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Oh come on we owe Fraunhofer at least psychoacoustic compression, the basis of MP3 and most current audio formats. It was also a moonshot project at the time. I
by varjag 3y ago
Oh come on we owe Fraunhofer at least psychoacoustic compression, the basis of MP3 and most current audio formats. It was also a moonshot project at the time. It's like complaining DARPA lives on the govt handouts: of many things that to it's among the least problematic.
- anjel 3y agoThe real handout here is who benefit$ from the publicly funded moonshot tech that makes it into real world applications eg smart phone components
- varjag 3y agoI was able to download and listen to sound tracks over my 33.6kbps link back in the 1990s, so I definitely benefited.
- usrusr 3y agoIf memory serves me right they had a project to set up digital radio in Africa so low-bandwidth that the spectrum would have room for stations in even the most niche languages. Languages on the edge of extinction, to help those languages survive. No idea if they ever helped a single language, but they sure weren't without impact. (I suppose the project was one of many related to audio compression, but it was the one I heard a presentation of, to highschool-age youth in the style of "this is what a career in science might look like")
- moralestapia 3y ago??? Wasn't MP3 patent encumbered for decades? T-thanks Fraunhofer ...
- varjag 3y agoI blame all the people who didn't invent psychoacoustic compression so that FHI couldn't patent it.
- ReptileMan 3y agoTo be fair patenting publicly funded stuff is not ok. All IP produced with government money should be public domain.
- DropInIn 3y agoThere is an alternative argument that government should be treated like any other financing partner and recieve a share of ownership in such patents with the revenues used to fund further works, thereby driving the majority of funding to things which have the greatest consumer benefits (proven through the value of patents). There's ways that leaves us with some innovations left by the wayside though, so a mixed system would likely be best to ensure the best net outcomes
- ReptileMan 3y agoAlso acceptable... But the government should get something out of it if it was on the public dime.
- moralestapia 3y agoExactly my point, thanks,