

Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA - hernan7
http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA

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felixmar
It seems that Google's purchase of On2 already has effect because MPEG is
seeking to develop a royalty free video codec.

 _Given that there is a desire for using royalty free video coding
technologies for some applications such as video distribution over the
Internet, MPEG wishes to enquire of National Bodies about their willingness to
commit to active participation (as defined by Section 6.2.1.4 of the JTC1
directives) in developing a Type-1 video coding standard._ (Source:
[http://www.robglidden.com/2010/04/mpeg-resolution-on-
royalty...](http://www.robglidden.com/2010/04/mpeg-resolution-on-royalty-free-
standardization/) )

Notice that they mention distribution over the Internet. MPEG has less
potential competition in the broadcast sector.

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jarin
I think I remember this before, back when it was called "Why Our
Civilization's Image Art and Culture is Threatened by the Graphics Interchange
Format (GIF)".

~~~
apotheon
There _were_ more useful alternatives to the GIF at the time, though, and the
GIF didn't have such a lock on related patents. GIF was one patented format;
h.264 is a fuck-ton of patents related to the development and implementation
of codec formats.

~~~
jarin
What useful alternatives? BMP? WMF?

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brazzy
I love living in Germany where this kind of EULA clause is completely void.

<http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bgb/__307.html>

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's not a EULA clause as I understand the term, as it's not asking or
assuming agreement and not restricting what you can do, but rather informing
you of rights you have been granted.

You can't use a patent without a licence, this text is simply informing you
what patent licence is included with the purchased software or hardware. The
vendors of that hardware and software are likewise only passing on the rights
that they have licenced. If it didn't include a licence at all (like if you'd
downloaded Handbrake or x264) then you'd be violating a patent. If you go
beyond a provided licence then you're infringing on the patent too.

(And pre-empting the MPEG patents don't apply in Europe/Germany argument, you
might want to ask why Aldi and Lidl just got sued by the MPEG-LA over MPEG 2
patents).

~~~
brazzy
_Of course_ it is a EULA clause - it's very literally attempting to restrict
what you can do.

And this kind of clause is simply void under German law, because if you buy
something, it's a contract between you and the seller, and this kind of
contract is not allowed to contain arbitrary limitations on how you can use
the thing you have bought, nor can the seller impose an implicit additional
contract between you and some third party on you.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The point of a EULA is that you, the _end user_ , _agree_ to the _license_ ,
effectively signing away legal rights that you would otherwise have.

This is not asking for agreement, and the government of Germany has already
imposed the implicit additional contract by granting a patent monopoly, the
_only_ purpose of which is to restrict the behaviour of others.

The text is only giving back what German law has already taken away, the
ability to use these 900 odd bits of mathematics, but only for personal, non-
commercial reasons. If you want to use it commercially you'll need to
negotiate another licence.

~~~
brazzy
Neither licenses nor patents work like you are describing them.

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tlb
"Civilization" is putting it a little strongly. Patents have 18-year
lifetimes, and the mpeg4 patent clocks have all been ticking for at least a
few years now. In a historical perspective, this too shall pass.

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cduan
> _However, what's "free to stream"? According to the interpretation of the
> U.S. law, if you stream your video with ads (e.g. Youtube, Vimeo), then
> that's a non-free usage. It's commercial video, even if you, the producer,
> makes no dime out of it (and that's a definition and interpretation of the
> US law that even Creative Commons believes so, if I am to judge from their
> last year's "what's a commercial video" survey)_

This is a pretty common error of legal reasoning. For one thing, the
definition of "commercial video" that Creative Commons asserts is just a
definition it made up; only a court can actually determine what the term
means. (I am unaware of any cases deciding this; if they exist, please let me
know of them.)

And at any rate, the definition of "commercial video" in a CC license has no
necessary bearing on the definition of "free to stream" in the MPEG-LA
license. They are not the same document, and the same term in two different
contracts can have entirely different meanings.

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blasdel
So everyone should use only MJPEG or worse end-to-end because he says so —
obviously the only path to freedom is _Bondage and Discipline_

Somehow it's only the freetards that respect Patent law to the letter — they
may be campaigning to dismantle it, but in the process they've been
consistently acting as it's biggest cheerleader by licking its boot heel in
toadyish submission.

