New MPEG-4 Licensing Scheme

morcheeba writes: "EETimes is reporting that the licensing of MPEG-4 patents will be substantially different than the existing MPEG-2 licenses. The per-player fee will be substantially cheaper ($0.25 instead of $2.50), but a new "use fee" component of $0.02/hour will be charged to service providers. More on MPEG-4 in general at MacWeek; The MPEG-4 Industry Forum and MPEG LA are handling the licenses."

Comments

How do they plan on enforcement?

[glrotate]

$0.02/hr? How are they going to oversee that?

Re:How do they plan on enforcement?

[Lars T.]

Did anybody bother to read the article? Yeah, I know, stupid question around here.

Under the new scheme, a "use fee" will be charged to service providers based on the time or duration of MPEG-4 video stream playback.

Looks like people (and only those) who use MPEG4 to stream video will have to pay this use fee - unless they get their customers to do it for them.

Re:How do they plan on enforcement?

[mprinkey]

unless they get their customers to do it

The customer *will* pay for it, one way or the other.

Re:How do they plan on enforcement?

[Lars T.]

Unless they don't have (paying) customers. IOW no free streaming MPEG4 pr0n streams for you.

Re:How do they plan on enforcement?

[Anonymous Coward]

And did you actually read the question? (s)He was asking how are they going to enforce payment of the usage fee, and your non-answer completely missed it. Saying providers will charge for usage time doesn't in any way or form explain _HOW_ they are going to make sure providers do pay, how do they get charging information etc. The problem is that the provider has the ability to keep track of usage (potentially), but MPEG4 consortium has no such direct access and never will.

Re:How do they plan on enforcement?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to be paranoid.
But this is another slip on the slippery slope.
In order to properly pay the fees to the mpeg-4 patent holders, broadcasters will need feedback from the decoder chips in cable bozes. The feedback will be used to track what programs an individual watches.
And that information can build a naked picture of you.

Re:How do they plan on enforcement?

[Com2Kid]

"In order to properly pay the fees to the mpeg-4 patent holders, broadcasters will need feedback from the decoder chips in cable bozes. "

Yah

When they are on.

Thats all really. If only some of the channels are MPEG4 encoded, then it will just need to keep a timer going of how long an MPEG4 stream is being recieved.

It's time to GPL Fractal Compression

[EastCoastLA]

I know of two groups using GA to produce amazing Fractal compression. Anyone know how we can get this GPL'd.

MPEG2, then

[1010011010]

It looks like they are breathing more life into MPEG2, then. "Use fee" for a data format? That's supposedly a standard? Right.

Re:MPEG2, then

[sacherjj]

One thing I haven't seen asked is how does this affect DivX? That is MPEG4, right? Just a freely developed version... Why doesn't everyone just switch to DivX?

Re:MPEG2, then

[tomstdenis]

Brand name I suppose..

I'd rather buy a MP3 player than a GoshMot player.

I'd rather buy a DVD player than a AcidNet VCD player [etc...]

Plus MPEG-4 is a total standard, DivX is just an implementation of portions of it. MPEG-4 can be suited for a variety of MIPSes platforms, DivX cannot.

Plus if you're going to make a product for $100Million you'd rather just pay the license than risk it with a format which may infringe on tons of patents...

Tom

Re:MPEG2, then

[Whelkman]

Why doesn't everyone just switch to DivX?

The legality of DivX is questionable. First off, it was orignally based on Microsoft's ASF format (a simple hack to put the codec into an AVI file). Next, Project Mayo re-developed it into their own implementation, complete with an "open source" license. However, once the project got far enough, Project Mayo shut down the CVS. Soon after they made a commercial product out of it. Yes, you can still download 4.0 alpha 50, but it's a year old.

So, not only does DivX use (or did use) "stolen technology" from Microsoft, the project centers around stolen code garnered from lies and deception. On top of that, it is an MPEG4 implementation of sorts, so usage of it probably requires licensing fees.

That's why "everyone doesn't just switch to DivX."

Re:MPEG2, then

[Whelkman]

MPEG-4 can be suited for a variety of MIPSes platforms, DivX cannot.

I believe MPlayer can play DivX on non-x86 through ffmpeg.

Re:MPEG2, then

[tomstdenis]

can *play*. I'm talking about both encoding and decoding.

If Divx requires 35% of my Athlon 1.2ghz to encode at full quality, I imagine on a 100Mhz ARM [i.e digital video camera or something] it would be way too much.

MPEG-4 has layers/modes [??? not sure about the vernacular] that are suitable for various levels of complexity suited to the platform.

Its like saying an MPEG I Layer III audio codec is also a Layer I codec. It ain't. Layer I is suitable for very low end platforms whereas Layer III requires more cpu time...

Tom

Re:MPEG2, then

[Whelkman]

I'm talking about both encoding and decoding.

mencoder, then. I think that it ither can or is close to be able to.

If Divx requires 35% of my Athlon 1.2ghz to encode at full quality, I imagine on a 100Mhz ARM [i.e digital video camera or something] it would be way too much.

Yes, I agree. This is why I said above that MPEG4 will not be on the level of MPEG1 for years. When you said "MIPS," I thought you meant the chip, not the abbreviation.

Re:MPEG2, then

[tomstdenis]

"Yes, I agree. This is why I said above that MPEG4 will not be on the level of MPEG1 for years. When you said "MIPS," I thought you meant the chip, not the abbreviation."

Sorry, yeah I meant raw computing power. For example, most MP3 chips are just DSP processors with a MP3 codec in the ROM. Its the most economical way to implement the codec. Good designs would naturally have hardware acceleration for the operations performed [hence using a DSP core as the basis].

While I think Div/x is great [looks very good at low rates like 512kbit/sec for 320x240x30fps] its just not scalable like the MPEG-4 standard.

Another important concept is that MPEG-4 is not just one codec. Its a set of several codecs.

One thing that pisses me off is that the specs for MPEG-4 are not free. I can agree with the license for use since it takes time/money to develop it, but for research students and such its a pain, specially when your college doesnt spend money on books without pullout diagrams.

Tom

Re:MPEG2, then

[Anonymous Coward]

The DivX distrobution from DivX networks is actually legally licensed.. you might want to read the licensee's section on mpegla.

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will you learn that Slashdot is a fringe element of society and does not represent the global view. Personally I have CD players, VCRs, DVDs, and TVs that I know contain several dollars of licensing fees each: BIG SHIT. Seriously, who gives a fuck? It pays the people to develop this.

Of course in the grand open source scheme, to avoid paying the licensing fees the OS fanatics will, rather than, say, write their own algorithm, break any protections and claim it as their intellectual right. Of course it totally refutes the open source foundations that their whole little religion is built on, but ignore that...

Pay-per-use

[TrollMan 5000]

Just like anything else lately, licensing is going to a pay-per-use scheme as well. What's next? Coin-operated toasters?

Holders of technology are going to eventually price themselves out of the market, if eventually people tire of paying for something every time they use it.

Re:Pay-per-use

[harmless_mammal]

Absolutely! Now I haven't seen any good numbers on this, but I'm guessing that every computer professional in the U.S. is probably spending at least $2K to $3K/year for the priviledge of a hi-tech lifestyle... buying new computers, keeping your ISP happy, cell phones, pagers, etc... This doesn't include what we spend training ourselves so that we might be able to keep our jobs.

Anybody ever seen any serious economic analyses on this topic?

Re:Pay-per-use

[homer_ca]

That is not even the same thing. Computers and phones are physical objects. Even when they are obsolete, they are still your property to do with as you please. ISP and phone service is a continuing service which requires the time and effort of a service provider to keep on functioning.

With MPEG, it's an industry standard agreed upon by a group of companies to ensure interoperability. Sure, someone had to do the compression research, but more likely than not, some of the research was done with graduate student slave labor under a government grant.

Economics of the past

[Dutchmaan]

I'm wondering in the next 10 years how many things we'll no longer own, but be charged as we use them.

I think there was a word for this kind of situation...

Serfdom

Only this time we pay to a CEO instead of a "Lord"

Re:Economics of the past

[Proaxiom]

The flip side of this is that patents aren't like copyrights. They expire after 20 years or so, and become public domain.

At that point all you have to do is write your own piece of software that implements the algorithm, and you don't have to pay anybody anything.

Presumably by then there will be new and improved patented algorithms, but it's nice to know that you will always have free technology to use, although sometimes a little outdated. (Or not, the RSA patent has expired and it is still the most popular public-key cryptosystem)

Re:Economics of the past

[SuperDuG]

Well we still got the GPL and everything that falls under it ...

Re:Economics of the past

[Lars T.]

No, it's called renting (or leasing) something.

Re:Economics of the past

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Although I understand your point, you failed to consider one little thing:

20 years ago, 20K of RAM in a "Personal Computer" was a REAL big deal. Do you still have people hacking out apps for a Vic-20? No. 10 years ago, "who will ever need more than 640k of RAM" was still somewhat in fashion. 20 years from now we'll be laughing at MP4's.

So I'm sorry man, but your solution or proposal or whatever is really not an option. By any means. By the time the coders get their hands on the inards of the thing, we'll be bitching about MP15's.

Re:Economics of the past

[Dutchmaan]

Yeah... ever hear of the term "landlord"

...and from what origin is that term derived?

Re:Economics of the past

[ch-chuck]

Ah, these things come up every so often and are soon forgotten when people wise up to what the deal it - I've some old magazines with pictures of an experiment in Canada with 'pay per view' tv that actually had a coin box on the consumers set in their house! This was in the late 50's early 60's or so. That's right, to watch tv you had to put a nickle in, and a collector would come around and get the change. Needless to say, it didn't catch on.

Re:Economics of the past

[Anonymous Coward]

..because lord knows we'll all still want to watch MPEG4 streams in 20 years.

The only two patents I can think of that are anywhere near to/have expired are LWZ compression and RSA crypto. Sure, now we can use them. But really, who cares? In the case of LWZ, the 20 years of patent's hanging over developers heads lead to the development of alternate technology (PNG).

So really, why does your argument hold any water at all?

Re:Economics of the past

[tjarko]

We are still using ASCII and is the death of GIF near ?

Re:Economics of the past

[Lars T.]

Yes, but I never heard of the term carlord. And since most Americans buy most things on credit, those things probably belong to their banklord and creditcardlord.

Re:Economics of the past

[Anonymous Coward]

>We are still using ASCII and is the death of GIF near ?

20 years ago we were using C64 and Atari character sets (which are vastly different from what you are seeing right now) and were creating colour with either ANSI sequences (something virtually unheard of today) or "colour" characters (C64).

GIF is only about for animations. How many animated GIFs existed 20 years? Did GIF even exist?

So, you see, we'd all be stuck viewing .PCX files and printing to line printers if patents were to stick about.

Peace out.

Re:Economics of the past

[Proaxiom]

Whatever. The LZW patent is set to expire at the end of this year, making the algorithm that produces GIFs free for use.

But I suppose GIFs are ancient technology and nobody has used them years, right?

So I'm sorry man, but your solution or proposal or whatever is really not an option.

It wasn't a solution or a proposal. It was just a statement. MPEG-4 will be exactly the same algorithm in a decade as it is now.

Re:Economics of the past

[Dutchmaan]

When you buy a car with a credit card you still own the car unless you can't pay your bills... in which case you get sued and the government decides wether you have to give up your property.

There is leasing a vehicle which is more of the "carlord" you speak of.

In todays society leasing or renting is usually a choice. My concern comes from the erosion of the choice we have as to wether or not we "own" something.

Re:Economics of the past

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

The LZW patent is set to expire at the end of this year

Not according to this it's not. The patent was granted in 1985. 1985+20=2005. Or you could read at Unisys itself.

~

It wasn't a solution or a proposal.

I know, bad wording. Sorry ,man.

~

MPEG-4 will be exactly the same algorithm in a decade as it is now.

You are 100% correct, but my point is no one will care. We will have GREATLY moved on by then, and the guts of MP4 will be very little more than an eye-brow raiser.

Re:Economics of the past

[Proaxiom]

It's actually 17 years. RSA was granted in 1983 and expired in 2000. LZW was granted in 1985, and so would expire this year.

In the US, at least. I don't know much about how patent laws work internationally. It looks like it might still have some protection in England.

Re:Economics of the past

[MessiahXI]

Whatever. The LZW patent is set to expire at the end of this year, making the algorithm that produces GIFs free for use. But I suppose GIFs are ancient technology and nobody has used them years, right?

come on. video codecs are a little bit more fast paced. I promise you, before too long MPEG4 will be obsolete and no one will care if it's public domain. Think "student projects". Think "historical purposes". But don't even think "cutting edge video".

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

(Score: 5? Are you kidding me? In the absence of any mod points this week, I reply.)

I'm wondering in the next 10 years how many things we'll no longer own, but be charged as we use them. I think there was a word for this kind of situation... serfdom.

Here I illustrate the use of the "Mad-Libs" method of argument analysis: replace the significant noun and verb in the sentence with other similar words. If the argument sounds silly, draw your own conclusion.

"I'm wondering in the next 10 years how many roads we'll no longer own, but be charged as we drive on them. I think there was a word for this kind of situation... serfdom."

If you don't want to pay the toll, don't drive on the MPEG-4 parkway. It's that simple. There's no need for this sort of hyperbole. If we're talking about wrongful imprisonment or illegal taxation or something, get as morally indignant as you want. But don't dilute that kind of rhetoric by using it on mundane issues like this one.

Re:Economics of the past

[Anonymous Coward]

The flip side of this is that patents aren't like copyrights. They expire after 20 years or so, and become public domain.

On the gripping hand, patent and copyright are both enabled by the same paragraph in the US Constitution. I've often wondered if anyone will notice the disparity between the expiration periods between the two; i.e., 20 years vs. the life of the author plus 90 years. And if anyone notices, whether the expiration period for copyright would be reduced or the period for patents would be extended.

Re:Economics of the past

[Proaxiom]

In the specific case of MPEG4, I'm inclined to agree with you. It probably will be outdated long before the patent expires.

However, it will be outdated because somebody else has patented a new better algorithm (or not patented it, which is also possible, and released it for everybody to use). This is the purpose of patents: to encourage new innovation. If people are perpetually coming up with better ideas, they do have some claim to get money for them. This is acceptable.

But unlike copyright, you can't sit on a patent, do nothing, and receive perpetual income. Copyright law may actually discourage new work, while patent law does the opposite.

Re:Economics of the past

[Kozz]

Well, Microsoft and Panasonic have already developed a Pay-Per-Use DVD player. It should be the wave of the future.

Re:Economics of the past

[Dutchmaan]

I'm sorry you feel that this isn't all that important.

Everything that happens in this world that is malevolent in nature usually has very small beginnings. How often I've heard "If we had only known sooner we could have done something about it." I wasn't raising a black flag a declaring war, I was pointing out a similarity between our economic trends and serfdom. If you feel it's not important fine... others apparently do feel it's a subject worth discussing.

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

Everything that happens in this world that is malevolent in nature....

Are you kidding me? Malevolent? Are you sitting there at your computer with a serious face telling me that the MPEG-4 Forum's licensing scheme is evil?

Of all thing, I would have thought that the events of the past four months would have given us all a sense of perspective. Blowing up buildings is malevolent. Killing people is malevolent. Charging a per-use-hour fee to your customers is business.

Get a grip.

Re:Economics of the past

[Matey-O]

And those 'others' feel better with tinfoil on their heads. Golly it's IMPRESSIVE how forthright us nerds are. It's equally impressive how much rhetoric we can spew.

Re:Economics of the past

[cpt kangarooski]

Patents aren't like copyrights... yet.
If there's little that prevents Congress from having insanely long copyright terms, there's just as little preventing the same with patent terms.

Re:Economics of the past

[Whelkman]

20 years ago, 20K of RAM in a "Personal Computer" was a REAL big deal.

No it wasn't. Even cheap, consumer-grade Atari computers had that much, and even the "stripped down" version had 16K.

Keep in mind how much MPEG1 is still in use and how old that is. It's getting dated, but not many are "laughing at it." MPEG4 may be the hot new thing, but it can't boast the ubiquity, stability, and portability that its ancestor can. Granted it's only twelve years old or so (compared to 17-20), but I really doubt MPEG4 will be on the scale of MPEG1 this year, next year, or the year after that.

Re:Economics of the past

[cpt kangarooski]

Absolutely it's malevolent.

Imagine that a law is passed to the effect that people are not allowed to own personal or real property, they must lease it from certain governmentally-approved businesses.

On the one hand, this is just a business regulation. On the other hand it is an assault on your personal and deeply ingrained freedoms. (e.g. how do you exercise freedom of speech if all property owners ban you for doing so, and prohibit certain things? Must you stand in the ocean? Will that be free forever?)

This is harmful to society's interests in affording people the opportunity to exercise any means of communication they desire so as to express themselves (free speech is not free if, e.g. it must only be spoken, not written). It is harmful to our interests in freely using, accessing, altering, preserving and disseminating elements of our culture.

I consider it to be quite harmful. Business is not an excuse, in fact it is NEVER an excuse. The proper excuse for such a proposal is that we have more to gain than we will lose. Viz, that more things will be produced and preserved and available w/ the restrictions than without. But this isn't necessarily the case, and it definately is not ALWAYS the case, and frankly societal interests come first.

Hell, you think economic models can support themselves? Hah! Again, they're only tolerated insofar as the people expected to respect them benefit... where they don't, they have no incentive to support them.

Re:Economics of the past

[Zeinfeld]

Not according to this [surrey.ac.uk] it's not. The patent was granted in 1985. 1985+20=2005. Or you could read at Unisys [unisys.com] itself.

Bzzt! The law is 17 years from issue or 20 years from filing, whichever is longer. The filing date on 4,558,302 is June 20, 1983, the issue date is December 10, 1985.

So the patent expires on the later of Dec 10, 2002 or June 20 2003.

What I don't quite understand is why anyone would use MPEG 4 under the proposed license instead of MPEG 2. Chances are that devices will have to support MPEG2 far into the future. It is not very likely that MPEG4 will offer such a devastating improvement in performance that many will be paying 2 cents an hour.

The problem with razor and blades type business models is that they are only good for the seller. Given the choice the customer will strategise to avoid razor and blades type models. Polaroid has gone chapter 11 because people prefer to pay $300 for a good digital camera that costs $0.00 per shot rather than pay $30 for a Polaroid camera and $1 for every shot they take.

Re:Economics of the past

[Dutchmaan]

"Are you kidding me? Malevolent? Are you sitting there at your computer with a serious face telling me that the MPEG-4 Forum's licensing scheme is evil?"

Depends on your defenition of evil now doesn't it.

Is MPEG-4's licensing scheme evil? Probably not.
Can it be a part of a larger corporate ideology that I would view as "evil" .. possibly.

Try looking at things from a perspective that isn't your own once in a while...and quite frankly from the condescending tone of your posts, I would imagine that you don't possess the ability to see things from any other perspective than the one that puts your nose at the center.

"Blowing up buildings is malevolent. Killing people is malevolent. Charging a per-use-hour fee to your customers is business."

Agreed...however it is in my view that business in regards to revenue acquisition and preservation in it's ultimate nature is entirely self-serving and therefore, in my opinion, "evil".

A business and some point in it's life crosses a line where the focus of the company is no longer on the products it produces, but rather the aquistion of revenue.

It's the very subtle difference in taking pride in products, offering them to the public, who in turn pay you for said products. As opposed to looking at the public merely as a source of revenue where your main objective is to get the most for giving the least.

It's a subtle difference and not surprising that it would escape your comprehension.

Re:Economics of the past

[Proaxiom]

IMHO, patents won't go in that direction.

Copyrights used to mainly effect arts and entertainment. Now they have a profound influence on technology as well. But that is still a fairly limited scope.

