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DOJ Anti-trust Investigation of MPEG-LA
thomst writes "The Wall Street Journal's Thomas Catan reports that the Department of Justice has launched an anti-trust investigation of MPEG-LA's purported efforts to prevent Google's VP8 codec from widespread adoption. According to the article, the California Stare Attorney General's office is also investigating MPEG-LA for possible restraint of trade practices."
HaHa
Anti-competitive? No way!
This is the Google Department of Justice (beta). Unfortunately, they'll probably get bored in a couple months and move on to something shinier.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This one affects other corporations though, not us citizen scrubs, so its automatically higher importance.
Of all the abusive monopolies they choose to go after, this is who they pick?
It's hard to think of a more clear cut example of supposed business rivals getting together to agree and enforce a common price. To top that off with efforts to shoot down VP8 really takes the biscuit. Most cartels are more subtle than this (De Beers and OPEC excepted, but they're beyond the DOJ's reach).
I agree, in this case they should have gone straight for the root cause, Microsoft and Apple.
Their attempt at strangling VP8 by trying to build a pool of patent to sue the one owning it are by far the worst case of anticompetitive behavior i have seen since the browser wars.
HTTP/1.1 400
When the parties come to a quiet settlement out of the public eye, I can't wait for Thomas Catan's headline: "Settlers of Catan"
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Of all the abusive monopolies they choose to go after, this is who they pick?
They've got to start small and work their way up (one can hope). After all, they're really out of practice - the big cartels and abusive monpopolies would eat the DoJ for breakfast.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The US Department of Justice is going after the International Oraganisation for Standardization (ISO)'s Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Licensing Agency (LA)?
Am I the only person who sees a problem here?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I agree, in this case they should have gone straight for the root cause, Microsoft and Apple.
Their attempt at strangling VP8 by trying to build a pool of patent to sue the one owning it are by far the worst case of anticompetitive behavior i have seen since the browser wars.
Bullshit. Neither company stands to make much money from their MPEG-LA patents. Nor do they stand to gain much from "lock-in," since they are, after all, blindly licensing away these patents in a pool.
I agree, in this case they should have gone straight for the root cause, Microsoft and Apple.
Microsoft and Apple are two of the largest members of the MPEG-LA. They are the two best-known by the public. Going after MPEG-LA very much is going after Microsoft and Apple, but it's also going after all the other criminals involved in this extortion racket at the same time. I consider that to be positive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Now can someone in government put two and two together and see the absurd situation software patents has caused? VP8 is supposed to be patent-free but everyone on the H264 side is calling it patent-encumbered anyway. The mere existence of patent trolls should be reason enough to get rid of the idea. You should be able to patent implementations, not ideas.
The point of software patents was to protect innovation. This should be a clear example that it is not, as VP8's adoption is supposedly slow because of the risk of violating other patents whose owners won't come out of the woodwork until VP8 has enough market share to make a lawsuit nicely profitable. The whole thing is patently ridiculous.
The sheer amount of patent lawsuits and now that even Google and Apple are teaming up against a troll is very telling. Software patents are not serving their intended purpose and it is obvious because no one wants to adopt VP8 because of the unknown threat. This is the stifling of innovation and is not protecting the patents of the 10 companies that may own patents to VP8 because no one wants to use them so they just become dead weight. What good is an idea if it can't be used?
Software is a fickle thing. Your idea may have also been invented by someone and you just didn't patent it. This is the problem with software patents. The patents themselves can be very vague and cover a whole host of ideas. If the patent office has to pass more patents just to get rid of a backlog, perhaps it isn't the fault of the filers but the fault of the law.
I thought that the DOJ anti-trust division had all been frozen in carbonite. Now, it appears that they are awake and may actually do some good. When they are done with this, there is a certain search engine they might want to look at...
And if they truly believe that, their free to sue Google and/or all users of VP8 for patent infringement. What they're not allowed to do (and what spurred this investigation) is to spread FUD about patent infringement without filing any sort of lawsuit in and effort to prevent adoption of a competitors product without the requirement of actually proving infringement. Believe it or not, you probably don't know more about monopoly law than the DOJ.
