Slashdot Mirror
The MPEG-LA's Lock On Culture
jrepin writes in to recommend a piece by Eugenia from OSNews, which explores the depths of the MPEG-LA's lock on video. One part of the problem is that almost all video cameras, including ones that cost more than $12,000, declare in their manuals that they are for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes only. "We've all heard how the h.264 is rolled over on patents and royalties. Even with these facts, I kept supporting the best-performing 'delivery' codec in the market, which is h.264. 'Let the best win,' I kept thinking. But it wasn't until very recently when I was made aware that the problem is way deeper. No, my friends. It's not just a matter of just 'picking Theora' to export a video to Youtube and be clear of any litigation. MPEG-LA's trick runs way deeper!""
Or just change the law. No more copyrights-patents.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
"declare in their manuals that they are for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes only."
You don't always do everything that the manual tells you to, do you? I'm pretty sure that thousands of people a day use these cameras for commercial purposes without any problem (I know we use them at work). And I'm also pretty sure the MPEG-LA doesn't want to see the issue end up in court, because they'd probably lose.
Somehow I find it very unlikely that them suing someone for not paying this extra "license" for professional equipment usage would work out in their favor. I suppose it might work in certain US jurisdiction known for siding with the patent trolls but in the rest of the developed world any such lawsuit is bound to be thrown out.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Use the codecs, adopt the standards, and don't pay a red cent to anyone.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It was exactly these kinds of shenanigans that led to the development of PNG as a replacement for GIF in Web browsers. Hopefully the same thing happens here (broad acceptance of a new standard), whether the replacement is Theora or something better.
How does that work? If a camera says it's for non-commercial use only, do I need to sign a contract that says I won't use it for commercial films? What if I sell my camera to someone else? Does the contract require me to sign over that contract to the buyer? If I fail to do so, what can they do about the buyer using the camera for commercial purposes?
I recently scoffed at the 720p MJPEG codec used by my shiny new Pentax Optio camera.
Who knew that its ancient and inefficient CODEC is its saving grace when it comes to the topic of TFA.
But seriously, this is a case of Moores law making old stuff (mjpeg) work even for modern resolutions. I lacks the elegance of modern compression, but as long as the camera has fast/huge storage and fast raw processing power, we can use it and probably be happy with it too. The place where the fancy compression is always going to be key is distribution where the bandwidth is limited, be it spinning off a disk or streaming off the net.
It's almost like the open source community needs to get some type of entity going to accept patents. Then if an open source developer is sued, this entity uses its patent arsenal to go after the attacker. Also the open source devs need to start patenting everything. The patent game seems to be that everyone patents everything and no one can make anything without stepping on someone's patents. So by having enough patents you can't be sued, at best you can grant a patent license....
It sucks that you have to do that, but it seems like without your own patents you don't have a chance. If you start a company and one of the big guys doesn't like you cutting into their business, they can just sue you for patent infringement and as you have nothing either you'll have to pay or go out of business. But if there was an open source patent entity, either they wouldn't dare, or they would try to negotiate some type of license. And of course all licenses will be void if a company sues any open source developer.
At the end of the day the only shield for the open source community is really to amass enough patents from all the open source projects that no one even cares. It seems like the MPEG-LA group has enough patents that even alternate schemes will use some of them (probably due to over broad patents). But there must be some stuff that they left out. Then just make an open source implementation and patent that. And suddenly the MPEG-LA group is now sueable......
http://www.eff.org/ is IMHO a great place to begin dealing with old laws and new media and technology. They are like the ACLU for geeks, and aim to limit corporate or bureaucratic grip on internet and new media technologies. If the FCC or other government agency can't figure it out, then at least these very smart legal minds will watchdog these issues of the fine print: licensing, patents, privacy, fair use, etc.
Wikipedia did, but you knew that already. It isn't about Theora specifically. It's about closed media formats versus open media formats. It doesn't matter how often you troll or how hard you cry about people who understand the issue. Open formats are the only formats worthwhile pursuing for the web.
compared the Panasonic HPX-500 and the HPX-300.
500 is DVCPRO HD and has no such documentation in its manual.
300 is DVCPRO HD and AVC and contains the restriction on page 4.
