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!""

Comments

Kill the lawyers.

[h00manist]

Or just change the law. No more copyrights-patents.

Re:Kill the lawyers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto with copyright. When the United states was first formed as a free country copyright terms were essentially 28 years in length. In the 20th century these terms were increased substantially. Current terms are complicated but can easily be over 100 years in length. If copyright terms were rolled back to something reasonable such as 30 years then a lot of this so called illegal copying (downloading a Beatles song for example) would simply go away. Of course the recording industry wants to sell all this old music to me and my children. Think of a world where a large conglomerate owned the works of Shakespeare and/or Mozart. You'd have to pay their asking price to read or listen to those works. I find that scary and unfortunately that's the world our children will live in as they grow up in a culture of essentially perpetual copyright.

BTW: I don't agree with the subject line. Lawyers aren't the problem. Most of them just work for someone whose paying the money, just like the rest of us.

Re:Who reads the manual?

[bersl2]

And in a very screwy way, that's actually how the whole patent game is "supposed" to work, i.e., find some reasonable amount to charge for a license, then do it.

As with proprietary software and copyright, perfect enforcement of the law would be just as disastrous as not enforcing at all, so they only care if you're a big-enough fish, and if you're small and are going to get away with infringing, they'd rather you use their product (codecs covered by their patents) and increase the network effect than use somebody else's product (codecs not covered by their patents).

Re:Who reads the manual?

[Draek]

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.

The issue with h.264 has always been the US, and while I'd personally be happy to lock them out of the entire internet just for being a bunch of morons with an ass-backward legal system, companies would never stop trading with them so it'll never happen, and the more we interact with them the more we get screwed by their goddamned idiotic laws (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).

Re:Kumbaya the lawyers.

[Bob_Who]

Or just change the law. No more copyrights-patents.

...and no more war! and no more hunger! and no more cable and cell phone bills, and TOTO too!

Re:Who reads the manual?

[mfnickster]

And in a very screwy way, that's actually how the whole patent game is "supposed" to work, i.e., find some reasonable amount to charge for a license, then do it.

Yeah, but the difference is how it used to be that the manufacturer paid for a license, sold you the product (cost of license built-in), and you used it for whatever you wanted.

Nowadays, they want to control not just how the product is made and sold, but how it is USED. That's just plain too much power.

Re:Who reads the manual?

[mfnickster]

We can debate whether software should be patentable all day, but video codecs are a pretty clear example of a piece of software that are very expensive to develop and probably do need some kind of patent protection.

There's nothing wrong with reasonable patents on inventions, but the point is to allow the maker to profit from producing the invention itself - and they can license other manufacturers to make similar inventions based on the patented design.

The reason this is different is because they're treating it like selling a video recorded with their invention is the same as duplicating the invention itself. They're putting limitations on the product of the codec as though you were taking away part of their business by selling an equivalent codec. I'm sorry, but I can't see that as a legitimate use of patents.

Re:Who reads the manual?

[nicolas.kassis]

I really wish I hat mod points for you. This is exactly the issue I think. Why should distributing a video be the same a implementing the MPEG-LA codecs and be bound by patents? In the end only codec writters should be liable. This is as if using a patented wheel on your car required a license. Damn, car analogies suck.

Re:Who reads the manual?

[RAMMS EIN]

``Suffice it to say that h264 is a very sophisticated technology that is the product of many contributions by many people and companies over a long period of time. We can debate whether software should be patentable all day, but video codecs are a pretty clear example of a piece of software that are very expensive to develop and probably do need some kind of patent protection.''

I'm not so sure. I agree with you that a video codec like H.264 is a complex beast and that a lot of effort has gone into developing it, but does that make it a good idea to allow it to be patented? The same thing can be said about a lot of other software, and it seems to get developed just fine without patents - actually, many would argue it gets better the fewer patents there are. I can't think of any reason why the same wouldn't go for video codecs, and, indeed, several video codecs have been developed without the developers seeking to patent their inventions.

My personal point of view is that patents are problematic, both philosophically and practically. If we agree that we want to stimulate innovation, we should carefully evaluate what ways we have to accomplish that (current and also newly implementable). If patents turn out to really be the best possible way to stimulate innovation, I say let's stick with them. But the idea that something I think of may be covered by a patent, and that people are willing to assert those patents and sue me if I implement my idea, does not strike me as particularly conductive to innovation. Nor does the idea of having to grep the massive body of existing patents to check that my idea is not covered by any of them - especially if that means my costs go up if someone ends up bringing a successful claim against me after all.

Now, none of this means that I want to deny the creators of H.264 compensation for their efforts. I think H.264 is a great codec (it certainly seems to be one of the best codecs we have managed to come up with so far), and if they want people to pay for using it, I feel they should have that option. It is the fruit of their labor, after all. I just wonder if we can't come up with something better than the current patent system.

Re:Who reads the manual?

[StuartHankins]

Mod parent up. This is like a chainsaw manufacturer wanting a fee when you used a chainsaw to create art. The more I hear about their licensingpracticesthe less I like them. When I buy a camera I expect to be able the pictures to be used anywhere, anytime,for any reason without some bum coming out of the corner wanting a handout.Force the camera manufacturers to admit ON THE BOX that you're just purchasing the videocamera not the rights to use the results and see how quickly this gets straightened out.