Listen, I've been around the block a few times, so to speak. I know that the DoJ is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to matters like investigating monopolies. The fact of the matter is, is that the American people like monopolies and huge conglomerates dominating their consumerist lives. Hell, many Americans would actually prefer these huge corporations and trusts to rule all aspects of their lives, from morning till night. When our lives revolve around feeding our minds with info-tainment and games and gossip, what matters most is that the supply of those things never runs out. The monopolies and conglomerates that are out there are a necessity, like it or not. We've entered a new era in human society, especially in the "Western", technologica world.
>>>What they're not allowed to do (and what spurred this investigation) is to spread FUD about patent infringement
Really???
Which law prevent a corporation from doing that? Quote it to me.
Please and thank you.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
basically they are a bunch of parasite lawyers living off software patents
But that still doesn't necessarily make them "trolls" in the sense of nonpracticing entities. A lot of MPEG-LA members sell copies of encoders that they have developed. I'd bet a lot of MPEG-LA members are also in MPEG itself.
The point is to give their holders a preference. True, it was intended for individuals who needs a while to ramp an idea up to a business, not multinational corporate conglomerates who house thousands like a weapons stockpile. Perhaps, the answer is that we do not afford corporations the same rights as individuals. The Supreme Court recently ruled to that effect.
I told you Google was working with the government! This just proves it.
--- Glenn Beck
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
This seems like a reasonable statement, at first, but then I wondered what makes video codecs so special. I mean, why single them out, when almost anything has at least the possibility of infringing on a patent? I think that's pretty much the point of having a patent pool, these days. If someone claims that you're infringing on their patents, you can search through your collection of thousands of patents, in order to find something that they are infringing upon.
Now, I'm not necessarily an anarchist wanting to abolish intellectual property, but I do believe that patents have become an embarrassing travesty, thanks to the past fifteen or twenty years' worth of crappy patents (which are just now beginning to fall out of protection). When you can't even write an open video codec without industry insiders calling into question your very algorithms, there's something wrong, be it with the insiders (spreading FUD in order to kill the competition) or the laws (which have made competition impossible).
Anyways, I'm sure a hundred other people will say the same thing, since this is Slashdot, and we looove to complain about intellectual property laws, so I'll add a little something extra: what I've thought about as a replacement for our current system. How's this sound?
Something being international doesn't mean it is outside of the law of a given country. Heck for that matter most large companies are international, they have offices all over the world. That doesn't mean they get to say "You can't pass any laws on us or take us to court! We are International!" Do business in the US, you are subject to US law. Same deal with MS and EU anti-trust rulings.
However the parent is completely correct. MPEG is the group that designs compression formats and so on. MPEG-LA is a group that grabs licensing fees.
Basically the MPEG standards created were covered by a whole heapin' helpin' of patents from all kinds of different companies. So these companies got together and decided that they way to deal with this and make money on it was to pool them. You put your patents in a pool controlled by MPEG-LA, who then handles the licensing of the technology. You then get your cut of the money.
Has nothing at all to do with the development of anything.
"the California Stare Attorney General's office is also looking into MPEG-LA for possible restraint of trade practices."
There, fixed it for ya!
Hmm... The two best-known? I think the following companies would like to argue that point:
Cisco Systems
Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
Fujitsu Limited
Hewlett-Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
LG Electronics Inc.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
Panasonic Corporation
Robert Bosch GmbH*
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Siemens AG
Sony Corporation
Toshiba Corporation
'Intellectual property' can't be stolen, and in this case, Google tried very, very hard to get a decent royalty free codec to the market. If they can't, that's a sure sign that MPEG-LA and it's members are practically working as a cartel. It's also worth noting that this isn't the first time the antitrust action against MPEG-LA has been called for.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It's hard to think of a more clear cut example of supposed business rivals getting together to agree and enforce a common price.
