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Not believing in software patents is unlikely to change a court's mind. Instead, support formats that are royalty free from the start - Vorbis, Opus, and Codec2

• throwaway91111 9y ago
  How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM.
  • 2bluesc 9y ago
    > How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM. Then you start by not giving them your money. It's a uphill battle, but someone has to fight the good fight instead of just throwing their hands-up.
    • JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > someone has to fight the good fight That's a noble, if politically naïve, attitude. Societies, like Congress, have a limited bandwidth for problem solving. The way we prioritize what gets solved and what doesn't, as well as how to solve it, is "politics". (This is more a matter of definition than quibbling.) There are various political institutions, and individuals have varying degrees of influence over them, depending on how one's society is structured. But unvaryingly, attracting people with political capital to your cause is paramount. This is often done by showing such people an agglomeration of individuals supporting your cause, individually with less political value than them but collectively something interesting. Even the people at the bottom of the chain have limited bandwidth. This is why most systems default to delegation, particularly at scale. Single-handedly refusing to support something you think is important without patching that into a political system is fine from a personal or moral perspective, but it shouldn't be expected to actually do anything. As such, it's less a good fight than good fussing about.
      • sbov 9y ago
        There's a wide range here. Complaining on a message board where most people agree with you is basically zero effort. Devoting your life's work to it is a ton of effort. There is a middle ground here. My general thought is: you should, on a regular basis, feel at least a little bit of pain due to your opinions. If you don't then your opinion is probably worthless to society.
        • arximboldi 9y ago
          > My general thought is: you should, on a regular basis, feel at least a little bit of pain due to your opinions. If you don't then your opinion is probably worthless to society. I've reread this sentence a few times... and it is actually quite deeper that it first seemed on a more superficial read. Thanks a lot for your comment.
          • rustynails 9y ago
            I would be very careful of that advice. There are many ideologies that use that exact thought process as a justification for divisiveness and intolerance, especially in an echo chamber like Facebook. Is there another side to the argument? Have you investigated it? Is the constraint or division unjustifiable? Who/what is being excluded in that argument? Many patents and anything politically correct fail that test. Eg, do we need a "women in engineering"* or should that be "people in engineering"? If you have "women in engineering" (because of percentages), do you have "men in veterinary science" because of percentages too? You see? Feelings may tell you one thing, but considering divisiveness, exclusion and an opposite view tell you something entirely different. If people asked that last question more often, the world would be a much better place. Leaving the criteria as a logical reasoning rather than a feeling would eliminate a lot of prejudice, intolerance, division and constraint. * I'm married to a qualified and practising engineer. We discussed this topic when she went to a "women in engineering" meeting. When I asked if we should hold a "black people in engineering" meeting, she said "of course not, why would we?". Now we agree on the divisiveness/exclusion test as well as the inclusiveness test. Be warned, my views are not popular.
      • 9y ago
    • throwaway91111 9y ago
      Do you suggest I don't listen to music, or are you prepared with an alternative to apple?
      • daveFNbuck 9y ago
        Amazon sells music and lets you download DRM-free mp3s.
        • 0xffff2 9y ago
          So does Apple... the call here is to use something other than MP3.
          • comex 9y ago
            Apple doesn't use MP3, they use AAC (.m4a), which is technically superior to MP3 but also patent encumbered.
        • throwaway91111 9y ago
          They are not patent free, which is the point at hand. Do they allow ogg/vorbis or other unencumbered formats?
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • Freak_NL 9y ago
        Why do you need Apple to listen to music? There is radio (online and in the ether), there are alternative platforms (e.g., Bandcamp), concerts and other live venues, (second hand) physical media (e.g., CDs or vinyl), open access music, etcetera. On top of all that there is the big middle finger of 'piracy' if you are so inclined. For many this is a morally acceptable alternative to a rotten system, for others it may remain an imponderable transgression of law and or ethics — either way, it is a viable alternative in addition to the above.
        • 9y ago
    • microwavecamera 9y ago
      Your right and it works. People used to say the same thing about Linux and open source software.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • virmundi 9y ago
        I wish that worked here. You'd have to establish an open source media group with direct hooks into the i* platform. Then you'd have to get major acts on that platform.
        • NoGravitas 9y ago
          No one is making you use that platform?
    • EpicEng 9y ago
      That approach is a complete loser. 99.999% of people couldn't care less, your voice will be nothing but noise.
  • alerighi 9y ago
    So don't buy music from Apple, or from anyone else that sells it in non-free formats
    • throwaway91111 9y ago
      Do you have a suggestion? Where can I find Rihanna in Ogg/Vorbis?
      • selectodude 9y ago
        Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis.
        • jhasse 9y ago
          and DRM. Therefore it doesn't help you that they use Ogg Vorbis internally.
