MPEG LA Attempts To Start VP8 Patent Pool 186
Confirming speculation from last year, an anonymous reader tips news that MPEG LA has posted a request for information about establishing a patent pool for the VP8 video codec.
"In order to participate in the creation of, and determine licensing terms for, a joint VP8 patent license, any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the VP8 video codec specification is invited to submit them for a determination of their essentiality by MPEG LA’s patent evaluators. At least one essential patent is necessary to participate in the process, and initial submissions should be made by March 18, 2011. Although only issued patents will be included in the license, in order to participate in the license development process, patent applications with claims that their owners believe are essential to the specification and likely to issue in a patent also may be submitted."
Evil & good (Score:3)
Re:Evil & good (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a few possible outcomes of this
1: nothing comes of it, either noone has a patent that they can reasonablly claim is essential for VP8 or those that do either want VP8 to stay open or want to continue holding their cards close to their chest.
2: Google looks at the patents and claims they don't actually apply to VP8 at which point a standoff ensues until a court rules on the issue.
3: Google looks at the patents, decides they do indeed cover VP8 and designs VP9 specifically to avoid them.
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4: Google files extortion lawsuit against MPEG-LA
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Umm....what? MPEG-2 can't stream any decent video at an Internet-friendly bandwidth. DVD isn't even HD and it takes 6 megabits to look halfway decent.
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which is where FTTH comes in... plenty of bandwidth for your mpeg2
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The internet is getting faster all the time. At its best, AVC has about twice the coding efficiency of MPEG-2... so you need 3Mpb/s VBR to look about as good as your DVD at 6Mb/s VBR. But bitrates don't need to scale as resolutions increase. For example, broadcast MPEG-2 in HD is at 19.4Mb/s or less, CBR, for 6x the resolution of that DVD. Most online AVC video is in the 2-4Mb/s range, which means MPEG-2 could look similar at twice that, whatever the resolution. People are even paying real money for things
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...like NetFlix steaming "HD",
Seems like most movies I watch these days are in the "steaming" category.
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mp3 has been mature for a long time, and it's been a while since i heard any "sizzle".
the portable music revolution (that really started in the 80s with the walkman) limits any popular formats to 2 channels.
and when we're comparing 24/48 or 2.42mhz, suddenly 16/44.1 sounds pretty much the same to any listener who is honest with themselves.
also, h.264 will always scale better than mpeg-2 on account of the varying block sizes.
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/. News Networks (Score:2)
Corporations collaborate to create a new wall to bar entry into the video codec arena. A surprisingly number of obvious implementations will be covered by at least one of the VP8 patents, and the judges chosen to try the cases will not have a clue how either video codecs or patents work.
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And the judges will live in Texas, the IP wonderland of the USA.
VP8 Patent Pool and Licensing (Score:2)
OK, so I'm sure everyone knows VP8 is the video codec for WebM.
So, this is essentially a step in killing WebM's major advantage over H.264? That advantage being a royalty-free codec...
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Your comment assumes that there are no external patent claims or that any provided would have no merit. If VP8 is indeed encumbered by third party patents--and they can prove it--wouldn't you agree that WebM has then no advantage over H.264 by essentially becoming a legal liability to its users?
Now, I emphasize that those are the conditions of the argument, not facts. However, having Google on one end claiming that the there are no patents encumbering VP8 is still not a fact, and does not prove it either
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Try, yes, but they didn't do a very good job. [multimedia.cx]
article 377 (Score:2)
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Dark Shikari did not actually research the patents and prior art on the technology he claims is patented. Now honestly to do that thoroughly is probably weeks of work, so I wouldn't expect him to ... but I would expect him to be a bit more careful with his words.
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Which is virtually impossible, but I'm going to wager that they've got patents to cover everything that VP8 does. As in all the VP6 patents plus all the ones for whatever they added. Which doesn't necessarily mean that they're safe, but I'm guessing they have enough of a war chest of patents to smack anybody foolish enough to try and claim infringement.
