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Steve Jobs Hints At Theora Lawsuit
netcrawler writes "Steve Jobs' open letter on Flash has prompted someone at the Free Software Foundation Europe to ask him about his support of proprietary format H.264 over Theora. Jobs' pithy answer (email with headers) suggests Theora might infringe on existing patents and that 'a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now.' Does he know something we don't?"
Update: 05/01 00:38 GMT by T : Monty Montgomery of Xiph (the group behind Theora, as well as Ogg Vorbis, and more) provides a pointed, skeptical response to the implicit legal threat, below.
Monty writes: "Thomson Multimedia made their first veiled patent threats against
Vorbis almost ten years ago. MPEG-LA has been rumbling for the
past few years. Maybe this time it will actually come to
something, but it hasn't yet. I'll get worried when the lawyers advise
me to; i.e., not yet.
The MPEG-LA has insinuated for some time that it is impossible to build any video codec without infringing on at least some of their patents. That is, they assert they have a monopoly on all digital video compression technology, period, and it is illegal to even attempt to compete with them. Of course, they've been careful not to say quite exactly that.
If Jobs's email is genuine, this is a powerful public gaffe ('All video codecs are covered by patents.') He'd be confirming MPEG's assertion in plain language anyone can understand. It would only strengthen the pushback against software patents and add to Apple's increasing PR mess. Macbooks and iPads may be pretty sweet, but creative individuals don't really like to give their business to jackbooted thugs."
The MPEG-LA has insinuated for some time that it is impossible to build any video codec without infringing on at least some of their patents. That is, they assert they have a monopoly on all digital video compression technology, period, and it is illegal to even attempt to compete with them. Of course, they've been careful not to say quite exactly that.
If Jobs's email is genuine, this is a powerful public gaffe ('All video codecs are covered by patents.') He'd be confirming MPEG's assertion in plain language anyone can understand. It would only strengthen the pushback against software patents and add to Apple's increasing PR mess. Macbooks and iPads may be pretty sweet, but creative individuals don't really like to give their business to jackbooted thugs."
And now Apple drops all pretense of being the underdog and joins the ranks of the FUD purveyors.
They need to move fast, clean VP8 up and push it into Chrome, Android and youtube. Firefox and Opera will follow quickly and the attempt to lock web multimedia into propietary formats from Apple and Microsoft will fail.
This move from Apple and the Microsoft's statement about only supporting H.264 are a reaction to Google's purchase of VP8. Both Apple and Microsoft are terrified of Google. They are willing to give up quicktime and wmv as long as Google doesn't succeed in pushing an open source, patent free solution to web video.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Unlike other community things, it actually works and people will defend it, because they are using what they write themselves. Go after Open Source and you are basically dead, even when it may take you a long time dying. The time to play games of greed and power with software are over. This stuff is critical infrastructure, everybody needs it and it has to be both good quality and readily available. Open Source can do that. No other approach can. And this becomes harder and harder to ignore.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Just like Microsoft hasn't sued anybody over the supposed patent violations in Linux.
Possibly for similar reasons. FUD is cheaper and easier to generate than a lawsuit that won't get thrown out of court, and maybe even get you sanctioned.
Jobs is partly correct and part incorrect.
When he says "All video codecs are covered by patents" he is incorrect. Patents are limited by their claims and it is completely possible that there is a codec that does not fall under any patents. One such codec, the null codec that simply turns every input bit into itself, is probably free of any patents. Of course that would be a silly codec.
Just because something is open source does not mean that it does not infringe on one or more patents. A lot of folks confuse "copyright", which protects expression, with patent, which protects ideas. Under patent even an independent expression (an implementation), even an open source one, might impinge on a patented idea.
I suspect that pretty much everybody here, including myself, is of the belief that patents have been granted that are overbroad, that live too long, and that are simply reflective of prior or obvious practice that existed at or prior to the time of the patent filing. There is much that is broken in the patent system.
I can readily believe that ogg/theora might impinge on some patent in some country. Then again it might not. And whether that patent is itself valid is a question that would have to be answered once we knew what those putative patents were.
Since proving that something like ogg/theora doesn't infringe is like proving a negative, it is pretty hard to ever say that something is provably and undeniably free of patents.
But it would, in my opinion, be a good thing to have the matter fully debated in the context of a lawsuit. It would create a forum where the H.264 people (and other patent-codec people) could duke it out with the open source codec community in a place where we could get some definitive answers that ratchet and lock into place and thus give guidance to us in the future.
If Ogg/theora (or Google's VP8) violates a patent it is better to know it now so that we can work around the patent or obtain blanket community licenses.
