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Because the US endorses the concept of "essential patents," meaning you need to pay a licensing fee to be lawfully allowed to perform the math that transforms d

Because the US endorses the concept of "essential patents," meaning you need to pay a licensing fee to be lawfully allowed to perform the math that transforms data into A/V content. Never to mention the two blatant issues with this, being: 1) video codecs are the exemplary "we'll patent math and there's nothing you can do about it" scam, since that's literally all a video codec is 2) a process being "essential" to a particular outcome (i.e. no other way to do it) was the main motivation mathematics was explicitly excluded from patentability in the first place, so the idea of "essential patents" just underlines the absurdity of the entire system Anyways, yearly reminder that software patents are a blight to innovation and a scourge on our industry, and no you won't change my mind.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I mean, is a video codec really just "math"? There's a binary payload description and algorithms involved for applying said math as well. I'm no expert in the field, so I'm actually asking in good faith here...
- akersten 4y ago
  Everything you can instruct a computer to do is just math, yes. "Instructions on how to use the math" is, unsurprisingly, also more math. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    I am well aware of the foundations of CS and the lambda calculus, but this is more than a bit reductionist, like saying "everything is made of subatomic particles." Patents on processes and methods are pretty common. Dismissing it as "they just patented some math" and then falling back to saying "oh, lambda calculus" -- I think you can do better :-) But, yes, I'm sure the patents suck.
    - akersten 4y ago
      Why should Free software advocates need to "do better" than to argue from literal first principles? Fourier could call his transform a "process" all he wants, but that does not make it patentable. So yes, "oh, math."
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        These files have carefully constructed format though. To read and write the patented format goes beyond patenting math. I think cmrdporcupine was getting at something.
        cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        Yep, it's not like I think the patent is just. I think software patents are mostly junk. But saying "because it's math" is highly uninformative.
      - alex_smart 4y ago
        First principles is fine, but where is the argument?
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        Almost all inventions can be reduced to "just math", because after all, that's what we use to describe the physical world, and oh also computer software things. I'm not in favour of patents at all, but the entire "it's math" argument has always seemed exceedingly weak to me.
    - drmpeg 4y ago
      B-frames (bi-directional predicted frames with a reference frame in both the past and the future) are patented. I'd say that's a process or method.
    - djmips 4y ago
      I don't feel like you were asking on good faith after this response.
  - alex_smart 4y ago
    I don't quite understand how you do not recognize that that is a strong argument against your position.
    - FabHK 4y ago
      Insofar as GP seems to be against software patents in general, it is not an argument against his position, is it?
      - alex_smart 4y ago
        It definitely is. Church Turing thesis basically states that all systematic procedures can be encoded as math. So, software can be encoded as math yes, but also music can be encoded as math. Life can be encoded as math (which is what our DNA is). Rather than providing a basis of not allowing software to patented, I think it makes the statement "X can be encoded as math" trivially true - and therefore uninteresting. In so far as there is value in patents on any systematic procedure at all, the position that "software should not be patentable because it can be encoded as math" is completely untenable.
        t-3 4y ago
        The difference is that music is not, in fact, math. The representation is abstract to the utility. With software, the math is the utility.
        jolux 4y ago
        What does “the representation is abstract to the utility” mean? I mean, music isn’t patentable, but it is thoroughly copyrighted.
        alex_smart 4y ago
        Software is also, in fact, not math. Nor is the math the utility of software. Software's utility (usually) is the business problems it solves. The processes are encoded as math, and a lot of writing software is about improving those processes, but that is not in fact the utility. Think of the guy who invented the equi-tempered scale. All throughout history you had to make instruments that are tuned to play in one scale. Now you can suddenly make instruments that can play all of them. Solves a real problem from music by making an improvement in the representation, so it can be viewed as all math. But is it really "just" math?
  - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    The link you're looking for is curry howard correspondance
  - em3rgent0rdr 4y ago
    Everything is math.
  - gitgud 4y ago
    https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png
- nceqs3 4y ago
