More on MPEG4

ratajik writes: "Salon is running a story about how MPEG-LA (the alliance of companies in charge of licensing MPEG4) are planning on charging .25 cents for each copy they sell, and a .02 cent an hour "use fee" for anyone viewing MPEG4. They have a interesting slant on how this will make open-source alternatives much more attractive, and will likely kill off use of the MPEG4 standard in the long run."

Comments

Re:And how are they supposed to measure this?

[Kymermosst]

Ahh, BUT the car's gas mileage is BETTER on freeways than it is on city streets, and in fact, when idling in a traffic jam because the state did not keep their end of the bargain uses a LOT less gas.

Gas tax is more associated with "mileage" as opposed to "time." It even works out with your math, "you use a certain amount of gas per hour, and the size of the vehicle (roughly) determines how much gas you burn", making it fair for larger vehicles which use more gas putting their extra weight per mile.

If they charged for "time", then it would cost loads more. I am okay with paying for actual use, which is mileage driven on the surface of the road, which is covered by the gas tax. If my car is stopped, either by me, or by the fault of the state not adequately designing the road, there is no way I should have to pay it.

I can also support normal mileage-based toll roads for the same way... they are charging for miles driven on the road, not time spent.

Just imagine if they checked the time your car entered the freeway, and then when you got off, two hours later, they charged you for two hours of road use. Sounds okay? Okay, what if that trip, at legal speeds, only should have taken 30 minutes, but the freeway was backed up due to an accident or something?

I bet you'd be so friggin pissed off.

Now, how that relates to the article is, if they charged you for "viewing time", and you say... took a piss during the MPEG-4 movie you were watching, do they refund you? Or do they charge? What if you fall asleep? How do they measure whether you were actually *viewing*?

Re:Reactions from Xiph

[2nd Post!]

Hmmm, well, now I gotta wonder; what is he going to use to play/encode oggs on his G4?

Or is it gonna be a Linux cube, and does he plan to do all his ripping and encoding and playback on a PC?

I own a Mac, and haven't found much info. An iTunes plugin would be wonderful, or a small standalone player ala mpg123... iTunes ripping, using AppleScripts and oggenc, similar to the LAME encoder, would be awesome too, but as of 3 weeks ago, I couldn't get oggenc to compile under OS X :(

Pay-per-view, pay-per-use, micropayments, etc.

[Shiny Metal S.]

Buncha bullcrap. I'm tired of this crap that tries to wring money out of you for time spent doing something. Subscription software, pay-per-minute viewing/listening, and the like.

This pay-per-view crap won't work, for the same reason as other micropayment ideas. See The Case Against Micropayments, my emphasis:

(...)

Micropayment systems have not failed because of poor implementation; they have failed because they are a bad idea. Furthermore, since their weakness is systemic, they will continue to fail in the future.

Proponents of micropayments often argue that the real world demonstrates user acceptance: Micropayments are used in a number of household utilities such as electricity, gas, and most germanely telecom services like long distance.

These arguments run aground on the historical record. There have been a number of attempts to implement micropayments, and they have not caught on in even in a modest fashion - a partial list of floundering or failed systems includes FirstVirtual, Cybercoin, Millicent, Digicash, Internet Dollar, Pay2See, MicroMint and Cybercent. If there was going to be broad user support, we would have seen some glimmer of it by now.

Furthermore, businesses like the gas company and the phone company that use micropayments offline share one characteristic: They are all monopolies or cartels. In situations where there is real competition, providers are usually forced to drop "pay as you go" schemes in response to user preference, because if they don't, anyone who can offer flat-rate pricing becomes the market leader. (See sidebar: "Simplicity in pricing.")

Why have micropayments failed? There's a short answer and a long one. The short answer captures micropayment's fatal weakness; the long one just provides additional detail.

The Short Answer for Why Micropayments Fail

Users hate them.

(...)

Read the rest of this article, very good stuff. I won't ever use pay-per-view and any other micropayments. For the same reason as I prefer a flat fee for my DSL instead of pay-per-use fee for every email I send or every website I visit, etc.

Having Flashbacks of GIF

[ebresie]

Isn't this the whole thing that happen with the GIF format...someone started trying to make money off of it and then people started using jpeg, png,etc to overcome it.

Oh well, I guess in the end, they have to make money, but shouldn't it be up to the makers that implement the cost concerns and not the patent holders?