Nero Files Antitrust Complaint Against MPEG-LA 247
hkmwbz writes "German technology company Nero AG has filed an antitrust complaint against the MPEG-LA, the company that manages the H.264 patent pool. Nero claims that the MPEG-LA has violated the law and achieved and abused 100% market share, by, among other things, using 'independent experts' that weren't independent after all, not weeding out non-essential patents from the pool (in fact, it has grown from the original 53 to more than 1,000), and retroactively changing previously-agreed-on license terms."
About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:About time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. MPEG-LA is a glorified protection racket - any corp. brave enough to take a stand against it (and the myriad of other companies it 'shields') is worth standing behind
Re:About time. (Score:5, Interesting)
That said:
"According to the MPEG-LA, Nero's case is nothing special. "I think we're looking it as a typical response by a company that has not abided by the terms of the license they've taken,"
Have Nero not abided by their licence deals? Or are MPEG-LA going to paint it this way to try and throw the case out as a tit-for-tat?
The supreme court would say MPeg LA is illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The supreme court would say MPeg LA is illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems to me this should extend to any collective pool of IP - including patents.
Possibly, it depends on how broad the SCOTUS ruling was. The laws for trademarks and the laws for patents are very different, and each are different from the laws for copyrights.
We'll have to wait and see, but it definitely sounds like this case could be used for a strong argument in Nero's case.
the NFL decision from the court (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the Supreme Court's decision:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-661.pdf [supremecourt.gov]
Re:The supreme court would say MPeg LA is illegal (Score:5, Informative)
No. They ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act would apply for collective licenses. They could still collectively license trademarks without a problem. The specific issue was that the NFL argued they didn't need to worry about antitrust issues while issuing an exclusive collective contract. They may still be able to do exactly what they've already done, and there was no ruling banning collective licensing at all (and nothing that could even be construed to hold back any collective agreement of any kind).
But if you have a collection of competitors agreeing to to work together, antitrust issues apply. It may have some impact on this case if it's found that the cross licensing is an antitrust issue, but there's nothing that would prevent any group from collective licenses (presuming other laws not examined in this ruling aren't broken).
Re:The supreme court would say MPeg LA is illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is the exclusive nature of the agreements signed by the various parties, where those joining the pool are barred by contract from joining another licensing pool. That is significant and may apply to the NFL as well if there were to be a team that would want to independently license its logos and mascots or team uniforms under a separate licensing agreement.
It is this exclusive arrangement that is at the heart of the MPEG-LA lawsuit by Nero. The major media companies and consumer media equipment manufacturers certainly have been engaging in acts for some time that locks potential competitors out of the market for some time.
It is good that this regime is being called on the carpet and being called exactly what it should be: A trust in the classic sense like the rail barons of a previous century were doing that caused the anti-trust legislation to be enacted in the first place. It is about bloody time!
Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)
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That doesn't really answer the question - what has Nero done in terms of breaking agreements? If MPEG-LA are confident to write this off as just a typical "licence non-abider" then what grounds do they have? I know Nero are accusing them of agreement screwiness, but if MPEG-LA are saying this is just Nero's kneejerk for doing something wrong and trying to get out of it, have they got grounds for that? Has Nero broken some agreement themselves?
Re:About time. (Score:4, Insightful)
I would think that if MPEG-LA has 'retroactively changing previously-agreed-on license terms' that in doing so they may have turned Nero from an abiding Licensee to a 'non-abider' rather quickly, and that perhaps this was what Nero was upset about.
I should RTFA, and all that though...
Re:About time. (Score:5, Informative)
FTFA, Nero got a license from MPEG-LA saying that they didn't have to pay license fees for trial software. Now, MPEG-LA has changed their minds and has demanded payment retroactively for all the free trials Nero has provided before the change.
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Unless that was in their original contract--that MPEG-LA could change the terms of the agreement at any time and demand retroactive payments as a result--I don't see how it could possibly be legal.
And if MPEG-LA licenses contain clauses that leave the door open for sudden, retroactive royalty assessment, then H.264 cannot die a quick enough death, and take MPEG-LA with it.
