8 ms·

Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA

85 points by hernan7 16y ago

xal 16y ago
Does "too big to fail" apply for something like h264 once the entire internet relies on it?
- noonespecial 16y ago
  How about "too big to not be public". It seems that there are some areas of thought (usually highly mathematical) that are virtually required to build anything else useful in a given field. Even based on a very liberal interpretation of the original intent of the patent system, it seems absurd to let a little clot of big business seize it and then rent-seek an entire society. If ever there was a case where the exercise of Eminent Domain by government was required to prevent a tragedy of the commons from developing, this type of thing is it.
  - blasdel 16y ago
    The funniest part is that MPEG-LA doesn't even gross that much money in license fees to get distributed to the pool — it's effectively peanuts for pretty much everyone paying in (only producers of 100,000 devices need to pay, and then it's pennies apiece with a total cap), and it's peanuts for all the pool members receiving the payments too! They aren't directly hurting anyone's bottom line, nor is anyone really profiting from it. It's just a bureaucracy for FUD-maintenance, that was originally created to keep its members from fucking with one another. If anything really gets out of hand, the government will just force them into a more liberal patent pool — it was done before to the Wright Brothers for being dicks, and in wartime to quasi-nationalize military IP.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      The Wright brothers only got cracked down on because of a World War too. Hopefully we don't have to wait for such a dramatic catastrophe before the government reacts this time.
    - mikecane 16y ago
      IIRC, Congress has the ability to void patents for the public good. Weren't such steps taken to standardize automobiles? And Hollywood wouldn't exist without piracy -- avoiding the patent royalties due to the Edison company was why they fled west to begin with.
bcl 16y ago
Interesting article. Although I think it is an overreaction. Obviously MPEG-LA could be trying to enforce their patents against everyone, but they aren't. Given the level of adoption of H.264 if they started to do so they would quickly kill their potential income stream. The answer isn't for everyone to go back to the dark ages of mjpeg, it is to convince MPEG-LA to be reasonable.
- nitrogen 16y ago
  I dislike broadly-worded mostly-unenforceable laws and contract provisions almost more than plain bad laws and contracts, because then instead of pleasing a law, you have to worry about pleasing whoever is in charge of enforcing the law. If the enforcers don't like you, they can find something you're doing wrong and charge you with it/sue you for it. So, what's not troubling to me is not the possibility of MPEG-LA suing everybody, but rather just suing people and companies they don't like (i.e. competitors, detractors, etc.), since virtually everybody making a corporate training video with an H264-based camera is violating the camera's H264 license.
  - GHFigs 16y ago
    rather just suing people and companies they don't like This is what the "non-discriminatory" part of the "reasonable and non-discriminatory" licensing terms that ISO/ITU require of their participating members is about.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      Clearly that's not true. They do sue people (they list them on their website) and yet, as discussed here, they don't sue everyone who breaks the ridiculously over-broad terms. That implies a choice. Then how do they discriminate here? I don't know, but it's not dictated by RAND terms which are often not reasonable either. Currently they also discriminate against smaller companies due to yearly caps on fees, and discriminate against certain business models e.g. subscription TV pays distribution fees, ad supported Hulu doesn't. That last one is clearly a decision made to mess with competition in a market with fewer barriers to entry while cementing lock-in in other areas.
katovatzschyn 16y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098336 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098336 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070780 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070780 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensi...
brazzy 16y ago
I love living in Germany where this kind of EULA clause is completely void. http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bgb/__307.html http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bgb/__307.html
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  It's not a EULA clause as I understand the term, as it's not asking or assuming agreement and not restricting what you can do, but rather informing you of rights you have been granted. You can't use a patent without a licence, this text is simply informing you what patent licence is included with the purchased software or hardware. The vendors of that hardware and software are likewise only passing on the rights that they have licenced. If it didn't include a licence at all (like if you'd downloaded Handbrake or x264) then you'd be violating a patent. If you go beyond a provided licence then you're infringing on the patent too. (And pre-empting the MPEG patents don't apply in Europe/Germany argument, you might want to ask why Aldi and Lidl just got sued by the MPEG-LA over MPEG 2 patents).
