

An Open Letter from the President of the United States of Google - hardik988
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tims/archive/2011/01/11/an-open-letter-from-the-president-of-the-united-states-of-google.aspx

======
Seth_Kriticos
I grew up with Esperanto, and I don't really see a reason to use it as a pun
in this context. It's a nice and useful language and everybody has the option
to use it or leave it.

The parallels (to VP8) with the blog post pretty much end there, as you don't
actually have to pay your pants off with royalties to some group, just because
you are teaching English (h264).

I really like ironic humor, but this one didn't get to me.

~~~
recoiledsnake
>You don't actually have to pay your pants off with royalties to some group

Really? How is paying a few cents a user 'paying your pants off' ?

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/h264-patents-how-much-do-
they...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/h264-patents-how-much-do-they-really-
cost/2122)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
$6.5 million per year buys _a lot_ of pants where I come from.

~~~
anonymous246
This reminds me about the scare tactics adopted about Congress's earmarks,
where a large number was thrown around without context to obfuscate the issue.
You need to put the 6.5 million in perspective.

The 6.5 million is for developers of encoders/decoders, not websites (it's
capped at 100k for video sites). If you sell a million copies of an encoder,
your royalty will be $0.20 times 900k = $180k (first 100k is free). Is it
really too much to ask $0.20 for developing most of the technology on which
you are basing your business?

For 250K subscribers to a _SUBSCRIPTION_ video site, big bad MPEG-LA wants
$25k, _CAPPED_ at 100k for users >1M.

I'm pretty sure this is a negligible amount for a subscription site. And
remember, free sites don't pay.

~~~
jbri
Right. Because the current price they're charging is going to be all that
they're ever going to charge until the patents expire.

Or, you know, what's actually going to happen is the price being kept low
until H.264 is well-entrenched, and then being jacked up when there's no
competition.

~~~
anonymous246
So you agree that 100k/6.5 million would not unreasonable for the entity which
would be charged that amount?

The linked article addresses inflation also. The licensors agree to not raise
royalties by more than 10% per year. Unless you definition of "jacked up"
encompasses 10% rise.

I see ideological reasons to support a free standard, but not business ones.
YMMV.

------
bad_user
English is free even for commercial use.

~~~
mahmud
كما هي اللغة العربية التي لا تقدر بثمن، مع انها لا تكلف قرشاً

~~~
dhimes
Upvoted in hopes of translation...

~~~
mahmud
"So is the Arabic language; which is priceless, even though it doesn't cost a
penny".

Trouble is, I can only say that in formal Arabic, not any particular dialect.
I must be the only native Arabic speaker without a native dialect (imagine a
native English speaker who speaks only in Shakespearean)

~~~
Vivtek
Child of an international marriage, growing up overseas?

~~~
mahmud
Yes, I am two quarters and a half, and so is my fiancee. Our child will have a
nationality in 5 continents.

~~~
Vivtek
That just reeks of awesome. I thought it was cool that our kids have two
passports (each, I mean).

You should arrange for the child to be born in Antarctica.

~~~
mahmud
Actually, my full name is Mahmud-LeShawn Nguyen Ramirez van Cohen-Singh~

------
dmaz
Not equivalent; HTML5 video is still being defined and is not yet in the
mainstream.

------
Kylekramer
If English was as only developed and entrenched as H.264 is currently when
Esperanto was introduced, I know I would be willing to take the very minor
setback.

------
joakin
Childish?

Suddently reminded me to the web page that criticizes Mac apps from the store

------
tomjen3
Nice parodi, but besides the (huge) costs of switching, Esperanto (with an
Ascii character set rather than the the current (Polish?) letters) would
properly be better by far than English.

At least we would have no more grammar fights - the entirety of Esperanto
grammar is significantly shorter than the linked article.

And don't worry, you would still have Wikipedia
[<http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/>].

As for Klingon, well I guess that remains a pipedream.

~~~
JonnieCache
Good luck with the whole poetry thing in a language with no ambiguity to it.

~~~
jokermatt999
I'm pretty sure I've seen poetry in Lojban which is specifically design for
lack of ambiguity. YMMV, but it's possible to have poetry without ambiguity in
my opinion.

------
ZeroGravitas
English -> Chinese might have been a more apt analogy, particularly as China
are pushing heavily for royalty free standards (and will simply take your
patent if you try to hold up the standard) as part of their plans for world
domination.

------
SmokenJoe
It is a good analogy but it would be more appropriate to use a theocracy or a
benovelonet dictatorship that wants to take over the world. It cam free
everyone of dangerous choices that way.

------
rubyrescue
title doesn't really match the article content

~~~
henrikschroder
As usual, the devil is in the details. Check where his links actually go, he's
not really talking about Esperanto...

------
EGreg
Brilliant, I like how this is a spoof of what Google is doing with h264 .

Of course, facebook's been doing this the whole time and it's been pissing
people off, but most of those people were developers who signed on to this
ever-changing environment.

Deprecating a format that most people use is a little harsh. On the other
hand, it is once again a symptom of intellectual monopoly protected by the
government. Apple can charge people for the codec, and google won't have it.
Makes sense.

I would like to highlight this fact. A lot of the problems we are encountering
are symptoms of intellectual monopolies (as Thomas Jefferson preferred to call
it) granted by the government. The activities of the RIAA, Interval Licensing,
pharma companies, and Disney may grab headlines, but they are perfectly viable
in a system that is set up to grant, and then go to great lengths to enforce,
copyright and patent protection.

How can we in the west criticize China's "zi-lu" laws, discount Baidu and
Tencent for following their country's laws (see [http://www.quora.com/Why-
does-Facebook-get-so-much-more-hype...](http://www.quora.com/Why-does-
Facebook-get-so-much-more-hype-than-Tencent-when-Tencent-is-bigger-in-terms-
of-market-cap-usage-and-reach)) but at the same time pass laws like this:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/u-k-passes-internet-
di...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/u-k-passes-internet-
disconnection-law)

and this:

[http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91378/feds-seize-domain-
names-o...](http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91378/feds-seize-domain-names-of-
counterfeiters-and-pirates/)

Seems due process goes out the window when copyright is involved. The same
western nations that are against censorship of the internet in China, censor
the internet as soon as copyright comes up. I am not sure this situation is
very stable -- something has to change.