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Even with that in the contract, I fail to see how a "we may change these terms at any time and make them retroactive" isn't the very definition of "unconscionable", and thus unenforceable.
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Yeah, I would think so, too. But contracts between corporations never have to be the least bit sane, apparently.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:About time. (Score:4, Insightful)
...there is a BIG difference between real hardware patents and the mess that is software patents.
People keep saying this, but it is a semantic argument more than anything else.
The reality is that the patent system is so systemically broken due to its lack of scalability, that the effects are most heavily felt by the fastest growing/moving industries.
Patents have always been there to describe both processes and physical manifestations, so there's nothing new there. However, the term lengths and acceptance of obvious ideas are too far removed from what could be considered sane in the current technological climate.
Concepts such as:
1. 'future' patents, or patenting the 'goal' instead of the steps to get there.
2. being allowed to patent something that has already been published (for up to 12 months)
3. obvious 'innovations' (eg. $prior_art$ on the internet)
4. non-immediate disclosure of the patent at the time of submission (eg. submarine patents - disclosure that occurs after numerous other parties have 'innovated' along the same line.)
5. an incredibly low bar for novelty (eg. 'inventive' steps that are a natural evolution of the state of the art and will be discovered in short order (if they haven't been already) by multiple independent parallel 'inventors')
6. etc, etc.
The above are unsustainable in an industry where the half life of a product is under 3 years and the shear volume of 'inventors and implementors' number in the millions. As the number of players grows, the bar for acceptability must be raised proportionally. There is still room for patents on ideas that are truly clever and novel and would have little chance of being 'rediscovered' by multiple other parties without significant effort, investment and/or serendipity. But, the more players there are, the more likelihood that what is being claimed is far from being unique. (To quantise this, term lengths could be made relative to how inventive the patent actually is. More inventiveness, longer protection. Very little inventiveness, very short term length. However, measuring 'inventiveness' is probably just as difficult a question.)
In addition to fixing the above, it should also be recognised that anything that ends up being deemed an industry standard should be considered a special case and handled by the public trust.
'Fixing' the patent system by trying to create a disconnection between software/hardware/manufacturing processes/business processes/etc is not the right way to go about it. Even if a distinction can be made, it is so arbitrary as to end up flip/flopping every time a clever legal argument is made or sneaky 'word-around' starts getting written into new patents. (eg. "A device that ..." or "A method to create ...")
So, the answer is not to "deny all 'software' patents". The answer is FIX the system. Now.
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> The answer is FIX the system. Now.
The answer is to delete the system. Completely. End the patent system.
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm [ucla.edu]
I didn't know Nero AG had time for this (Score:5, Funny)
They seemed so busy turning their superior burning tool into another bloated intrusive dog.
Re:I didn't know Nero AG had time for this (Score:5, Informative)
They seemed so busy turning their superior burning tool into another bloated intrusive dog.
There are other completely free products that have matched Nero's (former) minimalist approach. CDBurnerXP is great on Windows. Brasero works great on Linux. On OS X, Burn is not quite as much my style, but it's simple and get it's job done.
Essentially, Nero got priced out of the "dirt simple I just wanna burn a damned CD" market. Bloatware is all that's left.
Re:I didn't know Nero AG had time for this (Score:5, Informative)
I don't have any affiliation with this project.
Re:I didn't know Nero AG had time for this (Score:4, Interesting)
PortableApps Version [portableapps.com]
Also not affiliated with the project or the portable apps folks, just like both.
Re:I didn't know Nero AG had time for this (Score:4, Insightful)
There are other completely free products that have matched Nero's (former) minimalist approach.
I don't disagree and would add in CDex as another example, but Nero is one of the few for profit companies that seem to have made an effort to put out a good product at a fair price. There's always been a few companies whose PC products are reasonably priced and worth the cost. Norton Utilities was perhaps the most shining example. I almost always get a free light version of Nero software when I buy a high end optical drive or a TV card/ripper. I'll pick up their latest full suite when it pops up on my radar screen at half price because the lite version still measures up well against the free stuff. One of the biggest problems vendors like Nero face is that MS knows it has to keep adding brain candy apps for the point and click crowd and MS will drive niche vendors out of business to keep their OS/Office products afloat. It's just a temporary bother because an OS in 10 years time will come with a full suite of audio video scrapbook apps for mom and pop and the kids to play with.
just my loose change
Don't forget (Score:2)
BurnAware. Its how Nero used to be many years ago. I stopped using Nero when the "suite" stopped fitting onto a 650Mb CDR.