Video is, IMO, the area where software patents are doing the most harm, and the problem won't be solved by the anti-troll projects, and it won't be solved by raising examination standards. H.264 is covered by 900 patents. The only way to make it patent free is to abolish software patents.
swpat.org is a publicly editable wiki, help welcome.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Or just change the law. No more copyrights-patents.
http://www.neowin.net/news/google-investing-in-theora-for-mobile-devices
http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2008/07/native-ogg-vorbis-and-theora-support-added-for-firefox-31/
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/167167
Please provide sources to backup your statements. Thanks.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Any chance you could take a stab at reading what you've written and see if it makes a lick of sense?
Perhaps in some corner of Lesser Crapville the slang "rolled over" and the other random combination of letters have some discernible meaning, but how about writing for the rest of humankind?
This article, as well as other discussions involving h264, make it sound as if MPEG-LA are the only ones having patents covering h264. Or that every company having such patents are part of the patent pool that MPEG-LA administers. This seems like quite an assumption. I haven't seen any thing that would support or even suggest that this is the case.
MPEG-LA has insinuated in the past that they own so many patents around mpeg2 and h.264, that is simply not possible to build a video codec that it doesn't infringe on their patents.
This is blatant rubbish. A full MPEG 1 implementation can be implemented since all patents relating to that have expired. A number of the MPEG2 patents have expired so it may be possible to extend this using those. So that gives at the very least some basic space conversion and final compression algorithms that can be used. Even a few of the MPEG 2 patents have expired. We're not looking at a particularly modern CODEC yet, but this should at least give us better quality than an MJPEG stream.
Thankfully we don't have software patents in Europe, but does that mean we won't suffer from this?
...transcode from one format to another. The article claims you are "already liable" if you do this - but here's the rub, unless you announce the camera you made the film with + what it was originally encoded with, who the hell is going to find out?
h.264 is open, in the sense that the word has been used for decades. What it is not is free.
Some times to get laws and attitudes changed, mass civil disobedience comes into play. Some laws get on the books that are just so freaking lame, stupid and unfair that they invite mass disobedience. An example would be alcohol prohibition, where so many people disobeyed the law willingly that eventually it was changed. Another example would be racial discrimination. Mass marches and protests and willingly breaking the law obviously and in public, inviting arrest or worse, eventually worked to a large degree.
This is a situation where something like a mass "commercial photoshoot" might work. Thousands of camera owners all get together in a planned protest, video each other, exchange copies of the videos with each other for one dollar, with a big "neener, neener, do your worse" pronouncement. Lather, rinse, repeat. Keep doing it until these software patents are eliminated as just being too stupid and unfair and harmful. They certainly are not advancing the useful arts and sciences, so they fail on that critical aspect of the law.
I mean, this is complete bullshit. Analogy, in ye olden days with mechanical typewriters, if you used brand X, that had some patents on it, you could be an amateur or commercial author according to some writing guide "license to type", but if you used brands Y or Z, that had some other patents, with another variant on the "license to type", you had to pay a fee to the typewriter manufacturers cartel with the Y or Z patents if you wanted to sell your work? Or your publisher had to pay or..what??? Boooolll sheeet.
Form a company (Limited Liability Corporation) to run the camera, which sells the footage for a nominal fee. LLC is on the hook for not getting a pro license, but sadly, they have no assets.
At least, that's how it's done in property development. A multi-lot developer in our town, has an LLC for each address in the package.
I don't recommend actually taking this advice, this is merely how the Big Boys do it, it still takes lawyers.
> I lacks the elegance of modern compression
MJPEG is elegant. It's just not efficient.
You are not enforced to use any codec at all. Nothing stops you from storing the video in RAW format. If you insist on having a method to achieve more storage time, you can choose to use a codec. But this remains a choice. No-one is forcing you. The fact that such camera's are not or hardly commercial available [for consumer prices] is a matter of the market, the majority chooses to accept license limitations at the advantage of more minutes of video storage.
So is the article saying their is no commercial purpose cameras out their, or the commercial ones just cost a lot more then $12,000, or just that some of the really expensive ones are for non commercial applications?