  Here is a list of the essential patents from the main pool: https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/hevc-att1.pdf https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/hevc-att1.pdf Find a single US patent that "claims" maths as GP argued. It doesn't exist.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    I picked first US patent listed (US 7,292,636), and it's first claim says > 1. For a bitstream comprising a first video picture, a second video picture, and a third video picture, a method of decoding comprising: computing a particular value that is based on (i) a first order difference value between an order value for the third video picture and an order value for the first video picture, and (ii) a second order difference value between an order value for the second video picture and the order value for the first video picture; computing a particular motion vector for the second video picture based on the particular value and a motion vector for the third video picture; and decoding at least one video picture by using the computed motion vector. That certainly sounds like math to me.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  If you’re against patents, yes. If you’re gainfully employed doing math things that turn into codecs, no. Patents suck, but they also serve a purpose.
  - dogma1138 4y ago
    I’m not sure why is this being downvoted… A patent for a drug is just chemistry, which is also just math with a specific ruleset… Patents are designed to protect work, especially work where most of the effort is in the research / discovery rather than the implementation. Implementing a video decoder is relatively easy coming up with the algorithms to encode/decode the video efficiently and effectively however is a lot of work.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      The majority of the posters here are IT practitioners. Stupid patent rules get in the way, and there is a visceral reaction to them. It’s a tough, nuanced issue. I don’t think anyone is happy with the system, but many stakeholders have a vested interest.
    - adrian_b 4y ago
      There are essential differences between chemistry and mathematics. To discover anything in mathematics, including a new video compression algorithm, you do not need anything else, except a computer. In theory, not even the computer is needed, as you could do everything with pen and paper, but it might require years or centuries. Chemistry is an experimental science for now, until someone would find a method to solve the equations of quantum mechanics for non-trivial systems. A lot of mathematics is used in chemistry but at its base chemistry remains experimental, because all the mathematical models used in chemistry to predict some facts use a large number of model parameters that have been determined experimentally. There are no truly "ab initio" mathematical predictions in chemistry. Using mathematics in chemistry allows a significant reduction in the number of chemical experiments that must be done to discover anything new, but they cannot be eliminated yet. Any discovery in mathematics can be easily redone again, by someone else, completely independently, and this actually happens extremely frequently. There do not seem to exist many reasons that can justify why the later discoverers must be punished to pay money to others in order to use the mathematical relations that they have discovered themselves, even if by some chance someone else happened to discover the same relations earlier. For mathematical discoveries, there are little grounds to claim that the first discoverer should be able to recover any expenses, as most of the strictly necessary expenses are just in the salaries of people and it is very difficult to estimate what percentage of those expenses had actually contributed to the discovery. On the other hand, for inventions referring to chemical substances, or to mechanical, thermal or electrical devices and so on, a lot of experiments with physical devices must be made and the experimentation costs can indeed be very high, so it can be argued that it might be good for a society to encourage such experiments by promising a temporary monopoly for the exploitation of the results, as long as the duration of the monopoly is not excessive. For the kind of minor innovations that are the object of most recent patents, a reduced patent duration seems more appropriate, e.g. 10 years. A patent duration of 20 years or more seems acceptable only for a few patents for which the acceptance criteria should be much more strict than they have become recently, i.e. such patents should really be "non-obvious for those skilled in the field", and not just trivial combinations of formerly known devices or methods.
- MobiusHorizons 4y ago
  The specification for the format (which is what is patented) describes the mathematical relationship between the binary payload and the uncompressed picture data. The actual implementation of the encoder / decoder is copyrighted and may also be patented, (which seems to be what you are alluding to), but with patent encumbered formats, the real issue is that the specification itself is patented. Practically this means that every encoder / decoder for patent encumbered formats has to have some form of licensing just to interact with the format even if they somehow reverse engineered the specification and built a cleanroom implementation (at least as far as I understand it, IANAL)
zepolen 4y ago
> that's literally all a video codec is Go on then, make a better video codec, as it's just math.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  Nobody said math is simple. Also, isn't that just AV1? (it does seem optimized for the particular niche of streaming vendors though: minimizing bandwidth at all costs)
