[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Hi there, > > Hi!
> >I'm writing an essay about ISO and the case of the MP3, and thought some of >you might help me by dropping me a line or two. > >I'm really confused now, and hope there is a clear answers somewhere.. > > > OK, let's try ;) > >I try to understand who owns what of the MP3 standard: ISO/FhG/Thomson , >open source, ISO standard and patent-license, how can MP3 be all three? > > MP3 is part of the MPEG standard, a standard defined by a group of organisations. Participants are companies like Philips, Simens, Thomson, etc. as well as research entities like FhG. Most participants also contributed IP (intellectual property) to the project which formed later on the standard. Some more, some less. The result is openly available as an ISO standard. But nonetheless the participants still own their IP. But they license it to the MPEG consortium which in itself is supposed to be a spokesman for all the parts of the MPEG standard. Today there is an extra organisational unit that handles the licensing. Being an ISO standard does not prevent anything that is part of it from being patented. Some of the participanst of the MPEG group onw patents on parts they contributed. Some does this rather silently and others do very provocative and loud announcements that they invented the best parts and in general are *the* inventors of it, like FhG falsely did (get me right, I h*te FhG for this ;) > >It the reason why FhG suddenly started to wanted money for MP3, that some >record company organization "forced" them? > > > For this particular stuff the record companies are not responsible. FhG just started to claim and enforce their patent - to a great extend the rest of the MPEG group and especially the MP3 subgroup openly criticized FhG for that. They rather wanted to do the licensing rather silently and only charge companies and device manufacturers - not individuals programming for fun. >I've read somewhere that LAME and the other open sources for MP3 can never >be a free legal open source because it depends on a patent. Is this true or >was this before the last part of the ISO-standard code was replaced? > > > The GPL in general forbids patents in GPLed code. Dot. But apart from that the patent covers the algorithm, not the code. So anything you do will not get you rid of the patent. The ISO reference implementation was free as long as you do not use the code for the purpose it was written, i.e. MP3 encoding. You can read the code, modify it, maybe even compile it. But you must not use it and you must not redistribute working program code, i.e. the compiled program. This is the reason why e.g. Lame is not included in any Linux distribution. The MPEG group, especially the MP3 group, did not like what FhG did. They talked a lot and made a compromise: You are allowed to use the decoding patent as long as you do not make any profit or money from it. So decoders like XMMS or mpg123 are safe today. But Lame still is not. Replacing the last ISO code in Lame at least made Lame free from any copyright issues - which is a very distinct thing from licensing and patents. > >Was there a story about code that by accident was published, or am I mixing >up? > > The code that was in Lame and that was also published was the reference implementation. This is normal stuff. You can also browse patents to their full extent without violating anything. But having the code does not give you any license to actually use it. >Hope you guys know your history :-) > > > Hope this helped at least a little! If you have further questions drop me a line (or to the list of course). >Thanks, >Lars Kristian Aasbrenn > > CU nils _______________________________________________ mp3encoder mailing list [email protected] http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/mp3encoder