Also it seems really weird that a company would make a camera that is going to be used primarily for commercial purposes and then say in the manual that it is not allowed to be used for that.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Why is Slashdot so full of h264 trolls? Seriously, there's more of them here than Apple fanbois
I find the whole Theora thing amusing. You have a bunch of people trying to push for hardware support for a codec that pretty much no content producer (pirate or mainstream) uses. I can understand if you don't have the backing of mainstream producers, but if you can't even get a fraction of the pirates on your side, then you simply don't stand a chance.
Before you enter into a contract with the store to buy a device that is encumbered with H.264, where is the warning in 6in high BOLD text warning you that the patent trolls will be after you if you use the device for anything commercial?
Where is the warning so that people who shot the planes flying into the WTC that if they sold their footage the patent trolls would come a calling? Many of these were just tourists in the big Apple. They didn't go out that Tuesday morning with the aim of making money. Do you think that even if they knew the risks, they would have stopped shooting, put their camera away and said to the hijackers, I'm not taking any records of this because of some arcane law in the country you hate?
Nowhere. That is where.
Just like the EULA from microsoft etc, it is all snake oil (IMHO). The only different here is that the MPEG mafia have stronger snake oil than the rest. Buyer beware.
IMHO, post contract/sale restrictions that are put in force after you have legally purchased a device should be outlawed unless they are a Felony. AFAIK these cases are all civil suits and no jail time can be awarded.
This also should apply to the patent wars going on between the Mobile Phone companies. They buy stuff from a legal source. The license to use said stuff should be included in the price. There is no way any sane person would pay for a device and then have to pay umpteen other companies in separate contracts before they can legally use said device.
The US Legal System in this area should be consigned to history ASAP. There is no doubt that all this legal crap flying around is contributing to the downfall of the USA. But as all the legislators are Lawyers, they will never accept this in a million years.
There's 1135 patents worldwide that are essential to H.264, 1114 of which are active, 162 of which are active and in the US.
Here's the list: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf
The trick is probably to use a 20 (or maybe 25, to avoid old submarine patents) year old technology to get around it.
The law allows for monopolies and abuse of power. And it gives you your options. Follow the law - pay licenses for everything, or use legal but impractical alternatives. Break the law - ignore the law and deal with potential legal consequence. Agree with the law or campaign to change the law.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
If h.264 becomes THE web standard, then it should be striped of it's current royalty license and possibly be moved to the public domain for monopolistic reasons.
Now, I don't necessarily believe it should be moved to the public domain due to the fact that it has author and ownership, but having that much power of what is a standard is just wrong. Especially when the owner is trying to use it to dictate and harm competition the way they are.
When you allow the government to grant monopolies to private corporations.
It encourages them to try to control the market not by providing the best services to their consumers but instead by exploiting the patent systems to squash their competition and lock in consumers.
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
It might be nice to get the opinion of Canon on this one.
They advertise their new dSLR's as professional.
They have used the video mode in their dSLRs to tape an episode of House (5D I think) and the Rebel T2i commercial.
They have used it for commercial purposes, and they're clearly suggesting it is suitable and capable of professional video use.
I'd say it would become a horribly messy legal fight if they tried to enforce this restriction on individuals. At the very least it would entail accusations that the manufacturers like Canon misleading consumers on what their cameras can and should be used for.
Does this pass the reasonableness test?
It really doesn't seem like a reasonable thing to most people, which is a problem either way.
If this was posed to go to a jury it would be very risky.
1. They might lose the legal case.
2. They might win the legal case, which would be a PR, and potential legal disaster for their immediate customers.
Content creators don't create content for a specific content. You think a particular artist made music for apple's DRMed AAC format specifically?
Usually the media in question gets transformed into the target formats. Now that Google is pushing for support on this codec in their phones, webbrowsers and Mozilla & co etc. are doing the same, it is very likely content creators will make their media available in these forms. With large sites like wikipedia already moving to support Theora, it seems things are moving in motion to get widespread support.
I did a quick search on the only pirate site I know:
http://thepiratebay.org/search/ogg/0/99/200
http://thepiratebay.org/search/vorbis/0/99/200
http://thepiratebay.org/search/theora/0/99/200
Seems like they do to me *shrugs*.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Well, it has to start somewhere.
Producers won't release video in the format if nobody can play it. However, it's easy to add support for playing, especially in software, even if nobody ends up using it. If nobody tries to do anything, nothing will ever get done.
I'm curious what Canon would have to say on the subject of their Cameras being legally restricted from professional use.