Patents are broader. In particular they are critical in the pharmaceutical industry (where there are patent controversies from time to time). Long-term patent granting would be very very dangerous, because it could allow drug companies to put the health care market in a stranglehold. As it stands now, drugs are highly overpriced for the first 20 years of their existence (while patented), and then suddenly become available cheaply. This helps to discourage (but not prevent) abuse.

Re:Economics of the past

[Anonymous Coward]

gifs are also in use for transparency, and likely will be until microsoft fixes its png support in ie.

Re:Economics of the past

[Anonymous Coward]

png is not an alternative to lzw compression, it's an alternative to one application which uses it.

There are other lz-based algorithms which are used tho, such as lzss and lz77 (used in zip)

Re:Economics of the past

[Kushana]

While its true that people will try to overcome the "blades" portion of this model, this does not lead to the conclusion that the model will naturually fall out of favour.

For example, the razor blade market is quite mature, yet no-one is selling significant numbers of expensive razons + cheap blades. The home inkjet printer market is also heading towards cheaper printers and expensive cartridges (or grey-market refills).

I believe that the trick lies in the perception of expense. Send not too much money not too often, and the model works just fine.

Re:Economics of the past

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing i'm just licensing my college degree. I never use it anyway. I wonder if I can stop paying my student loans now.

Re:Economics of the past

[TooTallFourThinking]

But why can't charing a per-use-hour fee to customers be consider malevolent to some? Not every business is malevolent, but I think with this issue people don't agree with the motives behind the MPEG-4 licensing fees.

Since they made it, they want to profit from it. That is perfectable exceptable seeing how they did all the work.

I doubt many people will be seriously harmed because of the fees they are levying. What effects will it have other than causing people to whine, I don't know.

And if people are upset with the licensing fee, support an open source effort. Give your time or money along with complaining. Someone needs to do the work cause you are not getting something for free here.

What do the people who are doing the work want in the end? I know what the MPEG-4 people want.

Re:Economics of the past

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether or not it becomes "obsolete" depends on the applications. For example, MPEG-2 is already outdated (you could argue), but because it's part of the DVD and the DTV standards it will be many decades before it becomes obsolete.

Re:Economics of the past

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Patents are broader. In particular they are critical in the pharmaceutical industry (where there are patent controversies from time to time). Long-term patent granting would be very very dangerous, because it could allow drug companies to put the health care market in a stranglehold. As it stands now, drugs are highly overpriced for the first 20 years of their existence (while patented), and then suddenly become available cheaply. This helps to discourage (but not prevent) abuse.Patents are broader. In particular they are critical in the pharmaceutical industry (where there are patent controversies from time to time). Long-term patent granting would be very very dangerous, because it could allow drug companies to put the health care market in a stranglehold. As it stands now, drugs are highly overpriced for the first 20 years of their existence (while patented), and then suddenly become available cheaply. This helps to discourage (but not prevent) abuse.

You know, it was this industry that taught me that patents no longer serve their intended purpose (to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts"). Evidently, it's common practice in the pharmaceutical industry to patent a drug, wait 20 years, and THEN come with with a patent for a very-slightly-modified variant (i.e. "Now! New Improved Time-Release Prozac!") to hold off the generic drug companies. I can't imagine that it really takes 20 years to come up with a "timed-release" version of an already-developed drug, so I can only assume corporations "sit" on this sort of thing for 20 years, so that they can extend their patent control for as long as possible, to the detriment of "progress of science and the useful arts"...

Re:Economics of the past

[bbcat]

>I'm wondering in the next 10 years how many
>things we'll no longer own, but be charged as we
>use them

You'll get an implant that counts the numbers
and intensity of your orgasms and you'll get
charged accordingly. When you exceed your monthly
quota the sex police will arrest you.

Re:Economics of the past

[joshsisk]

Polaroid has gone chapter 11 because people prefer to pay $300 for a good digital camera that costs $0.00 per shot rather than pay $30 for a Polaroid camera and $1 for every shot they take.

If you'd read the article, you'd realize that that $0.02 per hour applies only to service providers. They aren't going to charge owners of consumer devices an hourly fee to use their players. This will get transfered to customers/or companies that use services that require MP4... Video on Demand, maybe. It might translate into more costs for consumers of items that required payment of those hour fees to produce, as well.

Re:Economics of the past

[cduffy]

Agreed...however it is in my view that business in regards to revenue acquisition and preservation in it's ultimate nature is entirely self-serving and therefore, in my opinion, "evil".

Evil? That's rather a strong word. I'm inclined to suggest that there can be no evil without coersion or force -- that any transaction in which all parties engage willingly (like a sale!) is ethically acceptable. In any event, what does it matter if my company puts out a good product because we take pride in what we build or we put out a good product because we want to drive our competitors out of business (or because we simply want customers to buy our product so we can go for cash)? Judgement should be based on actions, not intent.

As for those businesses that do evil things, they're eventually self-defeating. Businesses that discriminate lose customers and force themselves to select from a smaller set of potential employees (thus condemning themselves to a lower-quality workforce). Businesses that put out a poorly made product to reduce their costs either lose sales because customers go to a competitor, or are rewarded for their increased efficiency if customers decide that the extra quality isn't worth the difference in price. Businesses that use predatory sales tactics eventually see a backlash in public opinion resulting in worse sales. And so on. There's nothing wrong with businesses being focused on self-interest -- as long as they avoid becoming too shortsighted, in which case their actions eventually come back to harm them. And there's no reason to require government regulation -- market forces will straighten things out in the end.

Re:Economics of the past

[Zeinfeld]

If you'd read the article, you'd realize that that $0.02 per hour applies only to service providers. They aren't going to charge owners of consumer devices an hourly fee to use their players

I have extensive dealings with that industry. I don't do the actual business negotiations but I am in a position where they would make their requirements known.

I don't think that they are likely to accept the type of usage fees suggested. If I were in their situation I would never accept them if I had the option of using MPEG2 instead, even if the choice cost me money in the short term.

It is a visibility issue as much as anything. I would not allow anyone else to know how much I was streaming or allow them to put their monitoring infrastructure in my racks.

The majors distributors must realise that they can get better terms by simply waiting to deploy.

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

Imagine that a law is passed to the effect that people are not allowed to own personal or real property, they must lease it from certain governmentally-approved businesses.

Okay, I'm imagining it. It has nothing to do with what we're talking about, which is the MPEG-4 Forum's choice of licensing terms. What's your point?

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

A business and some point in it's life crosses a line where the focus of the company is no longer on the products it produces, but rather the aquistion of revenue.

Yes, it does. That point is called "incorporation."

The job of a business is to generate revenue. It exists for no other purpose. The only question is how it goes about doing that. Sometimes moral questions arise: is it morally right for drug companies to profit while people who can't afford their products suffer and die? That's a hard question.

The issue of licensing for the MPEG-4 standard seems kind of trivial by comparison, doesn't it?

The "subtle distinction" you refer to isn't lost on me, so much as it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Re:Economics of the past

[joshsisk]

I agree, it's a rip off - plain and simple.

I'd almost always prefer to pay more up front to OWN something, as oppossed to renting.

Re:Economics of the past

[nyet]

If you don't want to pay the toll, don't drive on the MPEG-4 parkway. It's that simple.

No its not. Eventually, there WILL be no other parkways, because just about any menthod to compete with them will be covered by patents and/or copyrights. After all, this is the PURPOSE of IP, is it not? To prevent competition so you can make money?

Its a stupid meme, and you know it. At least yell "slippery slope", but don't hide your head in the sand and pretend how great patents have been at "promoting the useful sciences" lately.

Corporations have a tendency to seek monopolies. Indiviudals who want to have the ABILITY to choose between competitors have to constantly struggle against this tendency.

We are much closer to a serfdom than you think, especially with people like you cheering the local lords on.

Re:Economics of the past

[Dutchmaan]

"The job of a business is to generate revenue. It exists for no other purpose. The only question is how it goes about doing that. Sometimes moral questions arise: is it morally right for drug companies to profit while people who can't afford their products suffer and die? That's a hard question.

The issue of licensing for the MPEG-4 standard seems kind of trivial by comparison, doesn't it?"

I don't consider flaws that I see in the system trivial. A wrong is a wrong, and I have no more chance of convicing you that what you've chosen to believe is any more absurd than what I have chosen to believe.

I may be wrong about things... I hope I am, but I'm not going to sit back and claim that one wrong should continue simply from the standpoint that it is not directly killing anyone.

If your so concerned about lives lost, then why are you even here as opposed to out in the world trying to save those very people in danger. Go join the service, give blood, join a fire department, train to be a nurse or doctor... Certainly more noble professions than trying to convince someone on a forum that his opinions are irrelevant simply because you don't agree with them.

Re:Economics of the past

[civilizedINTENSITY]

I believe the poster was refering to a pattern that is developing. We don't own software that we buy, we own permission to use it in accordance with the manner in which it was meant for us to use it. Likewise, music and movies are hoping to be reclassified as software. You might have bought the DVD, but only play it under the OSes we say are allowed. It really comes down to control.

Re:Economics of the past

[cpt kangarooski]

Their ability to set licensing terms can be, and should be, regulated by government so that said licensing (if there's any at all) is strictly so as to achieve the maximum public benefit.

Given that businesses won't bother if their benefit is below a certain point there is a balance to be met, true. But the system as a whole has to still maximize public benefit by being at the point where there is the most freedom of use by the public and the most development of the codec et al simultaneously.

As it stands, we're nowhere near that point, and moving farther away from it all the time. Allowing the licensors carte blanche is not helping the public good.

Re:Economics of the past

[zik0]

You already don't own your house, even if it's
paid for. You pay rent in the form of property
taxes.

Re:Economics of the past

[Eugene O'Neil]

If I want to pave my own road, I don't have to pay anyone for the right to do it. It's my land and my asphalt, I can do whatever I want with it.

However, if I want to implement my own mp4 player on my own computer, I WILL have to pay a fee.

Never confuse the ownership of physical property with "intellectual" property. When people are allowed to own the very ideas you think, they might as well own YOU.

Re:Economics of the past

[benwaggoner]

People will use MPEG-4 because it offers massively improved compression efficiency over MPEG-2. This means you're able to get a lot more bang for the bit when bandwidth is a constraint (which is almost always is for video). Eventually, digital cable and satellite operators will adopt MPEG-4 since they'll be able to get several times more channels, and hence dramatically improve revenue, over their current infrastructure.

MPEG-4 also offers a lot of rich media and interactivity features.

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

After all, this is the PURPOSE of IP, is it not? To prevent competition so you can make money?

Actually, the purpose of intellectual property rules and laws is to encourage innovation by making it profitable to come up with expensive, exotic new ideas. Who would spend a billion dollars on something new if somebody else could reproduce it for 1% of that and put the innovator out of business?

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

Their ability to set licensing terms can be, and should be, regulated by government so that said licensing (if there's any at all) is strictly so as to achieve the maximum public benefit.

WHAT?? That's awfully Marx-esque, don't you think?

This is a capitalist system, and as such the only responsibilities that a business has is to maximize value for its shareholders and to comply with the laws of the jurisdiction(s) in which it operates.

This system is not perfect, but any system based on the premise that you advocate has been demonstrated to be ultimately a failure.

I like the old saying: capitalism is the second-worst economic system yet devised. The worst economic system is... everything else.

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

Never confuse the ownership of physical property with "intellectual" property. When people are allowed to own the very ideas you think, they might as well own YOU.

This is, of course, a "straw man" fallacy.

But, to address your point, consider a world in which there was no protection of intellectual property. Let's say it cost $1 million to develop MPEG-4. (I have no idea what it cost. That's just an example.) The people who developed have no protection; if they release their specification, anybody who wants to could develop a product based on it. If they don't release their spec, anybody who wants to could reverse-engineer it. The MPEG-4 Forums loses $1 million.

In that case, who will develop MPEG-5? Hobbyists who do it in their spare time, as opposed to for profit? Maybe. Scientists? Again, maybe. But there have been a lot of innovations in this world, and only a few have come from those kinds of sources.

This shouldn't be a new argument to you; the same one applies to drug companies. Patents on drugs are a good thing because it encourages companies to develop new drugs that improve the quality of life for all.

Re:Economics of the past

[VersedM]

The flip side of this is that patents aren't like copyrights. They expire after 20 years or so, and become public domain.

Copyrights used to have this same problem I believe... Thank goodness for Disney!

Re:Economics of the past

[namespan]

The job of a business is to generate revenue. It exists for no other purpose.

In other words, it's amoral. Which some people actually consider "evil".

Most folks would argue it's not actually as evil asactively seeking to destroy something of high value (human life, human choice) or causing pain for the hell of it. I would agree. But the problem is that there are so many ways to get revenue that hurt other people, that ANY entity whose main goal is revenue is going to quickly find itself tempted to hurt them. Not because it wants to, but because the ends begin to justify the means.

Does charging for MP4s count? probably not. Does neglecting safety measures out of complacency and eye for the bottom line count? Absolutely. Ask yourself what you think of the fact that airline pilots and stewards/stewardess' had lobbied airlines for at least 2 years before Sep 11 for secure cockpit doors, citing several cases where unstable passengers could have caused an unstable airplane. Or watch Erin Brokavich.

The sad thing is, it's not that capitalism has to be this way. If your mission as a business is to meet a real (service or product) need adequately -- or, more especially, better than anyone else can meet it -- you're set. It's why Google beats the pants off of the rest of the search engines, despite being a late comer: they do it better than anyone else. It's why there's zillions of restaurants, despite zillions of other established restaurants: people need food, and if you sell adequately tasty food at an affordable price, you survive. But most corps and people are lazy; they'd rather see if they can find a way to coast and just collect the cash. In essence, they'd love to drive a wedge into basic economics that ensures they can maximize profits beyond the utility they're actually givint back. They work at the expense of the system in general, and the individual consumer who depends on them.

Revenue can't be the only guide. Subscribe to that principle, and people get hurt.

Or as some people like to say it, the opposite of love isn't hate. It's apathy.

Re:Economics of the past

[nyet]

Actually, the purpose of intellectual property rules and laws is to encourage innovation

And this is disagreeing with me?

Again, it is SUPPOSED to encourange innovation by promising the developer he won't have competition. Which is exactly what I said.

Currently, IP does the first (preventing competitors from entering a market), but it completely fails at the real goal, which is to spur innovation.

What it does is STIFLE innovation (in that market) AFTER the patent is granted, UNTIL it expires. In this day and age, 20 years is simply far too long. Deny it all you want, but all that happens now is patent portfolio disputes, usually ending in some nice crosslicensing deals. Typically, the corporation with the fatter portfolio ends up with the sweeter deal. The "small" inventor usually ends up with the short end of the stick, and a hefty legal bill to boot. You need to check your naivete at the door before trolling on a topic you obviously don't have much first hand experience in.

Re:Economics of the past

[nyet]

I like the old saying: capitalism is the second-worst economic system yet devised. The worst economic system is... everything else.

Except that IP laws are CLEARLY socialist in nature, establishing monopolies in areas that are in danger of becoming a "common good" by virtue of the commoditization of information.

That is their purpose. Pretending that a GOVERNMENT enforced monopoly is capitalism is laugable. IP is corporate welfare, and it serves its purpose perfectly if implemented correctly. In our case, however, it is a royal clusterfuck.

Re:Economics of the past

[nyet]

This shouldn't be a new argument to you; the same one applies to drug companies. Patents on drugs are a good thing because it encourages companies to develop new drugs that improve the quality of life for all.

If you actually WORKED at a drug company, you would know that you are being terribly naive. When a drug company gets a patent, what do you think it does for the next 20 years? Work on new drugs? HELL no, that is far too risky.

What they end up doing is slowly price gouging as much as the market will bear to make the balance sheet look good. R&D works on a NEW and IMPROVED version of the existing drug, to be released when the 20 years is up. A team of lawyers an order of MAGNITUDE larger than the R&D team is then paid handsomely (again, from the profits of their monopoly) to make sure that 1) nobody violates their current valid patents 2) negotiate crosslicensing deals from other corporations if they *DO* have overlapping IP 3) work diligently to stomp out competitors that have similar (but not enough to violate the patent) products and 4) make sure the wording for the new patent (on the new and improved drug) is iron clad to make the next cycle less expensive. If you look at the balance sheet of the typical drug company, you will see that the LEGAL dept's budget is scary compared to R&D.

Re:Economics of the past

[psamuels]

But, to address your point, consider a world in which there was no protection of intellectual property. Let's say it cost $1 million to develop MPEG-4. (I have no idea what it cost. That's just an example.) The people who developed have no protection; if they release their specification, anybody who wants to could develop a product based on it. If they don't release their spec, anybody who wants to could reverse-engineer it. The MPEG-4 Forums loses $1 million.

The problem with your argument is that you assume that the only people who profit from MPEG-4 are the people who license the patent.

Fact is, anyone who wants to provide streaming video - or for that matter any digital video - profits from said R&D. Digital camera companies, DVD publishers, digital cable providers, pr0n sites ... lots of people stand to be able to provide their customers with an improved service when someone develops an improved codec.

It is in the digital video industry's best interest to sponsor R&D of new compression technology - by way of working groups, consortiums, research grants, whatever. Also, for many or most of these parties, having one's own proprietary codec is of no use at all - they need open standards to drive consumer acceptance, which means they need to cooperate, on some level. (Again, consortiums are the usual vehicle for this.)

Side note: this is similar to the Microsoft fallacy of "GPL software is bad for business". Their key assumption is that the harm GPL software does to the software-producing industry somehow outweighs the benefit to the whole rest of the software-consuming industry. That's a pretty arrogant assumption, if you think about it. (Now don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing you of being arrogant!)

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

In other words, it's amoral. Which some people actually consider "evil".

Just because some people apply that equation doesn't make it correct. Good is good, evil is evil. These are moral judgments. Business isn't a moral activity (usually; you cite good examples of situations that are both business and moral issues, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule).

That's what so frustrating to me. When people try to apply moral rules to situations that don't call for them, silliness ensues.

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

What it does is STIFLE innovation (in that market) AFTER the patent is granted, UNTIL it expires.

Example?

You need to check your naivete at the door before trolling on a topic you obviously don't have much first hand experience in.

Here we are talking about the difference between real-world capitalist economics and pseudo-socialist regulated economics, and you talk about my naivete. Funny.

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

Except that IP laws are CLEARLY socialist in nature...

By definition, any policy that advances the good of an individual (and corporations are individuals, for legal purposes) over the "common good" (whatever that means) cannot be called socialist. Socialist policies attempt to advance the good of society (hence the name), not the individual. Communist policies advance the good of society at the expense of the individual.

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

If you look at the balance sheet of the typical drug company, you will see that the LEGAL dept's budget is scary compared to R&D.

I don't believe that's the case. The drug companies in which I hold stock don't publish their specific budget figures in their annual reports, so I can find no example to prove or disprove your statement. Can you?

Re:Economics of the past

[foobar104]

The problem with your argument is that you assume that the only people who profit from MPEG-4 are the people who license the patent.

Not at all. I'm assuming that the only way the MPEG-4 Forum can recoup the expense of developing and publishing their spec is through licensing it, which I think is true. But if Bob Smith from Piedmont, Arizona, can write a codec or whatever that uses the MPEG-4 format without paying for it, and publish it for anybody to use, then the MPEG-4 Forum will most likely never recoup their costs. Therefore they won't be too eager to spend tons of money to develop MPEG-5.

Side note: this is similar to the Microsoft fallacy of "GPL software is bad for business".

I don't think so. I'm just providing an explanation of why patents are widely considered to be a good and important thing.

The GPL issue is something entirely else. I'll never use it myself, but that's a different conversation.

That's a pretty arrogant assumption, if you think about it. (Now don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing you of being arrogant!)

