Slashdot Mirror

This is not FUD, I'm sorry to say.

Mythtv does not pay royalties to the MPEG LA (licensing authority). This body handles licensing hundreds of the patents that cover MPEG technology, up to and including MPEG-4.

Go to this page and peruse the licensee list: http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-licensees.cfm

Find mythtv on the list or acknowledge myth violates the hundreds of patents listed here: http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-patentlist.cfm

Which costs more to distribute, an mp4 stream or an ogg stream?

According to a news release from 2002 which is hosted on the MPEG LA site, the price for mp4 was:

2. In the case of Internet (wired and wireless) or mobile, annual royalties with annual limitations and thresholds will apply: (a) for the manufacture and sale of decoders and/or encoders: US $0.25 per activated decoder and/or encoder subject to an annual cap per legal entity of $1,000,000 for decoders and $1,000,000 for encoders (to be paid by the manufacturer that offers functioning product for sale or distribution, either directly or through a chain of distribution, to the end user), but there is no royalty for the first 50,000 decoders and first 50,000 encoders in a calendar year sold or distributed by a legal entity (applies to no more than one legal entity in an affiliated group); (b) for the use of decoders and encoders to decode or encode MPEG-4 video (to be paid by the party that is the apparent source of such video to the consumer), a licensee may choose to pay US $0.25 per subscriber per year or US $0.000333 per minute of MPEG-4 video used, each subject to an annual cap of $1,000,000 per legal entity, or a $1,000,000 annual paid-up fee (with no royalty reporting obligation), but no royalty is payable on the first 50,000 subscribers during a calendar year (applies to no more than one legal entity in an affiliated group). Subscriber refers to each unique viewer for any part of a year, but where the content provider's remuneration is not directly from subscriptions (e.g., advertiser-supported services), MPEG LA will work directly with Licensees to come up with a consistent method of counting subscribers that works with their business models.

3. In the case of Stored Video (packaged media and video transmitted and stored for viewing for which a transactional fee is paid), the replicator or content provider will pay (a) US $0.01 per 30 minutes or part to a maximum of US $0.04 per movie; (b) US $0.005 per 30 minutes or part thereof to a maximum of US $0.02 per movie where the content of the Stored Video is 5 years or older (after it was copyrighted or subject to be copyrighted), and (c) US $0.002 for a Stored Video of 12 minutes or less.

So, if the current terms even vaguely approach this older release, the difference in price/time sacrifice for the higher file size is more than offset by the pricing. Dollars and cents, free and open makes sense.

Anyone got current/more accurate pricing info?

You are correct in saying Ogg is not a codec. But when you compare Theora to VC-1, you must not have been reading the license terms of VC-1 properly. VC-1 is riddled by patents and there are royalites to pay when you use it: http://www.mpegla.com/pid/vc1/ . There is no such thing as royalties to pay for Theora. Also, the only patent on Theora were ones owned by On2 Technologies, who donated their VP3 codec as the *basis* technology for Theora and kindly granted an unrevocable free license regarding those patents: http://www.theora.org/benefits/. As for quality - yes, Theora is a generation behind in compression technology and H.264 is much better quality at lower bitrates. Again - have you read the license conditions? Theora is simply the only open codec standard (as to the definition of Open Standard by Buce Perens: http://perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html) with a usable implementation. Mind you, I would watch out for the BBC's Dirac codec http://dirac.sourceforge.net/ which is based on Wavelet technology and is thus opening a whole new space of new video codec developments and improvements - a space H.264 didn't enter. And Dirac is an open standard.

As far as I can tell, you don't need to pay licensing fees to distribute media encoded to the spec.

If you have concrete information to the contrary, please link it and correct me.

Here's a news release with the licensing fee information, although I suppose there's a more official document somewhere: http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_03-11-17_avc.html

You didn't really think you were going to escape the content-based licensing fees they introduced with MPEG-4, did you? The good news (for you), however, is that the fee structure is fairly reasonable for your type of application. Depending on how you classify yourself, and where your revenue will come from, you'd probably end up paying nothing.

Of course, you're going to want to consult with your legal staff. But that's a starting point.

(Incidentally, sheesh. Reading all that typewriter type was mind-numbing.)