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Re:I didn't know Nero AG had time for this (Score:5, Funny)
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>There are other completely free products that have matched Nero's (former) minimalist approach. [...]
(You neglected to mention the excellent k3b for Linux, but whatever).
The issue with Nero is that they are obviously doing more than just burning discs, they must be including the ability to either create video or transcode video (I don't know, I don't use MS-Windows, thus I don't use Nero). Other "burning" programs, even commercial ones, should not need any type of license from MPEG-LA just to burn disc
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As with everything, YMMV though. Personally I can't stand Brasero's UI, and feel K3B is too bloated for my poor, old laptop so yeah, I use Nero Linux on it. Runs smoothly, works great and it even works as a CD ripper in a pinch.
Perhaps the Windows version is still the bloated hog that I remember from so many years ago, but the Linux version at least is incredible and well worth its money.
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My favorite is DeepBurn for Windows. There is a paid pro version, but I haven't even bothered to look up its features because the free version does everything I've ever needed it to do.
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Essentially, Nero got priced out of the "dirt simple I just wanna burn a damned CD" market
yes, when Microsoft added the capability to burn DVDs to XP, what was Nero supposed to do (apart from roll over and die?).
Re:I didn't know Nero AG had time for this (Score:5, Insightful)
Zomg, what will the pirates do if they can't burn DVDs??
OK, for real though, here's the other side of the debate.
Higher end tech is too expensive - BD-ROM is the current highest end consumers can buy, but the entrance cost to using that technology is sufficiently high that Joe Middle Class Consumer with his wife and 2.5 kids and a mortgage can't afford it.
Why buy a BD-R or flash drive when you only have 1 GB of photos to give to Aunt Mabel, anyway? A blank DVD only costs a few cents.
Burning CDs to listen in your car is cheaper than buying an mp3 player. Those are still a luxury item, especially with the outrageous cost of the kits you have to use to hook them up to your car. (Let's face it - I'm not going to buy a luxury car just because it plays mp3s.) Hitting the next track button on your stereo is safer than fiddling with your handheld mp3 player, too.
CD/DVD-ROM discs will outlast a frequently-used USB drive. I've had some Flash devices that lasted, some that didn't make it 2 years.
In the business world, $100,000+ software is still distributed on CD and DVD, or an image thereof. Drivers for certain brands of servers are downloaded as ISO format, so you are supposed to burn them. Firmware drivers come in bootable ISO form now. Yes, I know, 7-zip can unpack all of the above. But when you're setting up an OS on a new server or zeroing a disk or recovering a failed machine, you usually need a disc because they DON'T boot off the USB ports.
USB drives cannot normally be write-protected without arcane magik tricks, and not many can be write-protected at all. Read-only media is more secure when you're up against malware. This is important when performing security breach remediation, such as antivirus on a live system.
And now, for Slashdot brownie points: Linux installs are available as CD/DVD ISO images. ;) Of course you could use USB for this, but when you can give someone Linux for essentially free (CDs are dirt cheap) how could you go wrong there?
I've seen people using floppies and tapes as recently as last year. So, just because something's obsolete on the cutting edge, doesn't mean hordes of people aren't still using it.
Must be nice to have the money and time and modern hardware to get rid of optical media!! :)
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I suspect the GP will point out the dirt cheapness of small flash drives. I will now beat him to the punch.
One could reasonably afford to distribute Linux installers on fairly small USB flash drives (1gb no longer counts as "big"... my inner child is appropriately stunned) for only a few cents more per unit than CDs or DVDs, and they are substantially sturdier for the purposes of travel by pocket.
Actually, I'll probably mention that to the next Ubuntu type I see handing out discs at a convention.
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The last bunch of 100 DVD-R discs I bought cost $0.17 each.
I am anxiously awaiting information where I can buy USB flash drives for anything near that price. Heck, I will be extremely excited if I can get some 512MB ones for less than $1.