Price fixing is a time honored practice in many industries. oil, steel, railroads, airlines and communications, all run by pirates who do challenge each other for top position, like in any other herd or flock of animals, but will never work against the whole..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
So patents are monopolies. MPEG-LA is using their/members/potential members patents (monopolies) to inhibit competition.
What the DOJ is doing is investigating whether the conduct of the MPEG-LA violates anti-trust (or other federal) laws. They haven't been charged with anything (yet). The DoJ can investigate a monopoly or a multi-firm contract, conspiracy, or trust to determine whether they are engaging in conduct that is restraining trade in an unreasonable manner. So if the DoJ determines that MPEG-LA pulling together patents to file against a competitor or spreading potential FUD about the potential presence of non-Google owned patents in an attempt to kill the product is unreasonable, they can then bring a lawsuit against them, where a judge will have to decide the matter. It is not like the DoJ says "you're a bad monopoly" and you automatically have to pay millions in fines, there's a due process to this insanity like it or not.
>>>Which law prevent a corporation from doing that? Quote it to me.
The sherman antitrust act allows for action against monopolies conduct themselves in a manner that unreasonably restricts trade/commerce across the states.
Out of practice? Hardly.
The 2004 DOJ didn't have any problem going after the CD Cartel (for price-fixing), and forcing them to refund money to overcharged customers.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Most people have no idea what most of those companies make... Sony is right up there too, but these days they definitely lack the cachet of Apple. Hilarious!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Except there is no price being discussed. The article sums it up nicely at the end:
If MPEG-LA believes that VP8 infringes, then they are well within their rights to question it. The OpenSource folks, of which slashdot has a majority, seem to think that all patents are evil. I tend to think both sides have merit, and neither would do well without the other. If Google believes that simply questioning whether or not a patent infringes is anti-competitive, then they have a long road to haul. That said, it does seem like MPEG-LA is dragging this out longer than necessary. Although it's conceivable that they could still be gathering information at this stage, surely they have enough preliminary data at this point to make a legal case (or not).
I suspect this latest bruhaha is just to put pressure on MPEG-LA to put up or shut up.
It's about time the Justice Dept. gave value for money.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
If MPEG-LA believes that VP8 infringes, then they are well within their rights to question it.
Lawsuits cost money. Especially when your opponent has a bottomless pit of it too.
FUD & idle threats is cheap and effective.
MPEG-LA does not believe VP8 infringes any of their patents, so they tried building/buying up a patent portfolio specifically to go after VP8. This is clearly anti-competitive and propably illegal. I personally think it is an act of extortion and MPEG-LA executives should be charged under RICO laws. But I'm not a lawyer and US justice system seems to do more to cover corporate executives (knowingly) illegal activities than to ensure justice overall. It 2008 financial crisis fiasco does not show that clearly than I don't know what is.
Most people have no idea what most of those companies make
Dolby has something to do with movies: see "Dolby Digital" that used to be shown before movies back when it was new. LG, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, and (as you mentioned) Sony are familiar from the TV aisle at Best Buy or Walmart.
Yes they do. MS get rid of Linux, Apple get rid of Android.
Or don't you think that having competing products in the field reduces their profits?
Missing the point. This is an anti-trust suit. A trust is when companies that should be competing conspire for monopolistic powers/purposes. If individual patent holders were behaving in a free-market way, they would each challenge individually, giving google the ability to pick and choose which patents to license or give royalties to, should anyone actually have an unexpired patent that pertains. Google would also have to option of altering VP8 to not infringe on any patents held by people who were asking too high a price. Doing so would require knowing the price.
Instead, we have the formation of a cartel that plans to bundle all patents together so the holders are no longer competing, but form an illegal trust. Granted it is probably a toothless one without any actual infringed patents -- but whether or not they actually have any goods is still unknown, so it doesn't matter -- the legal situation must be treated as if they do in fact have infringing patents, since it is their express purpose to gather them.
in the meantime they are using the prospect of this bloc of patent holders as a basis to go out and make declarative public statements before actually producing any evidence that they actually have any patents that were infringed. As they have done such, they may be already guilty of anti-trust behavior, because they have utilized the common asset of their bluff.
