Actually, it might be reasonable to make the case that the coupling of macrovision with the dvd patent technology is illegal. I am too lazy now to look up the specific wording, but there is something about in return for receiving a patent, the patent-holder must then make the patented technology available at a reasonable cost. One might argue that requiring macrovision is unreasonable.

>Am I the only one who doesn't think Intellectual Property is evil?

That's pretty funny. You do understand that if Fraunhofer's patents weren't beeing violated all over the place, that mp3 audio would not be the phenomenon that it is today. The most effective and accurate mp3 encoder, lame, is itself in violation of those patents. WinAmp was too, until AOL bought them and they paid Fraunhofer's license fees.

IP, especially in the form of software patents can be, and is often today, abused in a fashion that is decdidly anti-competitive. The whole freaking music industry is an oligarchy of 5 colluding companies that maintain their control over the market by abusing IP rights. Even Judge Patel, the judge who presides over the napster trial and was so keenly pro-copyright industry has figured things out and is now requiring that the RIAA prove that they legitimately own the copyrights to all the music that they claim. There is a reasonable chance that the RIAA will fail to win that argument too (they'll probably just bribe some congressmen to write a law that fixes things up though).

Not that I believe all IP rights are bad, just that the laws today which were written by the industry itself and rubber-stamped by the governments are far too biased in favor of delinquent corporate interests and against that of consumers and people in general.

A "DVD" doesn't require Macrovision (which I'm sure you know). There are many things that are lumped to create the DVD experience. It is up to the producer of any given disc to outfit their product with Macrovision. However... A DVD playback device must support Macrovision to be a legal product (with legal keys). If a disc is protected, it is not allowed to circumvent or disable that protection. In the case of Macrovision, I believe the point is that it has a limitation of 480p. Allowing an HD signal would disable the Macrovision protection by its nature. Anyway, tha analogy of DVD to MP3 isn't quite an apples to apples example. There are enough differences to make the comparison rather pointless.

With regards to LAME violating the Fraunhoffer patent, I'd have to read it to be able to tell you, so I'd have to take your word for it. Depending on their patent, other encoders could also be covered. Someone could have patented the entire concept and screwed everyone long ago.

Anyway, this patent finger-pointing still doesn't do anything to further the cause of Vorbis support. As I said, it's worth paying a licence if it's what your customers want. Advertising "MP3" will sell products. Advertising "Ogg Vorbis" will occupy shelf space.

Bruno

there is something about in return for receiving a patent, the patent-holder must then make the patented technology available at a reasonable cost.

If only. (I think you're confusing patents in general, with the W3C's abortive attempt to define "reasonable and non-discriminatory" patent licensing.)

The holder of a patent has absolute rights over it for the duration of the patent. The "return" is that the holder must disclose everything up front about how the patent works, so that once the patent expires anyone can duplicate the work.

Obviously this "return" is only worth anything if the invention described in the patent is still useful once the patent has expired; in other words, if the duration of the patent is shorter than the expected life of the technology.

ObOnTopic: I think it's fair to say that if an integer-only or ARM version of the Ogg Vorbis codec were released, there would be an internal development version incorporating it within 24 hours.

Peter

> Anyway, tha analogy of DVD to MP3 isn't quite an apples to apples example.

So you keep saying and so I keep disputing and I think it is a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. It is all about how patents on DVD technologies force manufacturers to agree to restrictions outside of what is covered by the patents in order to gain access to those patents to the detrimant of the consumer. Fraunhofer's exceptionally broad patents on MP3 technologies could easily be used to cause all commercially sold MP3 products to contain restrictions that are detrimantal to consumers too. It doesn't matter that a DVD can have the macrovision optionally set - it is the fact that you can't buy a licensed player that ignores the bit regardless of its setting that is the relevant detail in the comparison with DVDs.

As for LAME - you ought to take a listen to what Franhofer has been saying for the last 7+ years - they claim their patents cover any encoding to MP3 format, basically if you output an MP3 you've used their patented algorithms, no matter how you got there. So, any unlicensed encoders are in violation. Fraunhofer makes similar claims for MP3 decoders, but more experienced people than I tend to think those claims are far weaker than the ones on for encoding. Nevertheless, I expect that SB pays royalties to Fraunhofer for the decoder in the empeg - I suspect they use a package of routines provided by ARM that includes the royalties in the purchase price.

> Advertising "Ogg Vorbis" will occupy shelf space.

Chicken-or-the-egg. I think I've made it pretty clear how support for vorbis across the entire rio line would be a long-term profitable benefit to SB.