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I would agree that Google knows precisely which, if any, patents they may even remotely infringe. A question that comes up in my mind is whether MPEG-LA, or anyone else, has gone to Google informing them of infringements while demanding royalties. In other words, could they claim willfulness?
Given On2's history they have shown a high degree of integrity and willingness to research and implement their technology in such a way as to be unencumbered.
The member companies of MPEG-LA may have other patent issue
Might be a bluff, otherwise we've a lot of work (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been previous threats about Theora, but nothing happened. This could be FUD bluff too.
MPEG LA has over 1,000 patents which it says are needed for an implementation of MPEG H.264.
Most current efforts around software patents talk about quality and bad patents, but none of those efforts will make a dent on a thicket of 1,000 patents. It's unlikely they're all obvious or that prior art exists for them.
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/MPEG_LA [swpat.org]
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/WebM_and_VP8 [swpat.org]
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Audio-video_patents [swpat.org]
There was a time when the problem was killer patents - RSA, public key encryption, gif - but today the problem is always thickets. Raising quality won't solve the problem, we need to clearly exclude software from patentability.
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One interesting difference here is that they're going up against someone with deep pockets. If they can't find something substantive, MPEG-LA is risking a "slander of title" claim, and Google might consider making an example of them.
"slander of title" - sounds interesting (Score:2)
> MPEG-LA is risking a "slander of title" claim
Has that been used in the past against a patent holder??
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Not that I know of. "Slander of Title" is really a real estate law concept, however, SCO made an interesting attempt to use to enforce an alleged copyright claim. In their case, it turns out they didn't actually *have* the title they were claiming was being "slandered" by Novell. However, there really didn't seem to be anything fundamentally wrong with the reasoning - the consequences of claiming you own something you don't has substantial legal hi
Re:"slander of title" - sounds interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
The answer is yes, I did find at least one instance, and according to the article it is possible to win such a suit. This charming lawsuit [blogspot.com]
Chamilia’s slander of title claims also failed. Allegations of patent infringement can be slander of title if they are false, reasonably calculated to cause harm, and result in special damages.
That's an excerpt from the article relevant to the topic.
Slander of title on Groklaw and FindLaw (Score:3)
Has [a claim of slander of title] been used in the past against a patent holder??
Have you asked Google [google.com]? The first result is a Groklaw article from the SCO v. IBM era [groklaw.net]. It cites an article on FindLaw [findlaw.com]; the link there is broken, but I found it with Google [google.com]. Slander of title is the malicious publication of false and disparaging words by which special damages were sustained, causing a plaintiff who owns the property disparaged to lose a sale. FindLaw's article cites Prosser and Keeton (apparently Prosser and Keeton on Torts) that patents or other intangible property may be the subject of such
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From what I have read about the issue it is my understanding that most patents in the media codec area are somehow extensions or refinements of other patented methods. Which would mean that instead of 1,000 individual patents one would be looking at a card house of legal technicalities that would fold if the fundamental patents everyone else built upon were invalidated. Could someone in the field comment on whether that really is the case?
That isn't true at all. Let's say X is patented, and it may or may not deserve that patent. It may be really too obvious for a patent, for example. I invent Y, which is an improvement on X, and get a patent. That means my improvements over X were worth a patent. It doesn't matter what X itself is worth. If you manage to invalidate X, then my improvements over X are still the same as they were before, and they deserve or don't deserve a patent, totally independent from X.
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Yes, that's exactly right. A patent is supposed to be for a specific implementation, not a general idea. The highly paid patent attorneys like to write patents in very complex language that seems to be very specific during the review process, but then naturally reads on everything once the patent is granted.
The process of building these new specs, however, tends to avoid that. As A.C. up there points out, the goal is a reproducible spec, and it's at least possible the work that got that patent was intended
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Don't kill software patents just to use H.264 though. Kill software patents because it is ridiculous that an algorithm is patentable just because it executes on a computer.
