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MP3 Creator Honored By Germany 54

Posted by Hemos from the rewards-where-they-should-go dept.
^ZuLu^ writes "The inventor of MP3 Karlheinz Brandenburg just received the German Futurereward and 500k DM (approx. $250000). He received that price at the Expo in Hannover by the German President Johannes Rau. Isn't that just the statement we we're all waiting for? A state which completely honours the invention of MP3 regardless of what the music industry is trying to make us believe? The story's available in german at Yahoo here." And the fish can aid in translation.
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MP3 Creator Honored By Germany More

MP3 Creator Honored By Germany

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  • Quote (translated) (Score:4)

    by Hanno ( 11981 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @12:12PM (#688433) Homepage
    As translated from Heise Newsticker [heise.de] (forgive my bad English):

    "There is a philosophy that everything that is being thought [ / being invented] must be free for everyone; I do not share this view. It is nice when people can afford such behaviour because of their financial status, but I believe that intellectual achievements should be paid for. This is a position where we all are right on the side of the musicians, the licensing organisations and the music industry. Personally, I am not a friend of Napster and it is right that they are being challenged in court."

    So, Slashdot is actually worshipping the wrong hero, I guess.

    ------------------
  • The thing I like about German science is, despite the Teutonic reputation for accuracy and precision, their really great ideas are about imprecision; to whit Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Gaussian Distributions.

    Incertitude is far more important than exactitude.

    Elgon
  • Well let's see...after 5 minutes of research...

    From the RIAA faq which is located on www.riaa.com

    --
    Q. Does the RIAA want to make MP3s illegal?
    A. No. MP3 is simply a compression technology. Its use has had a very positive impact in terms of allowing the music industry to discover consumer interest in online music. At the same time, the RIAA has had some concern with this technology, arising from the fact that it can be used to distribute pirated copies of music. The RIAA does not endorse - or veto - the technologies that its members use to promote and distribute their recordings. Several of our members have used different formats to electronically distribute their music. MP3 is a 1992 technology and it appears likely based on current industry trends that its use will be supplanted by newer, faster, higher quality technology that also offers the ability to protect copyrights when desired.
    --

    Of course they're lying, right?

  • It's time for all of us to upgrade. (Score:3)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @01:16PM (#688436) Homepage Journal

    And I've certainly dl'd MP3's over 56kbps.

    But you can't create them in the United States and several other countries without buying licensed software from a software firm that pays the MP3 encoder software patent license [mp3licensing.com] royalties, which are currently USD$15,000 for the first 6,000 units shipped yearly and USD$2.50 for each additional unit. This is why official LAME [sulaco.org] binaries will not be released before around 2010 (good thing what happened to copyright duration [everything2.com] hasn't (yet) happened to patent duration). BTW, to compile LAME on Win32, get GCC for Windows [mingw.org].

    If you think licensing fees are the problem, it's time for you to upgrade.

    I agree totally. After having upgraded from MP3 to OggVorbis [vorbis.com], the only MP3 files I encode are Wrapster [tripod.com] archives containing .ogg files.

  • MP3's not free?

    I haven't paid for one yet.

    Maybe you're just trolling in the wrong places.

    People here will try to keep you from spending your money unwisely.

  • MP3 was great... Vorbis will be greater (Score:3)

    by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @12:14PM (#688438)
    MP3's not free, though. MP3 was great as a proof of concept of digital audio; it was just a coincidence that the "free music" movement got started with a *format* that's not free. Anyone who hasn't heard of Ogg Vorbis needs to go check it out here. [vorbis.com] The quality is better than mp3 for equivalent bitrates, and the format is free as in both speech and beer. There is of course a winamp plugin to play the files. Unfortunately, the encoder they have created doesn't work all that well, and there aren't many .ogg files out on the net... but the format has a lot of promise.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Buggy or not, did you come up with the Napster concept? No. But all the geeks who are jealous like to knock him down for its simplicity. This guy's "buggy" invention has caused the very concept of intellectual property to be challenged, what have you done today?
    --
    DigitalContent PAC [weblogs.com]
  • I've noticed that too. It's not a problem on my machine (Athlon 800) but it slows the rest of the system to a crawl on my mom's PPro-180. However, remember all the Vorbis stuff is still in beta; later versions will probably be much more optimized.
  • This is *not* informative.

    But, then again, moderators, are *not* humanoid life forms.

    Oh well.
  • Hmm it looks like that comment was from the story submitter, not Hemos.
  • (unlike some idiot...) Jealous?

  • There is a homepage [deutscher-...tspreis.de] dedicated to the German Future Award 2000. It is of course in german, so fish all you want.

