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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
OK, I think I'm done here for the night. I read that summary four times and I still don't know what it's about except something to do with video.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The current MPEG "business model" has a name: rent-seeking.
Anyone trying to profit from the MPEG standard can go DIAF.
How about that Leo? How about fuck off. Anything royalty free I'll take, and the less patents and more open source the better on top of that.
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.
Right !
aaaaaaa
Wow. That's basically a declaration of surrender by the chairman of MPEG. This is a great day for free software. It's been a long time coming.
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.
The MPEG model until now :
- create a standard (e.g.: MPEG 1 Video, MPEG Audio Layer I).
- concentrate on making the best compression, irrespective of patent situation
- because good compression and official standard, MPEG gets extremely popular and implemented everywhere.
- all the MPEG creators who hold patents band together, form a patent pool.
- the use the popularity of the standard and their patent pool to extract as much money as possible from as many people as possible.
- re-invest the money left over after the CEO's pay into producing the next standard. (e.g.: MPEG 2 Video, MPEG Audio Layer II, etc.)
- rinse and repeat
The problem (not directly clearly stated in the summary) :
- companies realize that they can make even more money
- patent holder stay hidden for a while, they push a new standard knowing that it's patent covered
- once the standard becomes pervasive to the point it's not possible to function without it (e.g.: MPEG Audio Layer III, a.k.a MP3), suddenly the patent holder wakes up (in this case: Frauenhoffer Institute).
- the holder tries to sue the shit out of everyone to make even more money.
- rent seeking and giant money grab rots the industry.
(Historically, it's not the first time this has happened. See the holders of the LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welsh) patent and the Graphics Interchage Format - GIF)
The current situations with MPEG HEVC / H.265 is a giant patent minefield, with several patent pools and/or patent holder each going for their maximal money grab.
To the point that HEVC/H265 isn't getting as widespread support in hardware as one would have expected when looking at its predecessors.
Meanwhile, the industry is fed up with this shit :
They've decided to do their own video standard with blackjack and hookers.
Actually forget about... blackjack.
They've decided to create a video standard with the explicit target for making it patent-free so it can be implemented for free by anyone who wants to use it online.
It's not the first time such a switch of standards on the grounds of being fed up has happened.
(The older being the switch from GIF to PNG by replacing the patented LZW compression with the free deflate).
And that is what frightens the MPEG guys.
----
As a note, a new standard won't necessarily devolve into the xkcd joke.
Each time, such switch have managed to actually succeed if :
- there is an actual push for the standard by the industry (e.g.: browser have started supporting PNG)
- the new standard is at least as good or even better that the old one (e.g.: PNG supports much more color schemes than the up to 256-palette of GIF. It also supports alpha channels, and the deflate compression is better).
The AV-1 is frightening the MPEG guys even more on these grounds.
- it's a coordinated effort by most of the industry big players including browser vendor, hardware vendor, server solution makers, etc. (i.e.: most of the company who make money by *using* video, as opposed to *selling the patents on the video* are in and pouring resources into it)
- it's a new gen codec, so of course it compresses somewhat better than the older standards.
And among the names of the companies involved, you see names who have been successful in deploying standards in the past :
- Google who have pushed their VPx series of codec.
- Xiph who have had relative success in the past:
- already with Vorbis against MP3 and WMA. It didn't get widely known by the general users, but it got a niche success : nearly all no-name asian media players supports it, it's used by several older audio streaming web companies - like Spotify and the completely free implementation have seen success in being used in various applications and engines - like game music)
- they did it again being among the company that contributed to OPUS, the free codec that currently beat everything else (including AAC) and is currently used by nearly any app/software on the
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well... there's been many failed attempts at trying to replace closed source codecs with open source ones
And the big web switch from GIF to PNG is a good exemple of a successful one. :
Usually it requires 2 things
- a big industry push
- as good or better as the replacement
like Theora, the VPx codecs, Direc,
Dirac is a very small scale stuff. Mainly pushed by the BBC and hence only used in their echo-system.
Regarding the VPx family :
- VP6 / Theora : happened late at a point when it wasn't that competitive against MPEG standard of the day and was only pushed by a handful of companies (mainly Xiph Mozilla, and considered by Google for Youtube) while the rest of the industry pushed for MPEG which *did* had patent costs, but not crazy ones yet.
- VP9 : pushed by Google, a company a tiny bit more relevant, but still not industry-wide, because people were betting on the upcoming MPEG-HEVC/H265 because nobody knew yet the massive patent minefield it was going to be.
- VP10 : see below.
Daala and so on.
Daala *is* AV-1.
AV-1 is done by combining the efforts of Xiph's Daala, Cisco's Thor, and Google's VP10.
Some parts didn't make it (Daala's Perceptual Vector Quantization - PVQ - currently isn't enabled by default in AV-1 and is considered too different/weird), other parts of Daala are actually in AV-1 (the entropy coders experiments of Daala are now part of the AV-1 standard).
Now: AV-1 is showing interesting results.
And nearly anyone who is relevant in the internet-video business is on it. (you find content streamer like Netflix and Google (Youtube), browser makers like Google (Chrome) and Mozilla (Firefox), etc. - the whole ecosystem is in there).
