US Department of Justice investigating MPEG LA
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
So, MPEG LA has no interest in extracting maximum possible amount of royalties for its patent holders?
(By the way, I voted you up, I think you summarize their position better than I did.)
I'm astonished that he might actually be talking about Google's own patents, knowing that he'll be quoted by the press in a way that turns a true, but pointless statement into FUD. Since most of his quotes sound like a Dickensian bad guy I think he might just be doing this. I mean who talks like this:
"In view of the marketplace uncertainties regarding patent licensing needs for such technologies, there have been expressions of interest from the market urging us to facilitate formation of licenses that would address the market's need for a convenient one-stop marketplace alternative to negotiating separate licenses with individual patent holders in accessing essential patent rights for VP8 as well as other codecs, and we are looking into the prospects of doing so."
They do charge royalties to anyone not in the association - those royalties can of course be >100%.
In the old days we used to call this a cartel - but that's illegal.
What that means in practice is that you cannot charge Apple $1 per copy and Google $10 just because you hate Google. You have to have terms that apply to everyone equally, and they have to be 'reasonable', which presumably 100% of your gross revenue would not be.
That said, I do believe the patent holders have the right to circumvent the pool and cross-license directly from each other. I'm not too clear on how that relates to the RAND policy, but my cynical guess would be that it can be used as cover for some pretty sweet deals.
The most obvious example of this is that it's not "reasonable" to charge usage royalties on FLOSS software. There is a school of thought that flat-rate royalties don't clash as badly since you don't need to track usage, but since we're talking about standards produced for the public good, obviously royalty-free would be better. Either way, by assuming and enforcing a business model from the hardware days, it is "discriminating" against certain busineses.
Similarly, they've dropped charges on free web video, which is a clear attempt to break into a market they've had trouble in before. So as a class of users at least they can charge you more if they think they can get away with it.
Finally, it appears that the (highly successful) video game industry thinks that royalties designed for the TV industry aren't particularly reasonable for them and so avoids MPEG audio and video formats whenever possible.
So while they perhaps made sense 20, or even 10, years ago, RAND terms are no longer RAND.
Is that true? I though members had to pay royalties even if they had a patent in the pool.
[1] - http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/AVC_TermsS...
The pool agreement isn't exclusive. The members are free to license their patents through other venues, including cross licensing.
In fact, one of the points MPEG-LA made in their initial review letter with the DOJ is that he pool would not be used to force anyone to pay for a license to a patent which they were already licensed for some other means.
So a pool member only has to pay royalties iff they've been unable to achieve complete cross-licensing with the other pool members.
At another place the article says that mpeg-la is asking people to submit patents that cover vp8 in order to form another patent pool. So it seems that they may not have the patents that cover vp8 but want other companies to give them to them.
It would certainly be easier for them if the Google and the world continued to just cut them checks for ancient technology. But it will never be to their advantage to admit the extent to which they are bluffing and they probably don't even know themselves.
Video has been digitized and compressed for how many decades now?
Weren't patents supposed to expire at some point?
Fixing the patent system will require legislation, which is a function of our elected officials. These officials, really (and tragically) by necessity at this point, are driven by funding their re-election campaign.
Given the early MPEG patents are in the mid - 90s they will begin to start expiring in 2015. Once we reach 2021 there will be a dozen free codecs with source code on the market.
In the meantime, MPEG LA does what it can to maximize its revenues.
MPEG-LA's workaround for that, which is what is at stake here, is some sort of carve-out with the FTC, stipulating that because it's an emerging standard, MPEG should not be subject to the normal restrictions on patent pooling.
Of course, MPEG protection racket-esque comments in the article makes this a bit easier to swallow.
They made some concessions to the DOJ in order to be able to operate, which at least one licencee claims they've failed to honor. You can Google for the Nero AG vs MPEG-LA antitrust case for more info. (edit: a link, http://www.osnews.com/story/23346/Nero_Files_Antitrust_Case_...)
So it makes perfect sense for the DOJ to be involved. It's not just a patent dispute.
These statements are conscience injections, red herrings, and convenient sound bites for zealots like Gruber to use in their "see I told you" agenda-driven opinion pieces. Truth is, patents for a video codec to be used on the web is simply nonsense. It's a stifle of creativity and hopefully we end up winning with a free, open codec that can be used in open source software. This is the formula that encourages innovation.
H.264 hardware inconveniences, gripes - to the wind.
Joking aside, this is a false dilemma. Patent trolls actually exist, inadvertent patent infringement is not some purely hypothetical risk. Particularly in fields like video codecs where the mines are laid especially thick.
