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New AT&T Empire winning giant lawsuits to enforce MP3 patents
A generation ago, we though we had defeated the AT&T Telephone Empire. Now AT&T is being rapidly reassembled from its component parts by new owner Cingular, who bought out the ruined husk of the old AT&T "Death Star." Audio 1min 54 seconds
Listen now:
Former AT&T component Alcatel-Lucent has won a $1.52 BILLION lawsuit againt Microsoft(no small empire themselves) over licensing of MP3 compression technology. This is just one of a number of lawsuits from old AT&T components over rights to digital audio processing that have not been aggressivelyt enforced until now.
The "new" AT&T has one of these audio encoding lawsuits before the Supreme Court, concerning applicabilty of US patent law abroad. If they either win this case or acquire/merge with the now hugely valuble Alcatel-Lucent MP3 monopoly, they will be able to demand ruinous royalties from about 400 companies. In any event, some lawyers predict Alcatel-Lucent will be approaching those firms shortly with demands for cash.
The re-mergers of phone monopolies(and maybe eventually cable as well?) back into the AT%T behemoth should be blocked by anti-trust regulators but so far the Bush regime has permitted these mergers to go unchecked. Now the AT&T comonents are starting to flex their muscle, perhaps in anticipation of this eventual merger.
MP3 patent rights have not been enforced much until now, but suddenly, with AT&T back in play, former AT&T componehnts that developed digital voice/audio technology a generation ago and junked it due to inadequate computers have suddenly developed new interest in collecting money everytime anyone does anything with digital audio technology.
A mad scramble in the computer industry has resulted, with some speculating that open source technology like .ogg could replace MP3 as a result.
This file itself would have been a .ogg if the media players embedded imost computers could handle that format-hopeflly these lawsuits will KILL mp3 rather than collect piles of money. This is contingent, of course, on the basic analog to digital encoding used in audio software having a non-patented, open source option as well.
Otherwise, your computer could end up an AT&T owned moneymaking machine just like that rental phone your grandfather had in 1950! You will pay extra to buy it-and maybe every time you play a CD on it it will appear on your telephone bill.
The "new" AT&T has one of these audio encoding lawsuits before the Supreme Court, concerning applicabilty of US patent law abroad. If they either win this case or acquire/merge with the now hugely valuble Alcatel-Lucent MP3 monopoly, they will be able to demand ruinous royalties from about 400 companies. In any event, some lawyers predict Alcatel-Lucent will be approaching those firms shortly with demands for cash.
The re-mergers of phone monopolies(and maybe eventually cable as well?) back into the AT%T behemoth should be blocked by anti-trust regulators but so far the Bush regime has permitted these mergers to go unchecked. Now the AT&T comonents are starting to flex their muscle, perhaps in anticipation of this eventual merger.
MP3 patent rights have not been enforced much until now, but suddenly, with AT&T back in play, former AT&T componehnts that developed digital voice/audio technology a generation ago and junked it due to inadequate computers have suddenly developed new interest in collecting money everytime anyone does anything with digital audio technology.
A mad scramble in the computer industry has resulted, with some speculating that open source technology like .ogg could replace MP3 as a result.
This file itself would have been a .ogg if the media players embedded imost computers could handle that format-hopeflly these lawsuits will KILL mp3 rather than collect piles of money. This is contingent, of course, on the basic analog to digital encoding used in audio software having a non-patented, open source option as well.
Otherwise, your computer could end up an AT&T owned moneymaking machine just like that rental phone your grandfather had in 1950! You will pay extra to buy it-and maybe every time you play a CD on it it will appear on your telephone bill.
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Ogg is much better than mp3-- the only problem with it is that typical pocket sized music players like ipod, rio, etc. do not allow it.
Iriver has been an interesting exception-- but it has hardly featured its ogg capability for consumers-- or made it particularly user friendly. Guess they figure that Linux geeks aleady know how to make it work easily enough.
Doubtless big money payoffs-- payola-- has influenced hardware decisions.
All the hip posters about "freedom" for music lovers is all hype.
People need to ask before buying anything: "does this product make me more free or does it lock me into something that will limit my freedom?"
Iriver has been an interesting exception-- but it has hardly featured its ogg capability for consumers-- or made it particularly user friendly. Guess they figure that Linux geeks aleady know how to make it work easily enough.
Doubtless big money payoffs-- payola-- has influenced hardware decisions.
All the hip posters about "freedom" for music lovers is all hype.
People need to ask before buying anything: "does this product make me more free or does it lock me into something that will limit my freedom?"
Listen now:
unfortunately this is from the mp3 above so, it contains all the mp3 artifacts :(
We tried publishing audio in .ogg format a couple years ago, but got complaints about people being unable to open them.
You cannot get maximum listenership for an audio piece distriburted in a format a significant number of people cannot open. If they are merely curious and not committed, they are NOT going to install a new media player!
I had to go through a LOT of trouble to be able to produce mp3 files on a Linux machine for later publication from random public computers.
This being political material, I do not care about tryign to go "hi-fi." For low power broadcast range is dependant on compression, and for material intended to educate teh number of listeners is more important than stereo or maximum audio quality. The only limitation here is that audio cannot sound so clipped or noisy(from the source recording) as to cause people to tune out the broadcast or stop a file. On the radio, a weak signal or weak audio can of course do the same thing.
You cannot get maximum listenership for an audio piece distriburted in a format a significant number of people cannot open. If they are merely curious and not committed, they are NOT going to install a new media player!
I had to go through a LOT of trouble to be able to produce mp3 files on a Linux machine for later publication from random public computers.
This being political material, I do not care about tryign to go "hi-fi." For low power broadcast range is dependant on compression, and for material intended to educate teh number of listeners is more important than stereo or maximum audio quality. The only limitation here is that audio cannot sound so clipped or noisy(from the source recording) as to cause people to tune out the broadcast or stop a file. On the radio, a weak signal or weak audio can of course do the same thing.
If you want to read the patents -- note that the jury found Microsoft infringed the
RE39,080 Patent for a "rate loop processor for perceptual encoder/decoder"
and
US 5,341,457 on "perceptual coding of audio signals".
I found these over at the blog on www.patentmonkey.com.
For more information:
http://www.patentmonkey.com/PM
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