
AV1 and the Video Wars of 2027 - ko27
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/08/the-video-wars-of-2027/
======
CharlesW
Here's my favorite exchange from the comments:

> _Tigt: I have no idea what you want me or others to do, even after reading
> this 3 times._

> _Judy DeMocker [Author]: That’s a valid point._

I'm sure it was fun to write a post that imagines how the use of anything-
other-than-AV1 ultimately leads football fans to firebomb police stations in
70 cities. But I'd rather have read a thoughtful post on actually-legitimate
reasons to care about this.

~~~
shmerl
_> I have no idea what you want me or others to do, even after reading this 3
times._

I think that's actually pretty clear. Keep pushing for free and open
standards. Oppose lock-in and patent protection racket.

~~~
CharlesW
> _Keep pushing for free and open standards. Oppose lock-in and patent
> protection racket._

The commenter is looking for a list of specific, actionable steps they can
take to make sure AV1 "wins". Unfortunately (as the author effectively
acknowledges), there really aren't any.

My worry about seeing thinkpieces like this is that Mozilla hasn't been able
to influence Apple through AOMedia — it's not accidental that Apple is still
missing from the front page — and so is resorting to general-audience
emotional appeals. I'd go so far as to say that "here's how the sky will fall"
posts like this are harmful to their cause.

~~~
shmerl
Apple are just being their usual lock-in jerks. Influencing them for anything
positive is only possible under heavy pressure. In this case they were
pressured, because various systems with video playback are not going to play
along with HEVC racket schemes. I.e. for Apple's video services to be able to
reach more users, they'll be forced to support AV1.

In more practical down to earth terms, what you or any other regular user can
do is to ditch Apple products and avoid paying them any money. Vote with your
wallet.

------
KaiserPro
Gah,

Look, the digital video world exploded, 90% of it using MPEG's
standards(MPEG1/2 to start with, h.264 now. HVEC/av1 is just a blip) they were
all patent encumbered

FFMPEG runs 60% of the digital media world. _if_ patents were to be called in,
places like disney, netflix & fox would have to spend literally billions
swapping out FFMPEG or licensing it.

Your phone/computer pays a h264 tax, in the same way that they pay ARM/intel,
qualcomm, wifi alliance, HDMI alliance et al.

HVEC gives you more efficient 4k, and HDR, but for most people that just isn't
important. Streaming services still use h.264, because there is not
hardware/software support upstream.

Now, the thing that will decide it is the speed/quality/cost tradeoff. If the
hardware doesn't support a codec, it won't be used.

AV1 has a really slow encoder, so until that has changed it's not going to be
used for on-the-fly encoding (live or just in time delivery from mezzanine
codec)

for industry noise, see [https://www.ibc.org/delivery/codec-wars-the-battle-
between-h...](https://www.ibc.org/delivery/codec-wars-the-battle-between-hevc-
and-av1/2710.article)

~~~
foepys
I don't know where you get your sources. Netflix switched to HVEC for 4K and
YouTube is using VP9 whereever possible. Those are the biggest players on the
market.

~~~
snaky
On the US market. Which is not only market in existence, nor even biggest one.
Take China for example - where neither Netflix nor YouTube are present.

> Compared with the US, China still has plenty of room to grow in a country
> with a population of about 1.4 billion and 751 million internet users. The
> proportion of internet users who pay for video content has increased more
> than 10 times in four years, rising to 13.2 per cent in 2016, and is
> expected to further increase to 40 per cent in 2022, iResearch said. By
> comparison, Netflix’s US-based paying members represented around 28.1 per
> cent of total internet video users in the country as of the end of 2016.

[https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2137870/chinas-
consumers-a...](https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2137870/chinas-consumers-
are-paying-watch-movies-online-foreign-streaming-giants-are)

~~~
icebraining
So they have 13.2% of 751M ~= 99.1M (and that's all subscribers, of all
services in China). Meanwhile, Netflix alone has 130M users worldwide.

