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MPEG Founder Says the MPEG Business Model Is Broken (chiariglione.org)
theweatherelectric writes: Leonardo Chiariglione, the founder and chairman of MPEG, argues on his blog that the current MPEG business model is broken. He writes, "Thanks to [MPEG's] 'business model' that can be simply described as: produce standards having the best performance as a goal, irrespective of the IPR involved. Because MPEG standards are the best in the market and have an international standard status, manufacturers/service providers get a global market of digital media products, services and applications, and end users can seamless communicate with billions of people and access millions of services. Patent holders who allow use of their patents get hefty royalties with which they can develop new technologies for the next generation of MPEG standards. A virtuous cycle everybody benefits from." But, he argues, the MPEG model is now in crisis because the forthcoming AV1 video format from the Alliance for Open Media means that "everybody realizes that the old MPEG business model is broke, all the investments (collectively hundreds of millions USD) made by the industry for the new video codec [HEVC] will go up in smoke and AOM's royalty free model will spread to other business segments as well." Chiariglione goes on to explain what can be done: "The first action is to introduce what I call 'fractional options.' ISO envisages two forms of licensing: Option 1, i.e. royalty free and Option 2, i.e. FRAND, which is taken to mean 'with undetermined license.' We could introduce fractional options in the sense that a proposer could indicate that the technology be assigned to a specifically identified profile with an 'industry license' (defined outside MPEG) that does not contain monetary values. For instance, one such license could be 'no charge' (i.e. Option 1), another could be targeted to the OTT market etc."
"The second action, not meant to be alternative to the first, is to streamline the MPEG standard development process. Within this a first goal is to develop coding tools with 'clear ownership,' unlike today's tools which are often the result of contributions with possibly very different weights. A second goal is not to define profiles in MPEG. A third goal could be to embed in the standard the capability to switch coding tools on and off."
"The second action, not meant to be alternative to the first, is to streamline the MPEG standard development process. Within this a first goal is to develop coding tools with 'clear ownership,' unlike today's tools which are often the result of contributions with possibly very different weights. A second goal is not to define profiles in MPEG. A third goal could be to embed in the standard the capability to switch coding tools on and off."
...let it die.
- sigs are stupid
The summary mentions they are competing with the Alliance for Open Media. AOM was founded by Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix and NVIDIA. Other AOM members include AMD, Hulu, and more.
AOM members serve up over 80â... of the world's internet traffic, and decide which codec it will use. Almost all the internet traffic is handled by network based on equipment made by AOM members. AOM members design nearly 100â... of the world's CPUs. 98â... of consumer devices (computers and phones) run operating systems made by AOM members. You can't beat AOM unless AOM somehow destroys itself.
Even is just Netflix and YouTube chose to offer a codec which was playable on Android, iPhone and Windows, that would be hard to beat. And all those companies are AOM members - plus many more, including Intel, AMD, and ARM.
MPEG is going to need a RADICALLY different business model, unless they get extremely lucky and invent something far better than what all the AOM members can come up, or AOM destroys itself.
What MPEG is learning is that in reality the world does not need them because open standards are far more cost effective,
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
For years MPEG licenses screwed people. Now that they have competition they say "we are sorry, we will work with you now". If AV1 did not come out, MPEG licenses would still cost too much.
for current patent licenses to 'fund' the next-gen codec...
(how much of that actually went to *development* and how much went into executives' bank accounts? cuz it sure as hell doesn't cost "hundreds of millions" of dollars to develop a fucking codec)
and you wonder why your business model is "broken"? holy fuck, you're so totally clueless, you could run for office.
free and open source will find a way when you gouge people and the manufacturers of the devices they purchase and use.
shrivel up and DIE, Moving Picture Experts Group. you. are. obsolete.
TFA claims that he's going to simplify everything by clarifying partial ownership, making how payment works more ambiguous, and allowing parts of the standard to be disabled. Right. If the "solution" is actually less complicated than what they're currently offering, I can see why AOM has already won. To me, this here MPEG nonsense is kryptonite to anyone needing a sustainable solution.
You can leech from companies for a while until they find out that it's cheaper to cut you and develop it themselves. This is basically what happened here. That "Alliance for Open Media", you know who that is? According to their Wikipedia article it is "Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, and Nvidia". Notice something in that lineup? Makers of networking hardware/software, makers of CPUs/GPUs along with content providers and the makers of the tools to show that content. In other words, everyone that MPEG sold to.
They simply noticed "Hey! Instead of throwing that money at these goons, throw it in a pool and let's develop a standard that suits OUR needs!"
Plus, no rent to pay after we have it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1) They killed the goose. ...
2) Then they cooked it and ate it.
3) They made geese extinct. Many, many ducks were collateral damage.
4)
5) Now they wonder why there's no more golden eggs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If Google says you need it for Android certification anyone who wants their chips to be usable outside of China will implement hardware acceleration for it.
So for your particular ones, Samsung and Qualcomm aren't even going to have a choice.
The good news is that the FUD will be largely ineffective, because MPEG's biggest customers are the founders / members of the AOM that are looking to extinguish MPEG for good.
You can only spread FUD to people that don't already know better.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's bitztream the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!
MPEG forgot the 1st law of extortion: Never demand more than it would cost to have you killed.
He believes that research into better ways of video encoding will stop if nobody can make money from merely doing the research and publishing it. Hence, he's trying to make MPEG, which uses the patent system to enable that kind of paid research, viable in an environment in which the need to pay royalties to use a technology is highly unpopular and undermined by free alternatives.
He's wrong, as Google, Hulu/Vudu/Roku/Consonant-U-Consonant-U/Amazon etc have plenty of incentives to fund such research and contribute it to the public domain. But traditionally this is how video and audio encoding standards have always been done (see also the H.26x series), so it's hard for him to break out of that thinking.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.