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Don't kill software patents just to use H.264 though. Kill software patents because it is ridiculous that an algorithm is patentable just because it executes on a computer.
I never understood this one. If anything, clever algorithms should be the ONLY software I am allowed to patent (one-click is not clever, GIF's compression was). These people worked hard to come up with a novel idea that they then want to make money from. What is wrong with that exactly? Why SHOULDN'T they be able to patent them? We let people patent novel ways of building a mousetrap. If my mousetrap is virtual, why is that any different?
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Why Software Patents Must Die (Score:5, Insightful)
I never understood this one. If anything, clever algorithms should be the ONLY software I am allowed to patent (one-click is not clever, GIF's compression was). These people worked hard to come up with a novel idea that they then want to make money from. What is wrong with that exactly? Why SHOULDN'T they be able to patent them? We let people patent novel ways of building a mousetrap. If my mousetrap is virtual, why is that any different?
Two big differences.
First, algorithms are not patentable in the United States, and a lot of these so-called "software patents" are actually effectively patenting the underlying algorithm, since there's no other reasonable way to implement the algorithm. Yet they still get away with it because patent clerks don't understand that the patent application someone is filing is effectively pre-empting all implementations of the algorithm, so they approve the patent. Related to this is the issue of obviousness. Patent clerks are not able to determine with software what is and what isn't obvious. Using your analogy, it's not like you patented a better mousetrap, it's more like you patented the entire concept of rodent control. Now, if someone else builds a better mousetrap, you haul them to court.
Think about it, this is the issue with Amazon's notorious "one-click" patent. What they came up with wasn't particularly novel or clever, and because of their patent, the entire concept of "press a button to order something" is now locked away by one company.
Second, you have to bear in mind what the whole point of patents is in the first place--to promote the progress of science and useful arts. The deal is that if you're willing to write down your stuff on paper and make it public, then the power of government will protect your invention for a limited period of time so that you can make money off of it. This encourages you to do research and development and make stuff. Today, though, patent holders aren't upholding their end of the bargain. They're not using patents to promote progress of science and useful arts. No, they're using them to extort people into paying them large sums of money. They're using them to engage in extremely anticompetitive practices.
I mean, look at what is going on with the VP8 codec. MPEG-LA is essentially trying to claim patent on all streaming video technologies. It's not good enough that they have H.264, a decent codec. No, they want to make sure that no one ever comes up with a competing codec of decent quality. For years, they've been threatening that Theora infringes on their patents without offering up any proof. Now, they're threatening that VP8 infringes on their patents without offering up any proof. I can't find the quote right now, but I think I remember someone at MPEG saying at one point that they believe that any streaming video technology will likely infringe on at least some of MPEG's patents. This is most definitely not what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they set up patents to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Indeed, it is significantly hindering those ideals.
I wish there were some way to meaningfully reform the system, but I just don't see anything on the horizon. In 2010, patents increased by 30% [slashdot.org], and I'll bet a wad of money that a very large proportion of those were software patents.
Software patents are evil, plain and simple. They need to go. Most of them are patenting obvious things, many of them are patenting algorithms (which are not supposed to be patentable). It flies in the face of what the purpose of patents are and are significantly hindering the progress of technology and competition.
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Or how about enforcing actual patent law. Algorithms are not patentable. Only implementations. One of the big problems is that patent cases seem to accept overly broad claims, rather than very strictly reading the claims, as embodied in the actual implementation, on any potential violator.
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Dilute your patent with MPLA (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think you have a patent to use against Vp8, signing it over to MPEG-LA is the last thing you should do. Look at their other pools, the few good patents are swamped by the dross. The earnings from your patents get shared with troll patents of no value.
Even the CEO of MPEG-LA HAS A SEPARATE patent pool all for himself largely undiluted? His MobileMedia Ideas LLC, is like a patent pool, only he's bought patents and controls the pool.