My own guess is that if the Apple or the MPEG people engage in something more than sabre rattling that they will find the open source community a resourceful and dedicated opponent. Most particularly, the open source community is probably a very formidable opponent on the question of whether that patent on which the claim of infringement is based is itself valid.
Apple and the MPEG people could find that at the end of the battle that their own patents have fallen.
and MKV is better than MOV, AVI, and WMV...
Open formats and technology scare the crap out of them.
Granted MKV is just a container... it is still a far better container.
This makes no sense to me. Lets run with your thought experiment for a moment. Google release a blinding implementation of VP8 support in Chrome next week, then FF and Opera pick it up and release browser updates the week after. Somehow, content providers decide this is a great idea and they all jump on the VP8 band wagon. How does this hurt Apple? What's to stop Apple from adding it to OS X and the iPhone OS along side H.264 and supporting both. How does this give google some kind of competitive edge over Apple that would make Apple "terrified"? They both have full access to H.264 and related tools today, so nothing would change with adoption of VP8: the status quo is maintained. You're just trying to blind people with FUD.
Open source codecs hurt the Apple MPEG LA connection. ;)
Everybody loves the manual prices, codec prices, lock in cash flow feel and Theora "like" lock out.
Apple, Real, MS ect all seem to want a codec to lock in developers and milk them at some workflow level eg. color correction, production software ect.
The idea that some free blog could set you up with a "good enough" Linux/Mac/Win guide to shoot 720/1080 HD media, edit, encode it and give/broadcast/sell to the world is just wrong to Apple, MS ect.
You should be buying Apple or MS low end software, learning via student discounts and then walking in and buying $1000 to 10000+ worth of software to start and then think about itunes ect to sell your art.
Theora is the main threat to this. People have the creativity, low end HD cams, friends, a codec and the web.
Nothing is stopping them from bypassing Apple, Hollywood, MS ect. and going to the consumer except a good free codec for real world web "sharing".
You still need a CC system for payments
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I've often made the argument that Apple is far more evil than Microsoft in terms of pursuing vendor lock-in and coercively leveraging one product in order to drive sales of others to the detriment of real competition; the only thing that held Apple back was that it blew the marketing battle against Wintel a long time ago. Now that their fortunes are on the rise again, we can reasonably expect to see Apple flex its muscles in ways that are just as insidious as Microsoft during its rise to dominance. This being one of those occasions, I'll say it again: Apple was innocuous for so long because they simply didn't have the market share to abuse their customers (much).
Now, for the other half of this endless loop, I'll yield the floor and let the usual crowd of Mac fanboys explain to us how Apple's predatory stance towards Open Source is really insanely great. (And really, this should be a great occasion for nostalgia, since the release of the iPad gives Apple fans the first chance they've had in several years to argue that preemptive multitasking -- or, in this case, any multitasking -- is actually a good thing.)
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Nope. Porn went for VHS: it was more prosaic economics that did it for Betamax. Porn hasn't created the One Streaming Format yet, either. The porn industry went for HD-DVD over Bluray, an expensive mistake. The one thing they've done right is accepting and working with piracy to increase the size of the market.
[FUCK BETA]
Yes but the H.264 implementation only infringes on the patents of the holders of the H.264 patents.
How do you know?
I'll feed the troll....sorry.
Get over it guys he can have opinions just like you and me.
You don't quite understand the difference between "opinion" and "veiled threat"? Really? He's producing FUD while possibly trying to launch an abusive lawsuit based on software patents(which are patently evil themselves) on Theora basically because he sits on the license board for H.264.
This isn't an opinion. It's an open declaration of war on an NGO. If your brain weren't so apparently dependent on Apple's marketing trolls, I wouldn't understand how you could possibly be fine with that.
Unfortunately for Microsoft and Apple they actually believe that they control something. Currently there is no h.264 content out there for HTML5 video and Microsoft and Apple have no means to create it.
Unfortunately, Google controls YouTube and what YouTube chooses to use is what matters. Like it or lump it, they are the standard for internet video which is why Steve Jobs has had to answer some uncomfortable questions about why Apple is incompatible with YouTube, and not the other way around. Google have rather steered away from h.264 in recent weeks towards VP8 (the successor to Theora), largely because they know they'll be steering a car that could take any direction it likes in the coming years and it will be used by Apple at some point to try and shoot YouTube and Google down. Microsoft and Apple in particular have no content to be able to dictate what format people will use, so they have to resort to threats.
There is no difference if the threat is expressed as an opinion.