    The other innovations nominated for the award were:

    • Autonomous Radiosensors
    • Integrated process for manufacturing paper
    • Helium-3-Magnetic-Resonance-Tomography
    Personally, I would have loved to see the autonomous sensors win. Small sensors, without an electric power supply, send changes in temperature and other properties wirelessly. On top of that, these sensors are extremely robust. But since this is slashdot, that'll probably earn me ignorance or -1, offtopic.
  • IMHO the academic grade has become less important in the last years. Sure it is still a sign of s.o.'s competence, and you earn a lot of respect with a professors or a doctors degree, but i.e there is a competition called 'Jugend Forscht' in which students aged from 8 to 25 can present their own research results, in different categories, and the winners are showed in the media.
    A lot of startups have been found from people who have abort their education and they're doing well.
    At present the specialists are rare in comparition to the growth of the economy so that you have good chances to get in the IT-industry without academic education. But it is difficult when the companies have more applicants to choose from, because the academic education is about at the same level in every university here, so that the companies know good how well they do in their job.
  • Tim Berners-Lee tried to publish a paper about his new idea for the internet(The WWW) and academia snubbed him because of his academic credentials

    What's the heck you say? Berner-Lee has presented a paper, he has given a speech. It was in 1989, in a workshop of High Energy Physics.

    Read the history...

    --ricardo

  • If you don't want other people to use your idea, keep it to yourself then.

    By the way, if you compose your invention using use any idea from the public domain, your so-called intellectual property is nothing more than theft and re-sell of stolen goods.
  • Ok, the ignorant has found the post. Now to the moderators...
  • All that and the Oktoberfest (please stop singing when you get to my street!).

    "HEEEEEIIIEEEYYYY BABY! OOO-AAAA!!!! I WANNA KNOOOOOOW IF YOU'LL BE MY GIRL!!!!!" I think only people living in Germany would understand that one. I'm not German either but I'm studying here and will be doing an internship here in a few months.

    Deutschland ist toll!

  • Re:information technology in germany... (Score:4)

    by BadDoggie ( 145310 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @02:11PM (#688451) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps I can shed a little light.

    Ever hear of a little company called Siemens? I'll just tell you a few things they did since the war.

    In 1953, they developed the zone refining method for high-purity silicon production.
    1958 saw the first cardiac pacemaker.
    Blah blah first European 64K RAM chips blah blah first workable cell phone system blah blah 1M DRAMs blah blah high-temp fuel cells blah blah blah.
    Last year Siemens developed the Sivit, a computer without a mouse or keyboard. And no I don't know if it runs KDE.

    Perhaps you've heard of CEBIT. It's held in Germany every year. It's the most important technological convention in the world.

    You've heard of Bayer -- they still have the trademark on "Aspirin" in Europe -- and you probably know that pharmaceuticals is a rather important high-tech industry. And it hires more and more computer people. They need Beowulf clusters to do molecule modeling, so now I get modded up for that mention.

    Are you familiar with Badische Anilin- & Soda-Fabrik? Yes you are. They make so many of the things you buy better. BASF. German, since 1901 (or is that going back too far?).

    Germany leads the world in "green" products and their implementation, from washing machines that run on less than 15 litres of water (almost 4 US gal.) to high-efficiency oil heaters to solar cell technology (a new breakthrough in coated copper backing for solar cell panels which drastically increases efficiency is just going into major production).

    We've got technology coming out of our asses (arses, for UK & Oz) here. Dr. Thomas Pabst of Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com]. Nobel Prize winners. You name it.

    All that and the Oktoberfest (please stop singing when you get to my street!). And a lot more that I'm too lazy to spell out right now.

    Oh... and I'm not German, I just live here. And I'll probably stay here. You see, I work for a high-tech company whose most important office outside of HQ is here. And who in his right mind would give up good pay (even if it is in Euros), full medical (it's standard here) and 30 days of vacation a year?

    "We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us." -- Mark Twain

  • Ever hear of a little company called Siemens? I'll just tell you a few things they did since the war.

    I actually worked for them for one month in the holidays, a summer job for instant.
    It's a complete mess there. Out of the four weeks, I worked two (Visual Basic, Access), then the boss of my room went on holiday, including every other permanent employee. Two weeks of surfing the Internet :)

  • Ok, so the creator of the MP3 format is from Germany, and one of the major Linux distributions (S.U.S.E.) is published by a German-based company.. Before the world wars (Specifically, WWII), Germany was a scientific mecca... Who can share information about other recent great innovations and breakthroughs by German companies, specifically in the computer industry?

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @12:05PM (#688454)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • so they can give to the artists who are being ripped off by the pirates..

    And why use MP3, when you can use <a href="http://www.vorbis.org/">Ogg Vorbis</a>?
  • MP3 Inventors Receive German Future Award

    Hannover (dpa)- The German Future Award 2000 goes to the inventors of the MP3 filetype. Federal President Johannes Rau handed the award, worth half a million DM to MP3 co-developer Karlheinz Brandenburg at the Expo in Hannover. Bernhard Grill and Harald Pop were honoured with him. This technology allows music files to be compressed so well, that they can be transmitted over the Internet in HiFi quality.

    -------------

  • I note from his bio that he's an academic. I've read that it's very difficult to get taken seriously in Germany unless you're a professor. I.E. you'd never hear of a German version of, say, Linus Torvalds, being honored in this way. Anyone care to talk about whether this is true, and if so, what impact it does/doesn't have on German innovation and inventiveness?
  • Umm...There's only one country in the world completely run by corporations (and morons, but every country has a few).

    Really sucks being you doesn't it.
  • If you need links you haven't been paying attention.