If he won't throw those patents into the diluted pool, neither should you.
http://www.osnews.com/story/23258/MPEG-LA-owned_Patent_Troll_Sues_Smartphone_Makers
Re:Dilute your patent with MPLA (Score:5, Insightful)
It is surprising to me, and a sign that MPEG-LA has thrown in the towel and this is a last desperate throw of the dice for H.264. I expected MPEG-LA to be extolling the virtues of H.264 such as better quality and lower bit rates, large amounts of established hardware encoders and decoders, etc. By trying to now establish a VP8 patent pool they are telling the world at large that WebM is just as good as what they have. As it's patent free, with a current patent pool of 0, it looks like WebM might move from the web world into the consumer device world too.
Phillip.
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By trying to now establish a VP8 patent pool they are telling the world at large that WebM is just as good as what they have.
In addition, they're telling the world they're not going to be extending the royalty free-period on H.264 beyond the ten year period already established.
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Yeah, the royalty-free period on h.264 was already extended to forever. Still only applies to certain uses though (as always).
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Or they can just make decoding for internet streaming royalty free forever.
That will solve everything, and everyone can move on with their lives.
They lose a bit of income, but they still make tons from everything else, decoding for other applications and encoders.
It's the logical thing to do. /sigh
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It will solve the HTML5 mess for one.
That's enough for me, beats the current deadlock.
Mozilla and Opera will be able to create decoders for their browsers, people who were concern about video quality will be satisfied.
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By trying to now establish a VP8 patent pool they are telling the world at large that WebM is just as good as what they have.
Don't confuse business decisions and quality. The two have nothing to do with each other. Google's VP8 codec could be far worse than it already is and they would still make this move because of the intense push against their format. This is about protecting income not because of a better product, but because some other companies are tied of their shit.
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By trying to now establish a VP8 patent pool they are telling the world at large that WebM is just as good as what they have.
Non sequitur. Google's campaign is not based on VP8 being as good as H264, but on it being "patent-free". MPEG-LA is just telling the world that the choice is not between a better, but patent-encumbered codec and a worse, but patent-free one; it is between a better codec with a known licensing model, and a worse one whose patent status is simply unknown - and they're looking into it.
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Fine then, let's discuss alternative patent pools. Oh, wait:
Never mind. Your non sequitur spouting of MPEG
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Hi, I was the one who posted comment #35176356 (while at a public terminal).
The OP was the non-sequitur. He is arguing that the CEO of MPEG-LA doesn't put the MobileMedia Idea patents into the MPEG-LA patent pool because he knows they are worthless and diluted. However, none of the patents that MobileMedia are trolling fit within the realm of the MPEG-LA patent pools, so he couldn't put them into the pool if he wanted to. Thus it is a completely invalid argument.
I don't support the MPEG-LA (look at my previ
Looks like "legal racketeering" to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice shiny-looking coded you've got there. It would be a pity of something bad were to happen to it. You know that you won't have to worry about any of these legal threats if you just license h.264, and it's just a small fee. For a short time, we've even waived the fee, just for you!
I know what MPLA is doing is technically legal, but spiritually it's corrupt. The patent system is broken, from many directions. For the other way around, my employer is routinely trolled by NPEs.
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Yes, it is legal racketeering. There are patent trolls everywhere.
MS saying that they wouldn't sue companies for shipping Android if they also ship some WP7 handsets? It's all over the place.
MPEG-LA hasn't waived any fees for a short time. They still have the same fee schedule for H.264 as ever. It's free for some uses (and recently that period was extended to forever), but for many commercial uses it costs money and that's hasn't changed.
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You know that you won't have to worry about any of these legal threats if you just license h.264
You think the MPEG-LA owns all the patents on H264? Really? Ask them if they can guarantee that the moment you put down your $$$.