In spite of this supposed huge vulnerability, nobody has ever suggested even one single patent that could potentially be read as covering anything in Google's WebM tech, much less the "minefield" that MPEG-LA try to conjure up with their vague insinuations. You'd be about as well-supported by the evidence if you claimed that God just hates WebM and will smite down anyone who uses it to encode video.
I'm not saying that WebM isn't on a patent minefield. I can't prove that negative claim. But I can say that I've never seen anyone offer any credible evidence for this minefield.
http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2100601
This argument is total FUD.
MPEG-LA doesn't claim H.264 is patent free - they just offer a simplified way to license a large number of patents.
If it is FUD, perhaps you can offer an explanation rather than just deflection.
H.264 - paid license, no guarantees of indemnification
Any argument that circumvents the above fact is agenda-driven. People know that WebM is the better choice; but are instead trying to find a roundabout way of keeping their H.264 encoders relevant.
Deleted comment
So excuse me if I, after finally abandoning Flash myself, feel this is quiet the hypocriticism of the open web movement. It again, seems like it's about battery life and very little to do with freedom of web technology.
And are you claiming that Google has no agenda? It might be one you support, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
No, I entirely anticipate an agenda - but that doesn't mean it exists. My hope is that Google will do the right thing and offer indemnification. Hoping doesn't do anything, of course, but neither does propping up the MPEG LA's argument of what ifs.
Google offers free services and tools of all kinds, so to single out WebM is highly agenda-driven, IMO.
Disclosure: I own a MBA, PC, iPhone, iPad and work on a iMac at my office. I don't own a single Google hardware product.
Honestly though the points you make here don't seem to have a lot to do with the question.
If Google is going to make claims that things are open, they should be held up to scrutiny. If they are not, then we simply collude with them in weakening the term.
Google claims that a highly complicated piece of code that does pretty much the same thing as another highly complicated piece of code covered by 1700 patents does is patent free and safe to use.
They want other people to stake their money on testing this claim.
"Google offers free services and tools of all kinds, so to single out WebM is highly agenda-driven, IMO."
By that argument, any discussion of individual Google products would be "agenda driven". That's absurd.
This is why I believe these rants about WebM are agenda-driven. Who says Google wants people to front the responsibility? This is your claim. I don't think Google bought WebM for the purpose of screwing the implementors. That doesn't mean I think we're all safe, it just means we need more information before jumping to conclusions. It also does not mean we should use WebM without discretion.
By that argument, any discussion of individual Google products would be "agenda driven". That's absurd.
It's absurd to disregard that out of all the possible Google technologies (maps, android, API), WebM is considered most harmful. Especially since most who share this vision are Apple users (again, so am I). I can't ignore the obvious, stitched together, lop-sided point of view.
WebM - free license, indemnification against 0 patents.
H.264 - paid license, indemnification against > 1700 patents.
(here's the list: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.p...)
For WebM to be a free equivalent, Google would have to indemnify users against that list of patents. If Google is sure that the patents are not infringed, why doesn't it at least do that?
Both sides are saying (if not expressly then implied) that their licensing technique is believed to be enough, but they can't promise absolute protection.
Both sides are simply not saying the same thing. You are putting words into their mouth to make it look as though the MPEG-LA is saying the same as Google.
I think an unencumbered format would be a good thing, and I'm asking a genuine question. Why is Google making a claim they aren't prepared to back up? Why should other people take the risk for them?
Perhaps there's a good reason for this strategy. I can't see it, so I'm asking if anyone else can?
Saying "the other side is just as bad" is uninformative and just turns the discussion into a question of who's side you're on.
Apple's camp will talk shit about Flash and how Flash should die because it's patent encumbered, but because iOS has a hardware H.264 encoder suddenly the rules don't apply and it's just fine to be presenting junk science as reasoning so long as its convenient.
You're spending more time trying to convince people to give up the idea of a truly open format instead of just conceding that it's an absolute necessity. Patent trolls might... is not a good reason to give up a necessary measure of innovation.
I'd still be on WebM's side regardless, but I feel like if the tables were turned and WebM was Apple's idea, this conversation would be going a little differently.
My head hurt after going through one software patent trying to figure out what it actually meant. I can't imagine cross referencing every single patent against everything that WebM does.
Now imagine a patent-free codec came along that had substantially better quality per bit-rate and was at least as efficient as h264. You wouldn't need lobbying to move us over. The pirates would embrace it first, and everyone else would follow. At the end of the day, moving forward is the only way we know. Sadly, WebM is leading in the opposite direction.
One of the most important properties of my media formats is it's accessiblility.
The fact that h264 is heavily patented by these creeps makes it inferior for my purposes by a large measure.