How are they not the biggest service?

~~~
snaky
You are comparing 2016 China numbers with 2018 Netflix numbers.

Talking about _paying_ users only, maybe Netflix is still on the top - not for
long, of course.

> According to research firm IHS Markit, video streaming in China will more
> than quadruple from $3.5 billion in 2015, to $17.6 billion in 2020.
> Membership payment will take up a bigger share of the pie, increasing over
> 500% to $2.6 billion, with the rest coming from advertising revenue.

But talking about active users, iQiyi now have more than 500 million active
users.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2018/03/07/the-billion-
do...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2018/03/07/the-billion-dollar-race-
to-become-the-netflix-of-china/)

~~~
icebraining
_You are comparing 2016 China numbers with 2018 Netflix numbers_

Yes, but it's all Chinese services combined, not just their top 1st. Unless
every of those Chinese subscribers pay for the same service, Netflix is still
probably the 1st worldwide paying video service.

 _But talking about active users, iQiyi now have more than 500 million active
users._

Which is small compared to YouTube's 1.8 billion.

But fair enough, maybe YouTube and iQiyi are the biggest players; foepys was
still at least half-right.

It does seem that iQiyi is using HEVC for high-res content as well, so the
point still stands :)

------
firefoxd
In September 2015, I was one of the people celebrating the expiration of Mp3's
license.

I scoured the web looking for others talking about it. I brought it up on
Reddit, no one seemed to care. I still don't hear it talked about often.

~~~
verall
I remember the _weirdest_ news cycle where like >4 news sites (including The
Guardian iirc) ran articles calling MP3 a "dead" format now that the patents
expired.

Definitely felt like a "wet streets cause rain" story.

~~~
tialaramex
A large proportion of all "news" is placed by PR companies, essentially
advertising but with maybe some light fact checking. It's cheaper than buying
advert space.

Fraunhofer essentially wrote these stories, complete with the plug for its
newer (patented) audio formats so that's why they say MP3 is dead rather than
hooray it's free.

------
ksec
_Author’s Note: This post imagines a dystopian future for web video, if we
continue to rely on patented codecs to transmit media files. What if one
company had a perpetual monopoly on those patents? How could it limit our
access to media and culture? The premise of this cautionary tale is grounded
in fact. However, the future scenario is fiction, and the entities and events
portrayed are not intended to represent real people, companies, or events._

If this were from a personal blog of an Mozilla employees I would have been
perfectly fine with it. Instead it carries the name of Mozilla, and most of
the story are simply fiction.

I don't know why the title is 2027, and 2027 was never mentioned again within
the article. And for those who knows, 2027 is the year all AVC / H.264 patents
expires.

I sometimes wish we could extend H.264 and create a new codec in a way, we
will have a better codec that is patents free by 2027.

~~~
totallyashill
Except the point where the evil monopoly buys the patents and keeps refreshing
the patent pool, thus locking things like H.264 away forever.

~~~
ksec
If that was valid we would never had a patent free MPEG-2 and MP3 codec by
now.

------
eximius
Eh, it's a good message but the dystopia is a little _too_ over the top and
reduces it's efficacy at making a statement.

------
monochromatic
>Meanwhile MalCorp found a way to tweak the law so its patents would never
expire. It proposed a special amendment, just for patent pools, that said: Any
time any part of any patent changes, the entire pool is treated as a new
invention under U.S. law.

This is a little silly. Patent law isn’t like copyright law. The term has
_never_ changed appreciably.

~~~
needle0
I've always wondered about this. Why is it that I've never heard of large
corporations trying to lobby patent law into extending, much like how it
happened over and over with copyright law? Had this battle already happened
and I just never heard about it, or is there something in the law (or
norms/culture surrounding it) that makes people never consider doing so?

~~~
akvadrako
It does happen with drugs in the US, but in a roundabout way. In a nutshell,
the original manufacturer releases a new version of their product with a new
patent and it's existence makes the manufacture of the old clones illegal
unless they go through an independent regulatory process.

~~~
monochromatic
I don't know much about drug regulation, but that sounds crazy. Do you have
more info?

------
shmerl
Related: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

------
yuhong
The entire debt-based economy is based on extracting more dollars from
"consumers". This is also part of the reason for DRM for example.

