Cisco Developing Royalty Free Video Codec: Thor 145
An anonymous reader writes: Video codec licensing has never been great, and it's gotten even more complicated and expensive in recent years. While H.264 had a single license pool and an upper bound on yearly licensing costs, successor H.265 has two pools (so far) and no limit. Cisco has decided that this precludes the use of H.265 in open source or other free-as-in-beer software, so they've struck out on their own to create a new, royalty-free codec called Thor. They've already open-sourced the code and invited contributions.
Cisco says, "The effort is being staffed by some of the world's most foremost codec experts, including the legendary Gisle Bjøntegaard and Arild Fuldseth, both of whom have been heavy contributors to prior video codecs. We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents."
Cisco says, "The effort is being staffed by some of the world's most foremost codec experts, including the legendary Gisle Bjøntegaard and Arild Fuldseth, both of whom have been heavy contributors to prior video codecs. We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents."
No Theora? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why couldn't they contribute to Theora since that was the entire point of it was to be a royalty free video codec.
Re:No Theora? (Score:5, Informative)
Theora [wikipedia.org] (developed from VP3) is not as good as VP8, VP9, H.264 or H.265. Daala and Thor have been contributed to NetVC [ietf.org], so the codec that comes out of that working group will be a combination of the best features of both.
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Will there be an implementation on GNU Hurd?
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Theora is dead. Long live Daala.
https://wiki.xiph.org/Daala
Theora is two generations back (Score:5, Informative)
Theora, based on VP3, is roughly H.263-class technology comparable to Sorenson Spark (FLV) and MPEG-4 ASP (DivX and Xvid). H.264 and VP8 are a generation ahead of it in rate/distortion performance at Internet bitrates, and Thor is intended to be a generation ahead of H.264.
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Theora, based on VP3, is roughly H.263-class technology comparable to Sorenson Spark (FLV) and MPEG-4 ASP (DivX and Xvid). H.264 and VP8 are a generation ahead of it in rate/distortion performance at Internet bitrates
That's mostly true, although Theora has been improved to the point where it is closer to H.264.
That said, Xiph has also been working on Daala [xiph.org], which is intended to compete with H.265.
GPU (Score:2)
Why can't the GPU do the work? Or do video codecs require special kinds of processing that GPUs are bad at?
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The DSPs pretty much always have lower power consumption than a comparably quick GPU for the workload.
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Why can't the GPU do the work? Or do video codecs require special kinds of processing that GPUs are bad at?
All video codecs require very specialised processing. It's rather trivial if the GPU is designed to do it, and quite awful if it isn't. Have a look here for example for the deblocking filter in h.264:
http://mrutyunjayahiremath.blo... [blogspot.co.uk]
It doesn't require any very complicated hardware. But it requires hardware that does _exactly_ what the h.264 spec says, and if the hardware doesn't provide that, you're in trouble.
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Why couldn't they contribute to Theora since that was the entire point of it was to be a royalty free video codec.
Because then they wouldn't have had a good reason to pick their own cool name and fuck up the field with yet another fucking "standard".
And yes, I agree- they should have thrown their weight behind Theora or something like it. But noooooooo, instead let's roll our own and muddy the waters even more...
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Because they don't hold a bunch of patents that let them keep control and charge for commercial use 10 years down the line.
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Because https://xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]
OMG, I can't believe I actually was the first to post this one!
Re:No Theora? (Score:5, Funny)
Plus they had issues with the other codecs they were writing.
ODIN: Great audio but missing half the video.
LOKI: The resulting video was always a rickroll.
HEIMDALL: Good video but the DRM was harsh.
JOTUN: Kept freezing up.
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I'm not sure the epilepsy-inducing random flashes with the THOR codec are any better than those, though.
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THOR is still the strongest of the codecs, and lightning fast to boot.
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Plus they had issues with the other codecs they were writing.
ODIN: Great audio but missing half the video.
LOKI: The resulting video was always a rickroll.
