H.264 patent license published for the first time by the FSF | Hacker News Reader

H.264 patent license published for the first time by the FSF

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33 pointsliraz10 comments

According to John Sullivan, the operations manager for the FSF: "Those terms have previously even been unavailable for examination online. We are publishing them on fsf.org today in order to comment on their unethical restrictions."

Analysis of the H.264 patent licensing restrictions in the context of the Apple/Adobe back and forth on Flash and "open standards":

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/pot-meet-kettle-a-...

The meaty part is that they require all licensed software to include the following notice:

THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (I) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (II) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM

So even a $12,000 video camera needs to include a limitation on non-commercial "consumer" use. But would it be legal to try and enforce that?

Don't you think there is a different license for commercial encoders? That commercial license probably comes with a stunning set of fees outlined in byzantine detail, hence the need to keep businesses from using the consumer license.

(I think the professional camera crowd doesn't do interframe compression in the camera anyway. It makes editing a little funny and they like very high quality source material. Google shopping for "video camera h.264" over $1000 only brought me a bunch of security camera packages.

The Canon Vixia HF S21 is over $1000 and contains the prohibition (well, the MPEG-2 version of it), sadly I can not paste it here because Canon set the no-copy bit on the downloadable PDF manual! Yes! That will defend the company from the evil threat of… umm… I can create no scenario where copying from the users' manual is a threat.)

Look for Canon 5D Mark II, it uses h264 and is used for commercial film production

I work part-time for a production company and as far as I know, the industry standard is the RED Camera http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RED_Digital_Cinema, whose standard output is 2K-4K RAW.

Compressed formats that interpolate between keyframes (like MPEG) are generally a bad idea since they make precise cutting between clips a lot harder.

I agree that the whole "non-professional" thing seems blown out of proportion. After you've shot and edited your masterpiece, run it though a "professional" encoder and you're done.

Adobe Reader isn't the only PDF-viewing software out there.

This isn't the first time the licence has been published. There's a copy in a Divx regulatory filing:

http://apps.shareholder.com/sec/viewerContent.aspx?companyid...

About 4/5 of the way down.

That's the 2005 revision, presumably that has been updated in the meantime.

If this license was a computer program I'd have to class it as spaghetti code.

edit: the meat starts on page 11.

Warning: This is an 8.7MB, 32 page pdf.

That's why there is the scribd link in the title. Click it, to view the pdf online. Very handy!

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