Comment by romland | Hacker News Reader

Comment by romland | Hacker News Reader

The problem with these write-ups about how bad H.264 is (or will be in 2011) is that it will not reach the right people in time; the masses. The people who clicked through to an article with H.264 in the title already know about the ins and outs.

The companies that implement and support H.264 also know all about the license, and they have most likely gotten some pretty sweet deals for getting this thing as widely deployed as possible.

What needs to be done is to get the message through so that the masses realize that MPEG LA will come after _you_ with their pitchforks and torches in less than a year from now. Worse yet, we do not even know how the license will look.

But maybe scaring people is not the key here. The question remains then: How do we get that message through to the big masses? Make alternatives look "cool"? Next generation video?

I know, I know. I'm not saying anything new...

A (6 month old) interesting link: http://streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/h264-royalties-w...

Worse yet, we do not even know how the license will look

When skimming the comments on that page, seems there is something new, (as of yesterday):

http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme... [pdf]

Very good information, well spotted!

For the PDF avoidant.

MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Continue Not to Charge Royalties for Internet Video that is Free to End Users

(DENVER, CO, US – 2 February 2010) – MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as Internet Broadcast AVC Video) during the next License term from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2016. Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing, and royalties to apply during the next term will be announced before the end of 2010. MPEG LA's AVC Patent Portfolio License provides access to essential patent rights for the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) digital video coding standard. In addition to Internet Broadcast AVC Video, MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides coverage for devices that decode and encode AVC video, AVC video sold to end users for a fee on a title or subscription basis and free television video services. AVC video is used in set-top boxes, media player and other personal computer software, mobile devices including telephones and mobile television receivers, Blu-ray DiscTM players and recorders, Blu-ray video optical discs, game machines, personal media player devices and still and video cameras.

For more information about MPEG LA’s AVC License or to request a copy of the License, please visit http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Intro.aspx

There are obvious problems with H.264, but I don't believe MPEG LA's plan is to sue regular people for not complying with the license agreement when they did that video that one time.

Not because I think they're not evil enough to do it, but because that kind of money-making scheme just doesn't scale.

Also, whenever they've sued one or two people, people's eyes will open and they'll just use an other codec. No big deal.

As a means to make money, that strategy simply sucks. A more likely turn of events is that licensing H.264 becomes quite a bit less good of a deal when H.264 has truly established itself. But even then they're not going to sue millions of people, because that doesn't scale, they're going to sue big vendors and service providers.

Certainly, that's not great either. But no, MPEG LA are not coming after "_you_".

No, they are probably not out to get you and me... Unless you fall into one of the "still to be specified categories". I guess my biggest problem is that there are questions begging for answers.

I admit that I went a bit over the top in the scare mongering with "_you_", though.

(the comments at the end of the article linked above is quite interesting, by the way)

Yeah, but whatever those "still to be specified categories" are, they're not going to include a whole lot of people, because suing people like that as a means to make money does not scale.

I thought we were "hackers" here with potential to create startups, possibly related to video or just using it as a support system?

If you have the need to pay for the sake of it you can relocate to my country, we have one of the highest taxes in the world :)

What does high taxes have to do with anything? I'm just saying that it's irrational to think that MPEG LA's plan is to sue consumers. Us being "hackers" does nothing to change those odds.

> I'm just saying that it's irrational to think that MPEG LA's plan is to sue consumers. Us being "hackers" does nothing to change those odds.

Some of us make products that may want to use h.264 and would be liable to have to pay to do so. Not as consumers, but as businesses.

> Certainly, that's not great either. But no, MPEG LA are not coming after "_you_".

Not if you're just a consumer, but we are not all just consumers on HN. So they might come after us.

Why wouldn't it scale to sue people? As long as one lawyer can make more money than he costs, they could employ more lawyers? Also, a lot of people might just be scared and pay licensing fees through their automated web form, without the need of a lawyer.

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