the mp3 format.
>Even if it were, would you really have us do so by treating unsubstantiated
>patent claims about mp3 decoding as if t
On 7/15/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 7/15/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I very carefully made a distinction between "technology described by
> > the patents" and "patented technology" in the message you're responding
> > to.
> >
> > One example of technolo
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, 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 not ostensibly covered by the presumptively valid patents?
>
> If you want to know what I am suggesting, wit
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 not ostensibly covered by the presumptively valid
On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 09:27:55AM +0100, Daniel James wrote:
> Hi Steve,
> > We're certainly all well aware of the patents that are being
> > enforced against mp3 encoders, and Debian does not ship any mp3
> > encoders.
> So it's OK for Debian users to 'consume content' in MP3 format but
> they
Hi Steve,
> We're certainly all well aware of the patents that are being
> enforced against mp3 encoders, and Debian does not ship any mp3
> encoders.
So it's OK for Debian users to 'consume content' in MP3 format but
they can't make and distribute their own music in the same format?
It's not r
On Sat, 16 Jul 2005, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 08:06:56PM +0300, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > > Maybe it's time to create some sort of patent/ftp/XXX policy
> > > then.
> >
> > Feel free to propose one; however you should attempt to di
On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 05:03:13PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 13:04:47 +0200 Diego Biurrun wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 01:49:17PM -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães
> > wrote:
> [...]
> > > I was under the impression that Debian *did* have a policy: if the
> > > paten
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 08:06:56PM +0300, Don Armstrong wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> >
> > Maybe it's time to create some sort of patent/ftp/XXX policy then.
>
> Feel free to propose one; however you should attempt to discover first
> what the "effective" policy is that th
On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 13:04:47 +0200 Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 01:49:17PM -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães
> wrote:
[...]
> > I was under the impression that Debian *did* have a policy: if the
> > patent is enforced, towards it, then the software will go to non_US
> > -- to the b
On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 03:09:20 -0700 Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> It's a
> fine point and I know there are some DDs who won't look at it this
> way, but if the software authors aren't attempting to discriminate
> among fields of endeavor -- only disclaiming responsibility for
> obtaining patent right
On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 07:46:37AM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 01:04:47PM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 01:49:17PM -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães wrote:
> > > I was under the impression that Debian *did* have a policy: if the
> > > patent is e
On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 04:31:20AM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> 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
I can't seem to find the message you're replying to, by the way. But
it's not surprising that it's hard to follow a thread, given that
Humberto continues to break threads, ignoring the damage it does to
a conversation.
On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 01:04:47PM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 1
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> On 7/16/05, Arnoud Engelfriet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > This of course presumes that a sequence of bits is a "product" in
> > patent law. I'm not aware of any caselaw either way. But it does
> > seem likey that this would be covered by the "essential element"
> > cl
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
> > non-infringing use it really has i
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
> non-infringing use it really has is the product mock-up scenario.)
WTF? How about watching DVD
On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 03:20:12AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 11:43:27AM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 09:47:22PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
>
> > > AFAIK there is no public evidence that Red Hat's (which is who I assume
> > > you're principa
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 01:49:17PM -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães wrote:
>
> ** Diego Biurrun ::
>
> > Maybe it's time to create some sort of patent/ftp/XXX policy then.
> > The core of this thread revolves around the problem that Debian's
> > stance towards patents is unclear and inconsistent.
On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 11:43:27AM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 09:47:22PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > AFAIK there is no public evidence that Red Hat's (which is who I assume
> > you're principally referring to) decision not to ship mp3-playing software
> > is grounde
(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 Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 09:47:22PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
>
> AFAIK there is no public evidence that Red Hat's (which is who I assume
> you're principally referring to) decision not to ship mp3-playing software
> is grounded in concerns about actively enforced patents.
FWIW, I've discussed
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> Can you point me to that statute? Is it a "hobbyist, design it
> yourself, infringe unknowingly" sort of thing, and if not, where is
> the dividing line between a precise description of the ideas contained
> in a patent and one that is so precise that it happens to be a
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
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> That's entirely consistent with my (much less informed) understanding
> of the history. It would be very interesting to know whether the
> statement at http://ballsome.org/index.php/news/100 reflects their
> present policy, and if so whether it would offer some degree o
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
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
On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 06:20:14PM -0600, Jack Moffitt wrote:
> > I have copied the Executive Contact and the Legal Counsel for Xiph.org
> > on this message. Please drop them on follow-ups that are not relevant
> > to Ogg/Vorbis. Mr. Rosedale and Mr. Moffitt: the topic of MP3 patents
> > arose on
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 create trouble here; an
9:39 PM
To: Jack Moffitt; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: MJ Ray; debian-legal@lists.debian.org; Tom Rosedale; Daniel James;
Free Ekanayaka
Subject: Re: MP3 decoder packaged with XMMS
Thanks very much to Mr. Moffitt for weighing in!
