[Fsfe-uk] Re: Patented videoshop opens in Wales

[Marco Schulze]

Kevin Donnely (kevin at dotmon.com) writes:

> > I do have to say that I see some difficulty with 3 of the items 
> > mentioned: I think the response of most people to patents on gifs, 
> > mp3s and mpeg4s will be "somebody did some work to create these, and 
> > you're using them, so it's reasonable to pay". 
Fileformats are like the alphabet: It's necessary to have open standards 
that everyone can use. Otherwise, we end up in the Celtic age > 2000 
years ago, when reading and writing were privileges of the priests!

> > In my view, these are of a different character to things like tabbed 
> > browsing, or paying by credit card over the internet, or a shopping 
> > trolley, all of which are analogues of real-world things.  I 
> > recognise the issues with the compression technology (significantly, 
> > in at least  two cases (png and ogg) there are free alternatives) - 
> > it's just that I think there would be a better response if we focus 
> > on the really loony ones. 
The propriatery formats are pushed into the market by powerful 
monopolists. They establish a "secret language" and exclude everyone 
they want. That's creating a monopoly on information itself as they can 
decide who is allowed to read/write!

Markus Gerwinski has written a very good text about it. Unfortunately, 
it's in German, but maybe Babelfish can help you to at least understand 
a bit:

http://www.pl-berichte.de/edit/nov2002a.html

Best regards, Marco.