  - brazzy 16y ago
    Of course it is a EULA clause - it's very literally attempting to restrict what you can do. And this kind of clause is simply void under German law, because if you buy something, it's a contract between you and the seller, and this kind of contract is not allowed to contain arbitrary limitations on how you can use the thing you have bought, nor can the seller impose an implicit additional contract between you and some third party on you.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      The point of a EULA is that you, the end user, agree to the license, effectively signing away legal rights that you would otherwise have. This is not asking for agreement, and the government of Germany has already imposed the implicit additional contract by granting a patent monopoly, the only purpose of which is to restrict the behaviour of others. The text is only giving back what German law has already taken away, the ability to use these 900 odd bits of mathematics, but only for personal, non-commercial reasons. If you want to use it commercially you'll need to negotiate another licence.
cduan 16y ago
> However, what's "free to stream"? According to the interpretation of the U.S. law, if you stream your video with ads (e.g. Youtube, Vimeo), then that's a non-free usage. It's commercial video, even if you, the producer, makes no dime out of it (and that's a definition and interpretation of the US law that even Creative Commons believes so, if I am to judge from their last year's "what's a commercial video" survey) This is a pretty common error of legal reasoning. For one thing, the definition of "commercial video" that Creative Commons asserts is just a definition it made up; only a court can actually determine what the term means. (I am unaware of any cases deciding this; if they exist, please let me know of them.) And at any rate, the definition of "commercial video" in a CC license has no necessary bearing on the definition of "free to stream" in the MPEG-LA license. They are not the same document, and the same term in two different contracts can have entirely different meanings.
blasdel 16y ago
So everyone should use only MJPEG or worse end-to-end because he says so — obviously the only path to freedom is Bondage and Discipline Somehow it's only the freetards that respect Patent law to the letter — they may be campaigning to dismantle it, but in the process they've been consistently acting as it's biggest cheerleader by licking its boot heel in toadyish submission. It's just like how the hackers that campaigned to dismantle the export restrictions on crypto in the 90s are the exact same people currently shouting down the ability to use crypto for practical purposes: they want hardware key escrow, DRM, and signed firmware to all be effectively illegal. I don't think ideologues are capable of understanding irony. Freedom is rigorous self-enslavement to other peoples' patents. Ignorance of the state of the art is strength!
jarin 16y ago
I think I remember this before, back when it was called "Why Our Civilization's Image Art and Culture is Threatened by the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)".
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Link?
- apotheon 16y ago
  There were more useful alternatives to the GIF at the time, though, and the GIF didn't have such a lock on related patents. GIF was one patented format; h.264 is a fuck-ton of patents related to the development and implementation of codec formats.
  - jarin 16y ago
    What useful alternatives? BMP? WMF?
felixmar 16y ago
It seems that Google's purchase of On2 already has effect because MPEG is seeking to develop a royalty free video codec. Given that there is a desire for using royalty free video coding technologies for some applications such as video distribution over the Internet, MPEG wishes to enquire of National Bodies about their willingness to commit to active participation (as defined by Section 6.2.1.4 of the JTC1 directives) in developing a Type-1 video coding standard. (Source: http://www.robglidden.com/2010/04/mpeg-resolution-on-royalty-free-standardization/ http://www.robglidden.com/2010/04/mpeg-resolution-on-royalty... ) Notice that they mention distribution over the Internet. MPEG has less potential competition in the broadcast sector.
yanw 16y ago
He's a short version: AAPL and MSFT have a stake in MPEG-LA owner of the proprietary H.264, for now they lets us use it without paying royalties, Mozilla and other smaller players can't support because it's proprietary. One day MPEG-LA will ask for it’s money and we’ll all be royally fucked, it happen before with GIF, so please support any existing or to introduced open source alternatives.
- wmf 16y ago
  Decoders and encoders have to pay royalties today. There an additional royalty for "streaming" coming in 2016.
tlb 16y ago
"Civilization" is putting it a little strongly. Patents have 18-year lifetimes, and the mpeg4 patent clocks have all been ticking for at least a few years now. In a historical perspective, this too shall pass.

