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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."
He doesn't know anything that we don't already know.
However, he, on the other hand, thinks different. (TM).
Apple's new slogan: "There's a patent for that."
zosxavius photography
The apple is the best computer. I don't care who he sues, it is for a good reason no doubt. Stop stealing from apple you dirty hippies.
Microsoft conspicuously said today that IE9 will only support H.264 for HTML5 video. Add in Apple and you have the two largest consumer OS vendors backing the same codec. I suspect they do know something the public doesn't, even if they themselves will not be a party to this patent challenge.
Theora will just end up becoming collateral damage in the coming war all of the large vendors are about to wage with Google. Follow the breadcrumbs and that's where you eventually end up.
And here comes Apple apologists. You know what, fuck you, fuck steve jobs and fuck my karma.
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."
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.
I'm ready to go "all-in" with a bet that says the second Google releases the source to VP8, every company with patents on video compression will begin examining VP8 source code for patents. They have their legal teams and engineers ramped up to start digging ASAP and I do believe that's what Steve Jobs means.
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.
Steve jobs has NEVER been a nice fellow. :)
Steve Jobs walks into a coffee shop and finds a college-aged student drinking chai, busily typing away on a laptop in front of him on the table.
"Hey, kid, what's up?" Steve Jobs flashes a big smile, and extends his warm, friendly paw.
The college kid looks up while sipping on his drink, and for a moment does not register his messiah, until he does a double take and spills chai down his shirt.
"Wow! It's really Steve Jobs! I hope you heard my prayer last night!"
"Um, yeah..." Jobs says, affirming the question with a hint of confusion. "Look, I'll give you an iPod, signed with my name on it, if you give me your liver."
College student's eyes widen. He can barely contain his excitement, and he manages to mutter a weak "yes" before passing out from his sheer spiritual bliss.
The next day, Steve Jobs woke up for the first time in a long time, ages in fact, free from jaundice and a new hankering for a few shots of Malibu, and was last seen leaving a box that said "i-p-p-p-p-p-pod" on a grave in a cemetery.
I'm about 99% sure that Apple does, indeed, own H.264 patents.
The various *LAs are licensing consortiums. They don't own the patents they license, they're authorized to license them (and then only in limited ways) by the patent holders.
Steve Jobs would indeed know if there was a group assembling a patent pool to "go after" Theora. And from what I've read of Xiph's attitudes to patents, I suspect they have a case. It'll be interesting to see.
(Maybe this'll help Dirac, which in many ways is a more promising codec, and has the advantage that the BBC did quite a bit of work on making it "Free")
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
Here's the perspective of Greg Maxwell from Xiph on Steve Jobs' claims:
http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2010-April/003769.html
I've always been a PC at heart.
Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.
I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.
Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer.. In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.
As I walk among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.
Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and sparkly white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.
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.
Oh wow they have some open source stuff, just like Microsoft, they're totally absolved of all those entirely unrelated things I talked about in my post, oh how wrong I was about them, they're total saints because the core of their OSes and some other doodads are open source.
If robots running OSS destroy humanity I will rejoice, for our death would be righteous.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now
(emphasis mine)
Google recently acquired On2 and plans to Open Source the VP8 codec.
"..."
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.
Theora (or rather the VP3 codec) is older than H.264 by about 3 years.
As a Theora developer, this is news to me. Would you mind mentioning who this buddy is so I can go back through my mail queue and verify that you're just making shit up?
I know you're lying, as regardless of what our response would have been it most certainly would _not_ have been, "ssshhh don't tell anyone".