8.0 problems.

[Geoff Shang]

Hi:

Ok, hang on a sec.   Lets be clear on our terminology before we have a
serious missunderstanding.  I've seen three terms that are not related used
as if they were.

1.  GPL.  This is a software license.  It's a form of copyright for a
specific piece of code.  Code released under the GPL may be modified and
redistributed providing those rights are maintained ... bla bla bla.  You
know the drill.

2.  Open standards.  An open standard is a standard which is open (i.e. the
opposite of a closed standard).  The specification is available and not a
trade secret.  Open standards are often, but definitely not always, the
product of some collaborative effort.  Using this definition, MP3 is an
open standard.  However, at least some feel that open standards need to be
royalty free (see the URL for "Open Standards: Principles and Practice"
below).

3.  Patent.  a patent, as I understand it, is recognision that a particular
invention etc is yours.  Paraphrasing a definition in "What Are Patents,
Trademarks, Servicemarks, and Copyrights?" (see below), a patent gives you
the right to stop others from making, using, celling or importing your
invention.  The idea of patents were that this meant an inventor could
share their invention with the public whilst having a period of time in
which they could have the exclusive rights to the use of this invention or
could determine who else could use it.

OK, so where does MP3 fit into all this?  Well, before we can look at that,
we have to look at software patents.  Software patents are explored in some
detail in several documents listed below, but basically they're a legal
construct that's basically impractical and unworkable.  Patents can of
course be challenged, but instead of patent offices looking thoroughly to
see if a patent is genuine *before* issuing it, they issue it anyway and
say that the validity of such a patent can be tested in a court of law.
The trouble with this is that, to test it, you need a nice fat wod of cash
to throw at the problem.  The Amazon article points out that clearly
unreasonable patents have been granted and stand because of this.  A
software patent relating to MP3 is likely to be far less clear cut.

OK, now to get back to the three terms and how they relate to MP3.  You can
write code and release it under the GPL, regardless of the status of the
standards it implements, well at least in theory.  In practice, however,
I'd think that a programme documenting a trade secret would probably get
you into hot water pretty fast (the DVD stuff is probably a good example of
this).  A programme released under the GPL or any other opensource model
that documents a freely available standard is not going to tell you
anything more about the standard than you can glean from reading the
standard anyway, so there's no problem with it.  But, and here's the
clincher.  A program released under the GPL that implements a freely
available standard specification DOES NOT come with a licence to use that
standard if the technology is patented.  It is not for the program author
to assign the right to use patented technologies, it's the sole right of
the patent holder.  so it's legal for me to read or write the LAME source
code, it's legal for me to download it, but it's illegal (at least in some
countries)  for me to use it to encode anything.

The stupidity of this is pretty obvious.  It's like saying, "You can build
your own car to industry standard specifications, but you can't drive it
anywhere.  You can only drive the cars we sell or if you pay a fee to drive
your own".

The problem that Redhat faces is that RPM's are generally compiled
binaries.  Since the only use of a compiled binary is to run it, it's not
considered legally safe to distribute binary versions of MP3 software that
has not been licensed by Tomson Multimedia.

Vorbis is patent free and royalty free, with a fully documented standard.
So people are able to use it without charge or permission.  They can write
both closed source and open source implementations.

A little light reading:

What is a standard?
http://www.lib.umich.edu/ummu/standards/whatis.html

Open Standards: Principles and Practice
http://perens.com/OpenStandards/


Why open standards are a myth - Tech News - CNET.com
http://news.com.com/news/0-1005-201-345513-0.html

What Are Patents, Trademarks, Servicemarks, and Copyrights?
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/whatis.htm

League for Programming Freedom - Against Software Patents
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/against-software-patents.html

The Evitability of Software Patents
http://www.computer.org/computer/articles/March/perspectives300.htm

Stop typing amazon.com. Start typing noamazon.com.
http://www.noamazon.com/faq.html


Patents and MP3
http://www.mp3-tech.org/patents.html

FAQ: MPEG, Patents, and Audio Coding
http://sound.media.mit.edu/%7Eeds/mpeg-patents-faq

Thomson Multimedia's MP3 licensing site
http://www.mp3licensing.com/

google rocks!

Geoff.