"Telamon" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Tom Holden" wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Telamon"
Newsgroups: alt.radio.digital,rec.radio.shortwave
Sent: Sunday, April 24, 2005 7:35 PM
Subject: DRM


In article ,
"Aztech" wrote:

"Telamon" wrote in
message
I see that they are still lying about this on the web page.

"DRM is the world's only non-proprietary, universally standardized
on-air system for short-wave, medium-wave/AM and long-wave. The DRM
consortium does not endorse or certify products. Links to products
are listed on the DRM web site at the discretion of the DRM
consortium. The DRM Consortium is not responsible for the content
of external internet sites."

The decoding software was proprietary and as far as I know it still
is in part at least.

It depends on the definition, when it comes to broadcast or telecoms
hardware non-proprietary means it's based on a published open
standard (usually ISO/ITU approved) that any company is free to
implement, for instance many companies produce their own AAC
implementations with specific performance and quality tweaks, but the
bitstream that comes out of each implementation is exactly in spec.

There is of course a combination of patent and royalties concerns,
however MPEG-LA have to licence each indiscriminately and on equal
terms. Compare that to MS where they control the standard, which may
not even be (fully) published, they produce the encoders and decoders
with any input from competition companies, and they licence the
actual codec in final form rather than just charge royalties on some
of the patents behind that. (MS have tried to rectify some of this by
getting SMPTE to rubberstamp WM9)

MPEG2 for example isn't a "free" standard, royalties must be paid
whilst the underlying patents are in force, however there are
thousands of companies who have produced their own implementation,
there are hundreds of vendors that produce silicon so there is
immense competition, and no one company can control the standard.

AAC+ may not be free but that doesn't necessarily mean it's
"proprietary" in the above context.

OK, here is my simple definition of proprietary in and out of context.

It is the public domain or it is not.

Some of the software that is used in DRM requires a license.

If it requires a license that you must agree to in order to use it then
it is proprietary.

The license MEANS that they are reserving the rights to the use of that
software. Please tell me this point is not lost by you?

This license can be revoked at any time or they can start charging for
its use or they can limit the conditions of use or whom may use it and
any other circumstance you can think of.

You must obey the rights of the owner of the software or the courts
will
fine you and the cops will put you in jail depending on the
circumstances.

No thank you DRM!

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

The licensing fees for DRM consumer products are at
http://www.vialicensing.com/products...ense_fees.html, ranging from
No
Charge (under 1000 units annually) to $1.70 per unit for 1001 to 500,000.
The DRM patent-pool licensors includes AT&T Corp., Coding Technologies,
Dolby Laboratories, France Telecom, Fraunhofer IIS, NEC Corporation,
Philips
Electronics, Robert Bosch GmbH, Sony Corporation, TDF, T-Systems
International GmbH, Thales, and VoiceAge Corporation.

The license is not for software, as far as I can tell, rather for the USE
of
the audio coding and modulation schemes which have been patented. There
was
decoding software sold by the DRM consortium or one of its members that
was
truly proprietary by all definitions - it was closed, no source code
provided, and a fee was charged. And there is decoding software that is
publicly and freely available in source code form from sourceforge.net
under
the Gnu Public License - which, by all or most definitions, is
non-proprietary. However, there is a warning that its USE may infringe
third
party IP and thus may not be legal in some countries.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"Something proprietary is something exclusively owned by someone, often
with
connotations that it is exclusive and cannot be used by other parties
without negotiations. It may specifically mean that something is covered
by
one or more patents, as in proprietary technology. It can also mean that
the
copyright is used in a way that restricts the users' freedoms."

It would seem that there are components of the DRM technology that are
proprietary, i.e., patented by someone, but that they have taken steps to
make the specifications freely available and the fee for use of the
technology nearly or absolutely free of charge for consumer applications.
That would make it far less proprietary than many other technologies. On
the
proprietariness scale, DRM would be closer to the non-proprietary end
than
the other.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. You can minimize the impact of
the situation but I'm not inclined to do that. I'm not comfortable with
the notion of free but under license. Like I have stated you are under
obligation to follow the license restrictions which can change at the
whim of the property owners.

There are at least two levels of IP to overcome if DRM is going to claim
non proprietary as you have noted. There is the software and there is
the algorithms the software employs.

The fact that they lie about it does not help their cause.

Just because you can access source code and compile it yourself does not
mean you are free of license constraints using that software. The source
code is the IP of the software. It does not matter if it complied or not.

I don't understand your conclusion of "On the proprietariness scale, DRM
would be closer to the non-proprietary end than the other." I don't see
you stating anything that supports that point. A court of law won't care
about how proprietary you think the software or the algorithms it
employs is only that it is or is not. If it is then the court will rule
in favor of the owner and that's not you.

You and other need to face up to the fact that the license holders are
not willing to give up their rights and that you have limited temporary
rights to use the IP in the software.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

I think you are viewing the proprietary axis as having only Yes and No
values and on that binary scale, I agree with you that DRM is proprietary. I
never said it was not. What I see is some differentiation along the range -
a secret being the most extreme as it is the most exclusive. A patent would
be less exclusive because it would require vigilance and action to protect
the holder's rights. An easily licensed technology and one that is free of
charge strikes me as being less proprietary than one that requires extensive
patent searching and onerous fees. In that sense (and I suspect that is the
sense that the DRM Consortium intends by their use or misuse of the term
"non-proprietary"), the DRM technology is less proprietary than the
Microsoft Outlook Express software and the underlying platform with which I
am sending this message. I'm certainly not uncomfortable that OE was free
but under license and I daresay that you aren't either with many things you
use daily. The DRM Consortium's objective nonetheless is to encourage the
adoption of the technology by many manufacturers, and thereby encourage
broadcasters and consumers in the development of a market in which many
competitors can share. Maybe they should use the term "non-exclusive"...

Tom