I don't think this is a path any of the rights holders want to go down.
Who is smart enough to determine patent eligibility? And if anyone is smart enough to do so, would they be working for the patent office or gaming the system for their own benefit?
I'm not sure that anyone is smart enough to consistently draw the line between patentable or not. I think that is one of the problems that makes patents so difficult to manage to the point where they stifle innovation rather than encourage it.
With current technology, disclosure of patents is not such a big deal anymore. Reverse engineering is much easier with the tech we have now, and the idea can be communicated to the world very easily. It's gotten to the point where centralized design and innovation has become more expensive than networked collaboration. That makes patents obsolete. And without patents, manufacturers will be innovating just to stay ahead of their competition rather than resting on patents.
The Age of User Innovation is upon us.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Please provide sources to backup your statements. Thanks.
Google may be "investing" in Theora, but:
A search of Google Shopping for "H.264 camcorder" will return 3,500 hits.
Consumer products, mostly. Ready to ship to the one-click shopper. Priced from $150-$5000.
A Google Image search for "H.264 video," returns 1.5 million hits, an Image search for "H.264 codec," 1.8 million. (Rounded)
46-47 pages, all relevant.
An Image search for "Theora video," 700, an Image search for "Theora codec," 29,000.
In the 811 AVC/H.264 licensees,, I see the Asian - the global - giants in industrial and consumer tech. Fujitsu. Hitachi. Mitsubishi. Panasonic. Samsung. Sony. Toshiba. Yamaha...
Not dozens of names the geek should recognize. Hundreds.
Critical mass.
I don't really get your point? You provided a bunch of data with no real 'argument'. I'm going to have to take a guess at what you were trying to argue here...
H.264 has had a lot of commercial backing, Theora has only had recent backing and not with such a substantial amount so obviously there is going to be more stuff for H.264 at the moment.
It does not mean that Theora will not become a big contender, especially with the fact it's licensing is far more attractive than H.264's? I honestly don't know, but with big technology companies like Google and Nokia getting behind it, the second world's most popular browser supporting it - Firefox and then popular websites like Wikipedia using it...
It does not seem to be like much of a loser since it's presence appears to be growing more and more, not shrinking.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
It's a bait and switch, they won't do anything right now because they want to get h.264 as widespread as possible.
Once people are well and truly locked in, thats when they will screw everyone...
The professional using consumer tech in production work knows the rules.
For him the commercial license is a non-issue. Part of the cost of doing business.
It's really quite impossible to imagine how H.264 could get much deeper penetration than it has right now:
List of video services using H.264/MPEG-4 AVC,
H.264
Google products. 33,000 hits. (Rounded)
You might want to RTFA.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
That would be the worst situation. Everyone would be paying for use they were not getting. If anything that would allow the people who produce the licensed product to tax anyone who buys a down stream product regardless of intended use. Like the tax on CDs in some countries, everyone pays regardless of use. How is that fair?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Hear, Here!
With disk space the way it is, (i.e. *cheap*) I don't know why people would even want a camera that records in a format that uses interframe compression.
I got a camera not long ago that still used DV tapes for this very reason: hdd and dvd all seemed to use codecs that would make editing frustrating, even though they had higher byte-capacity (and therefore vastly higher storage capacity due to the higher compression...)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
1) it is a software patent
2) there is no EULA when you use your camera
3) I am pretty sure it is non valid, in europe, to impose a contract/EULA in an item which is only viewable AFTER the sale.
That said, there might be problem for the US.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Defending an infringment lawsuit would be very expensive. On the other hand, rifle ammunition is quite cheap.
How many people are on the MPEG-LA board?
This sig left unintentionally blank.
If license issues are that important, wait for the 1080p USB 3 webcams to come out. Stream the uncompressed video onto hard drive, and compress it later. We have 2 TB hard drives for cripes' sake. That should hold at least 1 hour's worth of USB 3 data.
If nobody tries to do anything, nothing will ever get done.
You are my hero. That quote should be posted right above the "Preview" button for every comment.
http://outcampaign.org/
In patents there is the concept of "exhaustion" which is similar to the "First Sale" doctrine of Copyright. Essentially, the patent holders can't come after you for infringing on their patents embodied in a product which has licensed those patents. i.e. If Quanta buys chips from Intel which contain patented technology that Intel licensed from LG, then LG can't go after Quanta for infringement of the aforementioned patents in the chips they get from Intel.