It's just like how the hackers that campaigned to dismantle the export
restrictions on crypto in the 90s are the exact same people currently shouting
down the ability to use crypto for practical purposes: they want hardware key
escrow, DRM, and signed firmware to all be effectively illegal. I don't think
ideologues are capable of understanding irony.

 _Freedom is rigorous self-enslavement to other peoples' patents. Ignorance of
the state of the art is strength!_

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xal
Does "too big to fail" apply for something like h264 once the entire internet
relies on it?

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noonespecial
How about "too big to not be public". It seems that there are some areas of
thought (usually highly mathematical) that are virtually required to build
anything else useful in a given field. Even based on a very liberal
interpretation of the original intent of the patent system, it seems absurd to
let a little clot of big business seize it and then rent-seek an entire
society.

If ever there was a case where the exercise of Eminent Domain by government
was required to prevent a tragedy of the commons from developing, this type of
thing is it.

~~~
blasdel
The funniest part is that MPEG-LA doesn't even gross that much money in
license fees to get distributed to the pool — it's effectively peanuts for
pretty much everyone paying in (only producers of 100,000 devices need to pay,
and then it's pennies apiece with a total cap), and it's peanuts for all the
pool members receiving the payments too!

They aren't directly hurting anyone's bottom line, nor is anyone really
profiting from it. It's just a bureaucracy for FUD-maintenance, that was
originally created to keep its members from fucking with one another.

If anything really gets out of hand, the government will just force them into
a more liberal patent pool — it was done before to the Wright Brothers for
being dicks, and in wartime to quasi-nationalize military IP.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The Wright brothers only got cracked down on because of a World War too.
Hopefully we don't have to wait for such a dramatic catastrophe before the
government reacts this time.

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

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070780>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing)

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bcl
Interesting article. Although I think it is an overreaction. Obviously MPEG-LA
could be trying to enforce their patents against everyone, but they aren't.
Given the level of adoption of H.264 if they started to do so they would
quickly kill their potential income stream.

The answer isn't for everyone to go back to the dark ages of mjpeg, it is to
convince MPEG-LA to be reasonable.

~~~
nitrogen
I dislike broadly-worded mostly-unenforceable laws and contract provisions
almost more than plain bad laws and contracts, because then instead of
pleasing a law, you have to worry about pleasing whoever is in charge of
enforcing the law. If the enforcers don't like you, they can find something
you're doing wrong and charge you with it/sue you for it.

So, what's not troubling to me is not the possibility of MPEG-LA suing
_everybody_ , but rather just suing people and companies they don't like (i.e.
competitors, detractors, etc.), since virtually everybody making a corporate
training video with an H264-based camera is violating the camera's H264
license.

~~~
GHFigs
_rather just suing people and companies they don't like_

This is what the "non-discriminatory" part of the "reasonable and non-
discriminatory" licensing terms that ISO/ITU require of their participating
members is about.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Clearly that's not true. They do sue people (they list them on their website)
and yet, as discussed here, they don't sue everyone who breaks the
ridiculously over-broad terms. That implies a choice.

Then how do they _discriminate_ here? I don't know, but it's not dictated by
RAND terms which are often not _reasonable_ either. Currently they also
discriminate against smaller companies due to yearly caps on fees, and
discriminate against certain business models e.g. subscription TV pays
distribution fees, ad supported Hulu doesn't. That last one is clearly a
decision made to mess with competition in a market with fewer barriers to
entry while cementing lock-in in other areas.

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yanw
He's a short version: AAPL and MSFT have a stake in MPEG-LA owner of the
proprietary H.264, for now they lets us use it without paying royalties,
Mozilla and other smaller players can't support because it's proprietary. One
day MPEG-LA will ask for it’s money and we’ll all be royally fucked, it happen
before with GIF, so please support any existing or to introduced open source
alternatives.

~~~
wmf
Decoders and encoders have to pay royalties _today_. There an _additional_
royalty for "streaming" coming in 2016.

