6 ms·

There is already an open media format (edit: for object-based immersive audio), it's called SMPTE 2098. Granted it's basically the mutant stepchild of DTS and D

• scarface74 4y ago
  So it’s anticompetitive to give away tools for free or paying content owners to use it? Would you say the same about a search engine company that gives its browser away for free and pays its competitor in mobile a reported $18 billion a year to be the default search engine for its platform? I would much rather tie my horse to Dolby than a company that has the attention span of a toddler.
  • mattnewton 4y ago
    > So it’s anticompetitive to give away tools for free or paying content owners to use it? If the intent is to drive others out of the market, it could be right?
    • scarface74 4y ago
      So what is the intent of any company that gives away software or any startup that operates at loss funded by VC money? Or if the same company gave its mobile operating system away for free to undercut a rival and then as soon as it became ubiquitous, started making much of it closed source and forcing companies to bundle its closed source software?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • mattnewton 4y ago
        If you ask Peter Thiel, it’s certainly not to engage in competition for the ultimate benefit of consumers. Not that he somehow speaks for everyone in VC funded startups at all. I just don’t find many other voices willing to say “competition is for losers” out loud where regulators might hear, even if the structure of their investments looks like it needs to find a monopoly to me.
  • monocasa 4y ago
    Google is anticompetive and Dolby is. Just like in Google v. Oracle there are no true good guys here, only outcomes that are better or worse for the general public that various corporate entities have aligned themselves to for some perceived short term benefit. Open standards are good for the general public, as are allowing re-implementations of APIs. Taking a look at Google's anticompetive use of search combined with ads would be absolutely fantastic too, but I'm not going to gate other actions on it unless there's some semblance of a chance that the connections between the two actions are anything other than theoretical.
    • scarface74 4y ago
      So it’s open source? What happens as soon as Google abandons it and stops supporting in Android? YouTube? Do you think Apple will ever support it?
      • monocasa 4y ago
        It's an open standard, so better than open source per se since you're not reliant on any particular source tree. And in those cases you've listed, you're left with strictly more options than if it's not an open standard.
        • scarface74 4y ago
          You’re not left with an “option” of an audio standard that none of your customers hardware or browsers support.
          • monocasa 4y ago
            If the open solution doesn't take off in favor of the proprietary solution, then you're in essentially the same end state as if there was no open solution in the first place.
            • scarface74 4y ago
  • diob 4y ago
    Yes and yes. Although honestly, it's always a nuanced thing. But typically the idea is to use money and undercutting to force out competition, then when the competition dies quality goes to crap.
    • scarface74 4y ago
      So it would be like if a big tech company used its money from search to fund an audio standard and give away the software for free to undercut a rival…
      • diob 4y ago
        Yes
  • water-your-self 4y ago
    >So it’s anticompetitive to give away tools for free or paying content owners to use it? Absolutely. Go look at how carnegie won the steel market by starving his competition.
    • asveikau 4y ago
      More recently, Microsoft and Internet Explorer.
      • scarface74 4y ago
        And absolutely nothing came of it in the US. Microsoft was not forced to unbundle IE, no browser choice, nothing. Now all platforms are bundled with browsers and plenty of other software.
        • asveikau 4y ago
          I think that has more to do with who was running the DOJ in the 90s vs. the early 2000s. > Now all platforms are bundled with browsers and plenty of other software. This is an interesting question. You could take it as Microsoft's argument before the DOJ being correct, that browsers become an inextricable part of an OS. Whether or not they would have been had they not included it, it seems like we can say in hindsight, of course it would have. But surely Microsoft's decision to do so influenced the way the market went.
    • scarface74 4y ago
      Does that also apply to every other service and software that is either given away for free to gain traction? Does it apply to money losing VC backed companies?
      • duped 4y ago
        Impact and outcomes matter more than explicit behavior when you look at this, it isn't a binary "do x and get banned" kind of program.
      • 4y ago
  • freedomben 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
  • duped 4y ago
    Yes, loss-leading in general can be anti-competitive. And I'm not the only one who thinks so! It obviously depends on the scale, but having been in the space in the past I can tell you the "we are literally paid to use this" hurdle is next to impossible to clear. https://www.aeaweb.org/research/loss-leading-bans-retail-competition https://www.aeaweb.org/research/loss-leading-bans-retail-com....
  • galdosdi 4y ago
    Sometimes, yes. Selling something for below cost with the intent to drive your competitors out of business is called "dumping" and has been illegal since the 1800s. Because selling a product below cost is fundamentally unsustainable, there is no logical reason to sell a product for less than cost besides doing so temporarily with the hopes of being able to later recoup the loss with higher, above cost prices. This is anticompetitive because an inferior product can win out if it is backed by bigger pockets that can afford to stay unprofitable longer than the company making the superior product. This is basic economics, not really something that needs to be thought out and debated from scratch by HN over and over everytime it comes up, so it really would be helpful if everyone who is thinking about commenting on economic issues like this tries to at some point spend a couple hours reading an AP Microeconomics text. If a high school kid or college kid can do it in a semester, and intelligent adult can cover the high points in a weekend.
    • monocasa 4y ago
      Like most calls to just understand econ 101, the real life applications are significantly more complex. > Because selling a product below cost is fundamentally unsustainable, there is no logical reason to sell a product for less than cost besides doing so temporarily with the hopes of being able to later recoup the loss with higher, above cost prices. There are plenty of other reasons. The one applicable here is "commoditize your complement". Zero cost to consumer codecs mean more eyeballs on youtube videos, which means more ad revenue for Google. That thought process doesn't lead to later ramping up consumer costs. And if it's truly an open standard, how are they going increase costs when anyone can simply release a free implementation?
      • scarface74 4y ago
        Anyone can release a “free version” of a phone that runs Android. How successful of an effort will that be without proprietary Google Play Services?
        • monocasa 4y ago
          Which wouldn't be an issue if play services was an open standard.
• Aissen 4y ago
  If only it was the only thing... Did you know Dolby is actively fighting open source software like VLC behind the scenes ? Anyone having a Dolby license is pressured to stay away from VLC, even when it's a superior technical solution. The reason is simple: VLC/OSS developers have been implementing Dolby technologies without paying a dime or using proprietary blobs. How dare they!
• zeroimpl 4y ago
  I'm familiar with several Dolby tools for processing ATMOS and Dolby Vision, none of which are free.