Monty
2000-Nov-22 04:32 UTC
[vorbis-dev] [fwd] liked your article at http://xiph.org/about.html (from: mlewis@webnoize.com)
----- Forwarded message from Mark Lewis <mlewis@webnoize.com> ----- Delivery-Date: Tue Nov 21 10:15:55 2000 Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 10:07:15 -0800 From: Mark Lewis <mlewis@webnoize.com> Reply-To: mlewis@webnoize.com Organization: Webnoize News X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win98; U) To: monty@xiph.org Subject: liked your article at http://xiph.org/about.html here's an article about the FAAC shut-down. mark lewis news editor news.webnoize.com 626-398-1162 ----- November 21, 2000 technology . formats Pressured by Dolby, Open-Source Audio Developer Takes Down Software by Mark Lewis An open-source audio movement lost a battle last week against the audio technology industry when a non-commercial developer stopped distributing compression software that Dolby and others claimed infringed on their patents. But the developer is still distributing the source code so that programmers can improve the technology. Since at least December 1999, Dutch software developer Menno Bakker distributed source code and software that encodes and decodes audio files using Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). AAC is a high-quality audio compression technology whose patents are owned by Dolby Laboratories, AT&T Laboratories, Fraunhofer Institute and Sony Corp. Like popular MP3 encoders, Bakker's software compressed music into small files, but the AAC technology made them even smaller and of better quality than MP3 files. At the heart of Bakker's software was an open-source version of AAC technology, which he called Freeware AAC (FAAC). Dolby Laboratory's licensing corporation sent Bakker a letter last week telling him to stop distributing the software through his and other web sites because he had not licensed AAC from the four developer companies. Dolby licensing administrator Christina Bonner told Bakker in the letter that he could continue to offer the software if he purchased a license, and Dolby would need to "discuss [his] business plan in order to discuss suitable licensing terms." According to the AAC Patent License Agreement, applicants must pay an administrative fee of $10,000, which does not guarantee they will get a license. Developers making consumer software applications that encode and decode music with AAC must pay $1.35 for every piece of software they distribute, up to 100,000 units; fees are lower for more units sold. If developers prefer, they can pay 1% of their gross revenues earned on the licensed products. Thirty-five companies have licensed AAC, according to Bonner. After Bakker received Dolby's letter, he stopped distributing the free software. But he is still offering the code so programmers can understand how the technology works and improve it. "I think that if people invented something they have the right to expect some money from others using their ideas," emailed Bakker, a student at the University of Twente in Holland. "The license, however, is far too expensive for anyone to just go experimenting legally with AAC. I just wanted to experiment, and I think FAAC wasn't any competition yet for the Fraunhofer/Dolby implementation." Many open-source programmers contend that software and technology improve more quickly when code and inventions can be worked on by everyone without paying for licenses; they argue that a final commercial implementation can be proprietary, allowing those with the best real-world products to earn money. But for labs that patent genetic sequences and silicon chip-makers that use encryption to keep reverse-engineers from looking at the code in their circuits, proprietary information is their key competitive advantage. FAAC solved an interoperability problem associated with Dolby's AAC, said open-source developer Jack Moffitt, who helped create a royalty-free audio codec called Ogg Vorbis. Certain licensing terms behind Dolby's AAC require licensees to create encrypted files. Thus, even though two companies both use AAC, one company's software player won't necessarily play files created using the other company's encoder. According to the AAC Licensing Agreement, two companies can reach a private agreement to make their software compatible. But Dolby may prevent AAC from becoming an industry standard if it requires content and other technology companies to negotiate compatibility. "[That] just fosters everything that's wrong about media right now," Moffitt said. AAC encoding is used in files from Universal Music Group, BMG Entertainment and Liquid Audio, but because their file formats use different encryption systems, the files may not be compatible with various software and hardware players. "We aren't seeking to adopt the plain text MP3 model of interoperability," emailed Dolby's Bonner. Formats using AAC "are interoperable to the extent that their 'owner/operators' wish them to be," Bonner stated. Freeware AAC is supposed to create "generic" AAC technology that does away with those compatibility problems, as long as files aren't encrypted. Still, it's unlikely that any company could produce commercial software or hardware using Freeware AAC without the threat of a lawsuit from Dolby's licensing arm. That threat is the reason Bakker has stopped distributing the FAAC software -- but not the back-end code. He's not the only independent developer working that way. Last summer, files encoded with LAME, an improved MP3 encoder based on advanced Fraunhofer patents, started to appear on the 'Net. LAME stands for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder," because developers release only source code, not a software application using the code, on the 'Net. Ogg Vorbis developers, on the other hand, distribute their encoder/decoder software freely because they claim their technology doesn't infringe on anyone else's patents. Software players such as Sonique and XMMS now support Vorbis; a future version of Iomega's new HipZip portable music player is expected to play Vorbis files, Moffitt said. As open-source activity continues, Bakker isn't daunted by Dolby's move to protect its patents. He wants to press on with his experiments by developing another audio codec -- though this next one might not be open-source or freeware, he said. "I want to make good use of the knowledge I have obtained while developing FAAC." ----- End forwarded message ----- --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-dev-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.