What business wouldn't pay a slight file-size penalty (to maintain the same quality) in order avoid being bound to some per-seat licensing agreement with all its associated administrative and reporting obligations?
Drive space is most-rapidly-decreasing cost in the world and bandwidth isn't too bad either. Patents take twenty years to expire. Do the math.
Great! H264 is what you want then. It's not only supported, but also hardware accelerated, on most devices out there. WebM isn't, and won't be for a long time.
"What business wouldn't pay a slight file-size penalty (to maintain the same quality) in order avoid being bound to some per-seat licensing agreement with all its associated administrative and reporting obligations?"
Every business that would rather pay royalty fees than for extra bandwidth required by a shitty codec. You probably also want the majority of your customers to actually be able to view your content. So there's also that "minor" inconvenience. But aside from that, what business wouldn't go the WebM route, right? :P
"Do the math."
Actually, I'll let you do it.
Seriously, how much of a bandwidth increase are you alleging for a similar quality?
Great! H264 is what you want then. It's not only supported, but also hardware accelerated, on most devices out there. WebM isn't, and won't be for a long time.[...]You probably also want the majority of your customers to actually be able to view your content. So there's also that "minor" inconvenience.
Device adoption is certainly a good point. Based on the viewing habits I see of the kids, over the long term I'd bet on whatever YouTube is moving to over whatever remnants of IP the old television industry is trying to keep restricted.
If mp3 is anything to go by consumers as a whole actually seem to care surprisingly little about the quality / size equation. I suspect if either 10% more bandwidth is used or video is 10% worse the vast bulk of users couldn't give a hoot for the vast bulk of video they view on the web. There might be special cases (streaming HD movies, perhaps), but we don't need the general standard for web video to cater to every special case, just be good enough and robust enough for a wide variety of common cases.
H264 meets the pirates' needs perfectly now. It has the best quality per bit-rate out there. And pirates don't care about royalty fees.
It's likely that getting that support was aided by being clearly patent-free so certain compression techniques and wide support are probably linked.
Of course, a better than H.264 codec isn't hypothetical. THere is H.265 and VP9 coming, neither of which has hardware support or patent royalty demands or wide usage by pirates. The level of support for VP8 is likely to influence how those things pan out in the future.
If you want your codec to be adopted despite lack of hardware/software support, you really need to offer something worth the hassle. Notably reduced buffering wait times for consumers, and lower bandwidth costs and ease of distribution (encoder/decoder) for pirates would be such needs worth the hassle. WebM is worse in all these cases. Very few people care about royalties, so it's simply not enough to ask everyone to swap out all the hardware and other infrastructure for mostly ideological fluff.
You actually need to make a better codec. And so far there is nothing out there (H265 and VP9 don't have a usable encoder/decoder).
In short "better" codec means more than just compression efficiency and asking people to switch out their infrastructure for a quality improvement is as tough as for a cost reduction. It only happens now because the whole industry acts in concert to make it happen. There's no reason why the industry couldn't coalesce around a free codec next time if the "idealogues" and "hippies" have laid sufficient groundwork, either with no business case or one that only works in certain niches. This is how it has worked in many other free software or free content success story.
[1] this doesn't seem to be widely known. If you google for WebM then one of the twitter results is Joe Hewitt asking smugly when Google will announce hardware and Youtube support for WebM, something they'd done about a year previously.
(Emphasis mine). This is fair, I think. Basically, they are being investigated for spreading FUD against their competitor.
Imagine that you developed an application, and I'm your competitor. You're trying to sell your app to corporations. I call journalist and tell them that your app infringes patents (not mine, I don't have any patents). I also tell them that the patent pool is being assembled. I put a notice on my website: "Do you have any patents that [you app] might infringe? Let us know!", and let it hang there for a long long time. While there's an uncertainty, corporations won't buy your app. Anticompetitive? To me, yes.
The area of law where patent law and anti-trust law intersect is very complex, so I cannot explain it here, but suffice it to say there are situations where patents can be misused for anticompetitive purposes and this can result in violation of antitrust law.
Some examples may include situations where you have a patent for system A that rightfully grants you a monopoly on system A, but use that patent to get a monopoly on or control the distribution of system B which is not covered by your patent.
This is something that may apply in this case although I am not sure it does. MPEG-LA keeps its major license agreements secret, so we do not know what is happening.
None of the above is legal advice.
This looks to me like the patent system operating as designed.
I guess if you're Google you can get the government to make an exception for you in the interest of fairness.
But it's cold legalistic capitalism for the rest of us.
Not in general, if they're vague enough.
But when they come from the lawyer pool of a massively-funded cartel sitting on 1700 patents, they're inherently credible threats.
Charge for encryption/licensing formats.