Re: [AMC-List] I-Pod, MP3, MP4, Poket PC's..... Sattelite

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006, Sandwich Maker wrote:

> mp4 is not proprietary, it's mp3 with pictures.  


There are legal problems surrounding mp3 decoders/encoders,
relating to software patents. It's one of those really arcane
but terrifyingly oppressive things being battled up there in
the stratosphere.

Thomson CE has "patented" the algorithms needed to decode mp3s.
Not the programs, but the *IDEAS* needed to decode them. Software
patents are deemed horrible and oppressive by everyone not a
huge multinational corporation.

So you cannot legally write your own program, from scratch,
that plays an mp3 file, technically speaking. Clearly, lots of
people have, but the legal burden (in countries that recognize
software patents, like the US and Japan, but NOT Europe) limits
distribution to those willing to pay the blackmail licensing.
Microsoft does, but for those of us who run linux/unix
exclusively, I have to download it from a european site.

Software patents are analogous not to patenting say the AMC V8,
but the concept of V8. Eg. even from dead-scratch, if you made
a motor with 8 holes, in two banks, you would have to license
the idea first.  It's counter to centuries of law and tradition,
and is an attempt to "lock up" markets before they start.

Software patents have created monstrosities such as illegal
books; if you publish, in printed form, a program you wrote
from scratch, consulting nobody, and never once in your life
seeing another mp3-decoder program, that book would be illegal
to distribute. (The same legal technique is used to label
encryption "munitions".)

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