~~~
bopbop
It's the As-A-Service model - the idea that software not only shouldn't be
free, but also shouldn't even by run by the client. It's a pretty fundamental
renegotiation of the terms of ownership.

On better days I see it as a last gasp by entrenched interests to re-establish
the landlordism of old now that compilers are free.

------
p0nce
Read this if you want the other side of the story:
[http://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-
solut...](http://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-solution/)

> So don’t expect that in the future you will see the progress in video
> compression technology that we have seen in the past 30 years.

Google has bought a whole "camp" which is badmouthing MPEG for monetary
reasons. Nothing has been over-hyped as much as AV1. Who is really evil? In
the end it will all be about SSIM in non-geologic time scale.

~~~
wolfgke
> Google has bought a whole "camp" which is badmouthing MPEG for monetary
> reasons. Nothing has been over-hyped as much as AV1. Who is really evil? In
> the end it will all be about SSIM in non-geologic time scale.

I will always sympathize with the side that does not enforce protection money
(i.e. patent fees) upon others via violence (e.g. legal system).

~~~
p0nce
That "violence" has allowed to fund video research.

------
refulgentis
I'm really confused.

We went from everyone backing an open codec to a dystopia with no explanation
of how, only what.

The writing style is fun but makes it impossible to tell what parts are shared
by our reality.

~~~
teach
> makes it impossible to tell what parts are shared by our reality

Actually, it's pretty straightforward. Everything before 2018 really happened
in our reality. Everything afterward is dystopian speculation.

~~~
refulgentis
Yes. However, it is still difficult to discern what is verbal flourish and
what is a step along the way to dystopia.

By difficult, I mean impossible, and there's a large number of commenters
talking past eachother about this issue.

------
digi_owl
AV1 will win if torrents adopt it...

~~~
rootw0rm
nah. scene stuff operates within it's own alternate reality. 10 bit x264, and
10/12 bit x265 are either the default for some scenes (anime) or popular in
others. there's zero hardware support for them yet, so in my mind they haven't
won. AV1 will win if cheap decoding chips flood the market.

~~~
wmf
Likewise the scene adopted MKV and everybody else kept using MP4 or TS.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Container choices are way less important. You can convert losslessly from one
to another.

~~~
gsich
Though Matroska is the clear winner in this regard.

~~~
cm2187
Is there any other format for multiple audio tracks/multiple subtitles?

~~~
stordoff
MP4, IIRC - it can definitely do multiple audio tracks (iTunes uses it for AAC
and AC3, for example), and I think it can do multiple subtitle tracks.

------
ferongr
Should've thought about that before implementing h264 support in Firefox, back
in the days where Mozilla was still a relevant vendor in the browser market.
At this point in time, such articles seem hypocritical.

~~~
bopbop
Not sure why the downvotes - I think it's pretty relevant to view statements
in terms of previous positions taken. I'm a big supporter of Mozilla and
Firefox is the only browser I use, but another point would be the promotion of
the closed ecosystem of Pocket.

~~~
reacweb
I think the downvote is a well deserved punishment for the pointless
denigration of Mozzila. I use Chrome at home and was using Firefox at work
untill very recently. I had to switch to Edge at work. I also use Internet
Explorer (for sites of previsou century). Firefox is around the same level as
Chrome on almost everything. Edge is a notch below. Denigration is a poison
that hurts a lot.

~~~
bopbop
I agree the tone of the parent comment could use a little work, but think it's
a valid point - I'm not sure it can count as denigration if it's something
they've actually done.

In terms of "put up or shut up" I should make clear I'm not advocating Mozilla
shut up, more that they put up next time something like DRM in browsers is on
the table (which they ordinarily do, which is why I use their browser).

------
choonway
If you are interested in dystopian fiction of these sorts, I highly recommend
Manna, by Marshal Brain.

In any case, don't think it will be that dystopian. There is competition from
elsewhere in the world, you know.

------
ezoe
I doubt I see a day when AV1 seriously used in the wild.