Consider the h.264 video codec. It cost millions of dollars to develop, and is protected ONLY by software patents. Europe wants to play the prisoner's dilemma to their own advantage.

The h.264 is licensed by the MPEG LA. The list of the organizations receiving the payments:

DAEWOO Electronics Corporation; Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute; France Télécom, société anonyme*; Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.; Fujitsu Limited; Hitachi, Ltd.; Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.; LG Electronics Inc.; LSI Logic Corporation; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.; Microsoft Corporation; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; NTT DoCoMo, Inc.; Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation; Robert Bosch GmbH; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Scientific-Atlanta Vancouver Company; Sedna Patent Services, LLC; Sharp Corporation; Siemens AG; Sony Corporation; The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York; Toshiba Corporation; and Victor Company of Japan, Ltd

The countries are South Korea twice, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, US, Japan, US, Japan (three times), Germany, South Korea, Canada, US, Japan, Germany, Japan, US, Japan (twice).

Sorry to burst your bubble, but h.264 was pretty much an international effort. If you cared to check you would have seen, that the working group for h.264 was headed by four people, two from the US, two from Germany.

Those who think the technology will just develop itself, whether there are any incentives or not, are unbelievably naive.

Bullshit. MP3 was developed by Frauenhofer in Germany, where they could not expect to get it patented. Quite some of the parts of the MPEG group of standards was developed in the EU where they can not be protected by patents. Obviously patents can't be an all important condition for development.

What part of MPEG4-10 is free? It costs money to even look at the standard to implement http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.Cata logueDetail?CSNUMBER=43058&ICS1=35&ICS2=40&ICS3=. Then it also costs money in order use http://www.mpegla.com/avc/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf. Not to mention that the mpegla doesn't guarantee that all the patents they license you for are sufficient to implement the standard. It is only open in that you don't have to have a secret handshake to view it.

Royalties to be paid by end product manufacturers for an encoder, a decoder or both ("unit") begin at US $0.20 per unit after the first 100,000 units each year. There are no royalties on the first 100,000 units each year. Above 5 million units per year, the royalty is US $0.10 per unit.

Yes and no. H.264 isn't 'MPEG-4' it's MPEG-4 AVC. MPEG-4 is just a name the covers many, many codecs. H.264 is just one such codec. Even so, Qualcomm isn't th only patent holder, by far, of H.264/AVC, so the article title is misleading. From MPEG-LA, which is the primary provider of licenses for H.264 (and lots of other MPEG standards): MPEG LA's AVC Patent Portfolio License currently includes patents owned by DAEWOO Electronics Corporation; Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute; France Télécom, société anonyme; Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.; Fujitsu Limited; Hitachi, Ltd.; Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.; LG Electronics Inc.; LSI Logic Corporation; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.; Microsoft Corporation; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Robert Bosch GmbH; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sedna Patent Services, LLC; Sharp Corporation; Siemens AG; Sony Corporation; The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York; Toshiba Corporation; UB Video Inc.; and Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. MPEG LA's goal is to provide worldwide access to as much AVC essential intellectual property as possible; new Licensors and essential patents may be added at no additional royalty during the current term. Interestingly enough, I don't even see Qualcomm in list. Considering that Qualcomm is the patent holder for CDMA and related technologies, I'm guessing that Qualcomm doesn't even have any patents in the MPEG LA pool, but instead has patented particular implementations of H.264 for use in mobile phone applications.

Royalties to be paid by end product manufacturers for an encoder, a decoder or both ("unit") begin at US $0.20 per unit after the first 100,000 units each year. There are no royalties on the first 100,000 units each year. Above 5 million units per year, the royalty is US $0.10 per unit.

# Title-by-Title - For AVC video (either on physical media or ordered and paid for on title-by-title basis, e.g., PPV, VOD, or digital download, where viewer determines titles to be viewed or number of viewable titles are otherwise limited), there are no royalties up to 12 minutes in length. For AVC video greater than 12 minutes in length, royalties are the lower of (a) 2% of the price paid to the licensee from licensee's first arms length sale or (b) $0.02 per title. Categories of licensees include (i) replicators of physical media, and (ii) service/content providers (e.g., cable, satellite, video DSL, internet and mobile) of VOD, PPV and electronic downloads to end users.