85 points by hernan7 16y ago

xal 16y ago

Does "too big to fail" apply for something like h264 once the entire internet relies on it?

noonespecial 16y ago
How about "too big to not be public". It seems that there are some areas of thought (usually highly mathematical) that are virtually required to build anything else useful in a given field. Even based on a very liberal interpretation of the original intent of the patent system, it seems absurd to let a little clot of big business seize it and then rent-seek an entire society. If ever there was a case where the exercise of Eminent Domain by government was required to prevent a tragedy of the commons from developing, this type of thing is it.
- blasdel 16y ago
  The funniest part is that MPEG-LA doesn't even gross that much money in license fees to get distributed to the pool — it's effectively peanuts for pretty much everyone paying in (only producers of 100,000 devices need to pay, and then it's pennies apiece with a total cap), and it's peanuts for all the pool members receiving the payments too! They aren't directly hurting anyone's bottom line, nor is anyone really profiting from it. It's just a bureaucracy for FUD-maintenance, that was originally created to keep its members from fucking with one another. If anything really gets out of hand, the government will just force them into a more liberal patent pool — it was done before to the Wright Brothers for being dicks, and in wartime to quasi-nationalize military IP.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    The Wright brothers only got cracked down on because of a World War too. Hopefully we don't have to wait for such a dramatic catastrophe before the government reacts this time.
  - mikecane 16y ago
    IIRC, Congress has the ability to void patents for the public good. Weren't such steps taken to standardize automobiles? And Hollywood wouldn't exist without piracy -- avoiding the patent royalties due to the Edison company was why they fled west to begin with.

bcl 16y ago

Interesting article. Although I think it is an overreaction. Obviously MPEG-LA could be trying to enforce their patents against everyone, but they aren't. Given the level of adoption of H.264 if they started to do so they would quickly kill their potential income stream. The answer isn't for everyone to go back to the dark ages of mjpeg, it is to convince MPEG-LA to be reasonable.

nitrogen 16y ago
I dislike broadly-worded mostly-unenforceable laws and contract provisions almost more than plain bad laws and contracts, because then instead of pleasing a law, you have to worry about pleasing whoever is in charge of enforcing the law. If the enforcers don't like you, they can find something you're doing wrong and charge you with it/sue you for it. So, what's not troubling to me is not the possibility of MPEG-LA suing everybody, but rather just suing people and companies they don't like (i.e. competitors, detractors, etc.), since virtually everybody making a corporate training video with an H264-based camera is violating the camera's H264 license.
- GHFigs 16y ago
  rather just suing people and companies they don't like This is what the "non-discriminatory" part of the "reasonable and non-discriminatory" licensing terms that ISO/ITU require of their participating members is about.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    Clearly that's not true. They do sue people (they list them on their website) and yet, as discussed here, they don't sue everyone who breaks the ridiculously over-broad terms. That implies a choice. Then how do they discriminate here? I don't know, but it's not dictated by RAND terms which are often not reasonable either. Currently they also discriminate against smaller companies due to yearly caps on fees, and discriminate against certain business models e.g. subscription TV pays distribution fees, ad supported Hulu doesn't. That last one is clearly a decision made to mess with competition in a market with fewer barriers to entry while cementing lock-in in other areas.

katovatzschyn 16y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098336 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098336 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070780 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070780 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensi...

brazzy 16y ago

I love living in Germany where this kind of EULA clause is completely void. http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bgb/__307.html http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bgb/__307.html