It's great and all that I'm now aware of yet another manner in which I may or may not be intentionally or unintentionally flouting the law, but can we get a more realistic list of cameras that don't cause you to infringe on patents by their mere everyday use? I know the author listed a couple in the article, but $6k-12k is not even in my realm of possibility for purchasing transportation, much less photographic equipment.
The pirate bay unfortunately doesn't list the number of hits. If you try btjunkie.org you'll find
Theora: 49
x264: 27.469
I won't list Ogg and Vorbis, because that returns mostly audio and interestingly enough some MKV files with H.264 video and Vorbis audio.
Basically the "scene" mainly uses Xvid (MPEG-4 ASP) for standard definition content and H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) encoded with x264 for high definition content.
Personal opinion: Vorbis is great, the other audio codecs (CELT, FLAC, Speex,...) are also great, Ogg as a container format is inconvenient since it lacks the flexibility of and the tools available for MKV and Theora, as of the official release 1.1, is crap. The encoder is slow, has some bugs that shouldn't be in a release version (drops frames), produces low quality compared to what is possible with Theora the specification and the source code is a mess.
It's fair because everyone pays :P
It looks, to me, like the only way to deal with this would be for the courts to declare the contract unreasonably broad.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Please provide sources to backup your statements. Thanks.
Optical media, or will a floppy do?
Do agree with you.
MJPEG, which is simply each frame encoded as a JPEG, is an option for content origination. This is the base format of the Internet Archive's video. If you're going into editing, it has advantages, since there's no inter-frame compression - each frame stands alone.
It looks like the base patents on MP3 run out in 2012, so that problem is almost over. The "GIF patent" ran out years ago. It may be possible to define an MPEG 4 baseline which doesn't have some of the bells and whistles but is based entirely on technology for which the patents have run out. This was looked into around 2001, unsuccessfully, but many of the earlier patents have run out since then.
It seems to me that the intent of the licensing terms is to prevent companies from substituting a consumer model for a professional one that costs 10x to 100x as much. Consumer video quality is getting so good that camera companies need to legally require media producers to use the pro product because very soon there will be no other good reason why they should waste their money on it.
I never stated h264 didn't have more, only showed the poster who replied to me initially that his point about Theora not having a chance because a fraction of pirates aren't using it is apparently wrong since it appears there is a fraction.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Something over the hyper text transfer protocol would be best. If you could provide a uniform resource locator to it, that would be grand.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Shades of Edison and the Motion Picture Patents Company shenanigans which compelled the "independents" to up sticks and move out to Hollywood so they could make pictures
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
It is a little known fact that about 20 years ago I pantented bit of technology that is essential for the operation of all modern vehicles, and as part of the licensing terms to the manufacturers they all had to include a similar EULA for every car sold. I don't usually like to enforce it, especially on the little guys, but just so you know: Anyone who drives a car to work, and makes over $100,000 per year has to give me about 10% of their income anually.
Maybe the hardware manufacturers should disclose their entire agreement with the MPEG-LA in the manual. Most people will ignore it, but they can't claim complete ignorance of it.
Hell you can't even get the licencing terms from their website, only a summary:
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf
So sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I was just mildly amused at your use of the verb "backup", rather than the expression "back up". One being "making a safe copy of" and the other "putting your sources where your mouth is".
no worries; not even sure it's funny enough to mention.
You provided a bunch of data with no real 'argument'. I'm going to have to take a guess at what you were trying to argue here. H.264 has had a lot of commercial backing, Theora has only had recent backing and not with such a substantial amount so obviously there is going to be more stuff for H.264 at the moment. It does not mean that Theora will not become a big contender, especially with the fact it's licensing is far more attractive than H.264's? I honestly don't know, but with big technology companies like Google and Nokia getting behind it...
H.264 licensors include Apple, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Philips, LG, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, NTT, Panasonic, Sharp, Siemans, Sony, Samsung and Toshiba.
That's the brand name hardware line-up at the starting-gate - and all have product in stores.
Google is big. Nokia is big. But not as big as this.
Then you look at all the familiar names on the list of 811 licensees... In media production. OEM manufacturing. Retail distribution. H.264 licensing is pocket change to these mega-corporations. H.264 hardware off-the-shelf.
