>
> I saw that the page about a free compression set had been updated. I was
> wondering how many people here would be interested in it.
>
>
> Gabriel Bouvigne - France
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> icq: 12138873
I've actually been talking to the GNU project about this. (I've even
got email from Richard Stallman - I think I'll print it out and frame
it!). He is the one that pointed out the potential patent problems.
I didn't realize how bad the situation was, but in the US you can
patent pretty much anything. Every little idea used in perceptual
audio compression seems to be patented.
I think a new format is easy: take the best parts of LAME,
drop some of the stuff we are stuck with because of layer I and II
(like the polyphase filterbanks), add some of the features
from MPEG4-AAC, and I think we'd get a codec somewhere between
the quality of LAME and AAC. But because of all the patents,
it would probably be in the same legal grey area as LAME.
Related to patents, today on slashdot there is a story about Corel
being sued by the patent holder who came up with the brilliant idea of
side-by-side text file comparisons. The one good thing in the
article: it said only 1 in 50 of these types of law suites ever
succeed.
Mark
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