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I'm not sure if I have to say this, but "Non Practicing Entities", meaning companies that hold patents, but don't actually make anything related to the patents. For companies with patents, the normal way of things is to cross-license, because what they really want is freedome of action in making products. That's not the case for NPEs - they're just out to tap someone else's revenue stream. (The previous may be an unfair statement - maybe some of them actually are out to protect small independent inventor
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You mean yours isn't?
If (Score:2)
patent and copyright law in bad need of reform (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents today are massively abused. Originally developed for the purpose of encourage innovation. tnhey actually squelch it. Many innovations improve on a previous idea. Patents make it difficult for independant developers to improve on and rrefine an idea. Patents have been turned in to a way to squelch independant innovation and create monopoliies, and stagnant technologies which are difficult to improve on or use independantly. Patent holders often charge licence fees so high they preclude independant use or refinement, make the technology too costly to deploy and limit its use, or they do not licence the technlogy at all, gaining a monopoly on ideas.
Both copyright law and patent law badly need reform. Software patents need to be prohibited altogether. Other patents need to be required to be licenced to other persons, for a reasonable percentage of profits (if there is no revenue there would be no fee). Copyrighted works no longer under production or distribution will also be made public domain immediately and must comply with the same reasonable licencing requirements.
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I agree that there needs to be reform, but I disagree that video compression algorithms shouldn't be patentable. The patent terms just need to be realistic with regard to how fast the industry moves. Not 15 years or something.
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Mathematics has been around for quite a while now.
Phillip.
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Why? most other kinds of math aren't patentable, I don't see why this one should.
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It's not the math itself, it's the particular implementation of it.
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Particular implementations are covered by copyright, not patents.
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Algorithms are NOT patentable! (Score:2)
I agree that there needs to be reform, but I disagree that video compression algorithms shouldn't be patentable.
(Emphasis mine.) I'm really glad you stated what you said using these exact words, because algorithms are specifically not patentable. That's why all of these so-called "software patents" don't mention "algorithm" in their titles, but instead use the wording "system and method."
The problem is that the way these patents are worded, the implementation is required for any implementation of the underlying algorithm. Why do you think that there has been no effort to simply create a patent-free clean-room reve
Re:patent and copyright law in bad need of reform (Score:4, Interesting)
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The net result is that they no longer have to do any real innovation, and simply fight over a slice of the existing pie, rather than make the size of the pie as a whole bigger. Sure, they hate one another, but they fear any outsider who might come along with something new. Such an outsider has no chance against them, as it costs $1-10 million and years in court to get even an obviously bad patent thrown out. Multiply that by the number of garbage patents the bigs hold and the situation is untenable for anyone new coming along with a great new thing.
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Further, it's an assault on open source software, because those of us who write it cannot afford to defend against things like this, and it's almost impossible to write many lines of code without running afoul of some patent claim.
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Even google is catching this from Oracle at this point, despite Oracle's frequent past urging for Java to go completely free. Now that they own it, it seems they believe that some patents give them the rights to anything running on a VM of any kind (look out .NET and Perl!).
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We are witnessing the best law money can buy (surprised?) -- but it's not even the best law for those promoting it, because they are so shortsighted that they are actually going to create their own demise if they can't force this sort of thing to happen in every single country that has a market.. As one can see from the news, this is precisely what they are trying to do, and with some success.
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The true corrosion comes when anyone small does do something truly nifty. This leverage by the bigs means they can simply steal the new stuff while bankrupting the originator over all the stupid patents the bigs own. This of course means there is no incentive for that small guy to do anything nifty and humanity stalls out.
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It's hard to see how this system can be fixed in reality, as the bigs spend enough on politicians to perpetuate whatever they desire, and there's no reason to believe that throwing the bums out (as if we had a choice other than another set of bums) would do any good -- the new boss would wind up just like the old boss. It's the alternate version of the golden rule -- them with the gold make the rules. Where we failed is letting them get all the gold in the first place, now it's probably too late to do much of anything.