      • ryukafalz 9y ago
        The simplest thing, IMO, is just to buy your music on CD and rip it to a free format yourself. Some indie artists release their work online in free formats, but for mainstream artists a physical copy is often the only way.
        • mattkevan 9y ago
          Buy from Bandcamp. Support indie artists and buy music in MP3, FLAC, Apple Lossless, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV or AIFF.
          • chc 9y ago
            The question was specifically "Where can I find Rihanna in Ogg/Vorbis?" Rihanna is not on Bandcamp, so this is a pretty poor answer. You're essentially telling people to like different music than they do.
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
  • TD-Linux 9y ago
    If buying from iTunes, you can choose ALAC, which is royalty free. Patent-encumbered audio codecs are popular at this point because of network effects, not technical superiority. There are many ways to reduce the network effect, even without changing music buying habits. For example If you're a website designer, include a royalty-free audio format as one of your <audio> srcs. As a bonus, you'll save some bandwidth.
    • incompatible 9y ago
      Isn't MP3 a royalty-free audio format now that its patents have expired?
      • Millennium 9y ago
        As I understand it, this is the year that the last of the MP3 patents expire, nd some already have, but there are still two left. One of them expires on August 29, and the last one expires on December 30. It seems kind of odd to do this so late in the patents' life, though. I understand the general theory behind a last-minute cash grab, but you generally can't take "last-minute" quite this literally. Why wait so long?
        • arundelo 9y ago
          Wikipedia says that MP3's last patent expired in the United States last month: If only the known MP3 patents filed by December 1992 are considered, then MP3 decoding has been patent-free in the US since 22 September 2015 [...] If the longest-running patent mentioned in the aforementioned references is taken as a measure, then the MP3 technology became patent-free in the United States on 16 April 2017 [...]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing.2C_ownership_and_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing.2C_ownership_and... Wikipedia also says (unless I'm missing something) that all the MP3 patents have already expired everywhere else too. If this is true, then Fraunhofer is ending their licensing program just because they don't want to bother getting people to pay for something they can now legally have for free.
    • voltagex_ 9y ago
  • alexbeloi 9y ago
    As an engineer? You can influence design decisions and standards for the products your company makes. Somebody at apple decided AAC was better than MP3 because of it has better licensing for distributors, they could have gone further to consider codecs which had liberal licensing towards codec developers/manufacturers.
    • illicium 9y ago
      AAC is also higher quality than MP3 at medium bitrates[1], but this is largely irrelevant for high-bitrate iTunes downloads. [1] http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm
      • sjwright 9y ago
        You can only say that because of the astonishing improvements to MP3 encoding over the past fifteen years. Back in 2003 when Apple opened the iTunes Store, AAC was substantially better than MP3 at all bitrates, most particularly the 128 kbps rate Apple initially used. In fact the decision would have been made back in 2001 or earlier, given that the original iPod released in 2001 supported AAC decoding. (The music labels also forced Apple to encrypt everything, therefore there was no incentive to use an open format. Had they used encrypted Vorbis, that would have been seen as a giant middle finger to open source.)
        • duskwuff 9y ago
          I don't think the iPod supported AAC at its initial release. Virtually no software supported it at that time -- that didn't really come until 2003, when iTunes 3.0 added support for AAC (including encoding). The Music Store was introduced in the same release, so there would have been a required software update for iPods at the same time, to add support for Fairplay encrypted files.
          • sjwright 9y ago
            Correct, not supported at the point of release, but its specs did strongly suggest it was factored into the hardware design.
  • Arizhel 9y ago
    >How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, Simple: don't give any money to Apple for music in patented or DRMed formats, or to anyone else who tries to sell music that way. If you really want, you can write them to tell them why you're not buying their crap. Companies get away with this behavior because consumers let them, and reward them with their money. You can make the argument that consumers don't have enough power for necessities like internet service (because of local/regional monopolies or oligopolies), but this just isn't true for luxury goods and services, which is exactly what the Apple music store is. You don't need downloaded music, there are other providers out there, and you can always buy it on CD (frequently for less) and rip it yourself into whatever format you prefer, like Vorbis, Opus, or FLAC.
    • pdimitar 9y ago
      That's exactly what I do: I buy the physical media and since this doesn't limit my rights in how do I store the music contained inside, I just rip it off that physical media and keep it safely on my machine. That way I also give all the corporations the finger and I am hopeful that even if several tens of thousands of other people do the same, they'll notice a lack of growth at least and reconsider. I don't seriously believe the corps would actually change their ways to benefit the customer -- but this is my rebellion against their business model and it's an exercise of the small power I have. Plus I don't break the law. I simply actively don't feed them money in their scheme which I feel are very unethical and greedy.