On 7/15/05, Jack Moffitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just a quick
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
Jack Moffitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[snip, chop, trim]
>
> Before we released Ogg Vorbis beta 1, we did indeed hire a patent
> specializing attorney to go over the MP3 suite of patents. He only
> thought it necessary to issue a formal opinion on a single one of these
> patents. We were adv
> I have copied the Executive Contact and the Legal Counsel for Xiph.org
> on this message. Please drop them on follow-ups that are not relevant
> to Ogg/Vorbis. Mr. Rosedale and Mr. Moffitt: the topic of MP3 patents
> arose on debian-legal (thread at
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/0
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
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"
On 7/15/05, Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> > The Federal
> > Circuit, en banc, characterized one defendant's reliance on a similar
> > statistic (offered by their counsel and apparently relied on in good
> > faith to the extent that that means anything)
I have copied the Executive Contact and the Legal Counsel for Xiph.org
on this message. Please drop them on follow-ups that are not relevant
to Ogg/Vorbis. Mr. Rosedale and Mr. Moffitt: the topic of MP3 patents
arose on debian-legal (thread at
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/07/msg00081
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> The Federal
> Circuit, en banc, characterized one defendant's reliance on a similar
> statistic (offered by their counsel and apparently relied on in good
> faith to the extent that that means anything) as "flagrant disregard
> of presumptively valid patents without an
On 7/15/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I very carefully made a distinction between "technology described by
> the patents" and "patented technology" in the message you're responding
> to.
>
> One example of technology where this distinction should be clear is
> the use of time -> fre
> On 7/13/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > It's difficult to create JPEG image rendering software without using
> > technologies described by MP3 patents.
On 7/13/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So do tell us where MP3 patents fit -- what patents, which claims, an
"Michael K. Edwards" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [...]
> If I were defending, say, an Ogg/Vorbis implementation [...] I
> would argue that a wavelet transform is sufficiently different [...]
Wavelet transforms are not the only thing the format supports, but it
may be usable to defend a particular e
On 7/13/05, Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It's difficult to create JPEG image rendering software without using
> technologies described by MP3 patents.
So do tell us where MP3 patents fit -- what patents, which claims, and
what part of JPEG compression? None of the patents discussed be
On 7/12/05, Daniel James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> According to reports from free software developers, it's difficult to
> create MP3 encoders without using technologies described by the
> patents.
It's difficult to create JPEG image rendering software without using
technologies described by M
On 7/13/05, Pedro A.D.Rezende <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> How do you classify your knowledge that some of them smoke crack?
Hyperbolic (and obviously non-literal) ridicule, not of the persons
involved but of the premise (wholly unfounded in law and legal
history) that the GPL is a creature of any
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 09:10:42PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 10:25:03PM -0500, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> > Because the "current illegitmate patent regime" is the law.
>
> No, it is not. Portfolios of invalid patents hold their value by means of
> FUD and financial m
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
On 13 Jul 2005 07:50:44 GMT, MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"Michael K. Edwards" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Even so, Mr. Ravicher appears to be on the saner end of the range of
FSF associates. [...]
Isn't defaming a lawyer rather a stupid tactic for someone in
On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 02:38:29AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Debian policy governs the technical details of package creation.
> > This is a matter that's out of scope of the policy document; my
> > comments reflect the de facto policy of the ftp te
Hi Dan,
> This is not a "condition[] imposed on you ... that contradict[s]
> the conditions of [the GPL]," as per GPL Section 7, because
> exercising due care to avoid infringing a patent and redistributing
> software royalty free are not mutually exclusive.
