

H.264 to Remain Fee-Less for Free Internet Video Through 2016 (via DF) - rads
http://www.mpegla.com/main/Pages/Media.aspx

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evdawg
The same thing happened with .GIFs, royalties weren't actively pursued for a
_very_ long time, but when they were it became a problem.

Let's not make the same mistake again.

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natrius
For the curious, a quick search yields claims of 2025 and 2028 as the last
patent expiration date. This announcement shouldn't please anyone.

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modeless
How can that be if the standard was ratified in 2003?

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jws
Some of the patents may have been applied for, but not granted until after
ratification.

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modeless
For patents filed after 1995 the patent term is based on the filing date of
the application, not the date the patent is granted.

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fnid2
This is the drug dealer business model. "Sure, the first hit's on me. If you
want more after that, you know where to find me."

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stuaxo
Surely this only happens in films ?

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pstuart
No.

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nickyp
I love the abundance of 'XXX is sued by MPEG LA' press releases on their
'media' page!

I guess they designate lawyers using 'squad/platoon/battalion' instead of
boring old 'department' ;-)

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blasdel
While MPEG-LA clearly has the prerogative to go after people who infringe its
patents by distributing decoders and encoders, isn't this whole "Internet
Video" fee thing only enforceable if you enter a contract with them?

There's no way they have a valid patent on vanilla HTTP! I could see some of
their patents covering some stuff like generating a seek table, but how the
hell could they enjoin you from sending a blob in response to an HTTP request?

Isn't it possible for a video site to never directly enter a contract with
MPEG-LA? Is the shrinkwrap EULA on second-party encoder software valid?

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ajross
That might be true, if you could arrange things such that your site was
_solely_ copying around H.264 files it received from elsewhere. But in
practice, any site serving video has to be doing at least some transcoding or
analysis (think about normalizing aspect ratio or resolution, anonymizing,
converting from mpeg2 camera files, etc...), and that requires licensed
software.

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blasdel
But you don't have to enter a contract with anyone to get that licensed
software -- you can just buy it at retail. MPEG-LA would have to come after
you somehow via the software's shrinkwrap EULAs (which have never been tested
in court _at all_ ).

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ajross
This isn't true at all. That EULA doesn't transfer patent rights, except as
allowed by the patent holder. It's a license from the software manufacturer,
_not_ the party that is going to sue you.

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blasdel
But the patents don't cover the process of making the files available to the
public via HTTP supported by ads -- it would appear that these restrictions on
that are a novelty of MPEG-LA's standard contracts for licensing the patents.

They're obviously enforceable on the organizations that entered into those
licensing agreements directly, but what if I bought an licensed encoder off
the shelf?

Is the on-disk format itself somehow patented, such that the files themselves
are patented articles? Wouldn't that fail the machine-or-transformation test
rather egregiously?

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ajross
No no no, you're making the assuption that "buying an licensed encoder off the
shelf" gives you some kind of patent license. _It does not._ It's a license to
run the software from the manufacturer of the software. It sometimes contains
a transferable license from the patent holders, for some purposes. Read
carefully.

But walking into Fry's and buying a codec product off the shelf for $49.95
doesn't automatically allow you to start a video megasite.

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hedgehog
Reading through the fluff On2/Google's VP8 codec still looks pretty
interesting:

[http://www.on2.com/index.php?id=439&news_id=641](http://www.on2.com/index.php?id=439&news_id=641)

It will be interesting to see if Google pulls it out as an alternative to
H.264.

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MikeCapone
Anyone has hands on experience with that codec? Are those claims true?

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sketerpot
If VP8 is half as good as they claim, Google could make it a very serious
competitor to H.264. They own the codec, they own YouTube, they have a web
browser and a smartphone OS and they're coming out with Chrome OS before too
long. They have leverage.

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sant0sk1
It's a trap!

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timdorr
We can't compress video of that magnitude!

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wmf
Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098336>

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oomkiller
Not long enough, offer a license that doesn't expire until 2030, then we might
bite.