I would probably be interested in purchasing at least 100 of them.
Sadly, I think the price for a thumb drive is more like $10 for 512MB and $15 for 1GB. You might get it down to 512MB for $8 if you bought a lot of them. But nothing is going to compare to the $0.17 for a
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USB drives have replaced DVD's some time ago already. We are beating a dead dog here. Why?
The cost of a USB drive hasn't dropped to the point where I can keep a couple dozen of them on hand and give them out willy nilly to any friends who might want a copy of something I have.
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The cost of a USB drive hasn't dropped to the point where I can keep a couple dozen of them on hand and give them out willy nilly to any friends who might want a copy of something I have.
You pay for USB thumb drives??
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I don't pay for them. On the other hand I don't attend enough conferences or deal with enough sales people to amass enough of them to simply hand them out at will either.
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Thats pretty funny. CDs and DVDs are still the defacto method of making physical copies for offsite storage, the defacto way to give mom photos of the kids, the easiest way to give a distributor a physical copy of images for their catalog, the best way to make a compilation of music that will play in any car, the preferred way to backup and archive settings of the old computer when you buy a new one so you have a hard copy in case of crash, and it is dirt cheap, fast and easy.
Yes, I use USB hard drives mor
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the problem is that in the "real" world corporations and the US Government do not allow free or open source software on their computers. It is all fine that you have free alternatives, but they won't be allowed on the machines due to administrative policies.
I work for the US Government, and we run a ton of open source on various systems. Most other governments and most corporations do too (Apache - a FLOSS product, runs most of the Internet).
Your statement is completely without merit.
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They seemed so busy turning their superior burning tool into another bloated intrusive dog.
I'm genuinely curious here...
I've been using an older version of Nero for years now. I recently had to install Nero on a Windows 7 machine, which my old version wouldn't support, and acquired a copy of Nero Burning ROM 10.
There were other things I could have installed... I didn't really pay much attention to the options... I just installed Burning ROM 10... And it looks pretty much like my old version. I'm not seeing a whole lot of bloat there.
What's so bad about Nero these days?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:3, Informative)
Although I disagree with most of what that company does, their MPEG licensing fee is on the order of $2 per manufactured device to use their technology. This isn't really extortion. HDMI is 4 cents per device, but you're required to maintain a $10,000 license fee on top of that. I think gross abuse would be more on the order of $50/device.
Either way, I support the free and open standard provided by displayport, which dispatches with the fees.
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Informative)
MPEG_LA's official stance is that nobody can create a codec for compressed video of any sort without violating at least one of their patents.
Non-infringing video (Score:5, Informative)
Well, you probably would have trouble getting a modern compression system that doesn't infringe on one or more of their patents, but you can use an older video format.
Consider that DVD was developed in 1995, so the base MPEG-2 patents expire within 5 years, if not earlier.
The draft MPEG-1 standard was out in 1990, so a codec based on MPEG-1 technology should be free of patent issues.
H.264 dates from 2003, so we probably have another 13 years there.
Ultimately, it may take a legal battle with Google to invalidate or narrow some of the H.264 patents such that VP8 or something similar can compete patent-free.
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Consider that DVD was developed in 1995, so the base MPEG-2 patents expire within 5 years, if not earlier.
Patents last 28 years (in the US at least), that puppy has another 13 years or so on it.
Re:Non-infringing video (Score:5, Informative)
Consider that DVD was developed in 1995, so the base MPEG-2 patents expire within 5 years, if not earlier.
Patents last 28 years (in the US at least), that puppy has another 13 years or so on it.
Huh? US Patents don't last 28 years. New patents have a term of 20 years from the earliest filing date. Patents filed before June 8, 1995 have a term that is the longer of (i) 20 years from the earliest filing date; or (ii) 17 years from the date of issue.
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Thing is that in computing, stuff gets obsolete extremely fast.
Consider that DVD was developed in 1995, so the base MPEG-2 patents expire within 5 years, if not earlier, and people are still using it.
Better for you?
Citation, please? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I'm not being facetious. This is not a passive-aggressive way of saying you're wrong, I simply do not know.