# Subscription - For AVC video provided on a subscription basis (not ordered title-by-title), no royalties are payable by a system (satellite, internet, local mobile or local cable franchise) consisting of 100,000 or fewer subscribers in a year. For systems with greater than 100,000 AVC video subscribers, the annual participation fee is $25,000 per year up to 250,000 subscribers, $50,000 per year for greater than 250,000 AVC video subscribers up to 500,000 subscribers, $75,000 per year for greater than 500,000 AVC video subscribers up to 1,000,000 subscribers, and $100,000 per year for greater than 1,000,000 AVC video subscribers.

Royalties to be paid by end product manufacturers for an encoder, a decoder or both ("unit") begin at US $0.20 per unit after the first 100,000 units each year. There are no royalties on the first 100,000 units each year. Above 5 million units per year, the royalty is US $0.10 per unit.

# Title-by-Title - For AVC video (either on physical media or ordered and paid for on title-by-title basis, e.g., PPV, VOD, or digital download, where viewer determines titles to be viewed or number of viewable titles are otherwise limited), there are no royalties up to 12 minutes in length. For AVC video greater than 12 minutes in length, royalties are the lower of (a) 2% of the price paid to the licensee from licensee's first arms length sale or (b) $0.02 per title. Categories of licensees include (i) replicators of physical media, and (ii) service/content providers (e.g., cable, satellite, video DSL, internet and mobile) of VOD, PPV and electronic downloads to end users.

# Subscription - For AVC video provided on a subscription basis (not ordered title-by-title), no royalties are payable by a system (satellite, internet, local mobile or local cable franchise) consisting of 100,000 or fewer subscribers in a year. For systems with greater than 100,000 AVC video subscribers, the annual participation fee is $25,000 per year up to 250,000 subscribers, $50,000 per year for greater than 250,000 AVC video subscribers up to 500,000 subscribers, $75,000 per year for greater than 500,000 AVC video subscribers up to 1,000,000 subscribers, and $100,000 per year for greater than 1,000,000 AVC video subscribers.

Doesn't this make H.264 only free of the two patents held by Qualcomm? There has to be dozens and dozens of other patents used as AFAIK H.264 is just a profile (AVC) of MPEG-4?

True. There are 20 corporations participating in the MPEG LA patent portfolio for H.264. Each of these corporations believe they have patents essential to impliment H.264(here's a long list(pdf))) and are collecting licensing fees from hundred of licensees.

Doesn't this make H.264 only free of the two patents held by Qualcomm? There has to be dozens and dozens of other patents used as AFAIK H.264 is just a profile (AVC) of MPEG-4?

True. There are 20 corporations participating in the MPEG LA patent portfolio for H.264. Each of these corporations believe they have patents essential to impliment H.264(here's a long list(pdf))) and are collecting licensing fees from hundred of licensees.

Doesn't this make H.264 only free of the two patents held by Qualcomm? There has to be dozens and dozens of other patents used as AFAIK H.264 is just a profile (AVC) of MPEG-4?

True. There are 20 corporations participating in the MPEG LA patent portfolio for H.264. Each of these corporations believe they have patents essential to impliment H.264(here's a long list(pdf))) and are collecting licensing fees from hundred of licensees.

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without
        authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented
        invention, within the United States or imports into the United
        States any patented invention during the term of the patent
        therefor, infringes the patent.

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without
        authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented
        invention, within the United States or imports into the United
        States any patented invention during the term of the patent
        therefor, infringes the patent.

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without
        authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented
        invention, within the United States or imports into the United
        States any patented invention during the term of the patent
        therefor, infringes the patent.

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without
        authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented
        invention, within the United States or imports into the United
        States any patented invention during the term of the patent
        therefor, infringes the patent.

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without
        authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented
        invention, within the United States or imports into the United
        States any patented invention during the term of the patent
        therefor, infringes the patent.

Why should Microsoft publish a list of patents? It's not their job.

Relevant patents are held in a patent pool with at least 15 other companies. The pool is owned by an outfit called MPEG LA, which also manages patent pools for a number of other video standards. Unfortunately, VC-1 is still in their "Programs Under Development" section, so they don't yet have a patent list as they do for other standards such as MPEG-2.

Maybe you should complain about MPEG LA not yet posting the list -- it's been a few months since they announced the license terms from the initial pool members -- but that's hardly MS's fault.