Oh, heck. Go right ahead. Everybody else does. ;-)

Re:Economics of the past

[psamuels]

I'm assuming that the only way the MPEG-4 Forum can recoup the expense of developing and publishing their spec is through licensing it, which I think is true.

Perhaps, but that only matters if the MPEG-4 Forum needs to recoup their costs, which is another way of saying if the MPEG-4 Forum is not funded in some other way. What I'm saying is that there are other ways to fund R&D than the promise of patent royalties.

The X Consortium is a well-known example of an entity which made no money at all from any sort of license fees, but only existed to develop technology to benefit its member companies. It is undeniable than having everyone implement the X Window System (15-year-old tech and still very much alive, but that's a different thread) was a better solution than everyone having his own private windowing system like NeWS or NeXTstep, as cool as those might have been (studlycaps and all).

Of course, many parties benefitted from X11 without paying for X Consortium memberships. However, contrary to popular belief, IP economics is not a zero-sum game. The existence of freeloaders does not detract from the value to the paying sponsors - at least not the primary value, which is having a robust, cross-platform, widely supported standard for workstation graphics. In fact the freeloaders actually helped achieve this!

I see no reason the various parties who benefit from good media codecs can't form a similar consortium, sponsored the same way. (Whether they would or not is another question, but they could.)

(Now don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing you of being arrogant!)

Oh, heck. Go right ahead. Everybody else does. ;-)

Egomaniac. (:

Re:Economics of the past

[Dwonis]

Software patents aren't wrong, but 17-20+ years is much too long. I would suggest something more like 17-20 months, which would give entities an incentive to innovate and minimize the negative effect of patents on innovation.

Re:Economics of the past

[WanderingEyes]

Umm...just because the law defines something in a certain way does not make it so. I will believe that a corporation is an individual when someone stands up in a crowd and can truthfully say, "I am Microsoft."

Re:Economics of the past

[Com2Kid]

ASCII was first standarized in 1968

ANSI art is Kick Ass.

It also still exists, Telnet into some BBSs some day.

Current GIF spec is called 89a for a reason. :)

LZH as stated many times already in this thread almost has its patent time up.

Truely good ideas of course last forever.

MPEG1 was 1993, hmm, that date HAS to be off, I know its older then that!

Hmm, oh well. Anyways as demonstrated by MPEG2 which followed VERY shortly after MPEG1, MPEG1 was not all that well designed from the get go so a more flexable standard had to be set to replace it.

The set of MPEG standards currently in development do not seem to include any vastly new forms of video compression and instead mainly seem to be scene description types of standards. Useful granted but horribly boring, MPEG4 looks to be the last MPEG video standard released for quite some time.

It is also highly scalable to boot. :) Yah.

Re:Economics of the past

[cpt kangarooski]

I should've expected this.

I am not, repeat NOT, advocating a non-capitalistic economic model here. Swear to God.

What I am doing is advocating utilitarianism; the philosophy upon which modern property rights of all types are founded.

Imagine that we have two people:
Alice, an author, and
Robert, a reader.

Aside from her desire to achieve fame and artistic satisfaction, what Alice really wants is money. There are two ways in which she can get the most money possible:
1) By putting in the least amount of effort into her book that confers the maximum amount of return.
2) By monopolizing the reward from the book. This is inclusive of making sure that no one can leech off of your stuff.

Correlary 1a) Alice's efficiency may increase substantially if she does no writing at all, and sells an existing book. (or uses the story, and touches it up here and there) Disney does this.

Robert may like Alice's writing, and want to support her especially. But really what Robert wants is to read. He's like Burgess Meredith. There are two ways in which he can satiate his desire:
1) By having absolute freedom with regards to accessing and using books. This does include not having to pay for them -- I could get a lot more books if they were free.
2) By having an effectively infinite amount of reading material so that availability is not an issue, and subject matter is diverse.

The problem is that neither one of these groups is ever going to be completely satisfied.

If _each_ author is like Alice, they are not only hostile to readers (who are merely sources of money) but hostile to each other, because of 1a.

Authors must accept that their individual interests will never be maximized if they group together, because it is highly inefficient for them to have to come up with books that in no way resemble any other books. And making sure that no one else's books resemble yours is their 2nd goal.

Already we see that authors are going to have to make compromises in order to work together to promote their interests. This is utilitarianism at work:

If Alice maximized her own interests, it would harm Andrew (another author), because Alice has an incentive to leech off of Andrew, but since Alice's interests govern, he cannot leech off of her. Andrew prefers that the roles be reversed.

This conflict between Alice and Andrew results in both either leeching off each other 100% (possibly resulting in nothing being published because each is waiting for the other) or each accepting a compromise that is not wholly satisfactory to either party, but not wholly unsatisfactory either. Ideally, the compromise point will be at the optimum spot where neither can get any happier without the other getting sadder.

Note also that because authors have a natural inclination to recycle, they may lose their audience of readers, who are more interested in originality. (actually this is not quite true: readers are interested in diversity, which is largely originality, but also variations on the original works... a Borges-style library is a little much, however)

A similiar dilemma exists for readers with respect to authors. If readers want to maximize their first goal, the number of authors that write will drop to zero. (again assuming a simplified reality in which people only write for money -- far from as it really is) This results in a minimization of their second goal, to have lots of books.

If readers maximize having lots of books, this likely is not only very difficult for authors (who will not enjoy coming into conflict with one another, or spending a lot of money developing truly original books) but therefore must very greatly reward authors... which is measured in terms of a minimization of readers' first goal.

The utilitarian goal is compromise between each party's own goals, and between each party.

In order to satisfy readers, they must accept that they will suffer a little bit in order to satisfy authors. In order to satisfy authors, they must suffer a little bit, in order to suffer other authors and readers.

And note _VERY_ well that authors are virtually always readers -- authorial 1a laziness is coextensive with reader 1 free use. They are exactly the same thing, because one free use is republishing.

So here's the correlary to this proposal of compromise. Which isn't really a proposal, this is how it all works for real.

That if Alice is favored at Robert's expense, more so than Robert is favored over Alice -- i.e. if they are not at the optimal point where the mutual satisfaction of both cannot be increased -- then the system in imbalance and needs correction.

Bringing this back to the original point, licenses may very well be favoring authorial goal 2 more than readers are prepared to maka partial sacrifice of reader goal 1.

If so, readers have an incentive to disrespect author's right to license their works, up to and including making it illegal. The reason being that there is no benefit for readers in allowing authors to screw them over that way.

Do you see where I'm coming from now? Do you agree that the actions of competing self-interested parties (which is quite capitalistic) must lead to mutual compromise?

Re:Economics of the past

[namespan]

Business isn't a moral activity

Business is inherently a moral activity. Its entire foundation is trading with other individuals/entities. If you beleive in any ethics or morality at all, you have to beleive that interaction with other individuals/entities -- trading included -- is subject to ethical/moral principles and constraints. A moral trade (and therefore a moral business) is one that is in line with said principles and constraints.

I appreciate your duly noting the good examples of business/moral issues; but the sentiment that business isn't a moral activity scares me. All too many fail to realize that the foundation of business is trade/intercourse, and adopt the abstraction of "revenue streams", "consumers", or even "war" and forget the foundation of trade.

Just because some people apply that equation doesn't make it correct. Good is good, evil is evil.

My mistake; my remark about "some people" was a rhetorical device rather than a logical one. The logical meat of the argument is that an amoral entity has no regard for good or evil, only for its own perceived utility. So: An amoral entity will wander a possible space of actions w/o regard to whether or not they are good or evil. Depending on what you think the ration of good and neutral to evil actions is in the space, the amoral entity will be evil that % of the time.

The problem is that generally, there's a wide set of actions that can lead to perceived utility that damage other people. This can be anything to withholding information in a transaction to out-n-out extortion. Without morals/ethics in place to tell it to tread with caution, an entity can easily be tempted to roam this space w/o looking for cooperative games.

Re:Economics of the past

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you have better ideas.
Going anytime soon to former Soviet Union for your next treatment ?
They did not have corporations ,everything was run by the people and for the people.
So , are you ?

emulating MS

[Alien54]

It sounds like another group is trying to take the MS software rental idea and do something creative with it. It is not entirely from the articles how this will be handled. (the business news wire seems to be bucklling under the strain)

If it is a usage fee for each individual use, then this is a bad thing.

Re:emulating MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because technology licensing fees surely never existing before M$ Windoze right? Dumbshit.

You can't GPL an algorithm

[Proaxiom]

Algorithms are patented, not copyrighted, so you can't decide how you license it like that.

The way to patent an algorithm is to first invent it. For fractal compression, you're too late.

You can write a compression program and GPL it, but first you have to be careful not to infringe on anyone else's patents.

Here is a fractal decoder license. I believe Iterated Systems Inc. holds a pretty comprehensive patent on fractal compression, but I don't have much in the way of details.

Re:You can't GPL an algorithm

[Znork]

Yep, and in sane patenting laws you cannot patent algorithms any more than you can patent any other form of basic mathematics, or discoveries. Patents should apply to inventions as originally intended.

Re:You can't GPL an algorithm

[Proaxiom]

It's a grey area in law, actually. While we know you can't patent a mathematical formula, you can in fact patent a specific use of a mathematical formula.

Essentially that is what algorithms are.

Patents were not intended to cover natural phenomena or simple scientific 'knowledge'. It is finding an original use of that knowledge that is intended.

Algorithms can qualify as original use of mathematical knowledge, and hence are patentable.

Example: Gauss discovered an efficient algorithm for computing Fourier transforms a century and a half ago. It was simply a solution to a mathematical problem. He could not have filed for a patent. Many years later, somebody has a great idea and realizes that this algorithm can be used to make digital signal processing possible. That man can get a patent. But note that it does not in any way preclude somebody else from using Gauss' algorithm for a completely different purpose.

Re:You can't GPL an algorithm

[geekoid]

Technically your sorrect, but just because I patent smething does not mean I can't release it under the GPL.
I won't get money that way, but I could do it.
I have a patentent and I could give it away instead of liscence it.
Of course, I can't even lisence it.... ;)
Yes, its for an actual device not for software.

Re:You can't GPL an algorithm

[Proaxiom]

Alternatively, you could just invent something and not patent it.

As long as you have proof that you invented it first, you can invalidate anyone else's future claim if they try to patent it. Just tell everybody about your idea and say they can do what they like with it.

Re:You can't GPL an algorithm

[Lonath]

It's a grey area in law, actually. While we know you can't patent a mathematical formula, you can in fact patent a specific use of a mathematical formula.

But this doesn't work. A patent is not an invention. It's something you can stop other people from making or doing. If you have a patent on a use of an algorithm, then you can stop people from using it to do something. However, if you allow "generic" or "abstract" versions of the algorithm to exist, then someone could easily use the algorithm for the purpose for which you have patented it. Therefore, you MUST stop people from creating generic algorithms. The courts will allow this, because you can say "well it COULD be used to infringe my patent..." so you stop people from implementing any form of the algorithm. Even purely abstract versions of it.

So, the reality is that people lie and when they say that they are patenting a specific use of an algorithm, and not the algorithm itself. They ARE patenting the algorithm, because their patent can be used to stop any implementation of the algorithm for any purpose, since any implementation can be used to do what is covered by the patent. They know this and they lie about it because if they had to admit that they were expecting to stop all implementations of the algorithm, they would have to admit that they were trying to get a patent on something that they can't patent. So, these patents really are patents on pure thought that stop abstract algorithms.

So, what we have are unpatentable algorithms, which require a lot of work to find. And we have "real world meaning" given to the algorithms which then gets them patented. But, in reality, the people getting the patents are liars and they understand that they're getting patents on the underlying algorithm, simply because they can argue that any implementation of the algorithm can be used to infringe the patent, so their patent can stop those generic or abstract algorithms, which means that the patent covers the generic or abstract algorithms (since the thing that is patented is what you can stop people from making or using), and so they depend on the mathematical ignorance of judges to illegally patent pure thought.

quicktime

[SlamMan]

Luckily, there's already quicktime, with no licsensing fee. While I'd like to check out MPEG-4, there's absolutly no way we're gonna pay a per hour charge to broadcast our own stuff.

Re:quicktime

[SComps]

People tend to vote with their feet. This is evident with Windows XP (sales may be good but they're definitely not what Bill expected). With the current system, it'll be easy to just stay with what I've got. I don't need to change, or pay by the hour. The installed software base is already there; on both the server and client side. While they may want to make us pay for MPEG-4, they can't force us to use it...

I may be way overly simplistic in this, but we don't *need* to blast off into the future unless we actually *want* to. Nothing is stopping us from doing this stuff now, and hell standards are only standards if we accept them.

Re:quicktime

[billvinson]

You do realize that the next version of Quicktime is to be based on MPEG-4 right? They are already testing it from what I understand. Now, I don't know how Apple will deal with this per-use fee...

Bill

Re:quicktime

[ethereal]

So our options are a cross-platform expensive codec, or a free but non-portable codec? Bleh, I say: bleh.

Re:quicktime

[alannon]

Actually, it's the other way around. The MPEG group went shopping around for a base file format to use for MPEG-4 and they chose the Quicktime file format as the basis for all MPEG-4 files. I believe they chose it because it is a simple, flexible and (most importantly) free and well-documented standard. Note that this has nothing to do with any of the Quicktime codecs (I know the Sorenson codec is a particular point of contention here on /.) but instead the base file format for all quicktime media. An analogous file format would be the .avi file format. It's simply a wrapper.

Also, note that they said 'service providers'. I would assume this would mean providers that use MPEG-4 for content delivery, such as VOD, much like MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 are used for VOD right now.

I could hardly believe they would so horribly cripple the usefulness of the format by making it so that any player that used the codec would have to report back the time used to some organization so that someone can be billed for it. That's just dumb and I don't see why anyone would touch it with a 10-foot pole if that was the case.

Re:quicktime

[Lars T.]

Yet another Slashdot poster who doesn't know what Quicktime is. No, I'm not going to bother teaching you, you lazy git.

Re:quicktime

[medscaper]

I know that many of the players _I_ use haven't had the means or necessity to "report back the time used to some organization..." I don't know how they're enforcing this, but it certainly isn't with the player at this point.

Re:quicktime

[ethereal]

Yeah, whatever, it's a packaging scheme and not an actual codec. How did I know this was going to come up - next to open source/free software, the most guaranteed route to getting corrected on /. is to say something incorrect about Quicktime, apparently.

Unfortunately, your vast intellectual superiority notwithstanding, there remains a sizeable chunk of media labeled "quicktime" for which there is no player available on Linux and other operating systems. Therefore I say that if Quicktime wants people to not think of it as a nonportable format, they need to quit letting it be used by other people who put nonportable stuff in it and basically make it nonportable. Because nobody calls it "a Sorenson Quicktime movie", they just say it's a "Quicktime movie".

Re:quicktime

[LoudMusic]

I think you might be surprised how quick a company is willing to shell out money for something that comes in a pretty package. I had to fight pretty hard to keep my company from buying a service to transfer files across the internet to clients and vendors. They were going to pay hundreds of dollars a month for something that essentially does file sends over http, and makes Acrobat PDFs. Both of these tasks we already have the capability in house.

If it's marketted well, it will catch on, and when people see that they have to upgrade their software to keep fullfilling their video needs, they'll jump on it. I wouldn't be surprised if this takes off without a snag.

But like another comment pointed out, the article is over a year old. I wonder where this stands now?

~LoudMusic

Re:quicktime

[Anonymous Coward]

I could hardly believe they would so horribly cripple the usefulness of the format by making it so that any player that used the codec would have to report back the time used to some organization so that someone can be billed for it.

There is another way of looking at it. Say you're a legitimate video streaming company, which streams people's videos for them. Your number one expense is BANDWIDTH USAGE. If this new codec, which compresses video data even better than MPEG-2, saves you more than $0.02 per hour of streaming in bandwidth costs alone, then you are making a profit!

Re:quicktime

[Anonymous Coward]

Portable != runs on Linux.

QuickTime may well be non-portable (closely tied to MacOS's API layer), but just because a company hasn't bowed to the insigificant demand of some OS's 0.24% marketshare does not mean their product isn't portable. (For example, Adobe FrameMaker.)

Re:quicktime

[ethereal]

So many things that don't make sense, so little time...

• QuickTime works on Windows, so it's not like it's too tied to the MacOS's API layer.
• Framemaker works on tons of platforms, including HP-UX and Solaris. It is an example of how portable you really can make a tool, not the opposite.
• Apple wouldn't have to spend any money at all to get Linux support for QuickTime; they just have to open the specs to the world, or even to just a few dedicated hackers who'd do it for free. These days, portability is practically a gift bestowed for free upon companies that are smart enough to seize upon it. Apple, apparently, is not.

Confused

[DarkEdgeX]

How will this affect things such as DivX which use MPEG4 in their CODEC(s)? Wouldn't such a fee system preclude them from giving away the encoder/decoder (or atleast the encoder)?

Re:Confused

[Lars T.]

It doesn't affect DivX, because that doen't actually use MPEG4, but a hacked-up version of a pre-released version by MS.

Re:Confused

[Anonymous Coward]

It affects it. DivX has been rewritten to avoid the copyright issues with the original ripped MS code, but it still is affected by the patents mentioned.

Basically, projects like mplayer could probably be shut down, but the industry may not consider it worthwhile to do so -- a la lame.

Take a look at this interesting little tidbit on the MPEG-4 Industry Forum site. (Warning, .doc format -- sorry) Look at section 4.1.2. Basically, they're saying that *any free MPEG-4 player* must pay its royalties by including spyware.

OSS Hardware Decoder

[debiansierra]

What we need is an OSS hardware circumvention of MPEG, period. MPEG is great but why should we have to pay to use a freaking format? It's not like we're being given a choice. A hardware solution I'd propose would be a player capable of reading current DVD/VCD/CD/RW but also of playing many formats (.avi,.mov,.whatever) from either a disk, ethernet, external streaming source (USB?). While this can be easily implememnted using a computer as the center of your Home Entertainment, a more consumer-friendly version needs to be available. Considering the hardware requirements of this machine, you could definitely add a hard drive for time-shifting. Also, the OS (Linux?) would need to be flexible enough to allow for patches/updates/plugins toa llow for the new video formats this would definitely spawn. If MPEG had a market saturated with cheaper and free formats of comparable/better quality, this "use fee" would be much more of an intelligent shopper's choice than a force-fed, proprietary, DMCA-creating....rant rant rant.

Re:OSS Hardware Decoder

[debiansierra]

Implausible? About as implausible as the REALITY of a TiVo. Let's see, I have this here device with a freaking OS and a hard drive that can intercept video, record it, and play it back with whole slew of user contol. Wow, what a concpet, I might be able to improve on that by putting a different OS on the thing and adding a DVD drive. Yeah, sounds REAL implausible. Hell, give me a TiVo and a screwdriver, and a couple of weeks to build thing and I'll show you how implausible it is. I'm currently pulling off the same trick with my computer which i use for a million OTHER things. (Opens FACEBUNG (nice one) and spews contents all over AC)

Re:OSS Hardware Decoder

[gwillden]

I disagree. I think that what we need is to help the Ogg Vorbis people with their video codec. Having a Free and free alternative to all of these proprietary and fee-for-use codecs will be a good step. That we won't be breaking the law and we will all have what we want. (Except for all these corporations that want all of our money for nothing. They'll be out of luck.)

Furthering the myth that all Linux users are crooks is a *Bad Thing* (tm).
Cheers

Re:OSS Hardware Decoder

[Anonymous Coward]

However, in order for this plan to work, the OGG video codec would have to be released before other formats become well-established. (See ogg vs MP3.)

What about DivX?

Re:OSS Hardware Decoder

[Anonymous Coward]

"What we need is an OSS hardware circumvention of MPEG, period. "

This, of course, is the genesis of an opportunity. In the old days, business types would see this as an opportunity to start a company. With the current trend of Open Source development, this development may happen without a profit motive.

