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There are obvious problems with H.264, but I don't believe MPEG LA's plan is to sue regular people for not complying with the license agreement when they did th
by tjogin 17y ago
There are obvious problems with H.264, but I don't believe MPEG LA's plan is to sue regular people for not complying with the license agreement when they did that video that one time.
Not because I think they're not evil enough to do it, but because that kind of money-making scheme just doesn't scale.
Also, whenever they've sued one or two people, people's eyes will open and they'll just use an other codec. No big deal.
As a means to make money, that strategy simply sucks. A more likely turn of events is that licensing H.264 becomes quite a bit less good of a deal when H.264 has truly established itself. But even then they're not going to sue millions of people, because that doesn't scale, they're going to sue big vendors and service providers.
Certainly, that's not great either. But no, MPEG LA are not coming after "_you_".
- romland 17y agoNo, they are probably not out to get you and me... Unless you fall into one of the "still to be specified categories". I guess my biggest problem is that there are questions begging for answers. I admit that I went a bit over the top in the scare mongering with "_you_", though. (the comments at the end of the article linked above is quite interesting, by the way)
- tjogin 17y agoYeah, but whatever those "still to be specified categories" are, they're not going to include a whole lot of people, because suing people like that as a means to make money does not scale.
- middayc 17y agoI thought we were "hackers" here with potential to create startups, possibly related to video or just using it as a support system? If you have the need to pay for the sake of it you can relocate to my country, we have one of the highest taxes in the world :)
- tjogin 17y agoWhat does high taxes have to do with anything? I'm just saying that it's irrational to think that MPEG LA's plan is to sue consumers. Us being "hackers" does nothing to change those odds.
- sjs 17y ago> I'm just saying that it's irrational to think that MPEG LA's plan is to sue consumers. Us being "hackers" does nothing to change those odds. Some of us make products that may want to use h.264 and would be liable to have to pay to do so. Not as consumers, but as businesses. > Certainly, that's not great either. But no, MPEG LA are not coming after "_you_". Not if you're just a consumer, but we are not all just consumers on HN. So they might come after us.
- Tichy 17y agoWhy wouldn't it scale to sue people? As long as one lawyer can make more money than he costs, they could employ more lawyers? Also, a lot of people might just be scared and pay licensing fees through their automated web form, without the need of a lawyer.