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MPEG LA Extends H.264 Royalty-Free Period
Sir Homer writes "The MPEG LA has extended their royalty-free license (PDF) for 'Internet Video that is free to end users' until the end of 2016. This means webmasters who are registered MPEG LA licensees will not have to pay a royalty to stream H.264 video for the next six years. However the last patent in the H.264 portfolio expires in 2028, and the MPEG LA has not released what fees, if any, it will charge webmasters after this 'free trial' period is over."
Software patents? That's just absurd.
What a charming business model.
Oh well, I guess webmasters could have always used something else, right?
It's particularly nice that web masters are giving billing information 6 years early, so the company doesn't have to do much to track down the first round of suck^H^H^H^H customers to bill them for use.
There's nothing like getting your IP embedded deeply into everyones processes (with their complete acknowledgement of that fact) and then seeking rent against the cost of changing it.
I would expect that many companies don't have migration plans in place, I don't know, not my business.
Regards.
2010: DIVE! DIVE!
It's free, come and get it
2016: Up periscope. Look there's someone using it without paying the $799/Stream licensing fee.
-Arm MPEG LAwyer Torpedoes, FIRE!
looks like a ambush in slow-motion.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
You know, Theora video doesn't suck.
And even if it sucked, that wouldn't matter anyway :
most of video today consist of short snips on social websites of dancing cats filmed with a camera phone with crappy sensors and low quality MJPEG compression.
Arguing that Theora would need more bits to achieve the same quality as other codec is akin to arguing that Youtube should spend more bits to be better faithful to all the compression artifacts.
Theora opponents say that, for the same bits bandwidth, Theora video is blurrier. I'm saying that this blur won't hide any critical detail. It will only blur out the noise from the camera phone's crappy sensor and from the MJPEG'S 50% compression. I personally *can* live without them, if it is what it takes to have a open free/libre standard.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
H.265 has an estimated release of 2012. We're just trading on MPEG LA standard for another, but they may offer free licensing of it for a while as well. Personally, I don't think they should be able to charge content providers squat. They can sell users an encoder and charge for decoders in products, but what anyone does after that shouldn't be any business of the MPEG LA.
The first hit is free.
However this is a really plain-as-day example of how patent trolls are ruining business for everyone.
Please don't dilute the term "patent troll." It has a specific meaning and certainly doesn't apply to a patent pool packager like MPEG-LA. Everybody adopted h.264 with full knowledge that it was covered by several patents. This is certainly not a case of some junk firm patenting prior art and suing everybody. Nobody coerced anyone into using h.264; it just happened to actually be a good codec, so it was adopted by the industry. Nor is it "ruining business for everyone," so I'm not even sure what your point is. Your own anecdotal evidence doesn't lead to this conclusion.
Is it disappointing that we didn't have a comparable patent-free codec at the time when people started adopting h.264? Yeah, it's too bad. Unfortunately, no amount of sour grapes is going to change what happened.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
Well, hold on. How is performing a method using wires carrying electrons to carry a digital signal different from performing a method using wires carrying electrons to carry an analogue signal (e.g. an FM radio receiver)?
Should a mechanical device that performs a task be patentable but an integrated circuit that peforms the same task not be patentable?
But in any case, the point is that the patents involved have been granted in all sorts of jurisdictions that don't allow "software" patents. This is bad from the point of view of open-source projects that want to use H.264, for sure. But it seems to me that the fundamental idea of patenting the methods used in H.264 is sound, assuming the idea of patents is sound at all. This last is up for debate, of course.
You know, Theora video doesn't suck.
<sarcasm>
Oh boy oh boy, a comparison on xiph.org. I'm sure that this will be unbiased in any way. From the conclusion:
The primary challenge is that all files at these rates will have problems, so the reviewer is often forced to decide which of two entirely distinct flaws is worse. Sometimes people come to different conclusions. That said, I believe that the Theora+Vorbis results are substantially better than the YouTube 327kbit/sec. Several other people have expressed the same view to me, and I expect you'll also reach the same conclusion.
I'm totally convinced with such strong arguments. He's clearly gone his way to show flaws in both codecs, instead of just encoding a video with two codecs and letting the audience decide.
</sarcasm>
Sorry to say this, but This just isn't true. Ogg/Theora holds up quite competitively against H.264, demonstrably, TODAY. I don't know why this FUD gets spread around, but having the Internet move to H.264 as a "standard" is akin to shooting ourselves in the collective foot.
Ogg/Theora is here today, it's competitive with H.264, and isn't encumbered like H.264. The extension of "free" is just MPG group trying to submarine it into widespread use before they come in with terms. I swear, sometimes, we all live with the battered wife "Stockholm" syndrome. We've seen this before, and we're about to get it again.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.