nceqs3 4y ago
Every country in the world "endorses" the concept of "essential" patents. It's called a patent.
- yarg 4y ago
  No. A patent covers a way of doing things. An essential patent covers the way of doing things. Essential patents in general fail the obviousness test; they cover the solution that most experts in the field would reach in solving the given problem.
  - nceqs3 4y ago
    > A patent covers a way of doing things. An essential patent covers the way of doing things. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. An essential patent is declared essential to a standard (of which there are many). Take 3GPP, companies like Qualcomm, Apple, Ericsson, Huawei, etc. all spend hundreds of million of $ developing each release of the 3GPP cellular standard. During this development process often times patents are filed (based on the companies contributions). As part of joining 3GPP you have to agree to license this IP on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The patents are almost never obvious, as you can see from the lengthy debate over each feature and all of the associated proposals at each 3GPP meeting.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Aren't essential patents essential because they are a standard (or part of one) that makes them essential? Not that they must be obvious? For example, what good is the perfect communication codec if every operator must each pay top dollar?
    - yarg 4y ago
      I'm not saying that 'essential' means 'obvious' in any official sense, rather that they generally cover solutions that experts in the field would come to if attempting to solve the problem. I struggle to see how the patent office could ever uphold the requirement of inobviousness, how could they possibly have expert level domain knowledge across all domains? So the patents get granted, contextually obvious or not. I should stop typing while I'm still vaguely on topic, before I start ranting about patent thickets and wilful infringement.
dordoka 4y ago
Software patents should not be a thing... but the US neoliberalism fucked it up for everyone.
Razengan 4y ago
> video codecs are the exemplary "we'll patent math and there's nothing you can do about it" scam, since that's literally all a video codec is Most software is literally all math.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  That is why previously software could not be patented and it still cannot be patented in many countries.
- alex_smart 4y ago
  The Church Turing thesis basically states that any systematic procedure can be encoded into math. Software can be encoded as math, yes, but music can be encoded as math. Life can encoded as math (which is what your DNA is). I really don't understand how the parent commenter fails to see that this makes "X is math" basically a meaningless statement because it is always trivially true and makes their position "math shouldn't be patented" completely untenable.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    Encoding the information about some thing in numbers does not make the original thing a mathematical object. The numbers used to encode some information are mathematical objects and they can be transformed using mathematical functions. You can encode the image of a flower in a bit string and you can compress the image by applying a mathematical function. That does not mean that the flower is a mathematical object. The sequence of bases of a DNA molecule from the flower records some information about the structure of that DNA molecule, but it is neither the DNA molecule nor enough information to completely clone a living cell (the various cloned animals from experiments are not identical copies, they combine features inherited from the source of the DNA with others inherited from the source of the anucleated cells used to make the clone, the nucleic DNA is the major source of information about a living cell, but not the only one; it is like the source text of a C compiler that still needs a lot of extra information in order to bootstrap it into an executable compiler). When patent claims are analyzed, it is easy enough to determine if they refer to mathematical methods or to physical things, even when the language of the claims is intentionally confusing. Originally the concept of patent was applicable only to physical devices, which could be built and demonstrated to work as claimed. However the acceptance rules have been relaxed in time, allowing more and more abstract patent claims, until it became possible for the first time to patent software, first in USA, and then also in other countries, usually as a result of pressure either from USA or from industry lobbies.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
That doesn't explain why the browsers don't offer hardware decoding but only software decoding. Both implement the same specification. One is just faster (and in hardware which I assume has said license fees paid by the processor manufacturer). In fact looking at it this way it would be easier to implement it in hardware as you don't just offload the decoding but the whole licensing rigmarole too. Edit: oops this was already mentioned. Sorry the thread is so long I lost the overview.
HPsquared 4y ago
It's not just math. It's a process that can be described in mathematical language.
hitovst 4y ago
"IP" isn't property. Also, only decentralizing, open source, individual empowering, tech, isn't anti-human.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