HEIMDALL: Good video but the DRM was harsh.
JOTUN: Kept freezing up.
BALDUR: Looked so good they kept it proprietary. And then it died.
FREJYA: Only worked with porn.
JORMUNGANDR: Grew too large and bloated, development kept going in circles.
Collaboration (Score:5, Informative)
The Daala [xiph.org] team has also experimented [ietf.org] with integrating some Thor's features into Daala. It's likely that the codec developed by the IETF Internet Video Codec [ietf.org] working group will be built from the best features of Daala, Thor and any additional contributions.
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It would be an amazingly good idea to commit suicide now. You're so blinded by some idiocy that you can't tell the difference between Cisco and Oracle.
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not likely. (Score:2)
I checked with a couple of compression and video processing patent pools and the computer says no.
There is no way not to infringe on pretty much any kind of video compression tech by now
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There is no way not to infringe on pretty much any kind of video compression tech by now
Unless of course you happen to own the IP rights to the video compression tech in question. Thor is built on patents Cisco owns [ietf.org].
Which means it's free... (Score:1)
Re:Which means it's free... (Score:5, Informative)
They're working on Thor through the IETF Internet Video Codec working group and committing to royalty-free licensing for those patents. It will be difficult for Cisco to walk back from that. Many codecs make use of patents which are licensed under royalty-free terms. Baseline JPEG does, Opus [opus-codec.org] does, VP8 and VP9 [webmproject.org] do.
Builds Cisco's reputation. (Score:2)
Re:Builds Cisco's reputation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget: Cisco has an interest in everybody trying to stream hi-def video across the Internet.
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Re:Builds Cisco's reputation. (Score:5, Informative)
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...precisely until the moment that Cisco decides it isn't free any more.
Dare I say "until they drop the hammer"? /ducks
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Cisco might not need to. They are in the unique position of benefiting from more video streaming.
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If it becomes popular, they'll also be in a unique position of holding whatever "defensive" patents that may come about from this effort.
If they run into a quarter that isn't performing as well, and they're sitting on this super popular technology that can't be (easily) converted to alternatives.. it might start smelling like a gold mine.
But whatever.. making an effort is better than not making an effort, and as long as the license (or patents) isn't too restrictive there's nothing stopping someone from for
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There is no way not to infringe on pretty much any kind of video compression tech by now
Maybe it's RLE.
Re:not likely. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the US offered and court protected "codec" is turning US hardware exports into international internet toll booths for expensive codecs.
Hard to sell the next gen "internet" hardware if every user has to pay a fee just for moving their own data (movie, sound) along to their own users.
A codec tax per screen, device, user, connection would hurt global sales just for been connected.
Other nations and their broadcasters, startups will just look to other solutions that are free and will change hardware imports.
If the codec tax part is removed, hardware sales are safe globally. Who will be the first big brand to to offer new compression as a free part of ongoing hardware contracts?
Re:not likely. (Score:5, Informative)
Clean room gets around copyright. Patent is a whole other ball of wax. In particular, even if you created a design entirely on your own, if someone else beats you to the punch with a similar enough design to fall under the patent, you're still screwed.
That's why software patents are so reviled, combined with the relatively loose standards the USPTO puts towards software patents (or at least did in the past.. wasn't there some supposed reforms recently?) If I patent "icon with rounded corners," then you basically can't build any software that includes an icon with a rounded corner without running afoul of my software, even if you had no idea that I existed never mind seeing my code or copying my algorithm.
And to make things even worse, since you probably think "rounded corners" is a pretty mundane design idea (its been around for many thousands of years in the not-computer part of the world after all,) you probably aren't even going to bother with a patent search until my lawyers come knocking on your door making outrageous "damages" claims.
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Become just another codec tax collector brand with some price/speed/heat advantage?
Or offer a way out and enjoy safe next gen hardware?
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Two quibbles, though I wholeheartedly agree with your overarching points.
In particular, even if you created a design entirely on your own, if someone else beats you to the punch with a similar enough design to fall under the patent, you're still screwed.