In any case, one thing that a lot of Slashdot posters fail to account for (IMHO) is determining the value of the time and effort that goes into developing something like this.

If someone besides you does the work, will you pay for it?

Re:OSS Hardware Decoder

[debiansierra]

That's great, and once their codec is finalized you can add/download/port it to the expandable machine i describe.

Re:When will they learn?

[RagManX]

When will you learn that Slashdot is a fringe element of society and does not represent the global view. Personally I have CD players, VCRs, DVDs, and TVs that I know contain several dollars of licensing fees each: BIG SHIT. Seriously, who gives a fuck? It pays the people to develop this.

I think the point of contention with this licensing is that someone will now have to pay for creating content, as well as for devices which create or view the content. Now, companies will be able to sell us video viewers for less than ever before, but we'll have fewer videos to watch, because companies won't want to pay the licensing fee to provide the content to us.

RagManX

To quote Barney...

[Dan Crash]

"It begins."

It only takes tiny steps to walk off the edge of a cliff. I'm sure eventually they'll propose we pay a small monthly fee (just a trifle, really!) for every .MP? we have sitting on our hard drives.

I get a little more militant about this stuff every day. But I don't think I'm wrong, either.

Re:To quote Barney...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's closer than you think. I just completed a online marketing survey that I'm subscribed to. They were banging on about a music service where you could listen to your downloaded music for as long as you kept up your subscription.

That's about what I expect from Marketing folks though.

old article

[rschroeder]

I know the tech world doesn't change that fast, and we have been waiting for mpeg4 for a while, But that MacWeek article is dated Nov. 2000. Somethings might of changed since then

Re:old article

[morcheeba]

MPEG-4 was finalized in October 1998 and became an International Standard in the first months of 1999.

Here's some more detailed info about the MPEG-4 standard from the official mpeg home page.

I thought it was a little funny to see an animated GIF at the top of the home page, but maybe that's just me....

Re:old article

[anonymous loser]

The article quoted is the one from EETimes, which is dated yesterday.

It should be obvious, but the main thrust of this story is the licensing scheme, not the technical specs and application of mpeg-4.

$.02 per hour....

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't sound like much, but after just 125 hours of use, they'll make more money off of this then they ever did off of MPEG-2.

125 hours may sound like a lot, but it's less then 2.5 hours a week for a year. Or just over 20 minutes a day for a year.... I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Re:$.02 per hour....

[jerrytcow]

Once again someone who didn't read the article getting modded up...

The $2.50 was per unit meaning that every unit (hardware, software) was charged. Under the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License the party that offers MPEG-2 Royalty Products (Section 1.25) for Sale (Section 1.30) to the end user is responsible for royalties on the various categories of end product

Now, each of those end users will only be charged $0.25. The service providers will be charged for streaming content. This is shifting the burden of cost from the end user (you and me) to the provider.

Of course the cost will eventually get passed on to the users, so expect to pay for streaming content either through subscription fees, banners or a short commercial that you will have to watch before the video. But those who don't use it for streaming content won't have to pay for those who do.

Re:$.02 per hour....

[Anonymous Coward]

.02 cents is nothing. If I drive my car for an hour, I will burn 2 gallons of gas. The gov. tax on that gas is 18 cents/gallon. So for a car I pay 36 cents an hour. I would much rather pay .02.

Plus maybe this will help develop new technologies.

Re:$.02 per hour....

[StarBar]

One reason for supplying MPEG-4 is to lower the need of bandwidth which is good for the operator. Also with a lower price (-$2,25) the player will be cheaper one can imagine... but no! The player will also decode MPEG-2 of course. Which means that the end user both pays for a more expensive decoder ($2,25 + $0,25) AND a traffic fee... Hey, what is wrong with MPEG-2?

I want fiber to my home anyway!!

Pay to create content

[Lysander Luddite]

So know the distributors/providers of content have to pay a charge based on the length of material. Won't this charge be passed onto the content creators? How does this encourage people to use this format?

And if content creators have to pay more (raising their costs) won't there be a shift to more centralized content ownership? It'll be the big guys (MPAA and RIAA) that can pay these fees.

$.02/hour doesn't sound much but is that per stream? So I am paying more for being popular? How does that help amateurs or people who want to create content professionally?

I swear paying more for "pro" equipment that is hobbled simply to allow recording in digital formats is criminal enough. Now I have to pay another group simply because I use an "open" file format?

Re:Pay to create content

[MrAndrews]

Not that it's morally right or anything, but the gist of this would be that if you were an amateur doing video, you would probably broadcast without paying the licensing fee. If your amateur work got really popular, you'd be paying more in fees, but you'd hopefully be making money off your work, in which case the $1000 (probably) in fees would be trivial. People do this kind of thing all the time now with (off the top of my head) Adobe products. Security through obscurity (in a different sense).

Re:Pay to create content

[Che Guevarra]

Won't this charge be passed onto the content creators?

I haven't taken economics in 10 years but aren't most charges like this passed on to the consumer/user?

Re:Pay to create content

[Lysander Luddite]

Yes, but in the case of amateurs there is often no cost to the end users/consumers at all. In many cases pros don't charge either.

For example, if I am a DJ how do I get a job without sending a tape/CD showing my music skills? If I am a small business web developer wanting to demonstrate our capability in motion design, do I charge potential clients to view it?

What if I am making an iMovie for my family to view. Should I be charging them something to see my home videos of the family reunion?

Re:Pay to create content

[Lysander Luddite]

"People do this kind of thing all the time now with (off the top of my head) Adobe products."

If you are saying that people make money off their illegal copies of PhotoShop and AfterEffects you may have apoint. But that is a bad analogy. It would be a better analogy to say that I am paying Adobe $.02 to put my content in .jpg format.

What I am tryingt say is that I think this is another attempt to stifle the decreasing costs of publishing *any* media. Artificially creating costs to entry such as increased prices for "pro" level equipment (hardware and software) and now this proposed fee for *streaming* the content only benefits those with large stockpiles of money and content that they own. There's no incentive to have Joe Six Pack make his own material to share at no/low cost.

Re:Pay to create content

[Anonymous Coward]

A better analogy would be encoding MP3s with LAME. People do it all the time and swap on Gnutella without paying a licencing fee.

However, if you started a commercial streaming service using it, Fraunhofer would want their pound of flesh.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a little something for you.

DivX...nah, don�t think so.

[uncl_bob]

In a couple of years nobody will remember the DivX-era. Everybody will leech DVD:s and burn them with their DVD-burners. Okay, both the burners and the mediums are still expensive (and true DVD-VOBs are not that common out there) but this will change and then nobody will ever want to download DivXs. Btw...WHY ON EARTH is every pr0n-movie releases as a .mpg when there exists better formats?? Comon you rippers...mpeg1 sucks as much as those girls in it.

Re:DivX...nah, don�t think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Okay, both the burners and the mediums are still expensive (and true DVD-VOBs are not that common out there) but this will change and then nobody will ever want to download DivXs.

DiVX will beat DVD for a very long time. Even if you have a very fast pipe it takes time to download anything the size of a DVD. Why would you not want to spend 1/10th the time downloading something of very close to original quality. Or, to put it another way, why download 1 movie when you can have 10?

If what you were saying were true warez traders would now be trading in .wav format. They aren't because MP3 allows 10 times the amount of trading with a minimal loss in quality.

Re:DivX...nah, don�t think so.

[uncl_bob]

1: DVD is, despite its large size, a widespread standard. More and more people own external DVD-players and so you can download a movie, burn it and then show it on your or your friends DVD-player. Very nice. When will we see externa DivX-players? Yeah, I know, you can play your DivX-movies on your TV through the TV-out on the graphiccard, but again...maybe your girlfriend doesnt even have a computer to play it on, she only owns a DVD-player. 2: There is more content and specias on the DVD - "behind the scenes", jump to different scenes, a fancy menu, not to mention subtitles (and perhaps dubbed voice) for a whole lot of languages. For me, swedish subtitles really make me follow the movies in a better way than watching them without. But I must admit that it is very enticing (?) to be able to fit 10 movies on a single DVD-media :) But as long as DivX is not standard I say nah..

Re:DivX...nah, don�t think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you not want to spend 1/10th the time downloading something of very close to original quality.

Why would anyone spend thousands of dollars on an original art lithograph, when they could buy a poster of the same print for ten bucks?

If what you were saying were true warez traders would now be trading in .wav format. They aren't because MP3 allows 10 times the amount of trading with a minimal loss in quality.

Actually, there are a growing number of people who will only trade music in .shn format. SHN files are losslessly compressed, so when you decompress them you get the original .wav file back. SHNs are five times the size of MP3s.

The answer to your question is that there are people who want the "original quality", as opposed to "something very close to the original quality."

Re:DivX...nah, don�t think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that Hollywood is handling the filesharing threat much better than the recording industry.

Specifically, they are loading up the extra features on DVDs so that you really feel like you are getting your money's worth for your $20. (Or maybe that's only a temporary phenomenon until VHS rolls over and dies.) Meanwhile CDs have virtually no value-add, especially when you compare them to the packaging of albums in the 70s.

As for a stand-alone DivX player, not unless you build it yourself out of PC parts. It's not only not standard, it's probably not legal. Expect to see Windows Media or QuickTime boxes some day tho.

Re:DivX...nah, don�t think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

MPEG1 can be burned to a CD (as a VCD), and played on a standalone DVD player. I don't think you can do this with MPEG2, and definately not with MPEG4.

MPEG1 is also the most cross-platform video codec, and has few visible artifacts when the bitrate is high enough (DivX shows artifacts even at the highest bitrate).

Re:DivX...nah, don�t think so.

[LiENUS]

uncl_bob if your girlfriend has a dreamcast, she can now watch ~vcd quality divx's on her TV.

FUD

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Thanks for the DivX FUD. DivX 3 was based on the MS codec, but DivX 4 (aka OpenDivx) has been completely rewritten - no MS code at all. Now the legality of a patent-free implementation of DivX is another story..

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well, I'd like to rephrase that question.
Does OpenDivX (www.divx.com or whatever) use
the mentioned patents for decoding MPEG2 video?

Re:FUD

[Lars T.]

You are welcome. If somebody asks me about DivX, I'll answer about DivX, not DivX 4.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the official name of the new version is plain old "DivX", not "DivX 4"

Note that the old version was actually called DivX;-)

Note that DivX also refers to the pay per use DVDs.

Thus, of the three possible versions you could have been talking about, you chose the only version whose name does not fit the question that was being asked. Not to mention the fact that the original poster linked to divx.com, home of the new version, not the old version. I'll give you 2 points for trying, though.

Re:FUD

[CKW]

> Does OpenDivX (www.divx.com or whatever) use the mentioned patents for decoding MPEG2 video?

Not sure.

I'll tell you what though, I'm really uneasy about the relationship of DivXNetworks and Project Mayo. If their relationship was more clearly stated, I'd at least know what's going on. But it's so vague that it leaves me with *tons* of unanswered questions.

A month or more ago when I went through there sites, it was clear that DivXNetworks was feeding off of Project Mayo, it reminded me of Sun's "Open Source" license where Sun maintains all rights and sucks back in all improvements into their proprietary base.

I got the strong feeling that Project Mayo was there simply to ride on the "Open Source / DivX;) / haxor" wave and get their "OpenDivX" implementation out there and into lots of peoples hands, so that they have first mover advantage for DivXNetworks and their proprietary business model.

*Now* I go there, and there's almost no mention of the relationship between the two, just the hyperlink at the bottom. Who the hell knows how much of Mayo is actually a sham/front/facade for DivXNetworks, or what their agenda is.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's the "DivX" that everyone uses on the P2P networks (3.11 smiley).

And there's the "DivX" that nobody uses, is incompatible, slower and less featureful, and intentionally stole the other codec's name in order to misrepresent itself (DivX 4, or OpenDivX).

For some reason everyone on Slashdot likes to refer to the latter, maybe because it's bogo-open source or becuase they are squatting on the right domain name or becuase people are just dupes. But until it gets some users, why bother even mentioning those irrelevant scumballs?

Re:FUD

[hendridm]

I think you should check the P2P networks again. I think new videos are more often released as DivX 4 than 3.11. Also, DivX 4 is superior in countless ways, including native 2-pass encoding, the fact that it's not a hack and is under constant development, and is backward compatible. There are countless guide based on the DivX 4 format. 3.11 is going out, with good reason. Doom9.org

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm leeching the wrong content, but I've only seen one divx 4 file in the wild and it was not very good quality (and I always check the codec). I also haven't had very good luck with DivX 4's backward compatibility, specifically with their Playa player.

Going out? DivX 3 is still the "MP3" of the video world. Better codecs have come out, but the amount of existing content is so huge that it's pretty much a requirement for that sort of thing.

(If you are ripping for your own personal use only, both DivX 3 and 4 are vastly inferior choices.)

Re:FUD

[zachdms]

I'm interested in getting opinions on superior choices... any recommendations?

Re:FUD

[L0g05]

Both are just fronts for the NSA to keep tabs on "undesirables".

Watch out!

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one comparison, although it focuses on streaming. You might guess that the answer is QuickTime or Windows Media.
http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3428,a% 253D4058,00.asp

I've seen other articles in the past where divx 4 doesn't fair so well either. Most of the people know doing digitial video this either uses straight DV codec or proprietary hardware-bound codecs like Targa/Pinnacle.

Re:FUD

[hendridm]

Ugh, QuickTime can't comapre with some of the other codes out there. You can find some GOOD comaprisons here. If you're trying to minimize size, which most of us are, MPEG4/DivX is the way to go. If you are looking for lossless quality, I like the PicVideo's MJPEG codec.

This may be just what Ogg Tarkin Needs

[tkrabec]

An open source Video codec Might be just what we need. Development has started recently

Tarkin is at the bottom
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/index.html

-- Tim

*sigh*

[THEbwana]

Another good standard down the drain...

Re:When will they learn?

[ichthus]

Why should the people be paid to develop things?

Because not all of us are hippies like RMS. Some of us have mouths to feed, and software development is how we support ourselves/families.

Maybe some day, when we finally reach a Star Trek-like utopia and don't need money, all software development can be just for fun and for the betterment of all. Until then, we live in a world where money is the end, and software development might just be the means.

To quote Kosh. . .

[Salgak1]

"The Avalanche has begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote".

THIS is the inevitable outcome of the DMCA, and the policies of the RIAA/MPAA et al. Stallman is looking more prescient all the time. More's the pity. . .

banklord [OT]

[MenTaLguY]

Heh. "banklord". I like that. ^_^

*makes mental note to start using that word*

Just those owners making money

[drkich]

US $0.00033/minute or portion (equivalent to US $0.02/hour) based on playback/normal running time for every stream, download or other use of MPEG-4 video data in connection with which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed (including without limitation pay-per-view, subscription and advertiser/underwriter-supported services(

If you are getting paid for the download of your MPEG-4 video data, then you have to pay. Otherwise you can distribute the video for free.

Now of course the devil's in the details, they say at the end, "(including without limitation pay-per-view, subscription and advertiser/underwriter-supported services)" Which could be taken to mean that if you have ANY advertising on your site, you have to pay.

Re:Just those owners making money

[sumengen]

I assume that the advertising supposed to be inside the movie file.

Ogg Tarkin

[MenTaLguY]

I suppose this licensing descision will provide more impetus for the development of Ogg Tarkin.

Re:Ogg Tarkin

[Anonymous Coward]

Its an open question if you can do good motion compensation without running into a million patents.

Re:Ogg Tarkin

[evilviper]

I've been prodding at that subject with the developers since long before MP-4 was finshed, and they are just now getting around to releasing some info for developers. By the time that format is finished, we'll be worried about the licensing of MPGEG-6, and it will be competing with a patented video format that can fit 90 minutes on a floppy disk (yeah, we'll never get rid of floppies).

Slow down pr0n viewers!

[Uttles]

Don't worry! This isn't going to affect your file swapping in mpeg4 format. This applies mainly to digital cable providers, and also to online providers. Basically, if you're getting paid for the video, you have to pay MPEG LA. If you're just the average joe swapping files, it's free. This is just like the cable company paying HBO so they can broadcast it. Same deal.

Re:Slow down pr0n viewers!

[geekoid]

And who pays the cable bill? Us, thats who. So yes, we will pay for it plus maintainence adjustments.
This is like saying TV is free, which it isn't, the cost is in the goods.

Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT

[rutledjw]

Between this absurdity and the W3C (talk about yet another organization which has become utterly worthless) trying to implment licensing fees on thier stuff we're going to end up in an open world.

Am I a zealot? Perhaps. But, think of it this way - why did TCP/IP become "the" networking standard? Because IBM was sucking the life out of people with SNA. The same will happen here.

There is no "value added" (nice little overused consulting term) when people use a technology that has this kind of licensing scheme. In the end, technology like this is used to support a service. In this case: Streaming Video. If there's an Open or free (as in beer) alternative, why not use that technology instead?

These guys are setting the precedent for their own demise. They do not have the clout to demand such license arrangements and maintain market share. Such an absurd tactic will only add fuel to the fire to use other standards, perhaps such as the Ogg Vorbis effort...

Not wanting to needlessly bring up the Beast here, but they too have been trying to establish a similar control over electronic media through their wma (is that right?) standard. This is NOT a one front attack, but one with many seperate, but similar, efforts to control and hence, bill a new industry (eletronic &| streaming media).

I'm not anti-captialistic, quite the contrary, but I don't see the need to pay for something where it brings little or no value to me...

Re:Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT

[csbruce]

So how is JPEG-2000 doing these days, anyway?

Re:Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT

[spauldo]

Just curious, but when has the W3C tried to implement licensing fees? AFAIK all they've done so far is work on drafts to define their patent policy.

Re:Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT

[rutledjw]

As I recall, there were numerous stories on both /. and the Reg about W3C planning on implementing a licensing fee for those whoimplement patents owned by the W3C.

Isn't that the same thing? We have put together this great new standard in an open forum, but to actually implement it, you have to pay, even a MINOR fee. This would effectively knock out every OSS-type implementation. The $$$ wouldn't be a problem for MS, IBM, Oracle, etc. But for Linux and others it's a deal-killer.

It's my personal opinion that to develop a standard in the open forums and then charge for them is self-defeating. It's not really helped the OMG group very much.

My other beef with the W3C is that I feel they have "lost their edge". How long have various XML standards been sitting on desks? Where is SOAP as a standard? I really don't know. I became irritated and stopped watching last year. They may be done with 1.0, but is there any provision for security? Validation? Or is this to be left to the implementor exclusively?

I've seen this with other groups as well. As a Java code-monkey, I've watched the Java Community Process grind to a near halt as well. The Java SOAP spec is not yet finished, JAXM is farther along, but still not at 1.0. Is there any coherency between JAXM and message-driven EJBs?

Sorry about that long-winded response/rant, but I feel that as these standards organizations embrace more-and-more of a corporate influence they adopt more-and-more of the beurocratic overhead and other issues associated with these corporations. Ultimately they lose their effectiveness.

To the other responder, I really don't know much about JPEG2000. I don't know if your post was a real question or a statement.

Re:Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT

[inburito]

Did you even read the fscking article?

If you make money of a mpeg-4 feed then you are required to pay a royalty. That seems rather fair considering these people took enormous amounts of time and effort to create an awesome compression scheme that works not only in software but has also been implemented in hardware(try to have some "free" alternatives implemented in hardware).

Yet.. If you don't make any money of the feed you are not required to pay anything. If it brings no value to you I suppose you wouldn't pay for it anyway..

Don't like it, fine don't use it. If you pay for it they get a small share. If you're not paying for it nobody's getting anything(except maybe an extra value to the end-user). What did these people not get again?