    HINT: The Mass Media is NOT your friend.
  • MP3's not free? I haven't paid for one yet.
    I haven't either. However, the *format* is not free. You can't get a free mp3 codec that will go over 56kbps... why? Fraunhofer license fees. There's a difference between the format and the files encoded in this format.
  • Too true, academic credentials are overated.

    Tim Berners-Lee tried to publish a paper about his new idea for the internet(The WWW) and academia snubbed him because of his academic credentials.

    Of course those same academics are now falling over themselves to have him write articles for their learned journals.....
  • Why use "Submit" when you can "Preview" first!
  • For all the popularity of MP3, remember that Fraunhofer holds patents on it, making the creation of a legal, legitimate, Free encoder impossible.

    Well hey, there's the perfect solution for the RIAA. They buy up the patent and refuse to license it. Problem solved. Next!

  • For those of you who mistook his post for incoherent babbleing, pay attention: 54t4n here did in fact root every machine on the Internet.

    Check those loopback interfaces boys! This 31337 d00d 0wn3z 127.0.0.1 *Grin*

    (No, IANAL [I am not a looser])
  • Something went screwy with IDcide [idcide.com] and log-in while I was trying to preview.

    You mean you don't preview before you post?!

  • It depends. Will lying get them more money? :)
  • You got that right.

    They're still very stuck on titles.

  • If so strong in the force is Yoda, then construct proper order in sentences why can't he?
  • Well, EXCUSE ME.

    I'm just a stupid user. I don't care about the format, that would be someone else's concern. I just download the MP3's and listen to them at my convenience.

    And I've certainly dl'd MP3's over 56kbps. If you think licensing fees are the problem, it's time for you to upgrade.

  • Re:Witty Slashdot remarks strike again (Score:4)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @12:58PM (#688471) Homepage Journal

    IIRC they have a problem with pirating of their product, not the MP3 format itself.

    Logically, one would think that. But why did they sue Diamond over the Rio? That lawsuit can not be reconciled with merely wishing to prevent piracy; it was clearly a strike at the technology itself.


    ---
  • :)

    Actually I previewed, and then submited before reading until the end. Then I stopped netscape (before getting the reply), corrected, and tried to submit again, but the first submit had already made it, and I couldn't submit again.

    (And now, I will click preview, wait to read it all, then submit.)

  • Ever heard of L.A.M.E. [mp3dev.org]? And doesn't Fraunhofer hold a patent on MP3 coding only in Germany and U.S.?
  • Mp3s are finally not shunned by a country. Looks like we have a winner :)
  • as a proof of concept. Now, people have the concept of free availability of media in their heads, indelibly. Hopefully, this news will legitimize the concept of free media, and we'll eventually start seeing that be the rule rather than the exception. Here's hoping, anyway...

  • WARNING: Hell due to freeze over (Score:4)

    by Ted V ( 67691 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @12:00PM (#688476) Homepage
    Everyone dress warm tonight, because the first post on a slashdot artical was actually ON TOPIC. You know what that means... Ice skating down the river Styx. :)

    -Ted
  • wich is why they sued all the makers of MP3 players when they all started making them?? Which is why the music industry refused to work with Napster in any way to distibute music legally?
  • Large Parts of My music Collection

    My Job

    My Life In the US

    My Internet Radio Shows (and my status as the original mp3 DJ)

    All the cool people I met Because of mp3serv and Icecast

    OTOH

    I'm probably never going to complete my PhD in astronomy.

    And - Despite having access to terabytes of music I still Buy loads of CD's and Records every month. I'm still a complete Vinylphile.

    (Anyone need a DJ in SF? You can advertise me as the first hacker to do mp3 streaming - ideal for those companies in the space throwing parties ;-)
  • It's really a situation like the MPAA with DVDs: they say its about piracy, but it's really about control. They are trying to push joint mp3/SDMI players, but which will stop playing mp3s at some point. It is fairly clear that they intend to do their best to prevent mp3s being used, and replace them with their own controlled technology.
  • Now all the record companies are going to sue the poor guy.

  • Witty Slashdot remarks strike again (Score:4)

    by Zagato-sama ( 79044 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @12:01PM (#688482) Homepage
    I fail to see why the last quip regarding the music industry was needed. IIRC they have a problem with pirating of their product, not the MP3 format itself.
  • Its nice to see that there is still a country not completely run by corperations. Perhaps it is time for me to learn to sprechen sie Deutsch.

  • Re:Witty Slashdot remarks strike again (Score:3)

    by Eric_Henry ( 121003 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @12:11PM (#688484)

    The problem is that they don't see the difference between the two.

    Eric Henry
  • Its nice to see that there is still a country not completely run by corperations. Perhaps it is time for me to learn to sprechen sie Deutsch.

    Whatever virtues Germany possesses, being free of corporate dominance is not one of them. Barriers to entry are high, so it's tough to get a small startup going and compete with the giants. If you want a place closer to what seems to be your ideal, you might consider Taiwan or Hong Kong.

  • I'll bet this post gets moderated up to "+0 Grumble, grumble, grumble".

    The moderators seem to have a thing against first posts, even when they're on topic.

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