They might be if we choose to ship a G
On 7/13/05, Dan Ravicher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>Patentees only win patent infringement cases 1/3 of the time, so it is
> >>not unreasonable to feel confident that a dispute would result favorably
> >>for the accused infringer. Further, whether your company or any other
> >>defendant could
Patentees only win patent infringement cases 1/3 of the time, so it is
not unreasonable to feel confident that a dispute would result favorably
for the accused infringer. Further, whether your company or any other
defendant could afford to defend yourself if sued has no impact on
whether a "condi
the Federal Circuit ruled that "where, as here, a potential
infringer has actual notice of another's patent rights, he has an
affirmative duty to exercise due care to determine whether or not
he is infringing,"
That's the kind of obligation I was wondering about. GPL section 7
refers to conditi
On 7/13/05, Daniel James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[quoting me, quoting Knorr-Bremse]
> > the Federal
> > Circuit ruled that "where, as here, a potential infringer has
> > actual notice of another's patent rights, he has an affirmative
> > duty to exercise due care to determine whether or not he i
Hi Michael,
> the Federal
> Circuit ruled that "where, as here, a potential infringer has
> actual notice of another's patent rights, he has an affirmative
> duty to exercise due care to determine whether or not he is
> infringing,"
That's the kind of obligation I was wondering about. GPL section
On 7/13/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> For the latest word (AFAIK, IANAL, TINLA) on the subject from the
> Federal Circuit en banc, I recommend Knorr-Bremse v. Dana,
> http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/Fed/011357v2.html . This
> ruling reversed the district court's fin
I believe we have now gone way off topic from the original post, which
was about whether the existence of a patent that someone (whether the
patent holder or anyone else) believes may cover something similar to a
GPL'd free software product triggers GPL Section 7 and, thus, forbids
the redistri
On 7/12/05, Dan Ravicher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[quoting, I think, Daniel James]
> > That seems a little 'head in the sand'. The MP3 patent holders have a
> > truckload of patents on the format in many countries, going back to
> > the 1980s. I don't see how a business could distribute free sof
Free-software-MP3 enthusiasts who believe in the protective power of
ignorance, and who are not already sticking their fingers in their
ears and shouting "la la la", may wish to do so before reading
further. (They may also wish to start work on their affidavit
demonstrating that their local ISP pr
Hi Florian,
> keep in mind that many of those patents are fairly generic and
> probably affect Ogg Vorbis, too.
I think the Xiph developers have been very careful not to use the
techniques of MP3 for this very reason. However, I don't think any
developer is immune from patent intimidation, so i
Hi Florian,
> This is mostly a European issue, it seems:
>
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/54440
>
> The company is called Sisvel:
>
> http://www.sisvel.com/licensing_programs.asp
>
> IIRC, I looked at the patents, and they were hard to enforce
> against mere software distributors, bu
Hi Dan,
> And, it is possible to receive a patent license that does not cause
> a failure to comply with Section 7. The GPL Section 7 says "For
> example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free
> redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies
> directly or indirectly thr
* Daniel James:
> The more I look into this issue, the more I am convinced that we have
> to promote the free formats better.
This is certainly true, I'm not too happy with Debian's policy on MP3
and its patents, either.
But keep in mind that many of those patents are fairly generic and
probabl
On 13 Jul 2005 07:50:44 GMT, MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Michael K. Edwards" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Even so, Mr. Ravicher appears to be on the saner end of the range of
> > FSF associates. [...]
>
> Isn't defaming a lawyer rather a stupid tactic for someone in the US?
I have no w
"Michael K. Edwards" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Even so, Mr. Ravicher appears to be on the saner end of the range of
> FSF associates. [...]
Isn't defaming a lawyer rather a stupid tactic for someone in the US?
For those wondering what part of the sanity range patenter Michael K
Edwards inhabit
* Daniel James:
> Hi Florian,
>
>> There are more recent cases which have also been enforced against
>> embedded devices containing MP3 decoders.
>
> I couldn't find anything with a quick search on Google - any keywords
> I should try?
This is mostly a European issue, it seems:
http://www.hei
Daniel James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[...]
> I also find it hard to believe that the Xiph.org developers would have
> put many years of work into the Ogg codecs (Vorbis, Theora etc) on
> the basis of mere FUD.
Well, Vorbis has taken advantage of open development to produce
a tighter encoding.
On 7/12/05, Dan Ravicher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Mr. Ravicher's public statements on legal matters appear to be largely
> > conformable to the law as I understand it (IANAL), with the exception
> > of his repetition of the canard that it is the knowledge of the
> > particular patent number i
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 10:25:03PM -0500, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> On 7/12/05, Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 05:34:45PM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> > > If I were you I would be very, very cautious about inviting the SFLC
> > > to hang its first test
On 7/12/05, Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 05:34:45PM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> > If I were you I would be very, very cautious about inviting the SFLC
> > to hang its first test case on my project. I speak as someone with no
> > legal qualifications bu
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 06:37:17PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> So we're supposed to take the word of a self-professed collaborator with the
> current illegitimate patent regime, over the word of someone who works for
> an organization dedicated to fighting this threat to intellectual freedom?