Why should Microsoft publish a list of patents? It's not their job.

Relevant patents are held in a patent pool with at least 15 other companies. The pool is owned by an outfit called MPEG LA, which also manages patent pools for a number of other video standards. Unfortunately, VC-1 is still in their "Programs Under Development" section, so they don't yet have a patent list as they do for other standards such as MPEG-2.

Maybe you should complain about MPEG LA not yet posting the list -- it's been a few months since they announced the license terms from the initial pool members -- but that's hardly MS's fault.

Why should Microsoft publish a list of patents? It's not their job.

Relevant patents are held in a patent pool with at least 15 other companies. The pool is owned by an outfit called MPEG LA, which also manages patent pools for a number of other video standards. Unfortunately, VC-1 is still in their "Programs Under Development" section, so they don't yet have a patent list as they do for other standards such as MPEG-2.

Maybe you should complain about MPEG LA not yet posting the list -- it's been a few months since they announced the license terms from the initial pool members -- but that's hardly MS's fault.

Getting something like XPS into printers would not make it a standard. If you want to make it a standard you need to put it in front of a standards body, get it ratified and publish it so that people can use it.

Even standards aren't always that great, especially when you have to pay extortionate costs just to read them or patent fees to make an implementation.

So any of these companies can just arbitrarily decide that they want any random license fees they want?

But charging for transmission of those encoded files where "file copying" isn't part of the patent? Like I said, that's retarded.

Do people actually pay these fees?

VC-1 is a SMPTE standard. VC-1 is equally open, in that anyone can create a VC-1 compliant codec pursuant to the standard and the terms of the licenses.

As I said in another followup, it's not quite done yet. MPEG LA is the administrator of VC-1 and its licensing, and it's still a program in development. Granted, it will be done soon, likely by the end of the year, but that doesn't change anything I've said: every additional use of VC-1 is a big win for Microsoft.

You've also conveniently forgotten to mention that the authors of H.264 compliant codecs must obtain licenses from two patent pools, including MPEG LA and Via Licensing.

Interesting how when a standard begins life as open, and as a result of the work of many institutions and groups, more people might have to cooperate to create a licensing process. That's just the way it works. The licensing terms for MPEG-4 and H.264 are more than reasonable, and have caps that allow companies to pay relatively low yearly licensing and still allow unlimited use of the codecs for authoring and playback.

"Open" is not a magic word, and H.264 is not "free" in any sense of the term. The two codecs are legally equal from a 30,000 ft view, except for the existence of the open-source and quite probably patent infringing H.264 encoder X264.

"Open" is most certainly magic in the context of standards. And I never said "free" or anything similar. The two codecs will soon be legally equal from a 30,000 ft view, but they definitely won't have started that way: H.264 was the next generation MPEG standard, designed to be cooperatively open from the beginning. Microsoft saw the writing on the wall and decided that the only way for it to get some of the commercial, industrial and big OEM groups to consider VC-1 is if it were "open". So it throws Windows Media Video 9 and Windows Media Audio out to SMPTE, says "look, we're open," and gets huge indirect benefits every time someone uses VC-1. Guess where the easiest platform to author, play, and integrate VC-1 will always be? Guess how easy it will be for Microsoft to repurpose existing VC-1 content on Windows platforms?

H.264 started out as open from the beginning, as a follow-on to other open international standards. VC-1 came 100% out of Microsoft, and will still benefit Microsoft each time it is used. You might say "Well, anyone else can develop VC-1 tools if they wish, and whatever the reason, we should be happy it's open." And what, abandon a perfectly good next-generation codec that was the result of countless man-years of work and effort on the part of people who understand the value and benefits of shared open standards and protocols?

I was astounded when VC-1 showed up in Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD. But kudos to Microsoft for being so shrewd that they knew exactly what they had to do to secure Windows Media's future everywhere they possibly could.

MPEG LA are the administrators of the standard and its licensing, and it's still in development. Yes, it will be done soon (probably before the end of 2006), but that still doesn't change the fact that H.264 began as an open MPEG standard (regardless of whether or not Microsoft or any other company made a patent claim during the patent pool process) and has been open for some time, and VC-1 came entirely from Microsoft and represents literally WMV3 and WMA. The standardization of VC-1 was Microsoft's response to concerns that Windows Media wasn't open, so they threw out their olive branch to SMPTE, and now they can tell managers and executives, "Hey, we're open, too," giving Windows Media and Microsoft a distinct advantage every time VC-1 is chosen.