It's encoding is so slow to the point that the encoding speed should be
measured by FPD(Frames per Day)

------
CyberDildonics
This article is full of cliches and contains no actual technical information
on AV1

~~~
tofof
It also contains no technical information about Disneyland or the Superbowl,
despite their mentions.

Technical information about any of the three would be equally (ir)relevant to
the article's topic: _intellectual property law_.

If you're really hard up for technical specs, the most cursory search might
reveal
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16796127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16796127)
regarding
[https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/av1/demo1.shtml](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/av1/demo1.shtml),
or the part 2 follow-up
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417586)
regarding [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/06/av1-next-generation-
video-...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/06/av1-next-generation-video-the-
constrained-directional-enhancement-filter/)

~~~
cyphar
> intellectual property law

Please stop perpetuating the use of this term. There is simply no such thing
as "intellectual property" and nor are there any "intellectual property laws".
The term is perpetuated by proponents of the "intellectual property lobby"
which hope to confuse people over what precise laws are being changed, and
what precise issues are in dispute.

Not to mention that it is effectively a rewrite of history to pretend that
copyright law is somehow a subset of "intellectual property law" \-- the
closest thing to what we would consider copyright law has existed since 1710
with the Statue of Anne in England. Laws and agreements similar to copyright
(though in reality they were systems of censorship) existed even further back
than that.

Copyright law, patent law, and trademark law. They are separate laws, with
separate rules and regulations, separate rights, and are therefore worthy of
separate discussion. Not to mention that most people (understandably) have
different views on these different topics -- your opinion on whether the
trademark "Coca Cola" should be used by third-parties is probably different to
your opinion on whether the text of Alice in Wonderland should be used by
third parties, or whether the designs for penicillin should be used by third
parties.

The article in question has also (unfortunately) made the same mistake --
conflating patents and copyright law. I say "unfortunately" because I agree
with the general point they're making -- that free software and patent-free
standards are very important. But conflating the two doesn't make sense and
just leads to confusion.

~~~
tofof
The term "intellectual property" was used in 1845 in _Davoll et al. v. Brown_
, 173 years ago. The WIPO was created in 1967: 51 years ago.

Whatever your personal objections are to a collective term for intangible
human creations, claiming that "there is no such thing as intellectual
property" is unhelpful to your cause, as that contention is simply absurd.

It is beyond belief that a cabal of lobbyists has convinced practically every
nation on earth [1] to collectively supervise a nonexistence.

No, copyright/patent/trademark/trade secret/trade dress/design rights/moral
rights/publicity rights/mask work rights/database rights/plant variety
rights/geographical indications/etc(^) are _not_ always detailed in separate
laws. As early as 1916 the big three were grouped alike: see the Pan-American
Convention's "Patents Trade Marks Copyright Status Report" and South Africa's
"Patents, Designs, Trade Marks and Copyright Act" both in that year.

Yes, _some_ separation exists for _some_ of these ideas in _some_
jurisdictions - US law separates copyright from trademark, for example, but
not from moral rights, which are directly incorporated into copyright law in
Title 17 USC. And no, you can't argue that copyright and moral rights are
indistinguishable: even after assigning away copyright, an author retains the
moral rights (e.g. right to attribution). And of course, the US also groups
trade marks and patents together under the purview of the USPTO, and
collectively joins invention rights (utility patents), plant variety rights,
and design rights (design patents) all under the umbrella of 'patent law'.

Even where there is separation, that separation does not preclude the
existence of a collective noun for the set. Nor does assignment into a
collective set does imply a "rewrite of history". In fact, nearly all sets
_must_ be predated by at least one of their members; it would generally be
nonsensical to create and name empty sets before any of their eventual members
even exist.

In any case, arguing the merit of individual discussion is nonsequitous -- the
existence of a collective name in no way precludes it.

Using your reasoning: "There simply is no such thing as the 'United States of
America', nor are there any 'federal laws'. The term is perpetuated by
proponents of the 'federal government'. It is a rewrite of history to pretend
that that Virginia is somehow a subset of the USA -- the closest thing to what
we would consider a state has existed since 1606 with the First Charter of
Virginia in England. Native settlers of a similar area existed even further
back than that.'

(^) Man, that's awkward. If only there was a term to denote that set that I
just needed to name.

1:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/WIPO_members_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/WIPO_members_2012.png)