It would take years - more likely a full ten years - to turn this around. I don't think Theora has that much time.
Lawyers might not be the problem, but the problems are lawyers. Think about it.
Who comes up with the bizarre contracts, cowardly EULAs, and wacky tort ideas? Lawyers. Who decides that this nonsense is valid law? Usually judges, almost all of whom are lawyers. Who writes the law in the first place? Politicians, a great many of whom are lawyers. Who decides who is eligible to run? Sometimes lawyers (with the implicit threat of court battles).
There are many great lawyers out there, fighting for freedom and justice on the small (but very meaningful) scale. We need more of such people. Regardless, there is a particular variety that is causing mayhem in our political system. We really need to find a way to --err... dissuade them.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Or what if you bought the camera used without a manual. When exactly did you enter into an agreement with them?
What if you are too young to enter into an agreement with them? What if the camera is owned by multiple parties
some of whom live outside the United States?
Why does this sound so familiar?. And people wonder why I boycott Apple and Microsoft. As if their inferior products weren't reason enough.
Nathan's blog
Outside the US there are no software patents, therefore h.264 can't have any patent over it, therefore MPEG-LA can't threaten anybody for anything.
What makes you think these are software patents? A lot of the devices involve hardware patents.
The issue with h.264 has always been the US,
Many of the patents are held by European and Japanese corporations and research labs.
(in most of the world copyright lasts for 50 years, for instance, but try finding a book online before its US life+90 copyright expiration date).
Wrong. The Berne conventions (as in Berne, Europe) created much of the current insanity, eliminating the requirements for registration and copyright notices, recognizing so-called "moral rights", and creating a lot of other restrictions. Berne required life + 50 years as the minmum term from all signatories. Europeans started copyright insanity and threw their imperialist weights around to impose it on the US and other nations. The US and the UK tried to resist for decades, but eventually just gave in. Today, many publishers and media organizations behind the current push are European. The patent situation is similar: the insanity started in Europe in the 19th century, was imposed on the rest of the world, and Europeans play the political eand economic game really well, benefitting greatly while blaming the US. And software patents are far from dead in Europe. either.
This is at least as much a European problem as it is an American one. But European politicians are masters at shifting the blame.
all you little commies who want to abolish patents, what you are really on about is abolishing private property.
refusing people the right to own the output of their creativity is slavery. why dont some of the budding che guevaras on this forum go home to cuba?
When, in the American system, you find a case of class warfare that is so deep in the rabbit hole of the law that nothing can make it right without just burning everything down, we need to turn to our second-to-last, greatest defense: the jury system. Educate the people. They have the authority, as was found out under less pleasant circumstances, to effectively invalidate every law. It is slow, hard and expensive, in general. But not as slow, hard and expensive as eliminating patents altogether or killing all the lawyers. In the end, it is a relief valve against armed revolution.
So yeah, use is infringement, and you need a license. I agree that the expectation is that the manufacturer has provided you with this license, but it seems in this case the manufacturers have cheaped out and only pony up for a non-commercial license, expecting the user to purchase a commercial license if one is needed.
"Uh... yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?" --Pinky
You cannot have a legal agreement without a few things,like signatures, lawyers present (possibly), signed witnesses you know A CONTRACT. You can't sell someone a camera and somewhere in the manual pretend that you can list a huge contract. This is the most stupid thing I have ever heard of and this moron should not write tech. I sell cameras including the 7D/5DMII and there is no fucking way I can people you can't use this to make a music video/movie to sell. 1000's of people are every day. Or did this article miss that little fact?! If I was mislead by this guys stupid article you would think there is some validity to putting a EULA in a manual. REALLY! I should start selling a camera that has a EULA in the manual and say you owe me 1$ per photo. YEA that's waaay enforceable in court! What a waste of reading. There is no fucking contract when you buy a camera, Other than the two week return (with conditions) from my store at least. Lemmi call my Canon rep on Monday so we can have a good laugh at this tech circle jerk. PS I know it's in the manual I looked it up however this is just an over site and is in no way valid or close to enforceable in court. You can't sell someone a camera and tell them they cannot sell the pics they take with them that's bloody idiotic.