I've seen a lot of people talking about MPEG LA, including veiled threats against people who use Theora and WEBM, but I haven't heard much from MPEG LA itself. Where exactly is this "official stance" you speak of? I'd like to read it for myself.
It's my understanding that what MPEG LA does is gather patents that apply to encoding, license them out, and pay the owners of said patents. They also i
Re:Citation, please? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they don't indemnify at all. I've seen stories that apparently they are forming a patent pool for Theora and WebM/VP8, but the only place I can't find any confirmation of that is from MPEG LA themselves. The "official stance" referred to by the AC was mentioned in the story about them forming a VP8 pool, but said statement (and VP8 plan) doesn't exist on their site.
And they sue. A lot [mpegla.com].
They are founding a patent pool for human gene patents though. That can't be evil at all.
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Insightful)
Any non-zero fee is bad for free (as in beer, and as in speech) software. When you have no price you're charging, then you can't really add in any fee on top of your price.
It basically means that if you want to distribute software, you have to implement a means to SELL it. If you goal is to distribute software free of charge, then even a $0.01 licensing fee totally cripples that.
A better solution for "free as in beer" software would be to make the fee a percentage of the sale price, though that still is somewhat problematic from the "free as in speech" angle.
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If you goal is to distribute software free of charge, then even a $0.01 licensing fee totally cripples that.
The cost of duplicating and distributing your free-as-in-beer software bundle are surely going to be much more than a penny a a disk.
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How much does Sourceforge charge for every disk downloaded from a free software bundle?
That's just what Microsoft did to Spyglass (Score:4, Interesting)
When Microsoft bought the spyglass browser and turned it into IE, they agreed to pay spyglass a percentage of the sale price. Ultimately, they made the sale price $.00, wiping out spyglass's revenue stream in a classic MS double-cross.
I don't know why Spyglass never sued. IE was made a part of Windows, which was definitely not free. Sure, they made IE available as a free download, but they also included it on every Windows CD. Maybe there was a quiet suit and settlement?
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Although I agree that it was bad, the outcome (free browsers - as in beer and in speech) certainly was to everyone's benefit. Netscape needed to die.
Re:That's just what Microsoft did to Spyglass (Score:4, Interesting)
They did sue. The settlement, however, was for a pathetic $8M according to this source [businessweek.com].
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Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Funny)
That's like saying Satan is not evil because there's also Cthulhu.
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Funny)
That's like saying Satan is not evil because there's also Cthulhu.
Cthulhu is not evil... He's just misunderstood...
Here! Have a Taco, they are deliriously delicious, although a tad non-euclidean.
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I hope that taco doesn’t go commander! :P
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Nope it is pure evil. Okay not pure evil but just your normal unrestricted greed.
Software patents are just evil.
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention their patents become so broad that if you want to create your own compressed video standard you still have to license it out.
Really, they should license certain software for $2 and if you use clean-room reverse engineering, you should be perfectly entitled to distribute and use it. And if you make a different standard, you should be able to distribute and use that without fear of patent lawsuits.
Any company that does not make use of their patent "portfolio" to advance art and sciences is an abuser of patent laws plain and simple.
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is principle, even if I use totally clean-room reverse-engineering without even taking one look at their patents, I still am guilty of patent violations, how?
Among copyright, patent, and trademark, only copyright cares about the pedigree of any copy. Patents and trademarks can be infringed whether you have had any contact with covered goods or not.
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if it is technically legal, I can't support it. I probably can't help supporting it financially (as so many products have it included) but I certainly can't support it morally.
The entire point of patents are to instruct how something works and how to make it. However, these patents are too broad and cover far too much.
Patents are supposed to encourage different ways of doing things, however, with "patent pools" like MPEG-LA and large corporations having far to many patents and lawyers plus patent trolls, you can't do anything without running into one of them.
If you don't do things exactly like the patent papers say and make non-trivial modifications, you should be able to use it. That is the only way in this day and age that patents can "promote the sciences and the useful arts"
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't do things exactly like the patent papers say and make non-trivial modifications, you should be able to use it. That is the only way in this day and age that patents can "promote the sciences and the useful arts"
There's no such thing as "exactly" with software patents. Most of them are so broad and hopeless, they claim ideas, not specific implementations. Most software patents do not state and present any actual software that is being patented - i.e. no code, and no algorithm. In fact, it wouldn't make sense for them to list any actual code to patent because copyright already gives them a far greater protection than patents would.
