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Patents on codecs are probably the worst offenders in my mind. Codecs benefit significantly from network effects, so making it a question as to whether you can

Patents on codecs are probably the worst offenders in my mind. Codecs benefit significantly from network effects, so making it a question as to whether you can legally use a codec muddies the waters and drives people away from good solutions. You wind up in ridiculous situations where you have hardware in your CPU that you can't legally use without paying for a license. Plus, there are so many parties with a vested interest in making good codecs, I really don't buy the argument that they require patent protection otherwise they wouldn't be researched.

ossacip 2y ago
With the current level of investment in video codecs, it takes about 6-8 years to achieve a 40-50% BD-rate improvement between codec generations. That amounts to thousands of inventions over the course of those years. Without patents, I bet the level of progress would be abysmal. What vested interest are you referring to? What incentive is there for companies like InterDigital, Ericsson, Nokia, or even Qualcomm to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on each generation of codecs? It takes a lot of money to sustain research and development in video codecs. A decent researcher makes between 100-300k USD a year. Each generation of H.26x requires hundreds of researchers. JVET meetings have an attendance of about 350 people, four times a year. And don’t get me started on the computational side. A single research team needs thousands of CPUs running 24/7 to sustain the research. Video codecs are seriously slow during development. They get fast once dedicated hardware is built. As a video coding scientist, it baffles me how people assume that our work should be free. We work enormously hard for years so that YouTube and Netflix can stream higher quality video for everyone to watch. Now, why should that be free? Why do you call our work shit?
- peutetre 2y ago
  > What incentive is there for companies like InterDigital, Ericsson, Nokia, or even Qualcomm to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on each generation of codecs? If there's no incentive then they are the wrong companies to do the work. Google, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, etc. all derive clear and direct benefits from video codec improvements. They have strong incentives to reduce the bandwidth usage and increase the image quality of internet video. That's why they've all contributed to and use AV1: https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ All protocols and formats on the web are available to implement under royalty-free terms: https://www.w3.org/policies/patent-policy/ https://www.w3.org/policies/patent-policy/ Audio and video are no different. If H.265 can't meet that standard then it's the wrong choice for the web. AV1 for video and Opus for audio are formats that achieve royalty-free licensing and are better fits for the web and the internet generally.

ossacip 2y ago

With the current level of investment in video codecs, it takes about 6-8 years to achieve a 40-50% BD-rate improvement between codec generations. That amounts to thousands of inventions over the course of those years. Without patents, I bet the level of progress would be abysmal. What vested interest are you referring to? What incentive is there for companies like InterDigital, Ericsson, Nokia, or even Qualcomm to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on each generation of codecs? It takes a lot of money to sustain research and development in video codecs. A decent researcher makes between 100-300k USD a year. Each generation of H.26x requires hundreds of researchers. JVET meetings have an attendance of about 350 people, four times a year. And don’t get me started on the computational side. A single research team needs thousands of CPUs running 24/7 to sustain the research. Video codecs are seriously slow during development. They get fast once dedicated hardware is built. As a video coding scientist, it baffles me how people assume that our work should be free. We work enormously hard for years so that YouTube and Netflix can stream higher quality video for everyone to watch. Now, why should that be free? Why do you call our work shit?

peutetre 2y ago
> What incentive is there for companies like InterDigital, Ericsson, Nokia, or even Qualcomm to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on each generation of codecs? If there's no incentive then they are the wrong companies to do the work. Google, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, etc. all derive clear and direct benefits from video codec improvements. They have strong incentives to reduce the bandwidth usage and increase the image quality of internet video. That's why they've all contributed to and use AV1: https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ All protocols and formats on the web are available to implement under royalty-free terms: https://www.w3.org/policies/patent-policy/ https://www.w3.org/policies/patent-policy/ Audio and video are no different. If H.265 can't meet that standard then it's the wrong choice for the web. AV1 for video and Opus for audio are formats that achieve royalty-free licensing and are better fits for the web and the internet generally.