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Too Big To Fail is a rotten concept, and if that is really true for absolutely any enterprise, it should be priority one worldwide to force those too big to fail to break up. Period. Not regulate how they act once that is true -- make it not possible to be true. But, as we say here, goodluckwiththat.
kind of like the mafia (Score:2)
Pay us so that we can "protect" you.
Evilness (Score:2)
MPEG themselves also issued press release (Score:2)
Wouldn't This be a Hoot? (Score:2)
Alternatively we all just sit around until these stupid patents expire, at which point we all have 1GB fiber to the house and are watching uncompressed videos in 3D anyway.
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Google could patent troll everyone that uses h264 including every member of the MPEG-LA patent pool.
Unfortunately, patent holders have a veto (Score:2)
The decision will be made by the distros.
Patent encumberedness is what makes your legal department tell you a package can't be in the distro.
Liking openness is a lovely discussion for Sunday afternoons.
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Re:Does This Even Matter? yes it does (Score:5, Informative)
you either do not write codecs
or
you do not expect to be caught writing a H.264 codec.
MPEG-LA is the patent troll/layer firm that wants to collect $ for Software Patents on mathematical equations that compresses bits of information that happens to be a video. If it can scare/threaten/sue people into buying a license to create/use/distribute a H.264 codec then they will have accomplish their goal.
This WebM patent pool is a FUD tactic similar to MS' patents on Linux. You are free to create a WebM codec as much as you are free to write a Linux derivative. not so with H.264.
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You are free to create a WebM codec as much as you are free to write a Linux derivative
Actually, I'm not entirely sure about this. The patent license [webmproject.org] appears to only apply to:
the contents of this implementation of VP8
So, unless I'm misreading it, you are only granted a license to use the patents with libvpx and derivatives, not with independent implementations. The implementation in ffmpeg (which is faster and smaller) would not be covered. Maybe someone can persuade Google to clarify this.
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Yes you are misreading it ...
"Google hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, transfer, and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of this implementation of VP8, where such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by this imple
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Modify generally refers to a derived work. The implementation in libavcodec is not made by modifying libvpx code, it is an entirely independent implementation, and I'm not sure how you could interpret that patent license as applying in this case - it grants you the license to use the patents in modified and unmodified versions of the libvpx code, but not in independent implementations. Of course, Google would be shooting themselves in the foot if they tried to sue people over independent VP8 implementatio
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A technical analysis concerning patent infringement without a single patent number ...
He saw some things first in H.264 and also in VP8, simply for seeing it first in H.264 he assumes the techniques are validly patented ... a silly assumption.
Re:Does This Even Matter? yes it does (Score:5, Informative)
Both codecs are free in different ways. WebM is gratis; free as in beer; it costs no money to implement and distribute, but not to contribute to. H.264 is libre; free as in speech; you must pay to distribute an implementation, but anyone can contribute to the spec.
No.
WebM has a frozen bitstream standard. You cannot contribute to this standard, because it is frozen. However, you are free to contribute to the support software: encoders, decoders, tools. And there is vast room for improvement of the encoders, plenty of work there to keep you busy.
H.264 also has a frozen bitstram standard. During the development phase, which is now over, you could have contributed to the development process, but only if you could afford the fees to attend the meeting. I am not sure exactly how much that cost, but I saw one posting here on Slashdot claiming it was on the order of $40,000 per person per meeting. In fairness, you could probably pitch your ideas for free to one of the large companies that was sending representatives (e.g. Microsoft, Apple) and possibly get your ideas in anyway.
H.265 is under development now. Go ahead and try to contribute some ideas to it. Please report back here on Slashdot for how well that works out for you.
So, the important thing here is: H.264 and WebM are both frozen standards. Both have free software projects implementing them, to which anyone can contribute. But only one of them is fully free. H.264 is controlled by MPEG-LA, so you can only distribute H.264 (or even use H.264) with their permission, on their terms. If they decide "no H.264 licenses will be offered to Linux users" then the Linux users will have no legal way to use it. (That's a silly, extreme example, and I have no reason to think they will do that. However, they really are asserting that the mere act of using a camera that records in H.264 makes you subject to their whims, which is intolerable.)