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
It's not a EULA clause as I understand the term, as it's not asking or assuming agreement and not restricting what you can do, but rather informing you of rights you have been granted. You can't use a patent without a licence, this text is simply informing you what patent licence is included with the purchased software or hardware. The vendors of that hardware and software are likewise only passing on the rights that they have licenced. If it didn't include a licence at all (like if you'd downloaded Handbrake or x264) then you'd be violating a patent. If you go beyond a provided licence then you're infringing on the patent too. (And pre-empting the MPEG patents don't apply in Europe/Germany argument, you might want to ask why Aldi and Lidl just got sued by the MPEG-LA over MPEG 2 patents).
- brazzy 16y ago
  Of course it is a EULA clause - it's very literally attempting to restrict what you can do. And this kind of clause is simply void under German law, because if you buy something, it's a contract between you and the seller, and this kind of contract is not allowed to contain arbitrary limitations on how you can use the thing you have bought, nor can the seller impose an implicit additional contract between you and some third party on you.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    The point of a EULA is that you, the end user, agree to the license, effectively signing away legal rights that you would otherwise have. This is not asking for agreement, and the government of Germany has already imposed the implicit additional contract by granting a patent monopoly, the only purpose of which is to restrict the behaviour of others. The text is only giving back what German law has already taken away, the ability to use these 900 odd bits of mathematics, but only for personal, non-commercial reasons. If you want to use it commercially you'll need to negotiate another licence.

cduan 16y ago

> However, what's "free to stream"? According to the interpretation of the U.S. law, if you stream your video with ads (e.g. Youtube, Vimeo), then that's a non-free usage. It's commercial video, even if you, the producer, makes no dime out of it (and that's a definition and interpretation of the US law that even Creative Commons believes so, if I am to judge from their last year's "what's a commercial video" survey) This is a pretty common error of legal reasoning. For one thing, the definition of "commercial video" that Creative Commons asserts is just a definition it made up; only a court can actually determine what the term means. (I am unaware of any cases deciding this; if they exist, please let me know of them.) And at any rate, the definition of "commercial video" in a CC license has no necessary bearing on the definition of "free to stream" in the MPEG-LA license. They are not the same document, and the same term in two different contracts can have entirely different meanings.

blasdel 16y ago

So everyone should use only MJPEG or worse end-to-end because he says so — obviously the only path to freedom is Bondage and Discipline Somehow it's only the freetards that respect Patent law to the letter — they may be campaigning to dismantle it, but in the process they've been consistently acting as it's biggest cheerleader by licking its boot heel in toadyish submission. It's just like how the hackers that campaigned to dismantle the export restrictions on crypto in the 90s are the exact same people currently shouting down the ability to use crypto for practical purposes: they want hardware key escrow, DRM, and signed firmware to all be effectively illegal. I don't think ideologues are capable of understanding irony. Freedom is rigorous self-enslavement to other peoples' patents. Ignorance of the state of the art is strength!

jarin 16y ago

I think I remember this before, back when it was called "Why Our Civilization's Image Art and Culture is Threatened by the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)".

jacquesm 16y ago
Link?
apotheon 16y ago
There were more useful alternatives to the GIF at the time, though, and the GIF didn't have such a lock on related patents. GIF was one patented format; h.264 is a fuck-ton of patents related to the development and implementation of codec formats.
- jarin 16y ago
  What useful alternatives? BMP? WMF?

felixmar 16y ago

It seems that Google's purchase of On2 already has effect because MPEG is seeking to develop a royalty free video codec. Given that there is a desire for using royalty free video coding technologies for some applications such as video distribution over the Internet, MPEG wishes to enquire of National Bodies about their willingness to commit to active participation (as defined by Section 6.2.1.4 of the JTC1 directives) in developing a Type-1 video coding standard. (Source: http://www.robglidden.com/2010/04/mpeg-resolution-on-royalty-free-standardization/ http://www.robglidden.com/2010/04/mpeg-resolution-on-royalty... ) Notice that they mention distribution over the Internet. MPEG has less potential competition in the broadcast sector.

yanw 16y ago

He's a short version: AAPL and MSFT have a stake in MPEG-LA owner of the proprietary H.264, for now they lets us use it without paying royalties, Mozilla and other smaller players can't support because it's proprietary. One day MPEG-LA will ask for it’s money and we’ll all be royally fucked, it happen before with GIF, so please support any existing or to introduced open source alternatives.

wmf 16y ago
Decoders and encoders have to pay royalties today. There an additional royalty for "streaming" coming in 2016.

tlb 16y ago

"Civilization" is putting it a little strongly. Patents have 18-year lifetimes, and the mpeg4 patent clocks have all been ticking for at least a few years now. In a historical perspective, this too shall pass.