VLC Patent Issues?

[Dreamail]

It's like the war on drugs, in the end the authorities are next to powerless to prevent a large number people who really want something from getting what they want.

I think you're wrong here.

The war on drugs cannot be won because there is a lot of money to be made in drugs - money which can be used to 'buy' certain individuals within the authorities. Which in turn does not help the war against drugs.
And because a lot of money is involved people turn violent and some people even get killed. Which might help intimidate certain individuals within the authorities, individuals who perhaps were not open to the initial 'persuasional power' of money...

On the other hand there is no money to be made when people download 'free' music or movies. And not one will turn violent because of it.

Chances are in this case authorities will be successful in preventing a large number of people to get what they want...

 

[arribadia]

Ehh sorry, patents have been around for more than a century. And in my opinion the mouse was a REAL invention, and should have been granted a patent, or else patents should be abolished altogether. The truth is that you won't earn much money if you demand obscene amounts for licenses, cause nobody will buy it. You'll be better of if you ask a decent fee, and that is how it works in the real world.

Ehh sorry, you been living in a hole or something?

Have you seen that recent press report when Apple Computer got sued by this unknown Taiwanese company "Patrights" for the iPod and iTMS?

To make money from patents you simply..
1. file for a very vague and far reaching idea.
2. because idea is very obvious, eventually someone else will think of same idea.
3. wait for the product to take off.
4. sue them for damages.

When that happens you can probably sue for $10000 for each sale, and the target won't have any say in it. You have to see that the real world is not America, and yes, you have really been living in a hole.

 

[arribadia]

Software patents are not different from other patents. Patenting software implemented inventions has always been possible (see my post above), that is of course since software became a business. It was just not clear between the different member states how much of a technical contribution a software invention must have (none, a minimum or substantially). The current EU proposal is the first ruling specifically meant for software related inventions, in order to define uniformely in all member states which software inventions are patentable and which ones are not. The proposed standard will be a minimum of technical contribution, which has been the practice of the European Patent Office since long.

Are you paid like the same amount of money like that ****er in ireland?

A parallel to software patents can be drawn to this:
1/x^2 = 1
x = 1

There! I've patented that solution, now all possible mathematic expressions that you can use to derive that solution are infringing on MY patent.

Hell, in fact in many recent cases software patents are seen to be even MORE vague than that!

The nonsense that have come to light so far:
-accessing bank records.. WITH A COMPUTER! Wow! I'm so blinded by the obvious!
-go to patrights.com for more, it is so sick after you see what they have claimed to be theirs
-Microsoft's filing in NZ.. using XML to store a document! Isn't that infringing on an open standard???
-a lot more in the making...

You have to be an idiot to say that software patents are any good.

Now imagine someone just patented a very vague idea of streaming video via the internet, and your company.. having expended a lot of research to develop the algorithms for video compress.. test the product.. and just as you are about to bring it to market, you get faced with a C&D.

If software patents are not a means of leeching off the efforts of others, I do not see what else it can be.

 

[Agathon]

I think you're wrong here.

The war on drugs cannot be won because there is a lot of money to be made in drugs - money which can be used to 'buy' certain individuals within the authorities. Which in turn does not help the war against drugs.
And because a lot of money is involved people turn violent and some people even get killed. Which might help intimidate certain individuals within the authorities, individuals who perhaps were not open to the initial 'persuasional power' of money...

Drugs are considerably harder to transport and obtain than downloaded music. You are also much more likely to be caught.

On the other hand there is no money to be made when people download 'free' music or movies. And not one will turn violent because of it.

But that's irrelevant. There is demand for downloading free music and movies and enough people are prepared to share if they get what they want. That's just a fact.

Chances are in this case authorities will be successful in preventing a large number of people to get what they want...

How? They suck at it. The law moves so slowly that by the time they get anywhere, the technology will have moved on. They can mandate protection schemes all they like - so far they have all been cracked very quickly.

You are more likely to be killed in a car crash than you are likely to go to court for downloading.

The internet by its own decentralized nature resists attempts to centralize control. It would simply cost too much to go after every 15 year old hacker. The sooner people wake up and smell the coffee, the sooner we can get on with our lives.

 

[cyberfunk]

Patents, Copyrights, and the problem at hand

Ehh sorry, patents have been around for more than a century. And in my opinion the mouse was a REAL invention, and should have been granted a patent, or else patents should be abolished altogether. The truth is that you won't earn much money if you demand obscene amounts for licenses, cause nobody will buy it. You'll be better of if you ask a decent fee, and that is how it works in the real world.

That's the whole point!

They dont WANT competition.. they dont intend to license it. They want to be the ONLY player. Are we all familiar with the concept of a monopoly here? (points at MS as a glaring example) They dont WANT people using ideas similar to theirs. And please people... learn the difference between copyright and patents, they are NOT the same thing. Copyrights protect the companies from their software or their direct likenesses from being copied. Patents "protect" the company from other people using even vaguely similar ideas.

Patents are therefore several orders of magnitude broader in their reach. This is a problem, because in the process of patenting an idea, you essentially forbid anyone else to think of and use the idea for any purpose unless they pay you. Sometimes, and very rarely, this can be helpful, when the idea is TRUELY unique, and others would just easily copy the work of a brilliant person. But unfortunately, the patent system is used to register thousands of broad patents. Like as others have mentioned, many of these are utterly rediculous, patenting the "transmission of images via TCP/IP". I **** you not, things like this exist, and it's really insane. Companies , full of lawyers are based on this sort of sillyness.

Now ask yourselves, is it really fair for Xerox-Parc to patent a "digital input device based on the translation of the device in 1 or 2 dimensions" ? i.e.: a mouse, a joystick, a scroll wheel, etc.

No, the concept is rediculous, it's like telling a car maker that they cannot paint their cars red because Ford thought of it first. So they thought of painting a car red... why cant yours be too ? Well, if the kind of patent law these people want to make a reality was around at the time, then this sillyness would be a real "legitamite" legal battle.

Does this make any sense, common or otherwise? I hope you think as I do, that it most certainly does not.

 

[space2go]

That's a description of software patents from someone who should know the system as he plays it quite good:

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.

form http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/quotes/index.en.html

 

[i_am_a_cow]

the other open source battles have generally little to do with mac users

Wow that is so untrue. People don't realize that most of Darwin is based on open source, and open source is in jeopardy. Actually, Apple has been nice enough to open Darwin up itself (OpenDarwin?). I would guess that many innovative "ideas" or "implementations" from open source are being abused by big corporations. Did you know that Cinelerra, and open source video editor, was the first HD video editor to have 64 bit floating point color? They could have patented that idea and Apple, Adobe, and other companies that make video editing software would be screwed. I think software patents are ridiculously misused and I hate them with a passion. Most innovative ideas today come through open source before they are implemented in mainstream corporate software (obviously that is why Apple is using open source, and Microsoft is sucking with their operating system for not using open source and sticking to their bad platform). Just rambling by now.