Yes and no. "Prior user rights" exist in many countries, which permit the continued use of a patented idea by people who independently came up with the idea for the patent before the patent was filed, provided it wasn't disclosed, of course, since if it was disclosed it would count as prior art that can be used to invalidate the patent. But yes, for existing patents, you're quite right, and I completely agree with your assessment about
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Clean room gets around copyright. Patent is a whole other ball of wax. In particular, even if you created a design entirely on your own, if someone else beats you to the punch with a similar enough design to fall under the patent, you're still screwed.
It's even worse than that compared to copyrights. Copyright covers the act of "copying" (and all that entails), i.e. the "building/designing" phase of a patented product. But, with a patented product, not only can't you design/build one that's similar, even though you came up with the idea yourself, you can't even use one. Doesn't matter if you didn't build it, mere usage is also a breech of patent.
Patent trolls have taken this to heart of course, preferably going after users of technology first, users with
There is just one little problem. (Score:1, Insightful)
The propriety codecs like H.264 and HEVC are developed by the same companies which manufacture almost all the world's video hardware ---
Studio production. Theatrical distribution. Home video. Industrial applications and so on. In this pond, even Cisco is a very small fish,
If Mitsubishi is not on board, if Philips, Samsung, and a half dozen or so other global giants in manufacturing are not on board, your brightly polished license-free codec is going nowhere.
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your brightly polished license-free codec is going nowhere.
Not really. The target for NetVC [ietf.org] is the Internet and particularly the web (HTML5 video and WebRTC). It doesn't matter if it isn't used in studio production or theatrical distribution. That wasn't the goal in the first place.
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For those of us who are nowhere (and happy to live there), nowhere is grand central station. I don't need no stinking brightly polished codec. I just need the video equivalent of Opus.
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The hardware manufacturers are irrelevant. What matters is whether the web distributors and web browsers support it, as well as the various encoding utilities that people use to transcode video.
Personally I don't expect it to gain much traction, but it will because those "new technology" companies and products aren't supporting it, not because the tired old hardware manufacturers don't. Nowhere has Cisco suggested this would be used for the next generation of BluRay devices, or to address the needs of
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Really, Google is the only company that matters. And maybe Netflix.
Those two companies probably handle as much video in a day as Philips and Samsung and all of the other traditional video companies do in a year.
Google in particular is uniquely positioned to sway the entire industry since they provide both the most popular video service (Youtube) and one of the most popular video clients (Chrome browser.)
Whatever codec Google decides to adopt, its simply going to take over the world. Youtube is too big an
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Really, Google is the only company that matters. And maybe Netflix.
You might have those the wrong way around, at least for the US market. I didn't find newer figures in a quick search, but in 2013 YouTube consumed 18.69% of downstream bandwidth in the USA, Netflix consumed 31.62%. Netflix passed one third a little while ago, I'm not sure how YouTube has grown in that period, but I suspect it's still around 2/3 of the use of Netflix.
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Yep, your numbers look correct (according to a quick Google search! Though I certainly had thought the opposite,) but I still think Google will be more of a codec driver than Netflix though due to having their fingers in the client side of things as well.
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To some extent, ya. But DRM formats and streaming/container formats are a bigger issue for them - on the vast majority (nearly all? all?) of their supported platforms, the video is h.264.
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Actually, that's the reason I said what I did. :)
(that and my company is smack dab in the middle of the digital media space)
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The difference between the two is that Netflix has a dedicated userbase, who are willing to jump through hoops to get their service; it's the only reason I've installed Silverlight, for example. Youtube, on the other handbasically everyone has watched a Youtube video at one point or another, even if they didn't visit the Youtube site, thanks to embedded videos and such. If I'm a typical user, and Netflix stops working on Firefox, I'm probably going to blame Netflix. If embedded videos stop working in Fire
Yeah, Adoption is King (Score:2)
How many expert committees and standards organizations and patent wars have revolved around implementing and promoting dozens of “superior” video formats (including codecs and containers and server/client software)? Despite all that effort and conflict, the animated gif reigned supreme as THE most widely used vid
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Pretty much (Score:2)
The pro industry can get on whatever they like, it doesn't matter as to what people will use. That'll be whatever the big streaming services go for. Youtube, Netflix, Twitch, Amazon, these are the places that matter.
