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> They own IP. People want to use that IP. They say "pay us X to use our IP". The general premise of patents and copyrights is that you're going to do some dev

> They own IP. People want to use that IP. They say "pay us X to use our IP". The general premise of patents and copyrights is that you're going to do some development work and then you get an exclusive right that yields a competitive advantage. Standards are different. The purpose of the standard is that Alice wants her output device to be compatible with everyone else's input device and Bob wants his input device to be compatible with everyone else's output device. There is no competitive advantage to be had because the very premise is that everyone possible is going to implement it to maximize the network effect. And the entire industry has the incentive to want the standard to be good and put whatever good ideas they have into it because they're all stuck with it if it isn't. Meanwhile because of the network effect, everyone has to implement the standard because if they come up with their own thing -- even if it's better -- it wouldn't be compatible. So all of the normal incentives from copyrights and patents are wrong. You can't gain a competitive advantage from it, companies have a preexisting incentive to make it good even without an exclusive right, and someone who doesn't want to pay doesn't have the option to try to do better on their own because of the network effect. And the network effect makes it an antitrust concern. The result is that NDAs and royalties on standards are just a shakedown and the law shouldn't allow them.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
parineum 11mo ago
[flagged]
- regularfry 11mo ago
  Like the IETF, you mean? If I want to implement general internet-compatible timestamps, RFC3339 is right here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3339 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3339. How about something big: TCP? RFC9293. It's here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9293 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9293. HTML? Different organisation but the same idea, it's over here: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/ https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/ You're reading this web page because of standards organisations that gave everything away for free for anyone to implement.
wat10000 11mo ago
Where does "invention" end and "standard" begin? If I come up with a new and better way to transmit video between devices, should I be allowed to charge for the right to interoperate with it? What if I don't want any interoperability and it's just for my own hardware? What if I just want certain select partners?
- cwel 11mo ago
  >Should I be allowed to charge for the right to interoperate with it? No. >What if ... just for my own hardware? No. >What if I just want certain select partners? Sure, you can select between the DoD or Langley.
  - wat10000 11mo ago
    So anything which communicates between two pieces of hardware wouldn’t be covered by IP laws?
    - selfhoster11 11mo ago
      Ideally, yes.
    - barnabee 11mo ago
      Yes. It seems pretty obviously true to me that there should be no legal right to prevent interoperability and no recourse against adversarial interoperability. The right to say "Compatible with X" or similar where X is a brand should also be protected.
      - wat10000 11mo ago
        So I sit down and invent some wonderful new interconnect. It would be be a big advantage to put it into certain kinds of video equipment. I don't make any video equipment, so I license it to companies that do. Should this be impossible? New communications tech should only be created as trade secrets, by industry-wide consortia, or altruists? This is getting close to arguing against IP as a general concept. Which I don't really object to very strongly, but presenting it as a special carveout for communication doesn't make sense to me.
rtpg 11mo ago
> Standards are different. The purpose of the standard is that Alice wants her output device to be compatible with everyone else's input device and Bob wants his input device to be compatible with everyone else's output device. I do think there's value and a lot of work in coming up with a standard that manufacturers agree on. It's a huge coordination problem, based on the idea of unlinking a standard's success with the success of, say, a hardware competitor. It's real work! And like.... HDMI is an invention, right? If that isn't then what is? "we should have drivers for the hardware that relies on this tech" just feels like an obvious win to me though. The (short-term) ideal here is just the forum being like "yes it's good if HDMI 2.1 works on linux" and that being the end of the story I don't have much love for things that mean that like VGA info online all being "we reverse engineered this!!!" so they're not my friends but I wouldn't succeed much at standards coordination
- kasabali 11mo ago
  > HDMI is an invention, right? DVI was an invention. HDMI just added DRM on top of it.
  - samplatt 11mo ago
    That's definitely a thing that happened, but it's minimising so much other important work that it's misrepresenting the whole thing. Do you know how much bandwidth six channels of uncompressed audio needs? Home theaters would be a HUGE hassle without a single cable doing all that work for you.
    - crote 11mo ago
      ADAT Lightpipe supports up to 8 audio channels at 48 kHz and 24 bits - all using standard off-the-shelf Toslink cables and transceivers. MADI can do significantly more. Let's not pretend surround sound is a nearly-impossible problem only HDMI could possibly solve.
      - samplatt 11mo ago
        I... think you might be proving my point for me? The ability to have a single cable that can do video AND a bunch of audio channels at once is amazing for the average joe. Don't get me wrong, I use optical in my setup at home & I'd love to have more studio & scientific gear just for the hell of it, but I'm the minority. I'm not trying to defend the HDMI forum or the greedy arsehole giants behind them. The DRM inbuilt to HDMI and the prohibitive licensing of the filters (like atmos) is a dick move and means everything is way more expensive than it needs to be. Was just pointing out that parent's comment was reductive.
yturijea 11mo ago
I would say a fair compensation for the original work is fair, until certain threshold, after which they must invent new thing rather than continued benefit of an existing. Say once they earned 400% of valuation or cost of invention or similar. there could be a system in place. But of course the people to regulate this has a natural bias, as they themselves would be hurt by it, most likely. So the vast majority, ie. the public is at an disadvantage, greed wins again.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

