Bob Jenkins
@mediaone.net
| reply to statemachine
Re: the Overlooked Problem
>StreamRipper uses MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP-3) technology >which is by no means an "opensource technology". For every >copy distributed, the author must pay a royalty.
This is by no means an absolute. While Fraunhoffer does in fact hold patents for many MP3-based technologies, it is definately a debatable point on wether they have the ability to charge royalties for any technology that uses MP3 technology in any way. The LAME developers (which StreamRipper uses I believe) claim that they have removed *all* code that infringes on Fraunhofer/Thomson patents.
And the laws and copyrights you are clinging to were, in fact, very quickly enacted and were constructed by layers who's sole incentive were driven by the large Media companies.
>>But I am against the wholesale rip-off of intellectual >>property rights and copyrights of software and >>technologies that I or my colleagues in other parts of the industry worked so hard to create.
what's to say that people use this product to "ripoff" other people's property rights ? There are plenty of legal and valid reasons to use this product, are you going to sue the maker of the VCR because it can be used to copy VHS tapes ?
Bob |
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statemachine
Premium
join:2001-01-21
Si Valley
clubs:
| 1)The VHS format was not copyrighted with a per-stream royalty charge like MP-3 (and the rest of MPEG).
2) You cannot remove code from an MP-3 product and still have it produce/read MP-3 compatible streams. There are blocking patents on this technology, and without them, you cannot have an MP-3 encoder or decoder. The author is in violation no matter what.
3) Sure, there are many valid reasons to use a product, as long as all the associated fees, copyrights, patents, and other intellectual properties are respected. In the case of StreamRipper, this is not so. |
|
jon_clegg
@216.206.x.x
| Streamripper does not encode to mp3. It only decodes, it wouldn't even decode the audio if it didn't have to look for silence. anyway, it's the encodeing that has a license, not the decoding.
As for using LAME, I used mpglib which is part of the LAME distro for the unix version. I'm using xaudio for the windows version. I would prefer to use mpglib as it's GPL'd, however it's quality is not up to snuff.
-Jon |
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statemachine
Premium
join:2001-01-21
Si Valley
clubs:
| Actually, decoding needs a license too. As does any MPEG related product.
But if you take out all the decoding and are only copying the MP-3 from one place to the other, you should be fine.
As far as the legality of mpglib, its makers are only flying under the radar for now. |
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