Hardware makers will get on board too. If Youtube needs a certain kind of acceleration to work well, smartphone processors will get it. Doesn't matter if the media industry says it should be something different, they want to sell new phones and something that'll do that is it working well with t
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Google in particular is uniquely positioned to sway the entire industry since they provide both the most popular video service (Youtube) and one of the most popular video clients (Chrome browser.)
Don't forget that without hardware decoding support in mobile/tablets a new codec will have a very tough time. Being able to make demands for the Android platform might be just as important.
Cutting The Cord (Score:2)
Really, Google is the only company that matters. And maybe Netflix.
H.264 blew past Google and YouTube to become the dominant codec for HD distribution.
The geek is still fixed on web distribution through the browser and viewing video on his monitor.
But the action in HD is shifting to the app and the HDTV set.
That is where cable-cutting comes in, the smart tv, the set top box and dongles like the Amazon Fire Stick and Chromecast which bypass the browser and increasingly the computer itself.
Sad (Score:2)
Really sad that one has to work *around* a patent - so much for patents encouraging innovation, at least not the 'get-around-it' kind.
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That's always been the case. There's no shortage of stories and anecdotes about two people who invented similar contraptions at similar times and one happened to win the race to the patent office.
The difference is that software patents are so ubiquitous and so generalized that you pretty much can't write "Hello, World!" without stepping on the toes of some software giant or other.
When your patent is for "storage, transmission and playback of a sequence of digitally encoded images," you potentially cover ev
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I don't know that I'd call it "clear cut," given that it would be fairly difficult to prove you had completed your invention before I filed. As I understand it, it doesn't matter if you're one bolt away from completion when I file, I still win (and hopefully USPTO at least uses the postmark date to judge filing order rather than just crossing your fingers that your papers don't get stuck in the postal system for a week or whatever!)
Though your point is definitely still valid. Whether I win legitimately or
I predict that this codec will fail... (Score:1)
...and Cisco will just be Thor losers.
Re:I predict that this codec will fail... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean "Thithco"? :P
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Patents at work (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary:
We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents.
I'm so glad that patents are doing their intended purpose of encouraging progress. Nothing fosters progress like taking a long, circuitous route instead of the straight and patently obvious one.
Re:Patents at work (Score:5, Funny)
"...instead of the straight and patently obvious one."
I see what you did there.
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I'm so glad that patents are doing their intended purpose of encouraging progress.
Well, at least they're fostering innovation instead of promoting stagnation..
Since the rest of the world does have to innovate to work around your patents, there's more innovation in society as a whole with patents than would be without... ;-)
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"how else are investors going to get a return on the money they put into basic research
and development?"
By selling products?
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the company that did the basic research?
This codec! (Score:2)
Not Enought To Make A CoDec (Score:2)
It's not enough to make a good CoDec, a plan to propagate its adoption should be in the plans.
The situation (Score:3)
There is a lot of stuff going on with HEVC:
1) Ultra HD Blu-ray is about to roll-out based on HEVC
2) ATSC 3.0 new digital broadcast standard with HEVC is being finalized
3) DVB and others are considering HEVC for digital broadcast
4) UHD/4K with HEVC is being deployed by OTT like Netflix as well as direct broadcast satellite like DirecTV and wireline like BT.
The HEVC Advance patent pool unlimited content royalties [streamingmedia.com] that was recently announced are giving content distributors a lot of concern. In the professional content world, it is understood that enabling technology intellectual property needs to be paid, but when you are talking about unlimited percentages of "all direct & indirect revenue" from content, not only is the cost too high, but the accounting is impossible.