I mean, is a video codec really just "math"? There's a binary payload description and algorithms involved for applying said math as well. I'm no expert in the field, so I'm actually asking in good faith here...

akersten 4y ago
Everything you can instruct a computer to do is just math, yes. "Instructions on how to use the math" is, unsurprisingly, also more math. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  I am well aware of the foundations of CS and the lambda calculus, but this is more than a bit reductionist, like saying "everything is made of subatomic particles." Patents on processes and methods are pretty common. Dismissing it as "they just patented some math" and then falling back to saying "oh, lambda calculus" -- I think you can do better :-) But, yes, I'm sure the patents suck.
  - akersten 4y ago
    Why should Free software advocates need to "do better" than to argue from literal first principles? Fourier could call his transform a "process" all he wants, but that does not make it patentable. So yes, "oh, math."
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      These files have carefully constructed format though. To read and write the patented format goes beyond patenting math. I think cmrdporcupine was getting at something.
      - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        Yep, it's not like I think the patent is just. I think software patents are mostly junk. But saying "because it's math" is highly uninformative.
    - alex_smart 4y ago
      First principles is fine, but where is the argument?
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      Almost all inventions can be reduced to "just math", because after all, that's what we use to describe the physical world, and oh also computer software things. I'm not in favour of patents at all, but the entire "it's math" argument has always seemed exceedingly weak to me.
  - drmpeg 4y ago
    B-frames (bi-directional predicted frames with a reference frame in both the past and the future) are patented. I'd say that's a process or method.
  - djmips 4y ago
    I don't feel like you were asking on good faith after this response.
- alex_smart 4y ago
  I don't quite understand how you do not recognize that that is a strong argument against your position.
  - FabHK 4y ago
    Insofar as GP seems to be against software patents in general, it is not an argument against his position, is it?
    - alex_smart 4y ago
      It definitely is. Church Turing thesis basically states that all systematic procedures can be encoded as math. So, software can be encoded as math yes, but also music can be encoded as math. Life can be encoded as math (which is what our DNA is). Rather than providing a basis of not allowing software to patented, I think it makes the statement "X can be encoded as math" trivially true - and therefore uninteresting. In so far as there is value in patents on any systematic procedure at all, the position that "software should not be patentable because it can be encoded as math" is completely untenable.
      - t-3 4y ago
        The difference is that music is not, in fact, math. The representation is abstract to the utility. With software, the math is the utility.
        jolux 4y ago
        What does “the representation is abstract to the utility” mean? I mean, music isn’t patentable, but it is thoroughly copyrighted.
        alex_smart 4y ago
        Software is also, in fact, not math. Nor is the math the utility of software. Software's utility (usually) is the business problems it solves. The processes are encoded as math, and a lot of writing software is about improving those processes, but that is not in fact the utility. Think of the guy who invented the equi-tempered scale. All throughout history you had to make instruments that are tuned to play in one scale. Now you can suddenly make instruments that can play all of them. Solves a real problem from music by making an improvement in the representation, so it can be viewed as all math. But is it really "just" math?
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  The link you're looking for is curry howard correspondance
- em3rgent0rdr 4y ago
  Everything is math.
- gitgud 4y ago
  https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png
nceqs3 4y ago
Here is a list of the essential patents from the main pool: https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/hevc-att1.pdf https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/hevc-att1.pdf Find a single US patent that "claims" maths as GP argued. It doesn't exist.
- monocasa 4y ago