Someone had to do it.
I don't know. My Bosch cordless drill is pretty nifty and Siemens makes everything from phones to trains.
Actually, companies are free to implement h.264 WITHOUT involving the MPEG-LA. It's just that the company is now responsible for dealing with licensing the 1000+ patents from everyone themselves.
All the MPEG-LA does is provide a generic license of "Pay us $X per device and you'll be licensed to use all these patents". You are free to go after each and every patent holder separately.
Of course, there are advantages to going with MPEG-LA than doing it yourself, notably, dealing with 1000+ legal agreements is pretty difficult and time-consuming, and there's no guarantee that you can get it cheaper. Also, if you're dealing with one of your major competitors, they could simply deny you a license, or charge extra for it (MPEG-LA licensing is RAND).
Of course, I don't know what the MPEG-LA licenses are like, but they could also include clauses that say the license is only valid for h.264, and other codecs using the same things (VP8 is supposed to allow use of the same blocks has h.264) could very well require extra licensing because that block's license terms only cover h.264, not VP8, h.265, SuperCoolCodec, or whatever. This is less about the software decoders, but the hardware accellerators you'll need for VP8 to be used in mobile devices.
End result could very well be that you're paying for an h.264 license in order to do hardware accellerated VP8 decode.
There's obviously no explicit law against spreading FUD (except perhaps false advertising). However, clearly the DOJ considers this particular act a possible violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. I'll clarify for you and the rest of the 12 year old assholes on Slashdot who continuously don't get this: LOTS OF THINGS THAT AREN'T NORMALLY ILLEGAL BECOME ILLEGAL IF YOU ARE A MONOPOLY. Monopolies in and of themselves are not illegal. However, when we determine that a company has a monopoly on a particular market, we place a lot of extra rules and restrictions on them to make sure they don't abuse the power that comes with being a monopoly.
Exactly. That is the entire benefit of a patent pool so they don't have to deal with every legal patent, but rather get a blank package.
Nice - now Google gets free DoJ investigations.
Do no evil huh?
And babies. Wait, that's not right.
If MPEG-LA believes that VP8 infringes, then they are well within their rights to question it.
I don't think that's the issue. It isn't that if someone has a patent that reads on VP8 they aren't allowed to enforce it. It's that the people who control the rights to VP8's primary competitor are trying to gain control over rights to VP8.
..in addition to MPEG-LA (Los Angeles).
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Imagine that, using a company's own search function returns results favorable to that company. Im shocked, SHOCKED i tell you. They may have 90% of the market but its still not a monopoly because there is PLENTY of choice to go around. Bing and Yahoo are completely viable competitors, enough so that calling google an illegal monopoly on search is laughable. Google is in no way bound to rank sites in any certain way. They are completely free to rank sites in any way they wish.
Good-bye
I really don't think so. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, and maybe Bosch are unfamiliar. I'm not sure about Bosch. The rest are all household names (maybe not in long form -- I didn't know about "Koninklijke", but I sure knew Philips and it was the same Philips). I couldn't tell you all the things they sell, but then, I couldn't tell you all the things Microsoft sells either.
You can answer "TVs" for most of those and people recognize TV brands, if for no other reason, because they look at TVs all the time, and they all have a brand label.
The statements are fascinating and potentially point out a serious issue. What I'm not sure about is what this has to do with common property such as the royalty free VP8 codec.
I am glad the DOJ and CA Attorney General are launching this anti-trust investigation, and I hope MPEG LA is prevented from any further action against the VP8 codec. Without open competition, capitalism does not work. No group should have the right to block alternative technology formats whether they are free & open source or not. We must be vigilant about this as citizens because otherwise monopolies will destroy our democracy and the ability of new companies to compete and innovate. After reading this article, I am going to look into the VP8 codec and see about using it.