By the GIF/PNG exemple and unlike the less popular video formats mentioned above, all the chance are on AV-1's side.
Vorbis never caught on to replace MP3
It still had some limited success :
- nearly any no-name asian media-player supports it. (Despite a campaign by Microsoft's WMA certification to explicitly ban it)
- accepted as part of the IETF standards
- supported by all major browsers
- thus a few on-line web service have built around it (Spotify is one notorious example, and it's far from a tiny player).
- Youtube can optionally use it.
- Thanks to widely available free code, it has also found it's way in numerous software applications (lots of game engines used it)
So it's not as widely known by the public as MP3 or AAC, but it still beat WMA, and it still managed to get used quite a bit.
or AAC either.
Vorbis/MP3/WMA all predate AAC.
AAC appeared much later.
It also ended up feature many of the same problem as the MPEG Video codecs mentioned in the article : mainly heavy patenting.
So although it managed to gain a foothold in the TV/Radio (DAB+ and HD DVB-x) and Music selling (iTunes) business, it got completely blown out on internet.
OPUS has basically come and destroyed it. It has much better audio quality, and is completely free of patent licensing.
As such OPUS is what is used by nearly any modern app : Skype, WhatsApp, FB Messenger,... chances are if it's on your smartphone and allows you to talk with audio, it probably runs on OPUS.
There are even experiments in using it on radio (OPUS is an unofficial codec used in the "DRM" long range AM-like radio).
It's one straw in particular that broke the camel's back and it's that those licensing HEVC saw the rise of video streaming services and got a bit too greedy.
Yup, totally agree, it's the patent-trolling that killed HEVC (and AAC for that matters).
Basically, if you have Android and iPhone (= Google and Apple) recording AV1 video, YouTube and iTunes (= Google and Apple) delivering AV1 video to hardware decoding in smartphones (= Google and Apple) you hav
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
AMD, Intel and NVIDIA (who make the GPUs in desktop machines
) are on board with AOM meaning they will presumably support hardware acceleration of the new coded but what about the companies that make mobile GPUs powering most of the world's phones (and the SOCs they go into) like Qualcomm and Samsung? Will there be hardware acceleration for the new codec in the Samsung Exynos chips or the Qualcomm Snapdragon chips?
To me, the critical thing to grok here is that there were sufficient powerful interests that wanted MPEG dead and were willing to coordinate and to spend freely to make it happen. The fact that we are going to get native hardware support in the next generation of everything for AOM formats seals the deal and makes my point: you have to spend millions over long lead times to bake things into silicon.
This is all a Good Thing(TM) because in this case the AOM solution is preferable to the MPEG solution, but it's definitely not some David-beats-Goliath scenario where some kid in a garage takes down the big-bad using the magic of open standards. In fact, if anything, the forces behind AOM are (and proved to be) even more Goliath-y than MPEG and it shows that industry power has shifted in their direction.
So less David-beats-Goliath and more like a bigger Goliath decided not to put up with a mini-Goliath anymore. Or, if you prefer, the king is dead, long live the king.
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.
MPEG standards are open. That's the point of a standard. You can download the final drafts for free.
You can download the drafts for free (the technical documentation that explains the standard).
You cannot write a software freely - in jurisdiction that do recognize software patent (e.g.: the USA) the technology inside several codecs from MPEG (Mostly AVC / H264, HEVC / H265 , and AAC) are covered by patent.
If you attempt anything beyond simply reading the drafts, like actually writing code, you'd be violating IP rights in countries with software patent (in USA).
If you attempt to build a physical device around the standard (e.g.: hardware accelerating codec chip), you'd be again going against patent, in nearly all jurisdiction (in EU too).
MPEG doesn't sue. That is MPEG-LA, a completely separate organization.
To be correct:
The patent holder sue.
And the problems starting from H265 / MPEG-HEVC upward is that MPEG-LA isn't any more the only single organisation holding patents.
The world is not a simple place and the devil is in the details.
Yeah, I agree that the devil is in the details. That's why I called my over-simplification the "Easy Reader" version.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That does not imply that I get to have a monopoly and free money forever!
You have obviously never witnessed a copyright extension debate with Mickey Mouse. Spoiler alert: Mickey always wins.
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.
The problem is that any technical standard that is reasonably complex may infringe on intellectual property both from those who participate in the standardization process (and are supposed to declare IPR) and unknowingly from those who do not participate.
Just because AOM says AV1 it does not infringe on any IPR does not mean it does not. This is only truly discovered after no one sues the big pockets for years after deployment.
I am almost never a government-solutions style person, but the problem is that government created patents, and the current patent system is not particularly useful in coordinating multiple patent claims to orchestrate into a licensable standard.
For any significant standard (a "national standard" from ANSI, for example), all IPR claims on that standard should be required to be brought within one year of standard publication, and fit into a common sane licensing scheme (perhaps one worked out in the standardization body or ANSI before publication). If you don't speak up in one year after publication (i.e. submarine patents) then tough luck, you can not claim infringement on use of the standard.
I'm totally for letting people get paid for their IPR. I'm also totally for allowing standards to work and be licensable.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?