Those are two different things. An opinion is something like "I think they may get sued." A threat is "I will probably sue you."
An opinion is based on what your personal feelings at the time are. A threat is when you factually confront someone with the aim of informing them you will or may do bad things to them.
For example, me saying "I think you will get killed if you keep running into traffic like that." is my opinion. Me saying, "I will kill you." is a threat and is, in fact, illegal.
Stop me if I'm going to fast for you.
Dealing with your competitors FUD is the price of doing business
Excuse me, Glen Beck, but at what point is Theora trying to make money?
There used to be a course given at business schools called "business ethics". At some point, yes, they appear to have gone to the wayside more and more lately. They did that in the past too. Interesting you used the word "firing line".
Producing something for free as a service has never been a "business". Ever.
Apparently, the only thing you hold dear is your stock portfolio, up on your own personal "high horse"(you did start with "Linux dweebies and Microsoft apologists"). So any further discussion involving anything other then dollar signs would be as fruitless as describing Pythagorean theory to a gnat.
So, while I still have karma to burn, I feel absolutely entitled and justified in saying that people like you are everything that is wrong with humanity. Get off my fucking lawn.
It seems clear to me that Mr. Jobs has adopted Microsoft tactics. If someone threatens the profitability of your product - exterminate them. Jobs is planning to attack Theora with what amounts to a frivolous lawsuit. Even if he loses, it won't matter, because Theora will be driven into bankruptcy by the attack. It sounds just like 90s-era Microsoft.
And even if Theora survives, the battle will have left them so depleted that they'll longer be a competitor. However you look at it, Jobs accomplishes his goal.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Dude you forgot to include the joke as well.
I disagree. I thought it captured the essence of both Jobs and his followers rather well. Now, if you happen to be one of those followers, you probably found the post much less entertaining.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
We don't know for sure, but H.264 is in such wide use that any patent holder would either have asserted its patents or risk having its claims estopped by laches. (Laches is legalese for "you snooze, you lose.") Theora doesn't have this advantage.
You're legally prohibited from implementing H.264 except with permission of the people who own it. That's about as proprietary as something can possibly get.
If there was a codec with no documentation whatsoever, just binary-only implementations - that could still be more open than H.264, because the only obstacle to implementing it would be one's ability to reverse engineer the binaries, rather than one's ability to fight off the police.
Thanks.
Jobs is worse than Bill Gates.... granted, both are pretty much assholes, but Jobs, I feel, is even worse. He's just lucky to be the underdog so he can look like he's fighting the bad guy.
I don't even think (correct me if I'm wrong) that even Bill Gates stole from his #2.... Wozniak was the mind behind the Apple II and yet Steve Jobs cheats Wozniak out of money because he, Woz, was in the hospital at the time (if I have the story straight). What a great man to run a company. Hell, maybe he can be an "innovative" CEO by asking potential employees if they're virgins or not! Think Different!
Apple's R&D, marketing, and innovation is far better than Microsofts, and that's undoubtedly true. But the way they act, their soviet style secrecy, suing fans of theirs who leak material simply because they love Apple's hardware and software, disgusts me. They're worse than Microsoft and as bad as MS is, I'm almost glad they were the monopoly we got in the 80s and 90s and not Apple Computers.
Plus Apple gets it a bit easier, with them taking the backbone of their O/S from FreeBSD.
Unfortunately for Microsoft and Apple they actually believe that they control something. Currently there is no h.264 content out there for HTML5 video and Microsoft and Apple have no means to create it.
Tens of millions, hundreds of millions, of cell phones, web cams and camcorders generating H.264 video every minute of every day.
Two fantastically rich corporations with deep penetration into the consumer market space. Partnerships with global content providers and distribution networks.
Out of the game the both of them.
This is what On2 had to say before the merger:
What capabilities does H.264 add to the Adobe Flash Player?
Support of H.264 allows choice for consumers and enterprises, and gives users access to a broader range of content for the Flash Player. Many in the broadcast industry, including content providers for HD DVD/Blue Ray DVD, already encode in H.264. To enable the most efficient consumption of this content on the PC using the Flash Player, supporting H.264 makes sense, and allows users of the new player to avoid delays or other artifacts associated with a transcoding step for a better viewing experience. The already ubiquitous Flash Player has now extended its reach to play back H.264 content across all PC platforms, i.e., Windows, Mac and Linux. Support Center H.264 FAQ
Yeah, I heard about that and I got an iPad. But for some reason I can't get this stupid Linux to work. No wonder nobody uses Linux when it is so hard to use.