Software patents don't make sense.
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Which is an abuse of law.
Uh... I'm not sure you've got the idea of patents down yet.
The entire point of patents are to instruct how something works and how to make it.
And how do they do that? With a limited monopoly on the idea, not the implementation. It's the exact opposite coverage of copyright, which grants a limited monopoly on the expression but not the idea. Trademarks is a monopoly over a name under certain conditions.
However, these patents are too broad and cover far too much.
The patents themselves aren't, it's the pools that are far too broad and cover far too much. On that I agree. However there is a sharp distinction between what the MPEG-LA is doing and
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:4, Interesting)
And how do they do that? With a limited monopoly on the idea, not the implementation. It's the exact opposite coverage of copyright, which grants a limited monopoly on the expression but not the idea. Trademarks is a monopoly over a name under certain conditions.
And what are the points of those?
In the US constitution, patents are secured to "promote the sciences and useful arts", trademarks are used to protect consumers. The point of patents was to prevent guilds and companies from monopolizing knowledge by providing an incentive for them to release it to the public. Trademarks are useful because they let people understand what they are getting: if I want a Nintendo Wii and the package says Nintendo Wii, I should be getting a Nintendo Wii, not http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2007/12/vii-2-white.jpg [blogcdn.com] , trademarks are useful.
What patents are today, are not what patents were when they were first designed. They were to add to the public knowledge and let people do great things with it as building blocks. Today though? We have the internet, we have communication, etc. We need to seriously consider if patents are even worth it today because they fulfill none of the constitutional requirements and don't benefit the original idea of patents.
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If the patent can be infringed without ever having seen or heard of the patented item, then I'd argue that's proof that the patent is obvious or non-novel, and thus not patentable.
Or to state it another way, if someone describes a problem to you and you can create a solution that infringes on an existing patent, then your solution does infringe on the patent as awarded, but the patent was erroneously awarde
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The problem is principle, even if I use totally clean-room reverse-engineering without even taking one look at their patents, I still am guilty of patent violations, how?
That's how patents are supposed to work. They'd be kind of pointless if they didn't work that way.
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about it this way, there are a number of ways to create an image, you can use ink, CRT, LCD, LED, etc. but with patents like the patent pool that MPEG-LA has, they have a patent for a "technology to display an image" with the result of being an etch-a-sketch, if I want to make a CRT, I still have to pay them money because it is "technology to display an image" despite me not even using their technology at all.
So unless I feel like paying extortion money, the technology lags behind because patents are preventing me from creating "technology to display an image" even if I want to do it in a radically different way.
Not to mention that half the time it isn't the people who would have created the etch-a-sketch technology but rather a business out in Texas or someplace which does nothing to do with display technology and they only target me once I'm making money with my CRT monitors.
Granted, this is a terrible example, but when you look at software patents and such, they are effectively cornering the market with an "etch-a-sketch" because a CRT or LCD would violate the "technology to display an image" patent.
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...if I want to make a CRT, I still have to pay them money because it is "technology to display an image" despite me not even using their technology at all...
Say what? Even if the patent clerk was so facepalmingly stupid as to approve such an application, noone would ever be able to find a lawyer just as stupid as to argue a precedent that goes back before the written word; when Man first put dust to cave wall.
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I believe that's the wording in the US constitution.
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Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Insightful)
There are numerous other terms attached to MPEG licening, including requirements that you not facilitate the infringement of copyrights, your device respects HDCP, etc, etc. You either do as they say and pay their fee or they sue you. Sounds like extortion to me.
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Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:4, Informative)
well no, not yet anyways. But if you make a shortfilm with your camera and decide to sell it, then you have to pay up big time.
