
Life inside MPEG - clouddrover
http://blog.chiariglione.org/life-inside-mpeg/
======
cure
See also this thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18207478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18207478)
for what that Genomics 'standard' they are trying to push is actually like.

MPEG is a rent-seeking organization that doesn't actually contribute anything
useful to society. It just tries to lock up technology and standards behind
patents, and then extorts money for use of those standards.

~~~
masklinn
> MPEG is a rent-seeking organization that doesn't actually contribute
> anything useful to society. It just tries to lock up technology and
> standards behind patents, and then extorts money for use of those standards.

You're thinking about MPEG-LA, and even then your description is debatable.

MPEG itself is a standardisation organisms (technically a joint subgroup of
ISO and IEC), defining standards out of technologies both patented and not.

MPEG-LA is a separate _and completely unaffiliated_ entity which licenses
_patent pools_ : MPEG-LA does not create or hold patents itself, they get
agreements from patent holders and sell "bundled" licenses for all patents
essential to implement a relevant technology (or so they claim e.g. MPEG-LA
created a patent pool for DisplayPort independently from VESA, which disputes
this necessity and asserts the standard is completely royalty-free).

~~~
tialaramex
> standardisation organisms (technically a joint subgroup of ISO and IEC

Guessing you wanted "standards organisation" and technically MPEG is a Working
Group of a Subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee between ISO and IEC.

Patents are sad because they create an incentive to argue for a technically
inferior choice that you "own" over a superior choice that you don't own.

CA/B Forum (which isn't an SDO but bear with me) ran into trouble when setting
up the Ten Blessed Methods (our name, not theirs) for validating control over
an FQDN because it turns out some ways to implement these methods were
patented by members. Although CA/B isn't an SDO, the effect of it making rules
about how things are done is to set a standard, since all significant vendors
in this space are members of CA/B, and all major trust stores require you to
obey CA/B rules even if you're not a member.

The patents didn't cover any of the good ways to implement the Ten Blessed
Methods. Literally in every case the patent described the most unsatisfactory
half-arsed way to achieve something you could imagine, the existence of these
patents was causing vendors to prefer to do something bad (which they'd
patented) rather than something good (which they had not). But there was a
reluctance to just say "OK, we patented all this stinking garbage, but forget
about that" and get on with it, this stalled things for many months. After all
patents aren't free, who wants to admit they bought something worthless? Ugh.

~~~
Nelson69
Is there any evidence of MPEG showing a bias in favor or patents? The
different standards they define seem to have fairly well defined goals and
then, to my casual observer's eye, they've had fairly concrete technical
reasons for their decisions.

As it's constructed and the different patent pools involved, I'm not sure that
a patent holder could benefit more than others by having MPEG use their
patent.

That being said, patents are still annoying when you bump in to them. MPEG is
remarkable in terms of the amount of interop though, you can watch video on
your phone, laptop or your 4k TV all made by different vendors with different
parts.

------
bingobob
Support AV1
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1)

------
xvilka
All these people do more harm than good. Their formats should be abandoned in
favor of royalty free formats, for example like AV1.

~~~
wolfgke
> All these people do more harm than good. Their formats should be abandoned
> in favor of royalty free formats, for example like AV1.

Know your enemy. :-)

------
userbinator
The MPEG-2 patents expired earlier this year; are H.264 patents expiring very
soon, or do they just want to bring in more royalties by putting out H.265 and
already working on what comes after it?

~~~
freeone3000
Of course they want this. This is how they make money - by developing novel
video specifications, usually highly competent ones (H.264 was _so much
better_ than WMV9 it was silly, and Thora came much later). H.265 isn't quite
as good as VP10 in picture quality, so they're developing a new format to
fight for marketshare.

------
shmerl
MPEG hit the unavoidable dead end by pushing the broken patent system to
extreme. Their patents aren't driving progress forward, they are slowing it
down, and MPEG now reap what they sowed.