Like I said, I think the ability to contribute the codec vastly outweighs the ability to implement it for free.
I'm sorry, but H.264 is frozen too. You are simply mistaken on this point.
steveha
Re:Does This Even Matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dunno if you've ever actually read any MPEG specifications (I have), but the "open" standards process is not the best deal on the planet. Remember 802.11 "Draft N" and it's 5-year lifespan? That was a result of the standards process being held hostage by every vendor wanting to include their own pet features and patents. Constructing a standard around all those corporate filibusters took far too long, and the resulting standard is bloated and insanely complex. MPEG-4 and related (H.264 such) are stupidly huge standards that support all sorts of arcane features that nobody will ever use except as a) a marketing slide, and b) a patent to toss into the ring.
As per your claim that "anyone" can contribute to the MPEG standards, have you looked at the list of people involved? Every one of them comes from a major vendor or "research" company (or their university proxies) and is paying stupid sums of money to join and attend (meets move all over the planet). The reality is that if I had an idea I wanted to propose for an MPEG standard, hell will freeze over long before I even get a hearing let alone add the feature. Google is far more likely to pay attention to their (codec-savvy) users' comments.
I'll take unencumbered codecs with a single primary party keeping control over the standard every time.
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Neither they nor their users have an interest in an incompetent spec, so interests are aligned there; and were Google to somehow come up with a way to bake anticompetitive evil of some flav
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The worst part of the MPEG-LA style open process is that it works to maximize the number of patents that show up in any new specification. Rather than delivering the best technology, it delivers maximally patent encumbered technology that's good enough to meet the requirements of the project. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, and in particular, the large companies who have an interest in earlier specs and don't want to be locked out of the next one.
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Re:Does This Even Matter? (Score:4, Informative)
H.264 is "open" like the Microsoft Open Office XML [wikipedia.org] standard is open. There are bear-traps that can prevent you from using it successfully. In the case of OOXML, one of those bear-traps is requiring your documents to interpret "Proprietary Microsoft Binary Blobs".
H.264, being patent protected, means that the patent holder reserve the right to say, "Go pound sand" when your five-year license expires.
WebM is controlled by Google.... but Google has effectively put its patents into the public domain so that ANYBODY can implement a WebM/VP8 video codec.
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H.264 is "open" like the Microsoft Open Office XML standard is open. There are bear-traps that can prevent you from using it successfully. In the case of OOXML, one of those bear-traps is requiring your documents to interpret "Proprietary Microsoft Binary Blobs".
I'd call your comparison quite pathetic. h.264 is actually a useful standard. It provides a very, very clear specification for its compression and decompression, unlike WebM. It is widely used with a huge range of hardware implementations. It gives much better compression than WebM will ever have. It was created with the intention to produce the best possible video compression. From a technical point of view it is clearly superior to WebM, and Google is right now trying to force a sub-standard video compres
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Document formats are what maintains Microsoft's Office monopoly. Need I say more?
Re:Does This Even Matter? (Score:4, Informative)
Quoting from wikipedia: AMD, ARM, and Broadcom have announced support for hardware acceleration of the WebM format.[31][32] Intel is also considering hardware-based acceleration for WebM in its Atom-based TV chips if the format gains popularity.[33] Qualcomm and Texas Instruments have announced support,[34][35] with native support coming to the TI OMAP processor.[36] Chip&Media have announced the fully hardware decoder for VP8 that can decode full HD resolution VP8 streams at 60 frames per second.[37]
No. VP8 already has better compression efficiency than h.264 and at the same time being on par in quality with h.264. From the technical point of view, WebM has the potential to be a lot better than H.264.
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H.264 is a standard all right, the standard of an evil empire. A patent encumbered standard is no standard at all - not in the way the rest of the world uses the term. All the complaints about VP8 pale in comparison to this fundamental fact.