parineum 11mo ago

[flagged]

regularfry 11mo ago
Like the IETF, you mean? If I want to implement general internet-compatible timestamps, RFC3339 is right here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3339 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3339. How about something big: TCP? RFC9293. It's here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9293 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9293. HTML? Different organisation but the same idea, it's over here: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/ https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/ You're reading this web page because of standards organisations that gave everything away for free for anyone to implement.

wat10000 11mo ago

Where does "invention" end and "standard" begin? If I come up with a new and better way to transmit video between devices, should I be allowed to charge for the right to interoperate with it? What if I don't want any interoperability and it's just for my own hardware? What if I just want certain select partners?

cwel 11mo ago
>Should I be allowed to charge for the right to interoperate with it? No. >What if ... just for my own hardware? No. >What if I just want certain select partners? Sure, you can select between the DoD or Langley.
- wat10000 11mo ago
  So anything which communicates between two pieces of hardware wouldn’t be covered by IP laws?
  - selfhoster11 11mo ago
    Ideally, yes.
  - barnabee 11mo ago
    Yes. It seems pretty obviously true to me that there should be no legal right to prevent interoperability and no recourse against adversarial interoperability. The right to say "Compatible with X" or similar where X is a brand should also be protected.
    - wat10000 11mo ago
      So I sit down and invent some wonderful new interconnect. It would be be a big advantage to put it into certain kinds of video equipment. I don't make any video equipment, so I license it to companies that do. Should this be impossible? New communications tech should only be created as trade secrets, by industry-wide consortia, or altruists? This is getting close to arguing against IP as a general concept. Which I don't really object to very strongly, but presenting it as a special carveout for communication doesn't make sense to me.

rtpg 11mo ago

> Standards are different. The purpose of the standard is that Alice wants her output device to be compatible with everyone else's input device and Bob wants his input device to be compatible with everyone else's output device. I do think there's value and a lot of work in coming up with a standard that manufacturers agree on. It's a huge coordination problem, based on the idea of unlinking a standard's success with the success of, say, a hardware competitor. It's real work! And like.... HDMI is an invention, right? If that isn't then what is? "we should have drivers for the hardware that relies on this tech" just feels like an obvious win to me though. The (short-term) ideal here is just the forum being like "yes it's good if HDMI 2.1 works on linux" and that being the end of the story I don't have much love for things that mean that like VGA info online all being "we reverse engineered this!!!" so they're not my friends but I wouldn't succeed much at standards coordination

kasabali 11mo ago
> HDMI is an invention, right? DVI was an invention. HDMI just added DRM on top of it.
- samplatt 11mo ago
  That's definitely a thing that happened, but it's minimising so much other important work that it's misrepresenting the whole thing. Do you know how much bandwidth six channels of uncompressed audio needs? Home theaters would be a HUGE hassle without a single cable doing all that work for you.
  - crote 11mo ago
    ADAT Lightpipe supports up to 8 audio channels at 48 kHz and 24 bits - all using standard off-the-shelf Toslink cables and transceivers. MADI can do significantly more. Let's not pretend surround sound is a nearly-impossible problem only HDMI could possibly solve.
    - samplatt 11mo ago
      I... think you might be proving my point for me? The ability to have a single cable that can do video AND a bunch of audio channels at once is amazing for the average joe. Don't get me wrong, I use optical in my setup at home & I'd love to have more studio & scientific gear just for the hell of it, but I'm the minority. I'm not trying to defend the HDMI forum or the greedy arsehole giants behind them. The DRM inbuilt to HDMI and the prohibitive licensing of the filters (like atmos) is a dick move and means everything is way more expensive than it needs to be. Was just pointing out that parent's comment was reductive.

yturijea 11mo ago

I would say a fair compensation for the original work is fair, until certain threshold, after which they must invent new thing rather than continued benefit of an existing. Say once they earned 400% of valuation or cost of invention or similar. there could be a system in place. But of course the people to regulate this has a natural bias, as they themselves would be hurt by it, most likely. So the vast majority, ie. the public is at an disadvantage, greed wins again.