~~~
cyphar
I originally wrote a much longer response, where I argued that in order to
group laws together they must have something in common -- and there is nothing
that is obviously in common between copyright law, patent law, and trademark
law. They all protect different things in different ways, and arguing that
they "protect ideas" doesn't really get you anywhere (it doesn't help clarify
much -- because in what way can ideas be protected -- and it also isn't really
true because those laws protect specific things rather than a more nebulous
concept of an idea).

But I found that there is actually a section on the Wikipedia article for
intellectual property that outlines the basic argument against the term[1]. I
understand why you might find my argument silly on its face (of course people
with much more stature than me have used the term "intellectual property"
before, making it silly to argue that the term itself is not used anywhere of
significance) -- but my main argument is that it is not really easy to come up
with a single unifying idea behind "intellectual property laws". You can
fairly easily come up with a unifying idea behind "fraud laws" (use of
deception to profit in some fashion), or even just "property laws" (people who
have a greater claim than anyone else to something are granted certain
exclusive rights to it). But the fact that even the Wikipedia article for
"intellectual property" cannot describe the concept without immediately
breaking it down into the specific sub-rights leads me to believe that it is
fairly hard to describe the common idea underlying copyright/patent/trademark
laws.

I was probably too forceful in my original response, which wasn't really
fitting (since I actually agreed with the general point being made).

> (^) Man, that's awkward. If only there was a term to denote that set that I
> just needed to name.

I mean, my point is that the only time you need to name them together is when
discussing "intellectual property". When it actually comes to filing a patent,
or registering a trademark, or suing over a copyright infringement claim, you
never would reference those laws together. I agree it's awkward, but I
disagree that you would ever need to list them like that (because they are
naturally separate concepts that aren't much more related than any other legal
concept).

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property#The_term...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property#The_term_%22intellectual_property%22)

~~~
tofof
I think what you're encountering is that _most_ broad areas of law immediately
break down into specific definitions and lists of rights.

Examine
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiralty_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiralty_law)
and see that in the opening summary the article similarly resorts to naming
"marine commerce, marine navigation, salvage, maritime pollution, seafarers’
rights, and the carriage by sea of both passengers and goods" while
distinguishing it from the Law of the Sea -- which is again immediately
defined-by-list: "navigational rights, mineral rights, jurisdiction over
coastal waters, and the maritime relationships between nations."

Sadly, no, "most people" don't feel differently about these rights. In fact,
most people cannot even differentiate one from another. This is certainly made
no better by the growing use of the umbrella term, but is not caused by it.
Search any online art site and find thousands of artists disclaiming
"<character> is copyright <entity>", when in fact the only copyright in
question is held by the author himself on the drawing he just drew. The artist
intends to forswear the trademark, but cannot or at least does not distinguish
these legal ideas.

EDIT:

Removed further arguments, because in actuality I agree with you (and this
article). My original reaction was a kneejerk to your admittedly overstated
claim of nonexistence.

I too am concerned that greed-motivated lobbyists deliberately distort issues
to strengthen intellectual property laws against the public interest. Your
linked wikipedia section quotes Stallman and Lessig, as well as economists who
would prefer the more descriptive term "intellectual monopoly", all objecting
to to _property_ 's false implication of scarcity.

~~~
cyphar
I broad-strokes agree with most of what you wrote (and we appear to agree on
the main topic), but I did want to make one small correction:

> Your linked wikipedia section quotes Stallman and Lessig, as well as
> economists who would prefer the more descriptive term "intellectual
> monopoly", all objecting to to property's false implication of scarcity.

Stallman does actually believe that the term "intellectual property" to group
copyright/patent/trademark/... laws is intentionally deceptive and causes
confusion[1]. Personally I don't quite agree with all of his arguments, but he
does have a far more radical view than the others mentioned in the article.

[1]: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-
ipr.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html)