Yes becasue no other search engines exist and people are forced to use Google for any online searching.
"But this one goes to 11!"
>>>The sherman...monopolies...unreasonably restricts trade
That's NOT the question I asked. The question I asked was: Which law prevents a corporation from "spreading FUD about patent infringement"? Quote it to me. Please and thank you.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I'm not fan of the current patent system, but they're not just about protecting the money spent developing the patented concept but the profit that can be obtained from exclusive access to it.
The money invested in developing a patentable idea is just that, for the most part -- a business investment. People with money to invest are looking for some kind of return on their investment -- not just the money they invested, but MORE than they invested, an interest percentage.
I like your idea, but you would have to raise the cost of buying out the patent to some multiple of the invested amount.
I think another idea that would help a lot would be a "mandatory sunset without marketed implementation" requirement that would set a time limit (5 years? 2 years?) within which the patent would have to be brought to market as part of a product or the patent would become public domain.
This would bring a pretty quick end to most patent trolls, since they typically wielding patents that were never turned into products, and the system is supposed to be protecting industrial innovation, not creating licensing monopolies. Even big "patent portfolio" companies with active products would feel some heat -- ie, Company A patenting some concept they don't use only to hinder Company B's product development or simply hoarding patents to hinder competitors generally.
Here let me save some time: "Which law prevents a corporation from 'spreading FUD about patent infringement'?"
NONE. Commercial speech is protected by the first amendment. Companies can not lie, but they can certainly spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about competitor's products. (Almost every car commercial does it several times per hour.)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
[this is my personal viewpoint]
I'm all for people making money on their intellectual property (IP). And every modern standards development organization (SDO) requires the disclosure of IP by standards setting participants.
But it is the IP held by non-participants unknowingly infringed upon by standards that are the big cause of FUD on the adoption of new standards.
ANSI is the the official U.S. representative to ISO/IEC and accreditor of US SDOs . Not all US standards become ANSI "National Standards", but many important ones do.
I believe that upon ANSI elevating a standard from one of its accredited SDOs to a National Standard, there should be a legally defined process that begins a time period wherein all IP owners must "put up or shut up" regarding the standard, i.e. they must declare whether their IP is potentially infringed by a National Standard.
After that time window is over, patent or other IP infringement cases can not be brought for the use of that IP in applications of that National Standard.
I'd be happy for that window to be 1 year or 2 years to ensure that IP holders have enough time to be able to monitor publication of National Standards and properly analyze them, but no more than that.
I'm not a WIPO or international law expert, but it might be nice to extend this to at least a certain class of ISO/IEC standards as well (but perhaps only the important ones).
Actually, the Google 'top' results are formed using a separate query, and are placed within a separate div, meaning it doesn't affect the ranking of the other results -- because pagerank is simply not involved.
But I'm not a lawyer and US justice system seems to do more to cover corporate executives (knowingly) illegal activities than to ensure justice overall. It 2008 financial crisis fiasco does not show that clearly than I don't know what is.
To nit pick, we don't have a justice system. We have a legal system. An analogy might be like learning the subtle difference between amoral and immoral. I agree with you fully.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
The OpenSource folks, of which slashdot has a majority, seem to think that all patents are evil.
I think you're misstating the issue. Some /.ers may think all patents are evil. A great many more /.ers think that a patent regime that allows software patents is misguided, because such patents are easily abused. The fact that many large software vendors own patents purely for defensive purposes only proves that, as of 2011, it takes a lot of money even to enter the software industry, let alone to thrive.
Breakfast served all day!
I think it is high time the government stepped in to challenge what amounts to a video format cartel.
These people, the ones who put patents on maths, algorithms, are part of people who should be processed for crimes against humanity.
You shouldn't be allowed to patent the way we think.
Cheers,
Right now, I'm consulting for an audio-related company that licensed a couple of the patents in the MPEG-LA pool straight from the patent owners, as they needed different terms and didn't care about any of the others, so go blow it out your ass.