  I picked first US patent listed (US 7,292,636), and it's first claim says > 1. For a bitstream comprising a first video picture, a second video picture, and a third video picture, a method of decoding comprising: computing a particular value that is based on (i) a first order difference value between an order value for the third video picture and an order value for the first video picture, and (ii) a second order difference value between an order value for the second video picture and the order value for the first video picture; computing a particular motion vector for the second video picture based on the particular value and a motion vector for the third video picture; and decoding at least one video picture by using the computed motion vector. That certainly sounds like math to me.
Spooky23 4y ago
If you’re against patents, yes. If you’re gainfully employed doing math things that turn into codecs, no. Patents suck, but they also serve a purpose.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  I’m not sure why is this being downvoted… A patent for a drug is just chemistry, which is also just math with a specific ruleset… Patents are designed to protect work, especially work where most of the effort is in the research / discovery rather than the implementation. Implementing a video decoder is relatively easy coming up with the algorithms to encode/decode the video efficiently and effectively however is a lot of work.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    The majority of the posters here are IT practitioners. Stupid patent rules get in the way, and there is a visceral reaction to them. It’s a tough, nuanced issue. I don’t think anyone is happy with the system, but many stakeholders have a vested interest.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    There are essential differences between chemistry and mathematics. To discover anything in mathematics, including a new video compression algorithm, you do not need anything else, except a computer. In theory, not even the computer is needed, as you could do everything with pen and paper, but it might require years or centuries. Chemistry is an experimental science for now, until someone would find a method to solve the equations of quantum mechanics for non-trivial systems. A lot of mathematics is used in chemistry but at its base chemistry remains experimental, because all the mathematical models used in chemistry to predict some facts use a large number of model parameters that have been determined experimentally. There are no truly "ab initio" mathematical predictions in chemistry. Using mathematics in chemistry allows a significant reduction in the number of chemical experiments that must be done to discover anything new, but they cannot be eliminated yet. Any discovery in mathematics can be easily redone again, by someone else, completely independently, and this actually happens extremely frequently. There do not seem to exist many reasons that can justify why the later discoverers must be punished to pay money to others in order to use the mathematical relations that they have discovered themselves, even if by some chance someone else happened to discover the same relations earlier. For mathematical discoveries, there are little grounds to claim that the first discoverer should be able to recover any expenses, as most of the strictly necessary expenses are just in the salaries of people and it is very difficult to estimate what percentage of those expenses had actually contributed to the discovery. On the other hand, for inventions referring to chemical substances, or to mechanical, thermal or electrical devices and so on, a lot of experiments with physical devices must be made and the experimentation costs can indeed be very high, so it can be argued that it might be good for a society to encourage such experiments by promising a temporary monopoly for the exploitation of the results, as long as the duration of the monopoly is not excessive. For the kind of minor innovations that are the object of most recent patents, a reduced patent duration seems more appropriate, e.g. 10 years. A patent duration of 20 years or more seems acceptable only for a few patents for which the acceptance criteria should be much more strict than they have become recently, i.e. such patents should really be "non-obvious for those skilled in the field", and not just trivial combinations of formerly known devices or methods.
MobiusHorizons 4y ago
The specification for the format (which is what is patented) describes the mathematical relationship between the binary payload and the uncompressed picture data. The actual implementation of the encoder / decoder is copyrighted and may also be patented, (which seems to be what you are alluding to), but with patent encumbered formats, the real issue is that the specification itself is patented. Practically this means that every encoder / decoder for patent encumbered formats has to have some form of licensing just to interact with the format even if they somehow reverse engineered the specification and built a cleanroom implementation (at least as far as I understand it, IANAL)