Meanwhile from a bit rate versus quality level, VP9 is clearly not performing as well as HEVC.
If Cisco can show that Thor can perform nearly was well as HEVC, there are a lot of content distribution companies that will take it more seriously than they would have just a few months ago because of the HEVC Advance content royalty.
However the enabling factor would be if Cisco (and other Thor implementers) will indemnify users (i.e. content distributors) from any infringement by the use of their encoders/decoders.
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I am in the professional content industry, and the last thing we want to do is to use a new codec. But for feature-quality 2160p24, HEVC is a must to keep bit rates from peaking above 100 Mbps (VBR). Also there are HEVC software decoders available, or else no one would be able to watch the Netflix "4K" content in HEVC. I've even seen HEVC software decoders running on an iPhone.
Here is one analysis [psu.edu] of HEVC HM versus H.264 x264 quality, and finds: For video compression, the performance of VP8 were competi
These most foremost codec experts (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:2)
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Doesn't it all come down to math? That is, the algorithms being used for compression is just math. How can these patents remain valid?
They shouldn't, but companies have discovered that if they state a patent as a machine that implements said algorithm, then any other machine that implements it, even if done in a completely different way, is considered to be infringing. An computers that run a program are considered machines that implement an algorithm.
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They shouldn't, but companies have discovered that if they state a patent as a machine that implements said algorithm, then any other machine that implements it, even if done in a completely different way, is considered to be infringing. An computers that run a program are considered machines that implement an algorithm.
My suggestion is something I would call "compulsory counter licensing". Let's say we have two video codecs A and B, each with some patents, and each using some feature that is patented by the other. Then the owner of A should be able to offer B the use of A's patents in exchange of A's use of B's patent, and that offer is compulsory - B has to accept. And likewise, B can use A's patents for free by allowing A the use of B's patents in exchange. Again, compulsory.
See how that would work out in the video c
Re:Serious question for any lawyer developers... (Score:4, Insightful)
You could argue everything in the world boils down to math and physics, and that ALL patents should therefore be invalid.
But honestly - if someone IS going to patent software at all, a novel *algorithm" is one of the first things that should be allowed since it's actually a specific IMPLEMENTATION of an idea. The really shitty patents are those that just patent semi-abstract ideas (which shouldn't be allowed by patent rules anyway) or obvious user interface elements (electronic TV program guides, rounded corners...)
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You could argue everything in the world boils down to math and physics, and that ALL patents should therefore be invalid.
That's a pretty obvious red herring. Of course everything is physics (math is an abstraction we use to describe physics.. nothing in the real world is "made of" math.) Not that physics isn't patentable. You can't patent a physical law, but you can certainly patent a device you invent that makes use of said law.
As for algorithms.. yes algorithms probably should be patentable. The concept really isn't all that bad. Where things get ugly in the real world is that currently:
a) They're allowed to be extreme
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You could argue everything in the world boils down to math and physics, and that ALL patents should therefore be invalid.
That's a pretty obvious red herring.
Exactly, that was my point...
c) They have absurdly long lifespans. 20 years may be reasonable for real world engineering advances but software changes so fast that 20 months might be closer to a useful exclusion period.
Totally agree - my general argument on software patents is that they should be valid for enough time to give a company a clear advantage in the marketplace, but not enough to completely stifle competition for decades. Even 5 years is probably ok, if not ideal.
One thing you didn't mention about shorter SW patents that's also key: it most invalidates patent trolling as a business. The vast majority of trolls acquired (what most people thought were) nearly useless patents
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Nope, programmer for 23 years. Big projects, international projects, projects generating millions a year.
Obviously your claim was merely to poison the well.
"This is precisely issue (a) I stated -- overly vague patents."
Nope, the ALGORITHM patent *IS* "To catch a mice". READ A FUCKING PATENT. While you're googling, also look for "simplified example" or "analogy".