Google is a monopoly according to the legal definition (has at least 50% of the market), but being a monopoly is not necessary illegal nor immoral.
Clever signature text goes here.
They pick a major industry cartel which engages in mafia-like behavior. Why is this "facepalm"?
Clever signature text goes here.
You Google haters crack me up. You think this is about Google? No, it's about VP8 as a format, which reaches far beyond Google. It affects an entire industry. Stop obsessing over Google already.
Clever signature text goes here.
Quit it with the red herrings. This is not about open-source. This is about an industry cartel trying to hold back and gain control over its main competitor through threats and manipulation.
Clever signature text goes here.
First, let's upgrade the patent clerks to "patent engineers", because that's what they should be, with appropriate qualifications and salary.
Don't know about patent clerks. But I understand that patent lawyers are already required to also be engineers. Have been for some time.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Companies usually doesn't mention competing products in a denigrating way for a reason and it's called lawsuit.
So, please provide a link to a car commercial doing this or stop posting please.
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
Nippon is Japan's AT&T.
And Robert Bosch from the powertools aisle. Why I would want H.264 playback on my electric drill, I do not know.
Since there is absolutely no way you could possibly verify this let alone 'know' this (unless you created an alternate reality where patents didn't exist and that only difference caused this one company to fail), your entire argument is predicated on something that is untestable.
But, it's a good thing we have patents, or we never would have inventions like the 'wheel'...right?
You didn't reply to skids' point at all. Nobody is claiming that h264, its patent pool, or its licensing method is a problem here. What they are complaining about is that MPEG-LA basically said "Hey everybody, our current pool is insufficient, so send us other possible VP8-related patents and we'll all collude to take down this new competitor." They also announced this in a very public way to generate a FUD effect.
There's a difference between operating as a patent pool to enable interoperability and simplify licencing, and acting as a patent-wielding cartel to stifle competition. Regulators are fine with agreements that promote active competition in a space, but they're not so happy when agreements try to prevent competition. This is why many standards bodies with patents explicitly set out RAND licencing practices -- with unequal license terms you'd try to maximize what you extract from weak members or licensees. But that can quickly be seen as harmful collusion if used against any potential competitor, and that could get you in hot water with anti-trust regulations. As far as what's going on here, regulators will investigate and decide if they want to pursue action.
Your post seems to have little to do with this immediate discussion. Maybe you don't read TFA, but at least read TFS: "...anti-trust investigation of MPEG-LA's purported efforts to prevent Google's VP8 codec from widespread adoption.". There's nothing about h.264 licensing there, yet that's your focus of your rebuttal. The only thing that matters at all regarding their existing codecs is that it makes them a competitor of those who are pushing VP8. Few would dispute that the two camps are competitors.
What part of TFS or TFA says anything about existing licencing or the currently pooled patents? Nothing. This is about purposely making a new pool to form a coordinated attack (rather than to cross-licence or interoperate). GP gets this, but it appears you do not.
The original purpose of MPEG-LA is a lot like the Detroit automakers getting together to cross licence patents for advanced engine development, which they'll also licence to anyone (for the same price). That's fine. The new situation is like that same association of automakers publicly calling for all patents that could be used to bury Tesla Motors, which they will collude to use. Your post is simply restating the original purpose is fine. Sure, it is, but that's not the point. This new thing they're doing doesn't have the same stated goals or intended effect, so all of the sudden the companies in the pool are seen through a different lens w.r.t anti-trust regulation.
Of course, this is just an investigation. Maybe it'll all be roses and daises.
We don't live in a system where everything must be a law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
For something like this, you're almost certainly looking for case law and legal precedent.
Sorry, I cannot quote such a source for you, as IANAL.
You can answer "TVs" for most of those and people recognize TV brands, if for no other reason, because they look at TVs all the time, and they all have a brand label.
NONE of those brands just make TVs. There are a jillion manufacturers of televisions so just another TV manufacturer is nobody. If you think of Sharp (or worse yet, Mitsubishi) as a company that makes TVs, then you DON'T know what they do.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"