VideoLAN under serious threat
p2pnet.net News:- Right now, I’m using VLC to listen to Shakin’ All Over by Johnny Kidd and The Pirates (honest ; ) from the 1960s.
As Cory Higgins points out, “VideoLAN, commonly called VLC, has emerged as one of the file sharing communities favorite media players.
“It allows users to play just about any format of video they might run across in the massive file sharing ocean. However they now have this grave message added to their website.”
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Are VLC’s Days Numbered?
By Cory Higgins – P2PCore
VideoLAN is seriously threatened by software patents due to the numerous patented techniques it implements and uses. Also threatened are the many libraries and projects which VLC is built upon, like FFmpeg, and the other fellow Free And Open Source software multimedia players, which include MPlayer, xine, Freevo, MythTV, gstreamer.
Multimedia is a patent minefield. All important techniques and formats are covered by broad and trivial patents that are harming progress and alternative implementations, such as free software multimedia players.
The European commission has just passed its directive on software patents, violating democratic rules and procedures to the sole benefit of big non-European corporation and Ireland and to the detriment of small and medium sized businesses (which comprise 99% of the European software industry) and free software.
The European parliament will now be taking the last stand against software patents in a voting for which an absolute majority is needed. Such a majority is hard to come by in a parliament with a low attendance level.
But not all is lost yet as long as you decide it is time to make a difference and take action. This is our last opportunity to fend off software patents worldwide, there will be no second chance for the foreseeable future.
Signing petitions will not suffice. Contact your local EU representatives and educate them why software patents are a bad idea in the first place and why they must attend that parliament session to vote against them. Make it clear that they need to stop the machinations of the EU council and reaffirm the power of the EU parliament, the only democratically elected EU institution. For in-depth information and starting points to get active visit the software patent page of the FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) and NoSoftwarePatents.com.
Wish us luck, we will need it.
Loosing this great tool would indeed be a sad day for its fans. P2PCore encourages any of our readers who live in the EU to help stand up for VLC.
(Thanks, Cory, and we say the same. Jon)
June 21st, 2005 at 10:35 pm
What can U.S. citizens (and/or residents) do who support VLC Media Player to help support the cause for saving this program?
June 21st, 2005 at 10:51 pm
*sigh* all good things will come to a crashing end, when patents, copywrites, and big corporations force themselves on everyone else… even when no one is making money…
Things I do to fight, peacefully… Switch to Linux, never buy music that supports the RIAA, same for movies (with some excetions)… Download as many of these kinds of programs that I can, so that if anyone needs them in the future, I can still help…
June 21st, 2005 at 11:38 pm
what can people in the U.S.A. do to help keep this program alive? The article suggested users in the E.U. to take certain actions but what could a U.S. resident and/or citizen do to help keep this program up and running!
June 22nd, 2005 at 10:04 am
The reason that there still are a lot of software arround is that Europe as been more reluctant to enforce software patents that are claimed booth in the EU and the USA.
Other projects, such as samba and even linux filesystems are also threatened.
As an american, you should make the US patent reform real (not just a big corp thing, but for real inventors), and get support from compaines to lobby in the EU.
Right now MS lobbyists posing as SME-representativs swarm the parlament in Brussels. Its not pretty.
June 23rd, 2005 at 2:45 pm
There is patent reform underway in the USA. More people need to support reform, and to tell governments that if patent offices can not set up processes to ensure high (90%+) patent quality in each subject matter category then there should be no patent monopolies in that subject matter.
I sent the following to the Canadian Industry minister and Industry critics.
RIM case is example of the poor quality of software patents.
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/view/947
In the patent case between BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) and NTP the quality now stands at 87% poor quality as the patent office has now rejected 100 percent of the claims of the first seven of eight NTP patents it is reexamining. (See also: Why Research In Motion won’t blink)
It has many times been estimated that between 60% and 95% of information/mental process patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark office are of poor quality. A poor quality patent is one that would not stand up against adequate useful, novel and unobvious tests in court. Software and business model innovators believe that where the patent office can not ensure the vast majority of patents in a given subject matter are of high quality that patent monopolies should not be granted at all.
While the quite successful and rich RIM can defend themselves against the illegitimate patents that represent the vast majority in software and business models, the vast majority of innovators do not have the legal resources to do this. It is incumbent on the Canadian government to fix this problem by updating the patent act to either rid us of poor quality software and business model patents, or enact statutory exemptions of this subject matter from patentability.
June 24th, 2005 at 11:58 am
Unfortunately, it is comments like these that give the patent system a bad name.
In actuality, the patent system is in harmony with the open source movement. Instead of trying to change the system, the open source community needs to document when new innovations are created, and then ensure that this documentation reaches the Patent Office, so that patents won’t be issued on known technology. Otherwise, it’s just a design issue, and members of the open source community can probably design around anything that big corporations put up in their patents.
For a group of free thinkers, I can’t understand why folks don’t take the intellectual high ground and support the patent system. It is classless, it protects the little guy as well as the big guy.
A patent attorney.