Saturday December 15, 2007

An Open Letter to, and concerning the actions of:
Nokia
Apple,
and the W3C

Nokia and Apple have recently exerted pressure on the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to remove mentions of open source and royalty free codecs from the HTML 5 standard. These codecs were not required. They are just suggested.

Apple and Nokia are not without interests in this issue. I did a quick search for image and video in the titles of patents by Apple and Nokia at "proprietary". This is completely false! WordNet (r) 2.0 defines proprietary as: "adj : protected by trademark or patent or copyright; made or produced or distributed by one having exclusive rights." Ogg codecs are proprietary only in that they are protected, in some cases, by patent and copyright. However, they are not proprietary in the standard view due to the fact that patents, where they apply, are freely licensed. The copyright license on the libraries is very liberal allowing anyone to use, modify, and distributed them free of charge. The specifications are open and known and people are free to implement them without royalty, fee or payment of any kind.

While we are defining things, here are a few more. Webster 1913 defines slander as: "To defame; to injure by maliciously uttering a false report; to tarnish or impair the reputation of by false tales maliciously told or propagated; to calumniate." Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) defines it as "SLANDER, torts. The defaming a man in his reputation by speaking or writing words which affect his life, office, or trade, or which tend to his loss of preferment in marriage or service, or in his inheritance, or which occasion any other particular damage. Law of Nisi Prius, 3. In England, if slander be spoken of a peer, or other great man, it is called Scandalum Magnatum. Falsity and malice are ingredients of slander. Bac. Abr. Slander. Written or printed slanders are libels."

I believe Nokia has committed slander for gain. Apple is definitely guilty of attempt at financial gain at the expense of someone else. I believe that their actions should be looked into the the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission for violations of laws relating to libel, anti-competitive practices, making false claims against a competitor, causing fear, uncertainty and doubt over a competitor's's/competing product.

I strongly urge the W3C to add back the Ogg codecs as a recommendation, not requirement, of the HTML standard. The removal of these recommendations signified the ignorance and incompetence of the body, or the steering/controlling individual(s) or groups. If the W3 does not add these back and/or suggests Apple Quicktime, Flash, Microsoft media formats (Windows Media) or other such formats they will be in violation of their own stated Patent Policy.

I know that I will be contacting the FTC and DOJ as I am tired of companies that lie and due other illegal and unethical things to gain or maintain market share. I encourage all other U.S. Citizens who are like minded to do the same. I encourage my EU counterparts to complain to the appropriate bodies in the EU.

Sincerely, Trever Adams