Not only that, but H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10, MPEG AVC) is already an open international standard (and, for those who don't know, one of the three mandatory supported codecs for all Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD-DVD disc players - MPEG-2 and VC-1 are the other two).

While VC-1 (formerly known as VC-9, the Windows Media 9 (WMV3) codec) has been submitted to SMPTE, VC-1 is still not open, and must still go through the patent pool process, which itself is being administered by MPEG LA.

VC-1 is a SMPTE standard. VC-1 is equally open, in that anyone can create a VC-1 compliant codec pursuant to the standard and the terms of the licenses. You've also conveniently forgotten to mention that the authors of H.264 compliant codecs must obtain licenses from two patent pools, including MPEG LA and Via Licensing.

"Open" is not a magic word, and H.264 is not "free" in any sense of the term. The two codecs are legally equal from a 30,000 ft view, except for the existence of the open-source and quite probably patent infringing H.264 encoder X264.

Not only that, but H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10, MPEG AVC) is already an open international standard (and, for those who don't know, one of the three mandatory supported codecs for all Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD-DVD disc players - MPEG-2 and VC-1 are the other two).

While VC-1 (formerly known as VC-9, the Windows Media 9 (WMV3) codec) has been submitted to SMPTE, VC-1 is still not open, and must still go through the patent pool process, which itself is being administered by MPEG LA.

While WMV3 is an arguably good codec, Microsoft worked hard to get it into things like Blu-ray and HD-DVD, so that it could be in a position to get people to use it as the codec for HD content. Since VC-1 is nothing more than Windows Media Video 9, I guess I don't blame them for wanting it to be everywhere. Then all of a sudden, the same content can easily be repurposed for other things, and work extremely well with other Microsoft- and Windows Media-based products. Genius, on their part.

For what it's worth, H.264 is generally seen as similar in quality and functionality (and better in some ways) than VC-1; it's the official next-generation successor to the MPEG family of video codecs.

And no, to reiterate what's been said elsewhere, H.264 is NOT "Apple's codec". Apple uses and promotes it, but it's hardly "Apple's codec". It's an open international standard that is already heavily used in DTV/HDTV and satellite TV, and is being deployed in more industrial and commercial video equipment every day. Why? Because it's open, and didn't stem from one company. (If anything, Apple's involvement was to pressure MPEG LA to actually have reasonable licensing, so that it would also be able to actually be useful to individual users instead of just commercial users and equipment OEMs, which was positive for everyone involved.)

If people are switching to VC-1 instead of H.264, given that it's not open and came 100% out of Microsoft (and indeed is nothing more than WMV3 plus Windows Media Audio (WMA), you can believe Microsoft has likely had involvement. Every VC-1 user is a huge win for Microsoft and a blow to already-open MPEG standards.

What is Toshiba's incentive? Patents. The patent licenses for any technology format that gets a foothold in the mass market are *incredibly* lucrative. Every replicator who makes a DVD today has to pay a fee to patent licensing pools that cover the technology used. Likewise, every replicator who makes an HD DVD today has to pay a fee to license patents held by HD DVD godfathers NEC and Toshiba, and every replicator who makes a Blu-ray Disc has to pay a fee to a consortium that includes Sony and Pioneer, among others. (Or at least they will when all the various issues of patent ownership are settled to The Industry's satisfaction.) Too lazy to look this all up right now, but check out MPEG LA (www.mpegla.com) as an example of a big-time licensor of patents in this arena.

Patents on CD technology were worth millions (billions?) to Sony and Philips for a long time. They finally ran out in the late 1990s, but up until then everyone who made a CD anywhere in the world had to pay Sony and Philips for the privilege.

This is also, incidentally, why we have another format war. The stalemate between the two competing formats that eventually became DVD was broken behind the scenes when the companies involved came up with a last-minute compromise that preserved patents from both of the two warring camps in one design. That allowed DVD to launch as a single unified format. Unfortunately, there was no way to reconcile the dramatically different architecture of the Blu-ray Disc with the HD DVD.