Re:Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT

[spauldo]

I might have read it wrong, but it was my take that the W3C wasn't going to take out any patents - they were going to simply going to allow RAND licensed technologies to be used in some standards. The patents would be held by the original designers, not the W3C.

We've already got quite a bit of patented stuff used in standards; video codecs and image formats are a perfect example. It's a pain, yes, but the existance of a standard enables people to write their own implementations and not rely on one vendor.

I guess it really just runs down to how far we trust the W3C. They've got a pretty open process, and there's organizations on the board for whom patents are not in their interests.

Re:Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT

[rutledjw]

I think we're talking apples and oranges a bit here. I'm not opposed to patents. But I was under the (perhaps incorrect) impression that the W3C patents were to ensure that EVERYONE had access to them. As a standard they would be available to ALL and not be controlled by any one entity or company.

It would seem to me that charging people to implement these standards would violate this premise. Perhaps I was reading this incorrectly, but this proposal raised an awful lot of havoc in the OSS community

Re:Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT

[rutledjw]

I debated whether or not to even respond to your post. Posting angry babbling rants doesn't do anything for your point

try to have some "free" (as in beer, I assume) alternatives implemented in hardware

- You mean like the Open Power PC motherboard standard put out by IBM?

In short, it seems that you think that these people should not be criticized for desiring compensation for their effort. Fine, I agree. But only if they are prividing value. Go back to the TCP/IP vs. SNA example. Was TCP/IP technically superior to SNA? No, but that's not the point.

TCP/IP provided the function required and an alternative to SNA which was deemed too costly. In the same way, an alternative to MPEG-4 will provide the same value and detract people and companies who want to MAKE MONEY FROM THE TECHNOLOGY.

Unless they come up with something truly unique where the implementation of that standard is critical to being competative, folks will likely look to something else.

That's what they, and apparently you, don't get.

Re:Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT

[spauldo]

From what I understand the RAND part took care of that. Reasonable and Non Discriminatory - essentially, anyone could use the technology for a small fee. The licensing wouldn't be from the W3C - it would be from the company who owns the patent. The W3C just ensures that the licensing is available to all and is reasonable.

The question boils down to, "what is reasonable?". Charging a fee per program isn't reasonable for OSS, although it's perfectly fine for commercial entities. Charging a percentage won't work cleanly either - say microsoft incorporates it into windows - do they get a percentage of windows sales? Lotta money there.

The W3C actually seems to take an interest in what's good for the web, not just the interests of corporate players. Sure, they may be slow in some cases, like the ones you mentioned, but I've always had the impression that they actually care about standards and their effect on computing altogether. Otherwise they would have allowed RAND licensing and not asked for public opinion.

Here are the Licensing Terms

[InfoVore]

I found the following news release with the licensing terms here:

For Immediate Release
CONTACT:
Lawrence Horn
MPEG LA®
301.986.6660
301.986.8575 Fax
lhorn@mpegla.com

Terms of MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License Announced

(Denver, Colorado, US - 31 January 2002) - MPEG LA, LLC today announced that it will offer fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory, worldwide access to patents that are essential to the MPEG-4 Visual (Simple and Core) digital compression standard under a single license to be known as the MPEG-4 (Visual) Patent Portfolio License ("License"). The License currently includes patents owned by the following companies: Canon Inc.; France Télécom; Fujitsu Limited; Hitachi, Ltd.; Hyundai Curitel, Inc.; KDDI Corporation; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.; Microsoft Corporation; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.; Philips Electronics; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.; Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha; Sony Corporation; Telenor AS; Toshiba Corporation; and Victor Company of Japan, Limited. MPEG LA convened these patent owners in December 2000 following an independent patent expert's finding that each of them owns one or more patents essential to the international MPEG-4 Visual Standard. The objective of the License is to include as much essential MPEG-4 Visual (Simple and Core) intellectual property as possible in one license for the convenience of all users. Patent holders are required to include all of their essential MPEG-4 Visual (Simple and Core) patents worldwide. In addition, new patent holders and their essential patents will continue to be added following a determination of essentiality.

"The essential patent owners are pleased that their intellectual property has made a substantial and essential contribution to the development of this exciting new technology," said MPEG LA Chief Executive Officer Baryn S. Futa. "The MPEG-4 (Visual) Patent Portfolio License manifests their desire to 'partner' with other industry participants to encourage widespread adoption of MPEG-4. The patent owners understand the risks inherent in a startup technology in which companies large and small are asked to make a pioneering investment and are sensitive to the role that their licensing model will play in that process. Therefore, the License has been specially designed so that reasonable royalties are shared fairly by a variety of industry participants in order to stimulate early, rapid and widespread MPEG-4 product investment, development, deployment and use."

Under the License terms, Licensees will pay the following royalty rates for MPEG-4 Simple or Core Products:
US $0.25 per decoder (in hardware or software) for a license to make and sell and for personal use in receiving private video (i.e., not video for which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed), subject to a cap of $1,000,000 per year/per legal entity.
US $0.25 per encoder (in hardware or software) for a license for personal use only to create private video data (i.e., not video for which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed), subject to a cap of $1,000,000 per year/per legal entity.
US $0.00033/minute or portion (equivalent to US $0.02/hour) based on playback/normal running time for every stream, download or other use of MPEG-4 video data in connection with which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed (including without limitation pay-per-view, subscription and advertiser/underwriter-supported services). This royalty, to be paid by entities that disseminate the MPEG-4 video data, is not subject to a cap. (In the case of MPEG-4 video for which the number of uses cannot be directly determined (e.g., video supplied as part of a basic cable service or to a transmitter for broadcasting), a surrogate (e.g., standard industry audience measurement) is under consideration.)
US $0.00033/minute or part (equivalent to US $0.02/hour) based on playback/normal running time of MPEG-4 video data encoded (for other than personal use) on each copy of packaged medium. This royalty, to be paid by the packaged medium replicator, is not subject to a cap.
For one year from the start date of the license program, parties that sign the license (or a memorandum of intent to sign a license) will be forgiven their payment of royalties for all MPEG-4 Visual Simple and Core products during and before that one year period.
The initial term of the License has not yet been finalized but when decided, will be subject to renewal on reasonable terms and conditions for the useful life of any patents in the Portfolio.

In agreeing to the foregoing terms, the patent holders considered the need for simplicity, promoting the widest possible use of MPEG-4, maximizing the opportunity for full efficient compliance with intellectual property licensing requirements and recognition of the likely business models for deploying MPEG-4 Visual Standard technology so as to assure that the License is aligned with the real-world flow of MPEG-4 commerce.
As the objective of the MPEG-4 (Visual) Patent Portfolio License is to include as much essential MPEG-4 Visual (Simple and Core) intellectual property as possible in one license, MPEG LA reiterates that any party that believes it has essential patents (Sections 9, 9.1 and 9.2 and Tables 9-1 and 9-2 of ISO\IEC 14496-2 Information Technology - Coding of Audio-Visual Objects - Part 2: Visual) and wishes to join upon successful evaluation, is invited to submit such patents to the independent Patent Evaluator together with a statement confirming its agreement with the objectives and intention to abide by terms and procedures governing the patent submission process, which may be obtained from Lawrence A. Horn, Vice President, Licensing and Business Development, MPEG LA, LLC (lhorn@mpegla.com, phone 1-301-986-6660, fax 1-301-986-8575).

# # #
Overview of the MPEG-4 Standard

MPEG-4 is an ISO/IEC multi-media representation standard developed by its Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). MPEG also developed MPEG-1, which makes possible interactive video on CD-ROM and is present on virtually every personal computer, and MPEG-2, the core compression technology underlying the efficient transmission, storage and display of digitized moving images and sound tracks on which high definition television (HDTV), Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), direct broadcast by satellite (DBS), digital cable television systems, multichannel-multipoint distribution services (MMDS), personal computer video, digital versatile discs (DVD), interactive media and other forms of digital video delivery, storage, transport and display are based.

MPEG-4 is the result of yet another international effort involving hundreds of researchers and engineers from all over the world. Building on the successes of MPEG's earlier standards, MPEG-4 enables integration of the production, distribution and content access features of digital television, interactive graphics applications and interactive multimedia across internet protocol, wireless, low bitrate, broadcast, satellite, cable and mobile environments. With MPEG-4, all content elements can be maintained as discrete objects enabling richer interactivity and use across many different devices More information about MPEG-4 can be found at MPEG's home page http://www.cselt.it/mpeg and at the home page of the MPEG-4 Industry Forum http://www.m4if.org.

MPEG LA, LLC

MPEG LA successfully pioneered one-stop technology standards licensing, starting with a portfolio of essential patents for the international digital video compression standard known as MPEG-2, which it began licensing in 1997. One-stop technology standards licensing enables widespread technological implementation, interoperability and use of fundamental broad-based technologies covered by many patents owned by many different patent holders. MPEG LA provides users with fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to these essential patents on a worldwide basis under a single license. The MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License now has more than 360 licensees and includes more than 400 MPEG-2 essential patents in 39 countries owned by 20 patent holders. As the legal and business template for one-stop technology standards licensing, MPEG LA also provides an innovative way to achieve fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to patent rights for other technology standards - the high-speed transfer digital interconnect standard known as IEEE 1394 and the terrestrial digital television standard used in Europe and Asia known as DVB-T. In addition, MPEG LA has been asked to facilitate the development of joint licenses for other MPEG-4 technologies. The company is based in Denver, CO and has offices in Chevy Chase, MD (Washington DC metropolitan area), the greater San Francisco area and London, England. For more information, please refer to http://www.mpegla.com, http://www.dvbla.com, and http://www.1394la.com.

Re:Here are the Licensing Terms

[Skapare]

I designed a form of distributed broadcast protocol where instead of having all the streams coming from the broadcast center directly, it would be more peer-to-peer, like multicast but server based for a little more smarts. Essentially you find an active server (your own ISP might have one, and if you're geek enough, you have one) and initiate the request to it. If it already has the stream active for someone, you just join in. If not, it proceeds to find a source for the stream, either by contacting other known servers (for example the upstream backbone ISP) or the originating source (which might then redirect it to a better server). I'm sure there are many other designs like this, but my point is that this kind of thing is fairly trivial to build.

A pay-per-view provider obviously is collecting for each viewer, and assuming no duplication piracy going on (yeah, I know that's a stretch), they get their money per user, and pay out the $0.02 per user hour to the MPEG-4 patent owners.

Now consider a broadcaster who is making the content freely available (things varying from newscasts they produce to webcams). But do they have to pay MPEG-4 royalties? They sure do if they are collecting "remuneration". With the above scheme, they would not have a direct head count. So the licensing says "a surrogate (e.g., standard industry audience measurement) is under consideration". That might work for broadcasters who already depend on such things for high-end advertising. But not everyone does.

Consider a webcam put up by a business that happens to have their corporate headquarters in an office tower ideally situated to see the traffic on a major roadway that sometimes gets jammed up. The webcam shows the road, and is open for anyone to view at any time, and uses the above mentioned distribution scheme. But they also put in some advertising of their own stores (suppose they are a retail business). The draw is that people want to check and see if the roadway is jammed so they can decide which way to commute to work. There is also advertising in place and they might also see a good deal on something they were thinking about buying anyway (yes, sometimes advertising really works without having to click on it). So what are the royalties to be paid? How do you measure this?

I think this is yet another case of someone trying to stick their fingers in more pies than they have fingers. If they could get past that notion, and allow FREE licensing for FREE software (regardless of class of use), and charge the royalty on transmission to the broadcasters (of all categories), then I believe that would really promote the use of the technology.

This is a cop-out

[AnotherBrian]

Here is my rant: I think that pay-per-use (and subscription) is a big fqat cop-out by the people that write the software. And I think that eventualy people will be less likely develope new and better software because they lose the financial motivatiion.

Let's say you write a program like Zone Alarm that people will use all the time. Let's also say that you charge $20 a copy. You will probably sell a ton of units and you end up making $1 million. You could live off that profit for a while, but eventualy the money would decrese and you might have a finantial insentive to write version 2 of your software and you would include new features that would give consumers an insentive to upgrade and pay you another $20 for the new program. This is good for the consumers because programers would want keep makeing money.

In the subscription model, one could write a program and if it's a good and robust program it could be "in service" for a long time. (I've been using the same copy of Win98 for 3 years, and I don't plan on upgrading for a long time). M$ would have to come up with something with enough cool new fetures before I would pay them any more money.* The point is that I am not paying the software developers any money. But what if I had to send them $50/year to keep using it. They would keep earning money weather they developed new stuff or not.


*I am not trolling for a shouting match over the marits of Win98 v. Win2000 v. WinXP v. WinNT v. MacOS v. Linux. And yes I AM considering moving to a different OS.

Patent pool

[sumengen]

I think, if you are one of the companies in the patent pool of MPEG-4, you won't be paying any royalties for using MPEG-4 in any way.
That's why there have been lots of battles between companies and institutes to get their technology excepted to MPEG-4. The process is lengthy (3-4 years) and requires meetings all over the world every three months. For each small part of MPEG-4 multiple companies compete in terms of the performance of their technologies (speed, efficiency, visually better, etc.). I saw people going crazy and verbally fighting (I guess they are afraid of losing their jobs) during the meetings.

How the patent revenue is distributed I am not sure?

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

"When will you learn that Slashdot is a fringe element of society and does not represent the global view"

Not a bad troll overall. I give you an 8 for style, but only a 6 for presentation.

More like June 20, 2003 in USA

[yerricde]

The patent was granted in 1985. 1985+20=2005

You're assuming granted plus 20 years plus end of calendar year. This is not the case in the United States. For some U.S. patents, the equation is filed plus 20; for others, it's granted plus 17. According to US Patent 4,558,302, filed plus 20 = June 20, 2003, and granted plus 20 = December 10, 2002. (Unlike copyrights, patents do not extend to the end of the calendar year.) To be safe, use the later date.

Re:More like June 20, 2003 in USA

[Anonymous Coward]

See, this is the whole point of quoting what you are replying to. If you get modded up, nobody knows what "The patent" is. Or at least say:

The (LZW) patent was granted in 1985

DivX

[da5idnetlimit.com]

GET IT

And stream your Pr0n

What will I do with an officiam MPG4 when I have a perfectly legitimate DivX Codec I can encode/stream with...

And the licensing scheme is Great ! Free as in "It'll just take a couple days to encode your stream, but then..." 8)

Re:DivX

[Anonymous Coward]

> a perfectly legitimate DivX Codec

This is based on the MPEG4 standard. Are you sure it doesn't infringe any of the patents? Do you even know what the list of patents is?

Re:DivX

[Anonymous Coward]

The DivX 4.0 and later codecs are not based on an mpeg4 standard, they are developed from bottom up. The later DivX 3.00 codecs and later was a hacked MS mpeg4 codec.

Re:DivX

[Com2Kid]

::groans::

Bleh.

They are based upon the already existing MPEG4 base code, which is open source.

The code is, how nice. That does not mean that the TECHNOLOGY or IDEAS that the code uses is free for all to use.

Big difference.

DiVX is based upon the MPEG4 *specification*, and I do believe that they are aiming for full MPEG4 compatibility.

A side note here...Offtopic, thank you 8)

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Just to let you know that the guy who hold the patent on Fourier transform is on of Fourier Descendants.

He optimized the Algo and patented it. Now he's quite rich, as everytime you buy somethibg using Fourier, he gets a few pennies...

History has just biten it's tail here 8)

The patent owners CAN kill DivX

[yerricde]

One thing I haven't seen asked is how does this affect DivX? That is MPEG4, right?

But MPEG4 algorithms are independent of the particular implementation. If the licensing terms for MPEG4 do not permit licensing end-user products as free software, then open DivX as we know it will cease to exist in the United States, and some of the developers will move on to Ogg Tarkin.

Just a freely developed version

That doesn't matter. Unisys has publicly declared that it will not license the LZW patents to developers of free software: "For example, the typical Unisys license for standalone software does NOT permit copying, modification, resale, use on a server or in a network, or use for Internet/Intranet/Extranet or Web site operation."

Re:The patent owners CAN kill DivX

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Mr Trolling For Free Software -- you might want to check the licences on OpenDivX.

Not that licencing problems would hurt the popularity of a video codec or affect distribution in the real IP-is-optional world..

Re:The patent owners CAN kill DivX

[mrfiddlehead]

That's not necessarily true. They state that they require a written agreement to use LZW. To whit,

The answer is simple. In all cases, a written license agreement or statement signed by an authorized Unisys representative is required from Unisys for all use, sale or distribution of any software (including so-called "freeware") and/or hardware providing LZW conversion capability (for example, downloaded software used for creating/displaying GIF images). In certain cases, no license fees may be required, but this needs to be evidenced by a written agreement or written statement signed by an authorized Unisys representative.

Re:The patent owners CAN kill DivX

[msobkow]

DiVX has already been promoting the licensing of their codec for commercial use; only personal use is free.

A post lower down has a copy of the license agreement for MPEG4, and it really isn't as bad as you might think. It would cost less than a dollar to get a personal use license, a far cry from the $19 for Pegasus Imaging MJPEG codec. Even if they had to charge a few dollars more to cover the cost of selling the licenses (say $5 total), it still wouldn't be a bad deal.

The per-minute charges are for commercial user of MPEG4, not personal home use. Even if you were to provide streams from your webserver, there are no per-minute fees provided that you are not charging to view the content.

As I often pay the $10-20 most shareware developers want, I really have no problem with paying $5-10 for a DiVX personal-use license provided that I can continue to use the codec with VirtualDub as a video-tape replacement for archiving broadcast TV series.

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really that stupid? You didn't fucking understand anything about what you replied to. The question was simple; how is the pay-license-fees-per-minute scheme to be enforced? It's not about any licensing, just this pay-as-you-go that's kind of interesting. How is that taken care of? End users are not going to keep track of that or pay directly; providers could do it, but who and how is going to make sure they do correctly record times people have viewed the stuff, and pay accordingly. This would have to imply that absolutely no local copies are made, players probably should have spyware reporting play times, and all kinds of other extra "functionality".

Think of it as a mpeg-viewing tax, akin to phone taxes, except it's time-based and paid not to authorities but to a standards body.

So crawl back under the rock you came from, and next time read first, then reply.

Re:DivX...nah, don�t think so

[ThePlumber2]

What? MPEG-1 rocks! :-) I use it still and want more people to use it. I have setup a video/audio jukebox and it uses 1 and looks great (Sure the files are huge, but the quality is there).

Are you sure your not using a WINDOWS mpeg encoder? They all suck balls. Use linux with mp1e and you have it licked.

Relevant portion of the License

[EQ]

Stright from the license (emphasis mine):

US $0.00033/minute or portion (equivalent to US $0.02/hour) based on playback/normal running time for every stream, download or other use of MPEG-4 video data in connection with which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed

Well I think that pretty much makes if "free for free usage" in terms of providing streams.

Re:Relevant portion of the License

[spauldo]

The part I'm worried about:

US $0.25 per decoder (in hardware or software) for a license to make and sell and for personal use in receiving private video (i.e., not video for which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed), subject to a cap of $1,000,000 per year/per legal entity.

INAL, so I'm not good with legal speak (It's not quite the same as government speak, which I've been forced to learn) but the 'make and sell and for personal use' seems a little ambiguous.

Will makers of free decoders have to pay $.25 per download? I can't really tell with this.

The clause for encoders seems to be clearer; encoders for private use are $.25 a pop. That's gonna suck if they enforce it on free encoders.

Perhaps this kind of crap will be what brings out micropayments et. al. If I wrote a player that needed a license fee, I'd have a paypal button there for people to pay the license fee for a download (actually, maybe $.26 cents - the extra cent for envelopes, stamps, etc. to mail the payment off). Needless to say a lot of people would just pirate a player from somewhere and use that though.