zepolen 4y ago

> that's literally all a video codec is Go on then, make a better video codec, as it's just math.

formerly_proven 4y ago
Nobody said math is simple. Also, isn't that just AV1? (it does seem optimized for the particular niche of streaming vendors though: minimizing bandwidth at all costs)

nceqs3 4y ago

Every country in the world "endorses" the concept of "essential" patents. It's called a patent.

yarg 4y ago
No. A patent covers a way of doing things. An essential patent covers the way of doing things. Essential patents in general fail the obviousness test; they cover the solution that most experts in the field would reach in solving the given problem.
- nceqs3 4y ago
  > A patent covers a way of doing things. An essential patent covers the way of doing things. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. An essential patent is declared essential to a standard (of which there are many). Take 3GPP, companies like Qualcomm, Apple, Ericsson, Huawei, etc. all spend hundreds of million of $ developing each release of the 3GPP cellular standard. During this development process often times patents are filed (based on the companies contributions). As part of joining 3GPP you have to agree to license this IP on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The patents are almost never obvious, as you can see from the lengthy debate over each feature and all of the associated proposals at each 3GPP meeting.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Aren't essential patents essential because they are a standard (or part of one) that makes them essential? Not that they must be obvious? For example, what good is the perfect communication codec if every operator must each pay top dollar?
  - yarg 4y ago
    I'm not saying that 'essential' means 'obvious' in any official sense, rather that they generally cover solutions that experts in the field would come to if attempting to solve the problem. I struggle to see how the patent office could ever uphold the requirement of inobviousness, how could they possibly have expert level domain knowledge across all domains? So the patents get granted, contextually obvious or not. I should stop typing while I'm still vaguely on topic, before I start ranting about patent thickets and wilful infringement.

dordoka 4y ago

Software patents should not be a thing... but the US neoliberalism fucked it up for everyone.

Razengan 4y ago

> video codecs are the exemplary "we'll patent math and there's nothing you can do about it" scam, since that's literally all a video codec is Most software is literally all math.

adrian_b 4y ago
That is why previously software could not be patented and it still cannot be patented in many countries.
alex_smart 4y ago
The Church Turing thesis basically states that any systematic procedure can be encoded into math. Software can be encoded as math, yes, but music can be encoded as math. Life can encoded as math (which is what your DNA is). I really don't understand how the parent commenter fails to see that this makes "X is math" basically a meaningless statement because it is always trivially true and makes their position "math shouldn't be patented" completely untenable.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Encoding the information about some thing in numbers does not make the original thing a mathematical object. The numbers used to encode some information are mathematical objects and they can be transformed using mathematical functions. You can encode the image of a flower in a bit string and you can compress the image by applying a mathematical function. That does not mean that the flower is a mathematical object. The sequence of bases of a DNA molecule from the flower records some information about the structure of that DNA molecule, but it is neither the DNA molecule nor enough information to completely clone a living cell (the various cloned animals from experiments are not identical copies, they combine features inherited from the source of the DNA with others inherited from the source of the anucleated cells used to make the clone, the nucleic DNA is the major source of information about a living cell, but not the only one; it is like the source text of a C compiler that still needs a lot of extra information in order to bootstrap it into an executable compiler). When patent claims are analyzed, it is easy enough to determine if they refer to mathematical methods or to physical things, even when the language of the claims is intentionally confusing. Originally the concept of patent was applicable only to physical devices, which could be built and demonstrated to work as claimed. However the acceptance rules have been relaxed in time, allowing more and more abstract patent claims, until it became possible for the first time to patent software, first in USA, and then also in other countries, usually as a result of pressure either from USA or from industry lobbies.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

That doesn't explain why the browsers don't offer hardware decoding but only software decoding. Both implement the same specification. One is just faster (and in hardware which I assume has said license fees paid by the processor manufacturer). In fact looking at it this way it would be easier to implement it in hardware as you don't just offload the decoding but the whole licensing rigmarole too. Edit: oops this was already mentioned. Sorry the thread is so long I lost the overview.

HPsquared 4y ago

It's not just math. It's a process that can be described in mathematical language.

hitovst 4y ago

"IP" isn't property. Also, only decentralizing, open source, individual empowering, tech, isn't anti-human.