The license fee isn't for the MPEG2 decoder

MPEGLA seem to think you're wrong. Here is a list of sample claims that they believe cover MPEG2 applications. Some clearly apply to decoding (like "Halting input of data when decoder buffer fills", US Pat 5,291,486 claim 12 -- I'm not kidding, either. Halting input of data when decoder buffer fills? What else are we going to do, overrun it?). Others might or might not, they describe MPEG related data structures, and it isn't clear whether only creating the structures or also interpreting them might be covered. Although it seems I was wrong to describe it as a $5 fee, it's actually only $2.50. I'd guess that CSS probably forms the other $2.50.

*Nowhere* does the MPEG LA guarantee that if you license from them that you will get _all_ patents related to the standard. In fact, you can be sure there are big disclaimers in their contracts that it's not necessarily true. The MPEG LA can't avoid more than anyone else the risk of submarine patents.

You are correct. There are big disclamers in the license. (I've read the whole thing at my job.) Since Lucent is not one of the licenser of the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License, the fact that Microsoft received a license from MPEGLA (which I'm sure they have) will not help them in this case.

But there is a small catch. In the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License, it is written that all licensees have to license any MPEG-2 Essencial Patents that they own. So, if Lucent has signed the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License as a licensee, they cannot sue Microsoft (since thay have received a license from MPEGLA, which would have received a license from Lucent). All they could do is get a cut from the money MPEGLA is collecting from licensee around the world.

So, has Lucent signed the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License as a licensee? If they haven't, have they ever used MPEG-2 commercially? If the answer to the first question is NO, and the answer to the second questions is YES, there are going to get a phone call from MPEGLA.

MPEG LA licenses a patent portfolio covering a number of MPEG related patents. They "do not own" the patents, neither do they offer any assurance that their license includes every essential patent. (See FAQ: the http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-faq.cfm)

MPEG Licensing Authority maintains a patent pool and issues licences for MPEG-2 encoders and decoders. If you have a patent that is essential for MPEG-2, then what *most* companies do is to contribute it to the patent pool in return for a share of the licensing fees. The Lucent (was AT&T Bell Laboratories) patent 5,227,878 is not one of those on the list. In fact neither Lucent nor AT&T have any licences in the patent pool. Why is Lucent being obnoxious?

MPEG Licensing Authority maintains a patent pool and issues licences for MPEG-2 encoders and decoders. If you have a patent that is essential for MPEG-2, then what *most* companies do is to contribute it to the patent pool in return for a share of the licensing fees. The Lucent (was AT&T Bell Laboratories) patent 5,227,878 is not one of those on the list. In fact neither Lucent nor AT&T have any licences in the patent pool. Why is Lucent being obnoxious?

Yeah, nothing says proprietary formats like the ISO standard MPEG-4 audio layer.

Of course there are open DRM standards, e.g. OMA DRM or MPEG-21, but there won't be a royalty free DRM anytime soon. It's all patented up.

The MPEG LA January 1, 2006 MPEG-4 Visual Patent List lists patent
6,134,269: Fixed or adaptive deinterleaved transform coding for image coding and intra coding of video.

The inventors are from AT&T and Lehigh University (Competitive Technologies acted as Lehigh's agent and submitted the patent to the pool). So it looks like AT&T might have at least one patent in the MPEG LA pool (just through a related entity).

some other potential AT&T patents:

4,999,705 Three dimensional motion compensated video coding
5,227,878 Adaptive coding and decoding of frames and fields of video
5,253,056 Spatial/frequency hybrid video coding facilitating the derivatives of variable-resolution images
5,270,813 Spatially scalable video coding facilitating the derivation of variable-resolution images
5,500,678 Optimized scanning of transform coefficients in video coding

Some of these are prior to MPEG-4, but you can follow the "Referenced By" link on the individual uspto patent pages to see other later patents.

I have seen AT&T patents assigned to:

AT&T Corp
AT & T Corp
AT&T Bell Laboratories (old, but still valid patents)
Bell Telephone Laboratories (patents mostly? expired)

From what I understand, MPEG-LA doesn't even pretend to guarantee that a license from them covers all applicable patents. From the MPEG-LA: "Any party that believes it has patents which are essential to the MPEG-4 Systems Standard, and wishes to participate in the MPEG-4 Systems Patent Portfolio License upon successful evaluation, is invited to submit them for evaluation and inclusion." This statement is repeated in a number of locations including the FAQs for both MPEG-4 Systems and MPEG-4 Visual. The MPEG-LA licensing is more of a "We know these patents all apply, and you can conveniently license them all in one place. You're on your own with anything else." Also, the patent pool for the audio portions of MPEG-4 is administrated separately by Via Licensing.