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Interesting)
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For example in the processing industry it makes perfect sense to clone your competitor's production method and only "use" a patented invention. For the same reason it does make sense to grant conditional or limited licenses so say Microsoft can't pretend it'll be used in a tiny niche application and instead make it a Windows core technology at almost no cost. None of this should ideally screw the end users though, but finding the right legalese to avoid that will be difficult while retaining anything like a
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Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Insightful)
If Vinny and Guido show up at your business with a baseball bat and remark that you have really unbroken knees, and it would be a shame if anything happened to them, it doesn't really matter if they demand $2 or $50. Once they show up at your business, willing to make threats about how they need a cut of the sales of a business that they may not have contributed anything to, they have gone too far. MPEG-LA are, at this point, basically operating under exactly the same business model as Mafia running a protection racket. They just invested enough in politics to make their game somehow legal.
Re: (Score:2)
their MPEG licensing fee is on the order of $2 per manufactured device
MPEG-2 PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE SUMMARY [mpegla.com]
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You're missing the point entirely!
The point is that any commercial movie you make might infringe the patent because you exceeded the MPEG LA license. That really sucks.
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Informative)
You might think differently if you got the manual your $8000 Pro HD camera out and read the manual
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=584693&l=d37e6ecc2a&id=1429834573 [facebook.com]
and then once you got that sorted out you read the manual to your $999 copy of Final Cut Pro
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=584692&l=a8a46fa560&id=1429834573 [facebook.com]
MPEG-LA is a virus
Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil (Score:5, Informative)
You might think differently if you got the manual your $8000 Pro HD camera out and read the manual
Your camera shipped with the generic end-user consumer license.
Your costs for MPEG 4 distribution look like this:
Shorts 12 minutes and under -
$0
Retail sales by title -
The lower of 2% of the price paid to the Licensee (on first arms length sale of the video) or $0.02 per title.
If you aren't grossing $150K+ in sales they have no interest in you whatever.
Subscription sales [The Geek's Strip Club Channel or DVD of the Month] -
100,000 subscribers or less - $0/yr.
100,000-250,000 - $25,000/yr
250,000-500,000 - $50,000/yr
500,000=1 million -$100,000 - $50,000.
Over 1 Million - $100,000/yr
Free TV Broadcast -
1-Time $2,500 fee for each AVC encoder
OR
Annual Fee For Markets Of 100,000 and Over - Starting at $2,500/yr
Internet -
End user does not pay by title or subscription - $0/yr [May in the future rise to the equivalent of Free TV Broadcast]
Enterprise Cap [Commonly owned legal entities] -
$5 million/yr
That is the real cost of H.264 licensing to a service provider the size of Disney or Google. Which means that production, storage and distribution of VP8 video is going to have to be mighty damn cheap to be competitive. SUMMARY OF AVC/H.264 LICENSE TERMS [mpegla.com]
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Also, I believe that the fee doesn't kick in unless you've manufactured 10,000 units so the little guy who's developing an app for fun or limited distribution doesn't have to pay anything at all.
It's all perfectly legal (Score:3, Funny)
HOLY SHIT. (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems Nero listened to my e-mail. I told them they should be doing something about this because it would drastically affect their market otherwise. I sent that e-mail right after the original MPEG-LA brouhaha broke a couple weeks ago.
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Antitrust suits aren't started with mere weeks of research. They've probably been preparing for months.
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I guess you and some windows Users have something in common.
Now all you need is a camera and some commercial time. Maybe a slogan like "nero 7,it was my idea".
All joking aside, they probably did listen to your email. There was probably a ton of others they listened to also. but rest assured, there is something in it for them outside of making you a happy customer. Companies tend to operate towards what is beneficial to them. IT may be that your email and they line up perfectly, but lets not get to carried a
Obligatory... (Score:2)
Correlation does not imply causality :)
Re:HOLY SHIT. (Score:5, Funny)
"My name is Khyber, and Nero's anti-trust complaint was my idea."
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What timing! (Score:3, Informative)
This couldn't have come at a worse time for MPEG-LA. They're just now preparing for an epic struggle with Google over VP8 and Nero comes from behind and sticks a dagger in their spine.
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In other news, it couldn't have come at a better time for the American citizen and consumer.
Patent pools. Now small feudal fiefs (Score:2)
this is ridiculous beyond this point.
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No, probably because there's nothing to sue for. (Score:2, Interesting)
No, probably because there's nothing to sue for. It's just FUD.