I am cool with answering in a forum. Please see my answers below.
First....a couple of comments given that I guess I may be listened to by a
number of people....
1) Some of the "hate" mail that we have received is really disturbing. Like
yourself, we are real people, that work hard, have real families and real
feelings. Many of the comments we have received are offensive on a personal
level. It is clearly OK if people disagree (even vehemently) with our
position....the beauty of the Internet is freedom of expression. It is just
unfortunate that some individuals have to add venom in a personal way.
2) What CDDB licenses is access to our real-time data service for accessing
audio CD information. The protocols used to access our service (CDDBP and
HTTP) are Open Source protocols. We do not license the protocols.
3) Instead of requiring developers to pay a royalty for our service, we have
elected to offer a royalty-free "trade" type of relationship. We provide
developers of applications access to our service and in return, developers
agree to authorize our Agreement, acknowledge the CDDB brand when the
service is accessed, and provide a click-thru button on the user interface
of their application. We have been made aware of limitations associated
with text-based applications as it relates to the branding and click-thru
requirements -- this was good feedback that we received and we will be
altering our Agreement in order to accommodate text-based apps.
4) Access to the CDDB service is free for end users.
With regard to your specific questions, please see my responses below. We
really are OK people to work with. We have real costs associated with
maintaining the service and have tried in our Player Agreement to create a
mechanism for covering costs while not financially impacting developers. If
developers don't agree with this approach, that is OK....any developer can
elect not to use our service.
I hope this answers your concerns. Please feel free to communicate with me
directly if I can be of further assistance. See inline comments below.
Best regards, jk
Jim Kinney
General Manager
CDDB, Inc., an Internet enterprise of Escient, Inc.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 18:42:23 +0000 (GMT)
From: Mike Oliphant <oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk>
To: cdindex nospam at freeamp.org, freecddb-developer nospam at bigred.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Responding to your CDDB Inquiries (fwd)
Sender: owner-freecddb-developer nospam at bigred.lcs.mit.edu
Dear Jim,
Since you, or someone who works for you, is reading this list, I thought
I would just respond to you in this forum.
I do not know if my request for information was "honorable", but it was
certainly reasonable. I am the author of a cd-player that uses the CDDB
protocol. You sent me a license agreement to sign. As I have stated
previously, I simply want to know:
a) Whether Escient is in a legal position to offer me a license on the
ability to "CDDB-enable" my cd-player application, and if so, what
justifies this legal position (copyright, patent, etc.)
JK>> Escient licenses access to the CDDB data service.
b) What copyright or patent will I be infringing if i do not sign this
license, but retain CDDB features in my application.
JK>> Applications that access the CDDB data service and make use of the CDDB
trademark need to be licensed to do so. We are being very cool about
working with developers on this issue, however, there is a point where all
applications will need to be licensed to access the service.
A clarification on both of these issues would be most helpful (required,
actually, if you expect to see your license signed by anyone).
JK>> Hopefully this provides some clarity. Again, let me know if you have
further questions or concerns.
Best Regards,
Mike
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 13:23:05 -0500
From: Jim Kinney <jk nospam at cddb.com>
To: "'oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk'" <oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk>
Cc: Andrew Stess <AStess nospam at escient.com>
Subject: Responding to your CDDB Inquiries
Mr. Oliphant:
We would be happy to respond to your CDDB licensing questions if your
intentions are honorable. Please note the following excerpt of an email
that was authored by you.
+++++++++++
I didn't like the license, so I typed in some excerpts and sent
them to slashdot (which resulted in this whole sequence of these events).
You can get the pdf file at:
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~oliphant/grip/agreementv1.5.pdf
Feel free to do what you want with it, but please don't pass on this URL.
+++++++++++
You certainly are entitled to express your views freely on Slashdot or any
other newsgroups. My concern is that your current requests for information
are not really intended to understand our licensing requirements, but rather
are intended to gather "fuel for the fire" in your other efforts. If your
requests are honorable in their intention, we will be happy to reply.
Best regards, jk
Jim Kinney
General Manager
CDDB, Inc., an Internet enterprise of Escient, Inc.
-------- My original messat ---------
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 15:22:03 +0000 (GMT)
From: Mike Oliphant <oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk>
To: Andrew Stess <andrew nospam at cddb.com>
Cc: Mike Oliphant <oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Licensing agreement 1.5 attached
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Andrew Stess wrote:
> I can tell you that we are committed to keeping CDDB free for developers
> and end users.
Thanks for the quick reply Andrew. I am still unclear on the issues I
asked you about, however. Before I sign the license agreement, I need to
know that Escient is actually in a position to grant me a license to use
the CDDB protocol, and that I am legally required to have such a license.
Please do not get me wrong, here. I do not want to break the law by
infringing on copyrights or patents that Escient owns. I am just asking
for a clarification of what priviledges the license agreement grants that
I do not have if I do not sign the license.
Best Regards,
Mike