I often wonder if MPEG is more about good technology, or more about getting everyone's patents included.

SMPTE is currently working on standardizing a version of Windows Media 9 video codec as the "VC-1 codec" under SMPTE 421M. This should provide an openly available standard to create VC-1 decoding software (if you pay your license fee to MPEGLA and potentially others).

As VC-1 is being touted as being as mass-market broadcast video codec, I imagine we will see it popping up in all kinds of ways (satellite and cable set-top boxes, and home theater sofwtare).

I pay a four-digit sum for a computer and they won't throw in the $40 fee for the full fuctionality? Really clever, Jobs

look at #133 http://www.mpegla.com/m4v/m4v-licensees.cfm

What's wrong with uniform standards?

License fees.

It's really a shame when a standard requires very non-trivial licensing. Shouldn't standards be usable by anybody for anything? But somehow high-paid lawyers got mixed in and now it's a mess. I aplaud the Chinese for trying to avoid it altogether.

I expect the Chinese aren't too happy about some other mandates too.

From a purely technical standpoint, open standards seem quite attractive. However, until the patent system gets reworked so software patents get invalidated or have a high level of specificity required in comparing claims, even 'open' standards can become proprietary in a legal sense.

Some 'licensing' companies (e.g. Via Licensing and MPEG LA) will, if a standard looks like it will get some significant use in the market, make a 'call for patents', which means they ask anyone with a patent who thinks their patent would have some 'essentiality' to any implementation that used the standard to submit their patent for review. If one of these 'licensing' companies thinks the patent would apply generally to any system or application implementation that would make use of the standard, they add that patent with others of like merits to a 'patent pool' and then go after anyone using the standard to demand license fees for the pool. In this fashion, any open standard becomes a candidate for such companies to essentially leech off the standard and thereby prevent open, as in fee-less, use of the standard.

Open standards, then, face two hurdles beyond the technical ones. First, the well-known business interest some companies have in keeping their formats proprietary so you will not stop using their systems or software. Second, the less well-known, but growing legal problems with those who want to profit from the patent system without adding any real value in terms of standard creation or implementations. Open standards remain a good technical goal and we should pursue them, but this underscores some of the challenges to keep in mind.

The reason why your "porn, MP3s and NTFS" aren't supported without extra downloads is because of patents/lack of specifications.

I don't blame you for not knowing this because if you aren't going to go off and write this stuff yourself then it is deadly boring and tedious but it doesn't stop it being true.

MP3s are patented. The worry is if someone produces software to make or play MP3s they have pay royalties or risk being sued. This would ramp up the cost of Linux.

Porn. I have no idea what format your porn is in (I'm guessing it's video). Let's say it's some sort of MPEG4 video (this covers WMF too). MPEG4 is patented too and you need to pay royalties if you produce software that plays or makes them. This would ramp up the cost of Linux.

NTFS writing is off because it is dangerous/limited and can quite easily destroy the partition. This is mostly because NTFS has no documentation outside of MS. It may also be patented by MS. Licencing it would ramp up the cost of Linux.

By the time a company has paid for all these things and passed the cost to its customers (remember your distro can't possibly be free in either sense now) you have something more expensive than Windows which still doesn't run Windows programs. Why wouldn't you just use Windows?

The only system that could possibly win the game of being more Windows than Windows is MacOS and that comes with implicit expectation that you won't try and do things like read NTFS partitions or run Windows software outside of an emulator.

MS will be using XML to replace proprietary file formats in MS Office. So the Norwegian's will still be able to use Office.

It still all goes back to patents. MPEG and SMPTE need to release MPEG4 (AVC) and SMTPE (VC-1) to the world, but that will never happen. And no Open-Source product will be able to compete effectively in these markets in the near future. The reason I say this is that it has been 10 years since MPEG-2, and we are finally seeing a MPEG-4 (http://www.mpegla.com/avc/) and VC-1 (http://smpte.org/smpte_store/standards/). These will be used for future High Def. Video and Broadcast. MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 are on the way, but that's another story, and still patent encumbered.