Re:Relevant portion of the License

[geggibus]

If it is an open-source software decoder and only source is released, technically it's not a decoder.. it's instructions on how to build a decoder ..

this explanation could work against the $$$-lawyers

/K

Like music royalties...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Sounds awfully lot like music royalties. Write a few good songs in 60s, rake the money for the rest of your life (plus, heirs rake more after yours ends). In music (literature etc) this isn't as much of a problem for creativity, apparently because musicians usually love their job, and continue doing their stuff. In many cases it just gives them more financial security so they can try out things _they_ want to do, not things their audience wants to... Some think it's good for "arts", "non-commercial stuff" etc, others might say they just get to do things no one else is interested in.

I'm not against compensating authors of music, literature or any arts... But these leech-like arrangements just smell funny.

Perhaps the biggest difference between software and music is, though, that companies usually own all rights to software, whereas it used to be that musicians owned rights to their songs (this has been changing). Thus, although actual software writers would probably keep on creating new stuff even as just labour of love, companies have no such human motivations...

That's the kind of EULA I would R*E*J*E*C*T

[yerricde]

Here is a fractal decoder license.

I can't see why a fellow could in his right mind accept this license. It prohibits installation on SMP machines: "has one Intel 386, 486 or Pentium processor, Motorola 68036 or 68040 processor or IBM Power PC processor." Note: That's "68036" (nonexistent), not 68030, and not Motorola PowerPC (such as some PPC G4). It prohibits installation on dual-boot machines or on WINE: "operates only the Microsoft DOS and Windows operating system or the Macintosh operating system." It prohibits installation on machines whose primary keyboard is a wireless keyboard: "contains a keyboard (not an infrared remote)." It prohibits installation on machines that do not have a printer attached: "is able to produce printed output on a local printer." It prohibits installation on machines that have even one Windows share on them: "does not act as a server on any network."

Re:That's the kind of EULA I would R*E*J*E*C*T

[gorilla]

Worse than that, it demands exactly 80Mb hard drive.

Re:That's the kind of EULA I would R*E*J*E*C*T

[blazin]

It would appear this guy wrote his own license rather than getting a lawyer to do it for him. It looks like it confuses system requirements (like the side of boxed software) with requirements for running. Also, it doesn't say you have to have a printer attached, it just says it is "able to produce printed output on a local printer."

All the computers I have used have the ability to produce printed output on a local printer. If you hook the printer to the computer, it'll be able to produce output. The fact that the printer *isn't* hooked up to the computer doesn't detract from its ability to produce output to a local printer.

Maybe it just means no computers with a fried parrallel or USB port?

Again, I think it comes mainly from the agreement being written by a non-lawyer, but by someone who is so nervous about not getting paid every time his software is run that he's got to specifically say that you can't even let other people run the software... Pretty paranoid I think.

Artificial Scarcity

[renehollan]

I've been thinking about these kinds of things for a while now, and while I haven't examined the ramifications of the ideas that I'm about to share with any great rigor, I still think they are worth sharing.

RMS believes that software should be free, that agreeing to not share code one has, or to not be able to study and modify it is immoral. Basically, the world is a better place with free software than without. As a libertarian, I have a strong sense of property rights so I don't accept this view outright. Yet, because I am a libertarian, I also accept the idea that those who wish to produce free software not be impeded from doing so, and note that this is indeed helpful. So, I ask myself, "In what kind of society are restrictions on software use and distribution clearly wrong"?

The answer is a post-scarcity society (well, not really, but I'll get to that and why) -- one where no one wants for anything: replicators (for example) run on abundant (i.e. more than enough) solar power and employ nano-technology to make whatever anyone desires: food, clothing, shelter.

O.K. This is an artificial construct, to be sure, but bear with me.

In such a society, hoarding software, or licensing it under restrictive terms clearly harms those who want it, but can't have it. Why would one do this? To exact some price for it? But that is meaningless: one can already have anything one wants, and any price exacted could be met for the same reason. To deprive others of something that costs one nothing, and anyone could afford is not nice: its like throwing away perfectly good scraps of food that one can't eat or save when others are starving and it is no effort to give it away to them.

So, the only justification for restrictions on software, or the creation of an artificial scarcity of it (or anything else, for that matter: information in general) is the need to compensate for a natural scarcity -- if I write code for free, I can't earn a traditional living, and so can't affort scarce goods, like food. Writing free code costs me, in other words, and that cost needs to be mitigated.

So, the justification for artificial scarcity is a compensation for natural scarcity: if one can produce something in abundance for themselves, but limit its availability to others, one can avoid seeking other scarce things, through a mechanism of trade.

On the other hand, does this mean that it is acceptable to others that the artificial scarcity ber permitted to last indefinately? After all, this means a gravy train for life for some while others struggle in a world of scarcity? Traditionally, most people have said "No," and have enacted laws to deal with such artificial scarcities.

Before software, artificial scarcities existed for other things, like writings and the applications of inventions, namely copyrights, and patents. There was no infinite property right recognized for ideas by society, or its governing representatives -- the stable state is that of public domain, tending to lessen scarcity.

Artificial scarcities, like copyright and patents, were inventions of government, granted and enforced for limited durations, in order to reflect the realities of living iin a naturally scarce world, yet to encourage the eventual lessening of scarcities, otherwise known as progress.

While philosophically, I might object at the arbitrary imposition of a limit on copyright and patent, preferring instead to see a negotiation of terms acceptable creator and user, I nevertheless recognize that such intellectual property should not remain proprietary forever. Pragmatically, the "market force" of negotiation, civil or otherwise, establishes a flow from the haves to the have-nots: governments, empowered with the legal use of force, dictate terms, and mobs forcibly revolt when they have "enough" (distinguishing a mob from a government is left up to the reader).

Note that this applies to anything that can be made artificially scare, or restricted by license: writings, software, drug formulas, etc. The bottom line is that artificial scarcity is justified only by overall scarcity and it is desirable to reduce scarcity overall. Thus, artificial scarcity is like debt: useful, but not something of which one wants an excess.

Now, this analysis does break down to some extent in that there will never be a completely post-scarcity society: things that can be envisioned, but do not exist, will remain scarce, and artificial scarcity can encourage people to continue to try to invent. But, the principle that artificial scarcity be limited in duration remains.

The natural state, then is public domain, and this is what we should strive toward. Note, that the GPL is not the same as public domain, in that free software can not be employed in non-free derived works. But the teeth behind that are the same teeth that generate copyright-based artificial scarcity to begin with. If copyright and patent protection were substantially weakened, would the GPL need to be so restrictive? I don't think so -- it is as protective of fighting artificial scarcity as copyright is of promoting it: a rather nice balance.

So, what does all this mean? Instead of changing the free software mantra, we should be arguing for a recognition that artificial scarcity property rights, propped up by government should be temporary in nature, as a matter of principle, and shorter terms are better for society than longer terms. This is the exact opposite of recent trends. People need to be educated that the acceptance of artificial scarcities in their lives is like taking on debt.

These are only partially-baked ideas, so I appologize for the roughness of thought, but I certainly welcome comments.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[jaliathus]

I agree with you that artificial scaricity is a useful thing for the reasons you mention, but I think our current policies towards it are outdated. The pace of change of modern technology is much faster now than it was in the 18th century when our laws were established, and I think the duration of patents, copyrights, etc. on modern ideas is far too long.

If I develop a new fancy, whiz-bang way of making my computer do something, I should be given artifical scarcity rights for it to encourage that kind of thinking. But for 20 years?!? That's many generations in our field.

I envision a system where these kind of patents last for maybe 5 years. That gives the developers a gravy train for a while to encourage innovation, but it puts control back in the hands of the people after a more reasonable period of time. So others can benefit from the innovation and build off of it sooner.

So, I agree with you that artificial scarcity is useful. But I think it would be more useful if its duration were shorter.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[renehollan]

Yes, I support the idea of shorter artificial scarcity rights. The difficult thing for me, as a libertarian, was to come to the conclusion that artificial scarcity rights should be limited at all, since I have a strong sense of property rights.

To arrive at that conclusion, I started by (a) considering what kind of society does not need such rights (post-scarcity); (b) whether such a society was desirable (yes); and (c) what it would take to go in that direction. The conclusion was that artificial scarcity rights need to be limited in duration.

I would still argue that the duration of artificial scarcity rights should be set in a free market, rather than by government fiat, but the important notion is that the public should be educated as to the real costs of accepting artificial scarcity rights. This would lead to either a more informed free market for them, or pressure on governments to shorten their duration in an increasingly technologially sophisticated environment. Either approach would move society in a desirable direction, rendering my natural anti-interventionist tendencies philosophical oppositions rather than pragmatic ones.

Historically, innovators have become wealthy precisely because others have been slow to "catch up". Artificial scarcity rights that benefit such innovation also impede overall progress. Lately, the emphasis has been on increasing such rights rather than on new innovation: the rich innovators of old have gotten fat and lazy.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[Kushana]

You can't draw the conclusions you want from your post-scarcity model because your model is flawed.

Your post-scarcity model implicitly assumes that the only things worth being paid in are material, and that software is somehow outside of this. If software is not outside, then it can be trivially constructed and thus cannot be restricted. If it is outside of this, then we have determined something that is naturally scarce (because it cannot be created trivially) and thus subject to normal rules of supply and demand.

In this case, because I have created something non-trivial, I expect to be paid for it. If nothing else exists, I can be paid for it in other non-trivial pieces of software. But a society that cannot trivially create software will have a number of of other natural scarcities, including (I imagine) sex, entertainment, and power (over other people). And currency will exist so that I perform these trades smoothly.

The true non-scarcity society will exist not because material goods are available to all, but because *anything* can be trivially constructed. And even then, I suspect, humans will try to find ways to distinguish themselves from their peers. If nothing else, they will want to be the first on their block to think of something new to be trivially constructed.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[renehollan]

Yes, I have noticed this flaw as well (and addressed it, ableit briefly): a true post-scarcity society can not exist. However, I think it still serves as a useful model to move in the direction of less scarcities, and the limited durations on artificial scarcity rights have precedent in law: patents and copyrights were not envisioned to be perpetual rights, though some could argue that they should be.

In short, it appears that accepting power over one's self, in one form or another, for extensive periods, is not a naturally acceptable condition for humans. Limits on artificial scarcities address this, though present tendencies are in exactly the wrong direction.

Certainly, artificial scarcities will always be useful constructs because the post-scarcity society can not exist (even if there are no natural scarcities, there will always be artificial ones because their existance can be envisioned). However, I think a strong argument can be made that such scarcities not be tolerated in perpetuity.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[TFloore]

One problem with this is that there will never be a "post-scarcity" society. There is one resource that will always be scarce.

Space.

Not as in "the final frontier". Instead, the "my house is on 20 acres" space. The "my scheduled tee-off on the golf course is 2pm".

Anything that uses the surface of the planet will be "scarce". And will always be scarce.

Other than that, I can mostly accept your position.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[renehollan]

Yes, I addressed this briefly, and in more detail in response to the basic flaw in my reasoning that post-scarcity is impossible.

But, the ideas that apply in a post-scarcity society, also apply to move in the direction toward such a society, i.e. in a succession of less-scarcity societies. Indefinite artificial scarcity protections prevent this transition.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[msouth]

until we are immortal there will always be time scarcity, so the coder is still giving something up by writing the code. When you have replicators there will still be stuff that people want--rare naturally produced unimitatable delicacies, sex, recognition, whatever. I don't think the post-scarcity world exists, even in principal, because people naturally move up to more esoteric "needs".

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[zurab]

So, the only justification for restrictions on software, or the creation of an artificial scarcity of it (or anything else, for that matter: information in general) is the need to compensate for a natural scarcity -- if I write code for free, I can't earn a traditional living, and so can't affort scarce goods, like food. Writing free code costs me, in other words, and that cost needs to be mitigated.

So, the justification for artificial scarcity is a compensation for natural scarcity: if one can produce something in abundance for themselves, but limit its availability to others, one can avoid seeking other scarce things, through a mechanism of trade.

Allow me to disagree. As far as I understand the difference between what you refer to as Natural Scarcity and Artificial Scarcity is in the cost of reproduction, the former being relatively hard to reproduce and the latter relatively easy. Centuries ago, when most everything was "relatively hard" to reproduce nobody would have thought of Artificial Scarcity as it exists today. Several reasons would have contributed to this including slow development, no advanced production technologies, limited flow of information, etc. Moreover, there was almost no way to define, introduce, and enforce any restriction that would resemble anything like the regulations that create "Artificial Scarcity" today.

With the advance of technology, and improvements in production and information flow two critical things happened: (1) the cost of reproduction went down immeasurably, and (2) it became possible to gain more control of how products being produced are distributed. In many cases the cost of reproduction is less than the cost of producing the original product. The laws and regulations introduced to maintain the balance of the past was to give the producer of the original product more incentive to innovate and produce with the promise that said producer would also have control of the distribution and any reproduction of the product for a limited period of time. The ones that come under scrutiny on /. are Patent and Copyright laws. These laws were introduced with the purpose to contribute to "public good", and were solely enacted as a response to (1) above.

Heh, yeah right!! It is my opinion that these regulations were (1) applied as a short term fix, (2) not properly thought out and were only reactions to advancement and development, and (3) definitely not considered as basis for undesired effects in the future. In a not-so-sugarcoded version, and more related to how these regulations advanced and mutated into today's life, these laws were introduced to ease the creation of a control-and-profit structure placing too much power in the hands of the controller (not even creator or original producer). These laws, when introduced, assumed that any type of production covered by them would be substantially more expensive than the reproduction of the same; so much that it would discourage inventors to pursue their inventions as not profitable. And, in response to this, give 10, 100, or 1000 times more power to the inventor or controller to control all reproduction and distribution of the product. Given this power, and the system that allows more powerful to have more effect on the system, the patent and copyright laws cover a very broad range of production and activities, and, the idea of the power being limited in time is not so "limited" anymore. One can apply for a patent term of 20 (or whatever the ridiculous number) or years and extend it several times. And the "limited" in copyright? Copyright is virtually unlimited in time today.

This, combined with exponential advancement in technology, and such a broad coverage of these regulations not only deems them unreasonable but also unnecessary and hindering. It seems like the lower the cost of reproduction, the more power is awarded to the controllers. Let's see - the cost of reproduction of digital content is extremely low, close to 0. What was done to correct this? Software licensing. As you understand, licensing is overly more restrictive than simple copyright, we all know - anything short of taking away the first born son can be put into license agreement. Since now music, movies, and other similar content is entering the digital content what is done to grant more power to the powerful? DMCA and future laws "advancing" this idea (wait till DRM catches on). It has come to a point today that these laws and regulations are not only protecting the producer of the original product, but giving way too much power to the controllers to control and regulate their products for virtually unlimited period of time for the sole purpose of keeping the profit stream. In effect, now these controllers are in charge of innovation and advancement. And, herein lies the problem with this system as first introduced.

As you suggest, limiting the time and applying a short-term fix to this trend is not a solution to what's fundamentally flawed and will become more unusable, put more "innovation" into these powerful controllers' hands, and have negative effect on the "public good". If you were designing the system from scratch to balance the power you wouldn't go with this system knowing what you know today. But then again, what to do now? I don't know - pay me and I'll think about it! I just use GPLed and free software for now.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[cduffy]

I also support shorter artificial scarcity rights, but for a very different reason. Let me explain...

The difficult thing for me, as a libertarian, was to come to the conclusion that artificial scarcity rights should be limited at all, since I have a strong sense of property rights.

Also as a Libertarian, I have no problem with these limitations whatsoever. Rights to real property must, of course, be supreme -- but artificial scarcity rights are nothing of the sort; rather, they're a construct created by reducing the range of acts available to others (ie. I am prevented by force of government from building a device equivalent to some patent-encumbered device you created). Your "rights" to intellectual property restrict my freedoms when working with my physical property.

As IP is an artificial construct created through force of government which restricts individuals' freedoms, it need be treated very carefully. Why would something so restrictive be allowed? One possible reason is clearly stated: Promotion of the sciences and useful arts (and thus the public welfare). If an IP system provides government enforcement of patent claims, one need ask: in return for what is the public giving up to the inventor their ability to build a similar device? In a case of unlimited patent rights, the public receives nothing in return, thus leaving no excuse whatsoever for the government's infringement upon their rights. The case where this infringement may be tolerable is if they receive something of value -- such as free access to the (once-)patented work after an expiration of the government-enforced monopoly.

The next question, then, is what price (how many years of limited freedoms) is appropriate to pay for later unlimited access to the once-protected work. The answer, of course, is that price which results in the public's best interests -- the price which results in the most favorable ratio of value (in terms of works which eventually become free for public use) to price (in terms of number of years of protection required).

I, for one, am inclined to believe that the government is currently overpaying -- with the public's freedoms! -- for later free access to these works.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[renehollan]

Your analysis is excellent, but omits one very important facet: rights enforced not by government, but agreed-upon by contract.

Consider the absence of government-imposed copyright. Uncoerced parties could contract to respect an intellectual property right: in exchange for revealing a secret (to which I have a supreme right, assuming the secret is knowledge I obtained on my own) to someone, they agree to not reveal it further. Certainly such contracts can create the effect of copyright and patents in the absence of the government constuct and enforcement thereof.

The question of interest then becomes, "Are such contracts binding in perpetuity?". Or, put another way, should the government be the arbitor of last resort for disputes based on the alleged breaking of such contracts? I think my analysis shows that, beyond some limit, the answer is no.

Of course, a purely libertarian position would be to punt the question and respond that no rational person would accept a perpetual contract like that. But, not all people are rational, and having extracted sufficient income from disclosure of a secret, one could collect this income forever, and ensure that the secret remains so. Clearly that would not be in the public interest.

And this leads to an interesting possibility: public policy making by a libertarian government is limited to it's pre-announced position on just what disputes it will agree to resolve as the court of last resort. Such positions would be announced (and be binding on the government court) as part of it's efforts to become elected.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[renehollan]

Even if the purported purpose of patent and copyright (to provide incentive to inventers) was a farce to gain broad acceptance, it still stands as a reasonable principle, to be tempered with a technologically appropriate limited duration.

IOW, I think we are in agreement with regard to reasoning even as we might disagree on historical motives.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[benwaggoner]

Well, if you want to link about it in terms of scacity, there is definitely a scarcity of good, specified, interoperable digital media technologies.

Lots of people have spent YEARS and MILLIONS in making MPEG-4 happen - they started the process in 1993. And it took so long because it's really hard to do - well more than a thousand person-years by this point. It's a delusion to think things like Ogg Tarkin, which don't even exist yet and aren't trying to do even 5% of what MPEG-4 is aimed at, are an alternative technology.

The only viable alternative for what MPEG-4 is meant to do is Windows Media, which offers superior compression efficiency, but isn't an ISO standard. That's where the battle is going to be.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Then if I independently develop the same solutions you had sold the secret to, I could also sell my version? Since I didn't have to pay you to find out your secret, what do I owe you? Is ther merit to rewarding the very first accross the finish line?

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[renehollan]

Of course you could! That's just one of the things broken in the patent system: it precludes the possibility of independent discovery.

Re:Artificial Scarcity

[J. Random Software]

If "persons of ordinary skill in the art" produce the same invention given the same requirements, it's pretty safe to say the invention was obvious and none of them deserve a patent. This is only a problem because the USPTO isn't meeting the Constitutional requirements for its existence.

IMHO they ought to give some nondisclosed organization a modest budget to produce an invention that does substantially the same thing as the patent application. If they succeed the patent shouldn't be granted (either way their invention was work for hire for the public and should be published).

0.02 cents/hour = 175.2 dollar/year

[Anonymous Coward]

0.02 x 24 x 365 = 175.2

The different MPEG-4 Codecs.

[joeytsai]

The number of mpeg-4 implementations out there is pretty frightening, and so I wrote up a quick write-up of the most popular. Please let me know if you spot anything incorrect.