In reply to:

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Who *wouldn't* want it to support another format if it was a freebie?

---

What's a "freebie"? As Doug Burnside would have us know, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. "Freebie" to me means at least

• No payment (obviously)
• No development effort needed
• No bugs that might break anything else
• No memory footprint eating our precious RAM
• No extra initialisation time

AFAIAC, it would be nice to be able to remove WAV and WMA support from the player to make it leaner and fitter. Until such time as I might have a use for them, of course.

Uh, I was kinda saying just that... There are no freebies. Did you miss the context of my post, or were you just expanding on my original point?

I think you have to do a lot more reading about DVD licencing if you think the comparison is apple to apple. You seem to be adding in a lot of your own "ifs" which make it very obvious that you're trying to paint the orange red.

Your example would be akin to comparing MPEG2 to MP3. Codec to codec. "DVD" licencing is not solely MPEG2 however. If you want to do MPEG2 only, then you can still access the data off a DVD, but you're not going to be playing most copyrighted material. Most of the sticky bits of DVD are in there because of the studios. Without the studios there wouldn't be any content, so it wouldn't matter either way.

The Chicken and Egg thing doesn't comlpetely fly. The benefits must be enough to make the choice. And I suppose you think that people producing content, content players and other content-manipulation applications don't make these evaluations?

The biggest threat to MP3 is rapid scaling of storage capacity and communication bandwidth. Non-lossy compressed formats. Multi-channel support in an encoder would also be a future threat (and I understand Vorbis has support for this), BUT, it will wait on the content to become available in the first place. In current installations (and material) it's only suited for (home) theatre usage.

Obviously SB do not feel it is within their interests to include Vorbis if they have to develop it themselves. I don't blame them. It's completely useless for the large majority of their current and future customer base. Now, if it was just a matter of grabbing existing, open code, that's another story. Still some development, but a much more appealing proposition. Still not free, but as close as you're going to get.

Now, since I feel like this topic has been discussed to death and since Peter has given fair words to describe their position, can we let this issue die?

Do you want a practical example? GIF.

Bruno

I wasn't sure whether we agreed or not...

Certainly, the poll was poorly-worded, in that it did suggest that Vorbis support would be free. You only mentioned one of the hidden costs (and I thought you meant that that could be the only possible reason for a "no" vote); I thought I'd add a few more that occurred to me (including the ones that made me vote against).

KaCHING!

http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis-dev/0125.html

That looks really promising. Could you e-mail that to the guys?

Woo-Hoo!!!

BTW, it looks like the URL changed to here, as noted in this thread.

The chicken or the ogg? Well, that answers that!

I know that ogg support is a resource/priority issue, but this is great news. My tip of the hat to Biit Faulk for his "why we should care" overview earlier in this thread. While the priority of adding ogg support over other things is perhaps still debatable, this bit of news is enough to prompt me to add Ogg support on my ripper/encoder box and start working with it.

Certainly, the poll was poorly-worded, in that it did suggest that Vorbis support would be free.
Umm i never claimed in my poll that Vorbis would be free.

Glad that there is a integer based encoder for the developers to play with out there..
An implementation doesn't sound so far fetchted anymore.

No one said it was far fetched, we said it didn't exist. Now it does. You look like a wise prophet now... So, please, can you post a poll asking people if they want (a) a cross-fading feature, (b) true gapless output and (c) voice recognition... You're batting 1.000 so far!

Cross-fading! My gapless songs are close enough to completely gapless right now. And what on earth would I do with voice recognition? How would it ever be able to hear my voice over the very loud music? Besides, I'd have to stop signing to give voice commands. Though voice recognition for searching would be kind-a-cool.

Na, cross-fading is the ticket.

Bruno

Cross Fading 100% !

Are you all sure that Ogg Vorbis isn't just a character from Star Wars??

Ok, this marks the second funny post you've made. You've got hope yet.

Bruno

How would it ever be able to hear my voice over the very loud music?

That one's easy.

For voice recognition to work, there has to be a method of putting the player into vr mode, probably a remote button press. This would either mute or hush the player and prepare it to accept voice input.

tanstaafl.

This is my number one wish - not because I actually need it, I'm quite happy on a fully random play everything mode, but because it would just be very cool (in a geeky kind of way) to say "Set Playlist All Pantera. Append All Vivaldi. Append All Blues Playlist. Make It So."

Mmmm - warms the cockles of my gadget-boy heart

Mmmm - warms the cockles of my gadget-boy heart

And as everyone knows, there's nothing worse than a heart full of cold cockles!

tanstaafl.