O
It's very interesting to see this statement crop up over the by-line
of the legal director of the Software Freedom Law Center. For those
who haven't been watching carefully, that's the OSDL-funded entity,
created in February 2005, ostensibly founded to provide legal cover
for certain former pro b
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 05:34:45PM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> If I were you I would be very, very cautious about inviting the SFLC
> to hang its first test case on my project. I speak as someone with no
> legal qualifications but with a certain amount of research under my
> belt, including
On 7/12/05, Dan Ravicher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Absolutely, and I wouldn't expect otherwise. However there are
> > not-for-profit groups of developers working in this area.
> > http://xiph.org/ is one, http://linuxaudio.org/ is another (of which
> > both 64 Studio and Xiph are members).
>
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 06:24:33PM -0400, Dan Ravicher wrote:
> And, it is possible to receive a patent license that does not cause a
> failure to comply with Section 7. The GPL Section 7 says "For example,
> if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the
> Program by a
Further, many patents
that may in fact be valid are nonetheless sufficiently narrow that
functionally equivalent implementations are outside their scope.
According to reports from free software developers, it's difficult to
create MP3 encoders without using technologies described by the
paten
The Fluendo website does not claim anywhere that they "avoid the
patent licensing problem". Rather, they want to sell you a
proprietary plugin together with a patent license. Apparently
they have acquired rights to sell licensed plugins.
Fluendo provides our customers both with the actual
Dan Ravicher wrote:
> >Potentially any working in multimedia. I note that the new Nokia web
> > tablet, although Linux-based, uses the LGPL GStreamer libraries with
> > the proprietary Fluendo plugins, which are designed specifically to
> > work around the patent licensing problem:
> ...
>
> Your
** Diego Biurrun ::
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 02:38:29AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 11, 2005 at 01:45:24PM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 11, 2005 at 03:54:12AM -0700, Steve Langasek
> > > wrote:
> >
> > > > However, the reason Debian continues to include the mp3
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 02:38:29AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2005 at 01:45:24PM +0200, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 11, 2005 at 03:54:12AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
>
> > > However, the reason Debian continues to include the mp3 decoder library is
> > > that this pa
Hi Florian,
> There are more recent cases which have also been enforced against
> embedded devices containing MP3 decoders.
I couldn't find anything with a quick search on Google - any keywords
I should try?
> To make things even more
> bizarre, these patents are not part of the MP3 patent lic
Hi Dan,
> If IBM or some other well funded
> company that could defend itself from a patent threat wanted to
> redistribute the same programs you are choosing not to, they would
> not be violating the GPL in any sense.
...unless they licenced the patents from the patent holder?
> Patents can't l
Steve,
... since we don't have the money to fight a patent
that's being enforced even if it is invalid.
Although Debian may not have the financial resources necessary to retain
private counsel, the Software Freedom Law Center and Public Patent
Foundation are here to provide it pro bono repr
* Daniel James:
> Ancient history. That happened back in the 90's, and was the catalyst
> for work to begin on the free software alternatives, such as Ogg
> Vorbis. See for example:
>
> http://www.8hz.com/mp3/
There are more recent cases which have also been enforced against
embedded devices co
Patentees only win patent infringement cases 1/3 of the time, so it
is not unreasonable to feel confident that a dispute would result
favorably for the accused infringer.
A 2/3 chance of probable bankruptcy versus a 1/3 chance of certain
bankruptcy. Not great odds!
Yes, I agree, the patent
Hi Dan,
> Patentees only win patent infringement cases 1/3 of the time, so it
> is not unreasonable to feel confident that a dispute would result
> favorably for the accused infringer.
A 2/3 chance of probable bankruptcy versus a 1/3 chance of certain
bankruptcy. Not great odds!
> There is no s
Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Another example from the multimedia area are the patents on MPEG-2/4/H.264
> > held and actively enforced by the MPEG LA (licensing association) and the
> > many packages in Debian that support MPEG-2/4/H.264 (and all of them support
> > MP3 as well):
>
> Do you have any
Quite, but there is the issue of GPL section 7 making this
particular library non-free. The patent licence terms for MP3
technology are very clear, even for free software decoders:
Section 7 is very clear, "if ... conditions are imposed on you
(whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) .
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