I liked Tord Jansson's (of BladeEnc) Slashdot post so, that I couldn't help copying it here below. :) It seems a educated and intelligent insight into the legal issues around MP3. -=[ snip ]=- Not to rain on LAME's parade but... (Score:5, Informative) by Tord ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) on Wednesday May 10, @04:38PM EDT (#129) (User Info) http://www.advogato.org/person/TordJ/ ...the ISO code had NOTHING to do with the patents! It's a common misconception that different MP3 encoders are affected by the patents since they are based on the ISO code. That is NOT correct. Patents deals with technology and procedures, copyright deals with the source code! The reference code is provided by ISO to help people understand MP3 encoding/decoding and they have nothing to do with the patents (except that they accepted patented or patent pending technology into the MPEG Layer 3 standard, which they should have a big kick in their butt for). Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson Consumer Electronics owns a lot of patents on technology used in MP3 encoding/decoding and they will demand a license from any encoder that uses their patented technology no matter if it's based on the ISO reference source or NOT. Personally I don't know why the LAME team always have taken the approach of not distributing the entire source but only a patch, but I guess they decided to play it safe. Distributing the ISO reference source doesn't breach any patents, but it might possibly be a copyright infringement against ISO. Take a look at their page, does that say anything about the patents not being enforceable against compiled versions of LAME anymore? No it doesn't, it just says "All ISO code removed!" among the new features, which of course is a nice milestone to reach (no possible copyright infringement, having complete masterhood of the code, having replaced all old bug-filled code with new clean code etc.), but doesn't affect the patent situation. Technically it should be possible to create a completely patent free MP3 encoder by carefully reviewing all the patents (17 patents in total, unless their lawyers have "forgotten" to send me some) and then making sure that whatever implementation you go for doesn't use any of those specified processes, which is bloody hard since these patents were designed to intercept any attempt like that. Then if you succeed you would probably still have to go to court since they would sue you anyway, hoping that your implementation is close enough to get you stopped. Also, very few people knows this, but there is a ticking bomb hidden in all this. Fraunhofer and Thomson don't have all the mp3 related patents, they are just the ones who have decided to demand a license for the use of their technology and pulled their patents into a common pool that you can license. More companies are claimed to have patents on mp3 technology (they are listed in the ISO documentations), but they are currently not enforcing them. What if they suddenly start to demand licenses for the use of their technology? Then it doesn't help that you have Fraunhofer/Thomson's permission, you also need another license to go on... Also, I think that Slashdot should have checked this a bit more throughly before posting it (like checking with one of the LAME developers), the fact that they say "No more patching! Full souce code distribution since all ISO has been replaced!" and nothing about patents should have raised warning signs alone... Also, the last time I checked, LAME was GPL and not LGPL... Tord Jansson BladeEnc Creator -- MP3 ENCODER mailing list ( http://geek.rcc.se/mp3encoder/ )