Every image is accessible as a stand-alone entity, so it's a whole
lot easier to do any sort of trick-play.
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf
look on page 2 for the chart...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"The AVC Patent Portfolio License is divided into two principal parts (see Diagram): (a)
sublicenses for encoder and decoder manufacturers granting the right to manufacture and
sell and a limited right only for personal consumer use by or between end users (such as
in connection with a video teleconference or mobile messaging) but not other uses (left
half of the Diagram)2, and (b) sublicenses for video content or service providers granting
them the right to use decoders and encoders for other uses of AVC video (right half of the
Diagram)3."
source
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Why has no one mentioned the possibility of home-brew firm-ware? Most of these companies have developer kits, and those that do not... well... it didn't stop anyone from inventing firmware for the modem and router.
If a community gets together using a standard developer kit for a brand, it is only a matter of months before they have fully functional software that records directly into your choice of open source video format. And if community developers can do it, the camera companies can do it better. By no means are we "trapped," if this licensing issue becomes a major problem, a solution will be made.
Another added benefit of the MJPEG codec is that image quality is actually better, by including the entire image in every frame and not throwing information away with motion prediction. Makes editing easier also, not having to worry about key frames.
Yes this obviously used more data.
Simple question. If it's a European insanity how come when one of these stories come out everyone rolls their eyes and says "those crazy Americans - lucky we don't have stupid laws like that?"
It is a home grown cancer and it can be defeated at home.
You are blaming the efforts to stop such novels as "Three Men in a Boat" from selling two million copies in the USA without the British author getting a penny on all of the things that grew out of it in the USA later. Sonny Bono and lawyers at Disney had a vast amount more to do with the strange US copyright laws than the Berne conventions.
The very annoying thing is the USA is exporting this cancer as conditions on trade deals, but for the moment it almost purely a US monstrosity.
Flash, Google, VP8, and the future of internet video.
main() {1;}
That's my point. The pirates aren't using it. There are some people uploading a few dozen files that going by the seeder count no one is interested in. There isn't a single pirate group that encodes with Theora.
> I'd still like to see some examples of this that aren't in east texas, or even better, outside the land of lawsuits (AKA the USA).
Just so you know, patent law is a matter for federal courts (not state courts), so anyone in the USA can sue in East Texas. There were some slight changes to the law to give people a little more leeway in getting out of EDT if absolutely no one has a connection there, but that just made people open up branch offices in town.
In short, anyone in the US can file their lawsuit there if they want to.
Actually we've seen this before where a company tried to slide their patented technology into the standards system and then turn around and profit from it. Remember RAMBUS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus)? I see this as exactly the same situation.
I also have real questions about whether one can patent a mathematical function which is the fundamental basis of a codec. Or are we patenting the utility of that function to suit a particular purpose? If the latter, can I go through The Art of Computure Programming, find novel use cases for what is described therein (and combinations, oh yes, combinations!) and patent those? (In truth I have encountered patent claims which were straight out of those volumes.) Where do you draw the line. The codec is simple. The implementation may be difficult especially in the face of a multiplicity of operating environments that it must deal with. Frankly this situation is one that the patent system is not equipped to deal with, IMNSHO.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
MPEG and Co. I always thought they were the good guys cause they were not shoving the equivalent of Microsoft's Naziware down my neck when ever I used it.
.
Now it seems to me that perhaps in a commercial sense, MPEG and Co., they ought to have the right to protect their patents, of the product it's self performing it's function, and NOT from who uses it and why.
.
Still cunts will be cunts and their Nazi Licensing shows it.
.
Fuck them - Dump them, their "licensed products" and their bullshit; and go with better alternatives.
.
Or "It's MY video, I will film what I want, and show it to whom I want, when and where I want" - fucking arseholes.
The point was not to say the majority were using it, only to show there was a fraction using it and I did so.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
This way, MPEG-LA caches in
Gone are the days when someone who knows the word "cache" can be trusted not to use it incorrectly.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
You are getting paid. You are a professional because you are getting paid...
Even a commercial....
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Of course, the other reason these digital still cameras do MJPEG video -- they already have that JPEG encoder. No extra computation needed, only a little extra code memory for the video mode.
And they're usually dropping it into a Quicktime wrapper... there could still be Quicktime patents active. At least until 2011 or so.
-Dave Haynie