The ASF file format is based on Microsoft's MPEG-4 V2 codec.

The "DivX ;-)" codec is based off of Microsoft's MPEG-4 V3 codec. This is
sometimes referred to as the 3.x codec. This is the format that requires
Win32 DLLs. This is the format most people are talking about when they say
"DivX". Most movies floating around the internet are encoded in this format.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage
http://divx.euro.ru

Project Mayo is developing an implementation called OpenDivX, which is GPL.
This is a rewrite (to lose the dependency on the Win32 DLLs, trying to make it
100% legal) and is sometimes referred to as the 4.x codec. This version is
backward-compatible with 3.x, but 3.x is not forward-compatible with 4.x
OpenDivX is under development, and still has quality and performance issues.
http://www.projectmayo.com

DivX Advanced Research Centre (DARC) has an implentation called DivX4. DARC and
Project Mayo are both part of a companly called DivXNetworks. Apparently,
OpenDivX was a sort of sandbox where DARC figured out what worked and what
didn't, and used that to create DivX4 from scratch. It is closed source, but
freely downloadable. DivX4 is reported to have very high image quality.
http://www.divxnetworks.com

3ivx has a self-named MPEG-4 implementation. They also refer to it as DivX 2.0.
Their implementation is closed source, and only the decoder is freely available
(in Windows, as a Windows Media Player or QuickTime plug-in; in Linux, as an
XAnim plug-in). You cannot play a DivX movie with the 3ivx codec.
http://www.3ivx.com

Nandub in an encoder which sports the Smart Bitrate Control (SBC) method of
encoding DivX. Nandub is a modified version of the VirtualDub program (which is
a general AVI editing and capture tool). Both Nandub and VirtualDub are
released under the GPL. SBC is not a codec, it's an encoding method based from
DivX 3.x which generally yields higher quality than normal.
http://www.nandub.org
http://www.virtualdub.org

The FFmpeg project has another rewritten from scratch MPEG-4 codec. They are
striving for real time encoding, and their code (GPLed) is written in ANSI C for
portability.
http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net

Re:The different MPEG-4 Codecs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very nice, thank you.

Re:The different MPEG-4 Codecs.

[zachdms]

"The ASF file format is based on Microsoft's MPEG-4 V2 codec."

Nope - you can look up the ASF File Format here, but ASF is just a container. MS's MPEG4 vX codec implementations are just codec data stuffed into ASF.

Also, DivX 3.x is hacks to Microsoft MPEG4 v2 (aka DIV3 - and completely unnecessary), Microsoft MPEG4 v3 (aka DIV4), Windows Media Audio v2 (not supported/supportable in DivX 4), and the Radium pirated FhG Pro codec.

Generally, any AVI with WMAv2 is orphaned.

Re:The different MPEG-4 Codecs.

[benwaggoner]

Sorry, this is pretty much entirely wrong when it comes to the real world of MPEG-4.

The critical issue for any MPEG-4 technology is interoperability, which means that any compliant device/program can play any compliant content that matches the same Profile@Level. For example, the ISMA Profile 1 (targeting personal computer playback) uses Advanced Simple Level 3 for video and High Quality Audio Level 2 for audio. In turn, this means a maximum resolution of 99 16x16 blocks (typically 352x288) and a bunch of other stuff.

The content itself needs to live in a MPEG-4 file, or a MPEG-4 bitstream.

None of the "MPEG-4" titled solutions from the open source community meet these requirements. They adopt much of the Simple Visual Profile for a video codec, but don't handle the audio codecs, the file format, or the streaming format. While they get some value from the ideas in MPEG-4 video, they aren't MPEG-4 in any meaningful, real-world way. They don't work with the published ISO standard.

The actual ISMA derived solutions use the Advanced Simple codec, which offers much better compression efficiency, in the ballpark of Windows Media, RealVideo, and QuickTime with typical web uses (e.g. 320x240 @ 250 Kbps).

Yeah and copyrights expire too

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least they did in the past, you dont think the government will extend the copyright and patent protection even further ... unthinkable?

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are YOU really that stupid fuckwad? Firstly, I was replying to someone who just gave the standard open source spiel ("everything should be free!"). Secondly, cockbiter, it's EXTREMELY apparent by the article that they're talking about charing media sources that stream out MPEG4, not the end user for watching that porn clip over and over again (you have to be fucking retarded to miss that. Oh, hey, you're fucking retarded!). If you think there's some big quandry in how they'll "enforce" this then you're dumb: How does Microsoft enforce software licenses? The law says that you're supposed to maintain proper licenses, and they might audit at some point and ensure you do. It's not fucking rocket science.

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be a troll if it wasn't so explicit in stating perceived facts (i.e. the fringe bias of Slashdot). Instead it's an opinion, and just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it a troll.

Technology developers vs. lawyers

[drb1001]

So, here's the list of technology contributors.

Canon Inc.; France Télécom; Fujitsu Limited; Hitachi, Ltd.; Hyundai Curitel, Inc.; KDDI Corporation; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.; Microsoft Corporation; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.; Philips Electronics; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.; Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha; Sony Corporation; Telenor AS; Toshiba Corporation; and Victor Company of Japan, Limited.

If it's possible to do so without being xenophobic, I find it interesting to note that the breakdown is: one U.S. company (Microsoft), three European companies (France Telecom, Philips, and Telenor), two Korean companies (Hyundai Curitel and Samsung), and eleven Japanese companies.

However, I bet that the U.S. dominated the list of law firms involved in drawing up the license terms, and will have even greater domination in any enforcement actions.

Re:Technology developers vs. lawyers

[InfoVore]

What I find strange is that Apple Computer is not on the list. I thought MPEG-4 was based on the QuickTime format. I am very sceptical that Apple doesn't have several existing patents on QuickTime or wouldn't be involved in the MPEG-4 specification.

Don't they deserve it?

[IamTheRealMike]

You know, even though this is after all slashdot, I'm surprised that I haven't really seen anyone stick up for the MPEG consortium yet.

After all, they have worked for years to bring together technology from all over the world and synthesise it into something that is truly useful.

The kind of mathematics, science and engineering behind something like the MPEG standards isn't something you dream up in a bedroom - it takes a lot of time and money, and as time is money, this means money squared.

If they don't get their money back, then there won't be any more MPEG standards. At the end of the day, this is going to let people make lots of cash off of streaming video to people (whether it be via the net/cable/sat/whatever) - the people who enabled that deserve a reward.

I think it's pretty good of them to allow not-for-profit use of MPEG-4, which will allow people who aren't making money from their use of the technology to make as many MPEG-4 encoded videos as they like.

Sure, maybe the time based charging is dumb and should be rethought, or maybe it's actually pretty sensible (given the markets in which it'll be used, ie digital tv/video etc). The MPEG group is made up of a lot of extremely smart people - don't write them off because they aren't giving away their work into the public domain.

thanks -mike

Re:Don't they deserve it?

[barfy]

Your right it does cost money.
There are 14 million DSS customers, and probably lets say 10 million Digital Cable customers.

That would make the mpeg 2 licenses so far on the line upwards of $50 MILLION dollars. That pays for ALOT of academic research.

Now if those folks get transferred to mpeg4 (which there is a pretty high desireability from a consumer standpoint, more effective use of bandwidth means more and better channels), that goes from $50 million dollars of licensing fees to at the rate of lets say 8 cents a day to a licensing rate of 3 million dollars a day, or over a billion dollars a year.

Oh yeah, everyone deserves a billion dollars a year for licensing fees.

With fees as rich as that, no one will pay them. Either customers will not get access to mpeg4 technology, or a cheaper technology will be developed. Either way the mpeg folks won't get thier billions.

Re:Don't they deserve it?

[Wesley Felter]

If they don't get their money back, then there won't be any more MPEG standards.

And if they're too greedy they won't get their money back, so there won't be any more MPEG standards either.

Re:Artificial Scarcity - Part II

[renehollan]

Gee, thanks for the mod points, but I'd really like to see discussion.

A couple of observations I should have included, but forget are the following, relating classical economies to artificial scarcity.

RMS has been accused of being a communist because of his notions about intellectual property. However, communism has one great flaw: it seeks to redistribute existing scarce goods without creating incentive to eliminate the scarcity to begin with. That's why it appears to work so well at the beginning: it corrects a terribly skewed distribution of scarce things. While RMS attacks artificial scarcity, communism lumps natural scarcity in there as well. Note that combating natural scarcity requires the incentive to overcome the scarcity of knowledge of knowing how: once know, this knowledge can be kept artificially scarce (or not).

Capitalism, on the other hand, rewards those who can produce scarce goods. In theory, such goods will be delivered in the most efficient manner possible due to free market competition. The free market notion is nice because it does not create a have/have-not dichotomy, at least not in theory: anyone has the potential for success.

Of course, temporary extremes in both these economic models lead to undesireable circumstances that result in some form of government intervention: in the United States, we therefore have a mixed economy (note: many of the injustices attributed to capitalism and free markets can probably be attributed to "mismanagement" of this mixed economy -- this is why libertarians want less government). Recently, China has been experimenting with capitalist incentives within a predominantly communist economy. So, as presently practiced, communism and capitalism (both vulnerable to government corruption, though those of us in capitalist countries tend to think of communist governments are more corrupt), both seek to address scarcity issues, but in different ways. Personally, my bets are on a more capitalist incentive approach, because it offers the possibility of benefiting from short-term scarcity relief (i.e. "getting rich") as well as addressing the long term issues.

Finally, another way to look at the artificial scarcities is not as restrictions enforced by governments, but rather scarcities which do not remain so naturally: software is easy to copy. Heck, digital media in general is easy to copy. Information and knowledge are hard to keep secret. Such scarcities can only exist by the application of force or by concent. Absent concent, they are thus ultimately counterproductive to those who seek to exploit them too much.

Some things never change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly your grammar hasn't improved.

Surprised?

[hendridm]

> So I am paying more for being popular?

Doesn't that make sense? "Popular" web sites/companies generally have to pay more for equipment because they get more hits, and thus (hopefully) more revenue. The little guys who are less popular pay less because they don't need an Enterprise/Oracle solution - they can stick to the cheaper stuff.

Everyone pays more for success, and hopefully also makes more money in the process. A popular site costs more to build/maintain/license/etc. This is included in that cost.

Thesis

[jxqvg]

You should consider posting an opinion piece like this as a link instead.

Re:Thesis

[renehollan]

I was going too, but my ideas are still rough, and I wanted feedback before I made a more polished "fait acompli" version. The present discussion was an instance of the problems I'm addressing, so appeared as good a place as any to spring my ideas. OTOH, if you object to the front-page space it takes, complain to the moderators.

Once I refine and extend them, I might do as you suggest.

Re:Thesis

[anfloga]

One thing that confuses me is your approach to artificial scarcity as a property rights issue. You say you have a strong sense of property rights (fine) and therefore it took some effort to overcome, what I can only assume to be, a natural presumption that idea regulation ("intellectual property rights") is a good thing, because property rights are a good thing. I would argue with this entire basis. Firstly, there is no property at all in an idea. Intellectual property doesn't just represent artificial scarcity, it represents virtual property (artificial property -- property that is created by governmental mandate). Without the intervention of goverment, there was no property to be private!

As a libertarian, I would imagine that the difficult thing to overcome would not be the natural assumption that intellectual property is a universially good thing because property rights are important, but rather that governmental intervention to create this false property is a good thing!

Erik

Re:Thesis

[renehollan]

Respectfully, I think you misunderstand my point (or I have not made myself sufficient clear).

The intellectual property exists in two forms: (1) that my secrets are my own, and (2) that I may license them. Copyrights and patents are, IMHO, default means of licensing ideas. (Yes, I know that license law is a different beast).

IOW, the artificial property right is not that i own the idea, but rather that I can share the ideas with an agreement to compensate me for the sharing, or otherwise restrict it's use, that can be enforced at law.

This is not the same thing as government granting copyrights and patents, though the effect may be identical.

Re:Thesis

[J. Random Software]

Licensed trade secrets can't take the place of patents--if I can prove I independently rediscovered the thing you're keeping secret, I can do anything with it you can do. Once a patent is issued, everyone is presumed to be aware of it (which is plainly ridiculous--ever try to read any?).

crippled quicktime

[Erris]

Quoth the article:

By reducing frame rates to 15 or 12 frames per second or lower, a compressor immediately saves bandwidth, and as long as the frames are smooth the human eye tends to adjust.

Ten frames per second was real smooth about 100 years ago.

Re:When will they learn?

[MadAhab]

Of course in the grand closed source scheme, to avoid actual competition or production of useful goods and services, the IP fanatics will, rather than, say, write the best compression scheme, lay broad patent and IP claims all over the place and claim that the entire area of video compression schemes is their god-given territory and that it is their manifest destiny to rape and exploit it to the detriment of all others . Of course, it totally refutes the capitalist foundations that their whole little pigopoly is built on, but ignore that...

And what about no-software-patents countries?

[JCCyC]

If I set up a MPEG4 streaming server in a country who does not recognize software patents (like mine ;) I can solemny ignore patent holders, right?

And if they complain that citizens of the USA can view my videos, I'll just say (or rather instruct my lawyer to say) "Do you... Yahoo?"

Re:And what about no-software-patents countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong mpeg-4 isn't a software patent and the companies mpegla represent have patents covering brazil.

I'd settle for any Ogg-with-video implementation

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

I've been 'lurking' on the Tarkin-dev mailing list for a few months now, and it's pretty quiet, unfortunately. The sparse messages on the list indicate that Tarkin is STILL in the stage where the developers are discussing techniques that they MIGHT use when they get started writing code. The GOOD news is that to me, this indicates that serious thought is going into the design, and the final result will kick butt, but the bad news is it's still quite some time in the future.

On the other hand, as I understand it, the Ogg file format already supports having video streams embedded in it (i.e. it wouldn't have to be Tarkin-codec video). I've been ITCHING to see somebody add Ogg format support to a video encoder like ffmpeg (and I suspect MPlayer would have support for playback within days afterwards).

I could cope with e.g. OpenDivx/mpeg1/h.263 video with vorbis audio in Ogg format until Tarkin becomes useable. It'd at least give the Ogg file format more visibility, and perhaps attract some more developers to the Tarkin project...

An alternative:

[uradu]

Move the codec from the player to the content. Hardware manufacturers would get together and establish an Open Player Platform or something, which essentially standardizes the instruction set and capabilities of the player and the image format of the codec executable. When you insert a medium and hit play, the player first examines the content file for the required codec, which must also reside on the same medium. It then loads the codec image from the medium and executes it against the content file.

This approach would have several advantages: allow content creators to use different codecs optimized for the content (e.g. action/animation/quality-vs-runtime etc.), eliminate codec costs to the manufacturer, and future-proof the players to a certain extent. Currently, the main disadvantage would be the high(er) cost of the player.

-

Re:An alternative:

[disappear]

Move the codec from the player to the content. Hardware manufacturers would get together and establish an Open Player Platform or something, which essentially standardizes the instruction set and capabilities of the player and the image format of the codec executable.

Right. We can do it in Forth, just like open firmware, right? Muhahahahha

Re:An alternative:

[psamuels]

Hardware manufacturers would get together and establish an Open Player Platform or something, which essentially standardizes the instruction set and capabilities of the player and the image format of the codec executable.

That is absolutely the best way to introduce all sorts of exciting digital rights management schemes. Remember, this is what some "copy-protected CDs" do today - they autoload a player binary under Windows.

Imagine - the player bytecode would checksum your hardware player's ROM to make sure it is an "authorized AOLTW playback device", then try to connect to the web. If your media station isn't plugged into your phone line it'll refuse to play. Then it will make the necessary pay-per-play arrangements between your credit card company and AOLTW, and finally you get your movie playback. (Oh, and btw, no freeze-frame - since you chose not to pay the extra 15% for that privilege.)

I prefer smart (and openly-implementable) players and dumb media, thanks very much.

Re:An alternative:

[uradu]

I admit that it could open a whole new chapter of nastiness on the part of thusly inclined content vendors. However, it would also open the door for the "good guys", allowing small production companies to use open codecs to play their stuff in an unrestricted fashion on the same hardware that the big houses are using to enforce their DRM nonsense. In the end, it could give you, the consumer, more power, allowing you to vote for playback technology with your wallet, while still not being limited in the range of hardware you can buy. For example, try buying an Ogg Vorbis hardware player today.

-

Re:An alternative:

[psamuels]

However, it would also open the door for the "good guys", allowing small production companies to use open codecs to play their stuff in an unrestricted fashion on the same hardware that the big houses are using to enforce their DRM nonsense.

Your faith in the harmlessness of DRM in the face of open honest competition is touching. (:

DVDs are not required to be encrypted or region-coded. CDs are not required to be CRC-crippled. The Big Money is not forcing DRM down every content producer's throat.

Back on topic, I guess we're talking about people being forced to use MPEG-4 because that's what the hardware will support. Well, I suppose a VM-based player architecture would help there, but honestly, that's what flash rom is for.

And flash rom has the advantage that if you need to crack obnoxious features like DRM, you only have to do it once, not once per disc.

For example, try buying an Ogg Vorbis hardware player today.

Good point, but I still believe the support will come. Various reasons not to use vorbis are falling apart, and when Monty finishes with his integer-only decoder with performance comparable to mp3 (two reasons not to do embedded vorbis, currently), most of the pieces will be in place. There is still brand recognition, to be sure....

Re:An alternative:

[uradu]

> Your faith in the harmlessness of DRM in the face of open honest competition is touching. (:

Hardly faith, I'm just not convinced that the issue of DRM gets worse by moving the codec to the medium. If DRM is embedded in the hardware, all content providers will have to interact with it. If it's in a codec that is read off the medium, you're free to create content that uses DRM-free codecs, and to not buy content that does use DRM.

-

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a crock of shit. If they lay "broad patent and IP claims" their patents wouldn't hold up for a second. Of course that is ignored by the IP thieves who will rant about how IP should be free for them to rip off.

Times 60 channels, per subscriber?

[psgalbraith]

Image a cable or dish provider feeding you with 60 channels of music at all times. Does that mean they would have to pay $28.80 per day per subscriber to use this technology?

Okay, so the comsumer can only listen to one of those at a time per decoder. So $0.48 per day? How do they know whether anyone is listening?

PPV 8.95

[HamNRye]

Is that why Pay-Per-View is $8.95 for a movie I could rent for $1.....

Re:PPV 8.95

[rynix]

Not Really the other 7.95 is for being lazy.

Re:PPV 8.95

[plague3106]

I don'tk now wher eyou live, but PPV movies for me cost 3.99...only a few cents more then renting them.

Oh, for some mod points...

[Dave_bsr]

This get's a +1 insightful from me, except i don't have any points to give. People need to hear this - they don't need to believe it, but everyone should hear this. What a change in society that would breed - when people realize that corporations exist to serve the public good, and not just to take money in exchange for something. Let me repeat that: corporations exist to serve the public.

To the author of the parent post - do you mind if I use the second part of what you have said? I'll put it on my website or something?

Some people here wonder why slashdotters hate X Big company - this is why - they no longer seek to serve the customer, and produce a negative net benefit for society.

$0.25 per encoder/decoder?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Will makers of free decoders have to pay $.25 per download? I can't really tell with this.

The clause for encoders seems to be clearer; encoders for private use are $.25 a pop. That's gonna suck if they enforce it on free encoders.

Oddly, I actually wouldn't have a problem, provided they were reasonable about implementing it, with paying $0.25/encoder and /decoder that I use (I'd rather NOT have them bill the writers of free software instead, though - i.e. I would pay for my use, not the developer for my download.). Presumably, each small fee would cover an "implementation" of the mpeg4 standard, which means upgraded versions of the same program would still be covered by the initial $0.25 payment.