"Whoever first came up with the idea for quicksort probably spent many many hours trying to figure out the most efficient way he could come up with
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the ALGORITHM patent *IS* "To catch a mice"
Exactly my point. _THAT_ kind of patent (algorithm or otherwise) is horrible, because it covers way more than it should. The fact that the USPTO has been allowing those kind of patents means that the _current_ patent system is broken. It doesn't necessarily follow that the _idea_ of patents is bad.
And what algorithm is it anyway?
The quicksort algorithm. If you've been a programmer for 23 years you should recognize that that is a well-known, defined name for a specific algorithm (as opposed to say a bubble sort or a merge sort or any n
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software patents are broken and there is no way to fix it.
No, my "frigging" point is that they're broken and _could_ be fixed. They probably won't be of course, but I firmly believe that they could be.
"Catch mice" patents
You truly can't see the difference between "an algorithm that sorts things" with no further detail, and "an algorithm that sorts things by selecting a pivot, dividing the items into sublists around the pivot and recursively sorting the sublists"? The first one could cover any sorting algorithm on the planet. The second one fairly explicitly only covers the specifi
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He's hopeless and his arguments have mostly turned to ad hominem...
You truly can't see the difference between "an algorithm that sorts things" with no further detail, and "an algorithm that sorts things by selecting a pivot, dividing the items into sublists around the pivot and recursively sorting the sublists"?
The first isn't even an algorithm - it's a rough description. If it got patented is was just a (common) mistake of incompetent examiners. An algorithm is a procedure - the point is anyone who is an expert in the field can actually FOLLOW it to solve the problem. Which might be a good start: having expert panels review patents to make sure they solve a specific problem!
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Nope, the ALGORITHM patent *IS* "To catch a mice". READ A FUCKING PATENT. While you're googling, also look for "simplified example" or "analogy".
I'm not sure you understand what an algorithm is. It has nothing to do with software per se - it's a 1200 year old mathematical concept.
What you are describing is, like Altrag said, just a "vague patent". It makes no difference if it's hardware or software, the difference is just that patent examiners don't get software, so they approve more vague patents. Software is just telling flexible hardware to do something, obviously.
The ALGORITHM isn't "catch mice", that's just a description, the algorit
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but patents AREN'T just one specific algorithm
Arguing that algorithms should or should not be patentable vs. whether a patent contains an algorithm are two completely different things.
The problem is not with the concept of patenting specific, workable algorithms, it's that non-algorithm patents - or those that are overly vague - are being issued.
It's a fault with the poor implementation, not the theory. Much like our entire governmental process in general these days...
it all comes down to levers (Score:4, Interesting)
It all comes down to levers. Any machine made of metal or wood is a bunch of levers, arranged in some way to be useful. (Realizing that cranks and gears are simply levers that go all the way around).
If someone invents a NEW way of arranging levers to make something that does something USEFUL, they can apply for a limited-time"monopoly on that invention. If someone invents a NEW way of arranging of arranging goto statements to create a new thing that something something useful, they can similarly also apply for a patent.
Such is necessary because software is a large series of logic 'gates'. That exact same arrangement of gates can be built in C, silicon, PHP, or copper coils. A scissor is a scissor whether it's made in steel or in brass. An mpeg decoder is an mpeg decoder whether it's made in silicon or made in C - it's the same machine.
Because patents are issued by government bureaucrats, there is little incentive for the patent workers to do a good job, so we end up with bad patents, patents on "inventions" which are not new, and are not useful. That happens with "inventions" made with wood and"inventions made with C#.
The anti-patent activists have spread a misconception that "math can't be patented ", and therefore any use of math can't be patented. That's plain false. The actual text is "the laws of nature, including the laws of science and mathematics" are not patentable. In other words, you can't patent gravity, but you CAN patent an invention based on gravity, such as a new type of elevator. You can't patent magnetism, you can patent a new type of motor which uses magnetism. You can't patent multiplication, you can patent a new invention which uses multiplication to create some useful new thing (such as a better code ).