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but Google has effectively put its patents into the public domain
When did this happen??
AFAIK, they open sourced the IMPLEMENTATION, not the underlying rights granted by patents. Now, I don't EXPECT them to be suing anyone over the relevant patents they purchased from the original developers when they bought VP8, but that doesn't mean that they can't.
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http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html#vp8 [diveintohtml5.org]
Quoting the linked page, it says: "In 2010, Google acquired On2 and published the video codec specification and a sample encoder and decoder as open source. As part of this, Google also "opened" all the patents that On2 had filed on VP8, by licensing them royalty-free. (This is the best you can hope for with patents. You can't actual
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It doesn't matter who developed a spec, what matters is the freedom you have to implement it... WebM lets anyone implement it, h.264 requires patent licenses in order to implement it.
Both specs are finalised, so noone can contribute to them anymore. Any contributions made would become part of a future spec, and there is nothing stopping you contributing to WebM and making future versions of the codec with or without google's cooperation.
Re:Does This Even Matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Since anyone can, will and have sued anyone and anything else over anything, it seems that you are proposing that noone ever user codecs?
Re:Does This Even Matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
They want max bang for buck, where bang is video quality and buck is filesize/lack of streaming problems on a shitty connection.
That's still h264. It's often *stunning* in it's ability to compress quality video. WebM becomes defacto standard when it's a better tool than the alternative.
To compare this to png/jpg. They both have good uses, but jpg does better compression of photographic images, which is why your porn collection doesn't have any png's in it.
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businesses do care about open source. They care about *liability* as opposed to specific patent liability.
using something that you can use any way you want without requiring legal oversight is absolutely in their best interests.
See what I did here? I twisted your falseness to reality.
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Since when does the MPEG LA have the legal right to form a pool around the patents?
As soon as any holder of a patent that applies to VP8 decides that they want to join the MPEG LA patent pool.
The right belongs to the patent holder, MPEG LA is just offering to help them monetize their rights. That's all MPEG LA ever does. They are a one stop shop for licensing patents in pools at "Fair and Reasonable Prices". Nothing stops a patent holder from excluding their patent from the pool and pursuing licensing deals, and lawsuits against all possible infringers on their own. It's just much
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Google won't indemnify its users. That would be stupid - they could be out an unknown and tremendous amount of money if they did. That's not evil, that's "we would like to stay in a search engine business instead of being yanked under by a video codec"
But they *have* done two things. They purchased On2, (presumably) went through, and said "you can all use these patents that we now own." They've also said "we think those are the only ones", which presumably the lawyers took a look at.
This does a few things.
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Nope - HTML5 will kill Adobe/Flash. The future is in low power smartphones and netbooks and Flash is too inefficient. The future of web video is hardware accelerated HTML5 canvas, regardless of what CODECs dominate.
I'd not be surprised to see video come with it's own Javascript based CODEC at some point in the future (thereby making the issue of a standard irrelevant) - I think we're already at the point where it's possible performance-wise.
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Efficiency is only important when it's critical. Computers are so fast nowadays that saving every cycle is generally a waste of programming effort. With hardware acceleration and JVM/JIT advances the speed of a javascript codec doesn't need to be an issue - who cares if you could write a faster one in assembler if the javascript were fast enough?
The strategic advantage of a video that comes with it's own codec is the big win - you can use whatever codec you like and have it accessible to anyone with a brows
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[quote]You've misunderstood it. The licensee, and only that licensee, loses all rights forever if _they_ make any VP8 patent claim against anyone.[/quote]
The legalese in the VP8 licensing terms is pretty dense so I'm not pretending to be able to see it for what it's worth, legally, but the way I read it, it says something along the lines of 'if you facilitate any patent litigation suit against VP8 you will loose any right licensing or using it'. Signing a patent cross-licensing agreement with MPEG-LA to be
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What makes you think those don't already exist?