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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."
$0.02/hr? How are they going to oversee that?
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)?
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
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.
I would like some milk from the milkman's wife's tits
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
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.
The world according to SComps
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
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?
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.
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?
I suppose this licensing descision will provide more impetus for the development of Ogg Tarkin.
DNA just wants to be free...
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...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
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.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
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."
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
You could've hired me.
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."
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...
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
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?
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.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
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.