In my case, I'd end up spending between $1.00 and $1.50 to cover a handful of programs that I play with.

The trick is, can they set up the payment structure in a reasonable manner, and refrain from harassing people...

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont think it was a troll either. The Slashdot `community are fringe nutters, but those sorts of people always think theyre normal, and that everyone else (e.g. those of us who occasionally read or post to this ridiculous site) is strange.

MPEG2 is the oldest codec EVER!

[blazin]

According to the license info page the royalty scheme is determined by date, apparently starting on September 1, 1001 and going until March 1, 2003. Now I don't know a lot about patents, copyright law, and what not, but over 1001 years to be having all the rights on a patent seems a bit crazy...

<SNIP>
(5) For MPEG-2 Packaged Media, the royalty is US $0.04 before September 1, 2001/$0.035 from September 1, 1001 to March 1, 2003/$0.03 from March 1, 2003 for the first MPEG-2 Video Event, plus $0.01 for each additional 30 minutes or portion recorded on the same copy...

Work for a year, get paid for eternity ...

[gotan]

Apparently a lot of business types now get it into their heads, to implement some form of 'leasing' on their product, so they only have to work at it once, and then get paid untill hell freezes over (and with the amount of money you can make that way it'll be no problem to buy potential competition off before it can get big enough to stand a chance).

There's two reasons, why potential buyers of such schemes should abstain: The money comes out of their pockets, and throwing so much money in one direction will most probably create a monopolistic structure more concerned with keeping itself in control than making a better product (see Microsoft).
--

[OT] LZW/GIF patents

[DarkEdgeX]

About the LZW patent and Unisys, doesn't their patent expire in 2005? (I went and found the patent (using the number provided from the Unisys page you linked to in the parent) and noted that the patent was granted in 1985.) Of course this doesn't affect MPEG4 I imagine (has a patent even been awarded yet for that?) but I'm just curious when Unisys's monopoly will end. ;)

Not quite that long

[Anonymous Coward]

LZW patent will expire summer 2003.

Patent and copyright duration

[Sloppy]

our current policies towards it are outdated. The pace of change of modern technology is much faster now than it was in the 18th century when our laws were established, and I think the duration of patents, copyrights, etc. on modern ideas is far too long.

Outdated?! You win the euphemism award! ;-) Our current policies are corrupt. Back when technology moved slower and longer durations made more sense, the durations were shorter. If, as tech sped up and duration should have decreased, the durations had negligently been left alone, then you could say today's policies are "outdated." Instead, the durations were perversely increased.

Our policy, rather than being based on the false assumption that tech advances at a constant rate, seems to be based on the assumption that tech slows down! That's goofy.

Re:Patent and copyright duration

[renehollan]

Hmm, the paranoid in me thinks that the current corrupt policies extend artificial scarcity protections specifically in order to slow down progress, then their prtagonists can claim that the extended protections are justified because progress has slowed down.

Re:Patent and copyright duration

[civilizedINTENSITY]

I don't think corporate interests focus on the rate of technological progress nearly so much as the revenue rate.

This was recently done

[Anonymous Coward]

This message was posted to the Vorbis mailing list a few days ago:

From: Jernej Simoncic
Subject: OGG DirectShow implementation
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 23:31:49 +0100

Somebody made it possible to use DirectShow video codecs in OGG
framework... Now get ready for DivX OGG files :)

<http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q5045045/>

Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[sfgoth]

To deprive others of something that costs one nothing, and anyone could afford is not nice: its like throwing away perfectly good scraps of food that one can't eat or save when others are starving and it is no effort to give it away to them.

But it doesn't cost nothing to create, even in your utopian society where everyone's needs are met. It costs the time of the creator. And in your utopian society, time will be the most valuable commodity of all, since it will be the only limited resouce. (Limited for any single person, unless you add immortality to your list of pie-in-the-sky technological and social advances.)

Patents, and copyright, are ultimately about rewarding the time invested by the creator. They've been perverted to funnel most of those rewards to the creator's employer, which may or may not be fair. (I figure they're about as fair as those places that will buy your long term lottery winnings for a lump sum... minus a big service fee.)

As long as patents and copyrights are limited in duration, society is able to reward creators, and still acknowledge that intellectual property isn't real property by reclaiming it into the public domain. This is a very important (and apparently delicate) balance.

-pmb

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[renehollan]

Yes, of course, but what could you reward one with in a post-scarcity, or limited-scarcity society?

Time would cease to have value because there's nothing it could be traded for -- you wouldn't loose work time because you would not have to work.

The point is, having created a piece of software, there would be no justification for hoarding it because you couldn't get anything in exchange for it that you didn't already have.

Actually, that isn't quite true: you could trade it for things that are promised, but don't exist -- other software. But you wouldn't need to trade it for food, clothing, or shelter.

Artificial scarcity begets ongoing scarcity, and that is the argument for limiting it's duration.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[mav[LAG]]

Not to denigrate your otherwise excellent points but I'm tired of seeing the "Linux is only free if your time is worthless" phrase. Linux is free: free as in Free Software, free as in speech - you have the freedom to use, copy, modify and distribute it as long as you adhere to the terms of the GPL. "Linux is free" is itself a statement that needs to be qualified anyway - since the "free" really means Free Software.
The problem is most people say "Linux is free" and take it to mean that it's free as in zero price.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[LoseNotLooseGuy]

you wouldn't loose work time because you would not have to work.

I doubt that you would be capable of "letting loose or releasing" work time, as that would require the ability to manipulate time itself. However, it is possible that one could fail to efficiently exploit work time. I believe the word you were looking for is lose.

Congratulations! You have been participant #22 in my campaign to rid Slashdot of this error.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[renehollan]

Er, it was a typo, not an ignorant grammatical error: i.e. I did not intend to write "loose", but rather "lose". Still, good catch.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[LoseNotLooseGuy]

Very well--I am encouraged that your error was one of haste rather than of ignorance. Proceed with care in the future, lest you once again incur the wrath of LoseNotLooseGuy!

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[renehollan]

You will find, sadly, that my spelling does leave quite a bit to be desired. But I do try to avoid the more common grammatical errors. Also, while even the good people at Oxford have accepted split infinitives and dangling participles, "to boldly go" is still something "up with which I shall not put", to mix qotations.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that's exactly what he is saying: linux is zero-price-free if your time is worthless. Otherwise there is a non-zero-price-free-ness (i.e. cost) to it. One spends time creating software. This time is not refundable.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[civilizedINTENSITY]

What about services? A good massage can't be "replicated"... this applys to the live performance of any artform. When production costs for necessary goods goes to zero, services will still exist to be traded.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[renehollan]

... a trivially replicable massage machine, or does the personal touch matter that much?

Perhaps it does, and i didn't mean to suggest that a post-scarcity society was a practical possibility, but that a lesser-scarcity one was, and that artificial scarcities impede progress in that direction.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless...

[Anonymous Coward]

Time always has value. What they should have said was "Linux is cheap if your time is cheap" (which is relative--how much time would be consumed by using an alternative, or by doing without a computer?). People who hear "free" and think of money instead of freedom are pathetic.

Re:Artificial Scarcity - Part II

[Hoi Polloi]

While communism may lack a strong mechanism for meeting scarcities one of capitalism's biggest flaws will be it's tenancy for one organization to gain enough momentum to become a monopoly and create an artificial scarcity (Microsoft, Standard Oil). Capitalism's greatest asset is competition but when that is squelched by either buyouts or sheer size then the lack of competition becomes it's greatest flaw. For this reason alone government regulation is essential, not only to protect society but capitalism itself.

One has to ask what is the goal of the economic system we choose? Is it for it's own sake, to become a pseudo-living thing where we ask "Is this good for the economy?" or is it for the society who created it and we ask "How is the economy serving us?".

Allowing car manufacturers, energy suppliers, etc to run unregulated and having multidecade copywrite/patent terms might be great for that imaginary economic beast but for the actual living people who live within it would (and has in the past) badly fail society.

Look to the late 1800's for examples of this. Business was allowed to run virtually unregulated and it thrived, for the benefit of a handful. Working conditions were abysmal, pay poor, pollution was severe, food was poisonous (ref Pure Food and Drug Act), and the gap between rich and poor resembled the middle ages.

A balance has to be maintained between society's needs and keeping the economy it feeds off of healthy, not fat and bloated. Personally, I think it is better to be the one being fed than being the one fed upon.

[OT] Unisys: Begone!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use LZW for GIFs when the PNG image format is so much better? PNG has better compression, a better license, and more features! Okay, backward compatability is one thing, but at some point, we should drop the garbage... Especially when Unisys wants to be such a sissy about it.

Re:[OT] Unisys: Begone!

[yerricde]

Why use LZW for GIFs when the PNG image format is so much better? PNG has better compression, a better license, and more features!

Because PNG doesn't support animation, and unlike Mozilla, IE doesn't support MNG (the animated variant of PNG). To check for MNG support in your browser, head over to this page.

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, that would be against, Bob. Next question?

for 70 cents a day...

[Anonymous Coward]

you could instead save the life of a child.

Maybe they do, BUT

[DrSpin]

You have come adrift somewhere. This is an international standards committee. It is populated by people with an interest in the standard, just like SCSI, and the committees that tell you how big a foot or metre is. The companies who sponsor them do so to get the standard to meet their requirements. If their requirements includes fleecing implementors who don't belong to the group, it means the "standard" it is not a standard.

Feet and inches are very useful, but no one has ever suggested you should pay for the right to use them!

I have no objection to people being asked to pay to use patents to implement codecs, but there is no way that anything have to pay to USE will become a standard. Its a law of nature. The incentive to develop alternatives will guarantee non-compliance by major players.

You can rest assured that, if this is implemented, MPEG-4 will go the way of MCA.

why should i care

[DABANSHEE]

I downloaded it for free & as I did not have to sign an agreement I'm not beholden to any agreement.

& besides in this country only manufacturing or distributing pirated software is illegal, its not illegal to posess or use pirated software here.

Subscription model actually offers more profit?

[SilentChris]

Out of curiousity, I wonder if anyone has actually done a study to determine if the subscription model offers more profit than the "pay" model. I know cell phone providers have practically relied on this model exclusively - anyone wonder if more money could be made by just charging someone, say, $200 for the phone and unlimited usage?

Re:Artificial Scarcity - Part II

[renehollan]

Yet, as squalid as the conditions of the Industrial Revolution were, they still left the poor far better off, in absolute terms: half of London's poor children managed to live past the age of five, because they could no work for a living.

Whether that was wonderful or horrible really depends on one's perspective.

As to regulation being necessary to "bust monopolies", traditionally monopolies tend to die of their own weight within 15 years. If anything, governments do more to prop them up, if inadvertantly, than shut them down.

"You may not let others use this software"

[yerricde]

so nervous about not getting paid every time his software is run that he's got to specifically say that you can't even let other people run the software... Pretty paranoid I think.

This type of restriction isn't paranoid but common. Newer EULAs written by professional attorneys contain similar language: "You may not permit other persons to access or use this Software except under the terms of this License."

"No royalty" != free software

[yerricde]

In certain cases, no license fees may be required

OK, so that potentially makes LZW-writing software gratis, but gratis != free. As I stated above, the typical Unisys LZW license "does NOT permit copying [or] modification" and thus prohibits use of LZW technology in free software as defined by FSF or by the Debian social contract.

There are fewer than 17 months left in the U.S. patent on LZW, which expires no later than June 20, 2003 (filed + 20 years).

Re:"No royalty" != free software

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Linux. It is the best. I think that everybody should use Linux.

Closed standards - RIP

[be-fan]

Who care's what MPEG-4's license is? Hopefully, the subscription model will cause content providers to move to a more open standard.

Overview of the MPEG-4 standard

[benwaggoner]

A lot of folks seem to think that MPEG-4 is a video codec, which is a relatively small part of the overall technology.

This document is a good overview of what MPEG-4 is and what it's for

We haven't seen public demonstrations of many of the more exotic technologies in here yet, like the facial and 3D animation, text to speech, digital film projection, two-way real-time voice and videoconferencing, etcetera, but all those are part of MPEG-4. As is interactivity and wavelet still image compression.

Overall, we're talking about something riviling the complexity and importance of the Linux Standard Base.

Re:Overview of the MPEG-4 standard

[Anonymous Coward]

As has been typical with the MPEG standards, in the end the useful 20% (by number of pages) of the MPEG4 standard will be used and the rest will be discarded. Most likely in the case of MPEG4 it will be only the DCT-based video that everyone is familiar with.

The MPEG committee generates a lot of crap standards but the final users of the technology just ignore that part of the standards. Most of this is due to useless garbage that gets inserted by greedy companies who want to get into the patent pool, thanks to politicking at the meetings. The committee members recognized this long ago and started slicing and dicing the standards into "profiles" and so on so that the real trash could be left out of a compliant implementation. Otherwise all MPEG4 video decoders would also have to have facial animation, compositing, etc. More to the point you would have to PAY for using those.

With each further revision the amount of useful work coming out of the MPEG committee shrinks. With MPEG7 history may show that 0% of it is of any value. Their best work happened long ago with the MPEG2-era video and audio codecs but the good technologists responsible for that have by and large ended their involement with MPEG years ago. Now it's all about getting your company's patents in the next MPEG standard so you can get a raise and promotion from your employer.

Re:Artificial Scarcity - Part II

[Fjord]

traditionally monopolies tend to die of their own weight within 15 years

This really don't fint with my understanding of the history in this country. The rail companies in the 1800s had monopolies lasting well longer than this. Even if this is true, the problem with monopolies isn't the fact that they are monopolies, but that they can often use this status to control and hurt the marketplace. It's only in these cases where they have violated the law, and we shouldn't just let them do it because they'll be gone in less than 15 years, likely replaced by a new monopoly

on the flip side

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is forcing you to buy any of this crap.

I, for one, don't even own a DVD player.

QuickTime 5

[pinqkandi]

Remember that MPEG4 is based on QuickTime. It'd be possible to use QuickTime instead, which has no fees.

Also, this article is quite dated. Does anyone know if there are any updates to the proposed fee, that are known?

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, more proof that there should be a new moderation category: (-1, asshole).

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm sure the entire industry is going to stop releasing videos because of paying patents. That's why DVD has become so unpopular as a distribution medium.

OpenDivX is already dead...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised still so little people know about what happened.

A year ago Project Mayo started the OpenDivX project, claiming that it is an open source version of DivX.
They got a lot of free publicity and developers interest.
OpenDivX progressed well... until one day, Project Mayo suddenly closed the CVS and removed the source code.
They used OpenDivX and turned it into their own, commercial DivX 4 codec.
Yet they claim that DivX 4 is written from scratch, and that the DivX 4 released was planned from the beginning (totally false).

So in short: they deceived all those developers who were working on OpenDivX volunteerly.
OpenDivX no longer exists anymore.
However, for some reason (marketing?) Project Mayo still calls his website as "Home of OpenDivX", which is totally nonsense.

Now there's a fork of OpenDivX, called XviD: http://www.xvid.org/
It's progressing nicely, and in only a few months they've already replaced major parts of the old code with new GPL'ed code.
XviD is rated pretty high by Doom9.org's codec comparison (already better than DivX 3.11 SBC).

*not* FUD: DivX 4 is NOT OpenDivX!

[Anonymous Coward]

DivX 4 is a hijacked version of OpenDivX!

And yes, I mean that.
Project Mayo started the OpenDivX project, but one day they closed the CVS and removed the source code, and created their own, closed source DivX 4 codec based on the OpenDivX code.
So OpenDivX is dead now, thanks to Project Mayo.

If you want to know the entire story, you may want to dig through the forum archives @ Project Mayo.

OpenDivX is already dead and is NOT DivX4!

[Anonymous Coward]

There I go again...

OpenDivX is not DivX 4. OpenDivX development has been halted for months.
Project Mayo closed the CVS and removed the source code.
Then they created their own, closed source DivX 4 codec based on the OpenDivX code.
With other words: they deceived all the OpenDivX developers.

So please don't confuse OpenDivX with DivX 4.
OpenDivX is dead, DivX 4 is, in reality, a hijacked version of OpenDivX (yet nobody seems to care?)

Re:I'd settle for any Ogg-with-video implementatio

[psamuels]

On the other hand, as I understand it, the Ogg file format already supports having video streams embedded in it (i.e. it wouldn't have to be Tarkin-codec video). I've been ITCHING to see somebody add Ogg format support to a video encoder like ffmpeg (and I suspect MPlayer would have support for playback within days afterwards).

Indeed, ogg is just a container format - but think of how confusing that would be! If you show anyone a "*.ogg" file today, they assume it's Vorbis-coded audio. (Assuming they have any clue what it is at all, of course.) With your proposal, it could be any sort of multimedia file.

Not that there's anything wrong with a little confusion, but people would have to start learning to say "ogg vorbis file" instead of just "ogg file". (:

What, you mean like electric razors?

[Galvatron]

I believe there is a rather large electric razor market, which absolutely consists of selling an expensive razor with little upkeep cost.

MPEG-4 and other standards

[nbahi15]

If paying for a standard is the answer, could we rephrase the question? In a networked world where content has become effectively intangible, we need to have a societal rethink on life, the universe and intellectual property.

You didn't look hard enough

[Anonymous Coward]

The guys over at XviD have almost fully rewritten OpenDivX from scratch in GPL'ed code - it's now running faster than both DivX 4.12 and the old DivX 3.11 (MS-MPEG43), as well as creating smaller files with identical quantizers (a standard measure of motion estimation efficiency). MPEG4IP are working on a complete .MP4 file format implementation, also. -h

"The job of a business is to generate revenue."

[Chris Johnson]

"The job of a business is to generate revenue."

Do you run a business, 'foobar'? That sounds like a distressingly dotcomesque point of view to me- definitely not any sort of truly insightful business practice.

The RESULT of a business is (one hopes!) to generate revenue. The job of the business is providing a product or service, in essence doing some sort of work for people.

If you believe the job of a business is to generate revenue, I hope you're in a business that competes with mine ;)

Or patent prior art

[Anonymous Coward]

do a google search: Keywords image compression fractal, and a year, say 1980, oops. Lots of books in print at the time, now try 1970. Maybe I am missing something.

Re:I'd settle for any Ogg-with-video implementatio

[Trogre]

"Indeed, ogg is just a container format - but think of how confusing that would be! If you show anyone a "*.ogg" file today, they assume it's Vorbis-coded audio. (Assuming they have any clue what it is at all, of course.) With your proposal, it could be any sort of multimedia file."

Can you say Amiga IFF?

.
.

more exciting

[main()]

The most interesting project for me is xvid -

http://www.videocoding.de

... based on the opendivx code and GPL.

Doom9 have a comparison up here -

http://www.doom9.org/codecs.htm

Looks very promising.
Si

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Free for them to rip off"??? Overly broad patents are theft from the public. A "ripoff", if you will. And overly broad patents hold up for much longer than seconds, unless you happen to have a spare US$1,000,000 and a stomach for legal warfare. Any retard knows that. Except one, apparently.

An important url

[Anonymous Coward]

Click here

Another url

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this

What is wrong with you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, Did you get spanked by the coding demon from hell or what? It's not THAT easy to write an entirely new compression scheme that doesn't infringe on just about every available technique.
And if you want to rant and rave about the ominous infringer's, then you should consider what your doing when you listen to an Mp3.....
I understand why you'd be upset, but come on, If you truely belive you have a better way of doing things, Put your mouth where your paranoia is.

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anybothy in the U S of A ever realized that the 'utopistic' view of the future in Star Trek (no money, no property, etc) is *very* similar to communism? No? I guess people in the other nasty block (i.e. the former U S S of R) did not either. Good for us living outside these 2 blocks.

Nothing to see here...

[coolgeek]

This is the RAMBUS debacle all over again. Move along.