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Ever built something with gears and levers? Write a program with a thousand gotos and your "algorithm" is still patented. Build a gear with a thousand teeth and it breaks every time, and your patent is invalid UNTIL YOU DESIGN A GEAR WITH A THOUSAND WORKING TEETH.
Programs deal with a virtual world, no invention is necessary since you can, in extremis, use a virtual world that doesn't have the problem you'd need to invent around.
Real products can't be produced in a different reality because in this one the s
Nothing new and useful ever done with computers? (Score:2)
> no invention is necessary
An invention is a novel (new) and useful thing. Is it your position that nobody has ever done anything new and useful with computers?
neither numbers nor taxis are new. Uber is a taxi (Score:2)
No, numbers aren't new. Prime numbers aren't new. A big prime number isn't new, it's existed since before humans.
Taxis aren't new. Uber is a taxi service, run much like many taxi services before it. When I was a kid, my uncle owned a cab, and contracted with a cab company to send him customers. It was pretty much exactly Uber, 35 years ago. Marketing the same old thing by applying a hippy image isn't new. See Ben and Jerry's ice cream as an example of prior art. All Uber did was apply an old style of m
autocorrect. s/code/codec/ (Score:2)
That was supposed to say "codec", not "code".
If you invent a _useful_ _new_ way of compressing video, you can in fact patent it. It doesn't matter if you implement your method in pure silicon (an asic), vacuum tubes, C, or copper relays. If it's new and and useful, it's patentable.
You can't patent the laws of physics, such as Newton's first law, and you can't patent multiplication. You can patent things that use gravity, and you can patent things that use multiplication. BTW, gears are for doing multipli
false. They lied to you (Score:2)
> no maths can be patentented
Sorry, they lied to you. That's not what the law says. The anti-patent activists have spread a misconception that "math can't be patented ", and therefore any use of math can't be patented. That's simply false. The actual text is "the LAWS of nature, including the LAWS of science and mathematics" are not patentable. In other words, you can't patent gravity, but you CAN patent an invention based on gravity, such as a new type of elevator. You can't patent magnetism, you can
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If you find a use for these techniques outside of video and audio compression then you can do so without infringing.
Disney scores some free software brownie points (Score:3)
Marvel shares a parent company with Pixar, which has released OpenSubdiv as free software and just announced plans to do the same with Universal Scene Description [slashdot.org]. On that basis, I can think of companies more evil than Disney, such as The Tetris Company co-founded by Alexey "free software should never have existed" Pajitnov [slashdot.org].
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Disney's evil is just in different fields. They are not a software company, so they have no reason to be evil about software. Their evilness is focused in secretive lobbying for ever-stricter copyright laws and working towards ever-denser media consolidation.
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When you were given a binary you did not have the freedom to modify it.
Try telling that to a reverse engineer like doppelganger, who disassembled and commented an NES game [romhacking.net].
Re:Marvellous (Score:4, Funny)
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Cisco is a company that is run by MBAs and powered by crappy offshored Indian labor. These clowns are not interested in anything except their next quarterly earnings report.
So... why are they creating an open source codec? Lets see...
Maybe they want everyone everywhere to be watching streaming video all the time, and so all of the service providers will want bigger and faster cisco routers for all of the extra traffic.
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I agree, of course we don't know how open google would be to collaboration.
In some ways we do. Participation in the Internet Video Codec [ietf.org] working group is open to everyone. The final codec that comes out of NetVC will be built from the best features of all contributions. Cisco has contributed Thor and Mozilla\Xiph has contributed Daala. Google is supposed to be working on VP10 at the moment so it will be good if they contribute it to NetVC. As far as I know, they haven't yet.
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Dirac low-latency ("Dirac Pro", aka SMPTE VC-2) may come back as a mezzanine compression for production video over IP (Snell showed this at NAB 2014 [cisco.com]).
But "long GOP" Dirac never provided enough quality per bit per second compared with H.264, and certainly not with HEVC. I don't think anyone at BBC R&D is actively working on it now.