John Lazzaro wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I am not a lawyer, don't base your business plans on anything
> I'm about to write here.
Thanks, John, from the things that I read in the links (just skimming),
I did not really notice anything regarding Usage of the format (as
opposed to writing an encoder/decoder). But I am still getting the
sinking feeling that to transmit your files using MP4 format, someone is
going to ask for money.
> There are two separate issues here -- patent issues on MPEG 4
> Systems, and patent issues on Structured Audio itself. In general,
> patents licensing rights for MPEG 4 get negotiated in the M4IF --
> the MPEG 4 Industry Forum. Like white smoke puffing out of the
> Vatican, you can follow press releases on this website:
>
> http://www.m4if.org
>
> to see when consensus has been reached on a portion of the
> patent pool. Since Structured Audio flies underneath the radar of
> the M4IF folks currently, most of the high-profile action revolves
> around MPEG 4 Systems, and this email will focus on that issue.
When you say "Structured Audio files" I assume you mean any files
containing SAOL code or SASL score info. Does this mean that we can use
SAOL without fear of having someone ask us for money?
How separate is SAOL from MP4?
> for details. We're going this route because we're
> interested in low-latency network musical performance, and
> MPEG 4 Systems doesn't help us do the things we need to do
> to make a usable system happen -- namely, tight coupling
> to the transport media for forward-error-correction. See
> the paper above for details, and expect to see the technology
> in action in upcoming sfront releases.
Are you doing this because you are more interested in create
"performance" systems, instead of a "playback" system? How will this
work relate (legally) to the MP4 stuff?
Are there any future plans to restrict the usage of 'sfront'? I only ask
this, as I am really starting to make some serious decisions on what I
use, as I want to do my work with "Open" technologies. (Replace MP3 with
Ogg Vorbis...)
> Notice, in this whole discussion, I've sidestepped the actual patents
> surrounding MPEG 4 Systems. The interested reader should look at this
> mailing list thread:
I did look at the audio page at
http://www.m4if.org/patents/AudioPatentPressRelease.html, and it did not
make any mention of Usage. I guess I was just assuming that the whole
shebang was being done under the GPL, trying to encourage people to use
the format.
Boy, could you image, Aldus might still be in business if they asked for
royalties for using the "Tiff" format. I also am thankful that Adobe
does not ask for royalties for using the PDF format...
Thanks,
Mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jan 28 2002 - 11:46:43 EST