  • Jare 9y ago
    Support software and services that supports that format, and try to avoid supporting software and services that do not support it. Including your own if you are a developer, of course.
  • djsumdog 9y ago
    I try to always buy hardware that supports FLAC (which is what everything new in my music collection is ripped/encoded in and what I always download from Bandcamp. Even CDBaby supports FLAC now, which is surprising, but must have been a demand for it). When looking for a head unit in my car, I specifically made sure I had something that could play FLAC and oggs (and mp3s .. and aac .. my music collection is a mix of legacy formats).
• Manchit 9y ago
  This has been confusing me for a long time. As far as I know, it's clearly stated that software is not applicable to patent.
  • JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > it's clearly stated that software is not applicable to patent Given that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has been giving software patents a good deal of thought (not to mention issuing software patents) [1], I'd say the situation is anything but "clear". [1] https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/news-updates/examination-software-patents https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/news-updates/examination-soft...
  • rhino369 9y ago
    You can get a patent over software that is sufficient non-abstract. Where the line is drawn is extremely unclear. But there are valid software patents.
  • coldtea 9y ago
    It's not that clear even in Europe (which kinda forbids them, but sorta allows them). And it differs by jurisdiction too (e.g. in the US).
  • maxlybbert 9y ago
    In the US, patents on ideas, business processes, and algorithms are not allowed. However, there's a goofy (court approved) legal idea that software transforms a general-purpose computer into a single-purpose computer, and that transformation makes software patentable. The general-purpose computer to single-purpose computer transformation cracks me up (and makes it obvious that the law doesn't necessarily have any relationship with reality): "by loading this program, a computer able to do many different things becomes a computer capable of doing a specific thing."
    • josaka 9y ago
      >that transformation makes software patentable This isn't true in many cases after the Supreme Court decision Alice v. CLS Bank in 2014. Now we have a rule more like that in Europe, where some software is patent-eligible if it's sufficiently technical (e.g., something like RSA, or better cache management) and not patent eligible if it's not technical (e.g, CRUD apps, or new views on a database).
• JulianMorrison 9y ago
  The major trouble with patents, and the thing that puts them in a special category of nuisance all of their own, is that it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered until each particular claim to the contrary has been hashed out in court, at ruinous expense. And there is no legal proscription against patent owners letting you think you were safe for years, and then popping up to cream off the fruits of your work. We know MP3 was encumbered. We don't, and can't, know that MP3, Vorbis, and so forth aren't encumbered now. All we can know is that nobody has popped up to hold the industry to ransom... yet.
  • djsumdog 9y ago
    I'm really glad New Zealand decided to disallow software patents. I wish more countries would follow suit.
    • Xeoncross 9y ago
      Has any action been taken against them by other countries or even private industries for this?
      • Kadin 9y ago
        IIRC one of the things that the TPP was supposed to do was "harmonize" (read: ram the US idea of down the throats of everyone else) software patents and other relevant aspects of IP law that were near and dear to major US companies. Since TPP is dead, the IP-dependent industries may start looking for a new venue, as they appear to have been putting a lot of eggs in that particular basket. But there may be a short-term reprieve for countries not currently toeing the US party line.
    • CalChris 9y ago
      I'm really glad New Zealand decided to disallow software patents No, that is not the case. http://www.ajpark.com/ip-central/news-articles/2016/05/new-zealand-patent-office-issues-first-software-patent-under-new-law/ http://www.ajpark.com/ip-central/news-articles/2016/05/new-z... What the Zeds have done is really not so different from what the Supreme Court decided in Enfish: claims purporting to improve the functioning of the computer itself, or improving an existing technological process might not succumb to the abstract idea exception Abstract software is excepted (disallowed) but software which really controls machines is allowed.
• beedogs 9y ago
  Or just keep using MP3 and ignoring these idiotic patents. This has worked for me for 20 years; why would I do anything differently now?
  • robotresearcher 9y ago
    You are paying for the patents whether you ignore them or not.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• Iv 9y ago
  Or be based in Europe where software patents are basically unenforceable. Or make your patent-dependent development OSS.
• rawfan 9y ago
  Software patents are banned in Europe, so the whole shebang is really only relevant in the US. While the patent offices in Europe allowed software concepts to be patented, these patents are not enforcable.
  • jordigh 9y ago
    The situation is a lot more nuanced than that. After all, this is a German company holding mp3 patents. While software itself is not patentable in Europe (or, for that matter, in the US; they argue that it's not software but a process or a "method and a device" that they are patenting), there is a lot of wiggling around the law that results in software patents still being applicable. http://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html http://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html
• gcb0 9y ago
  they mader sure to get rid of this option in the obama administration. now it is first to file. I can just patent all those formats and troll everyone until a court finally decides to consider prior art correctly when someone finally bites the bullet on a defense instead of deal.