First of all, video file formats are hardly a concern of "IT" -- this is really all being hashed out in Hollywood boardrooms, and is completely offtopic in a discussion about MS Office.

Sorry, but open standards and all of the tools and infrastructure that support them are a concern for "IT".

Further, Microsoft pushing closed standards and file formats is perfectly on topic in a story entitled "Microsoft Ends Era Of Closed File Formats".

Second, it really boils down to either giving Dolby a bunch of money

Er, Dolby?

Oh, you must mean MPEG LA. You know, the entity that actually does the licensing for MPEG family standards. It has so much experience in this arena, it's actually doing the patent pool for VC-1 as well.

or giving Microsoft a bunch of money

Oops, common mistake. You mean Microsoft giving them a bunch of money: Microsoft has shown they are willing to spend money or pay companies to use their product--buying their way into markets they deem important to future Microsoft business. It will be hard for telcos, ISPs, and cable providers to turn down billions of dollars in incentives if Microsoft attempts to buy the market.

the relative "openness" of one side or another is all politics between the content and device vendors and not something us peons should be overly concerned with.

Sorry, but an open, international ISO and ITU-T standard (H.264) is a lot more open than something that is, you know, not open, as is the current state with Windows Media.

And finally, your fantasy about Anti-Apple Zealots doing whatever the opposite of Apple does is humorously delusional.

Funnily, not using something from Apple just because it's Apple is mind-bendingly commonplace, even among supposedly skilled and knowledgeable folks. Your pretending that it's not is the only delusion here.

I will say that there is a user resistance to QuickTime-based video, but that's mainly because the player sucks, and not because people have any particular opinion about Apple (other than they produce a crappy player).

Baseless assertion. How does QuickTime Player "suck" compared to:

- RealPlayer
- Windows Media Player

Please be specific.

QuickTime Player is a free, commercial, vendor-supported player for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and Mac OS 9/X. What's "crappy" about it? (Nice troll though!)

First of all, video file formats are hardly a concern of "IT" -- this is really all being hashed out in Hollywood boardrooms, and is completely offtopic in a discussion about MS Office.

Sorry, but open standards and all of the tools and infrastructure that support them are a concern for "IT".

Further, Microsoft pushing closed standards and file formats is perfectly on topic in a story entitled "Microsoft Ends Era Of Closed File Formats".

Second, it really boils down to either giving Dolby a bunch of money

Er, Dolby?

Oh, you must mean MPEG LA. You know, the entity that actually does the licensing for MPEG family standards. It has so much experience in this arena, it's actually doing the patent pool for VC-1 as well.

or giving Microsoft a bunch of money

Oops, common mistake. You mean Microsoft giving them a bunch of money: Microsoft has shown they are willing to spend money or pay companies to use their product--buying their way into markets they deem important to future Microsoft business. It will be hard for telcos, ISPs, and cable providers to turn down billions of dollars in incentives if Microsoft attempts to buy the market.

the relative "openness" of one side or another is all politics between the content and device vendors and not something us peons should be overly concerned with.

Sorry, but an open, international ISO and ITU-T standard (H.264) is a lot more open than something that is, you know, not open, as is the current state with Windows Media.

And finally, your fantasy about Anti-Apple Zealots doing whatever the opposite of Apple does is humorously delusional.

Funnily, not using something from Apple just because it's Apple is mind-bendingly commonplace, even among supposedly skilled and knowledgeable folks. Your pretending that it's not is the only delusion here.

I will say that there is a user resistance to QuickTime-based video, but that's mainly because the player sucks, and not because people have any particular opinion about Apple (other than they produce a crappy player).

Baseless assertion. How does QuickTime Player "suck" compared to:

- RealPlayer
- Windows Media Player

Please be specific.

QuickTime Player is a free, commercial, vendor-supported player for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and Mac OS 9/X. What's "crappy" about it? (Nice troll though!)

The replacement for CSS (MPEG-LA) is not a flawed 25-bit encryption scheme, it is a full DRM scheme utilizing 128-bit AES encryption. There will be no "DVD Jon" to crack MPEG-LA like an egg.