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Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

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Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#111

Post by mikekchar »

adultSwim wrote: post #89
smithkl42 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen. As Thomas Jefferson (correctly) described patents, they're a part of positive law, not natural law. In other words, their only justification is pragmatic, not moral. You can't "own" an idea the way that you can own a couch or a car. We allow for (temporary) patent protection because it's supposed to encourage innovation and help our economy. If it doesn't - and it's clearly reached the point where it hinders ra…

Are we saying you can no longer commercially develop a video codec? If it's so good for the industry, the patent holders could just choose to make it free. Everyone else could choose to :gasp: pay. I actually agree with your point. I just want to make it clear what that means. When it comes to patents, to me a compression algorithm is the closest thing in software to a mechanic device. At that level could patent equi…

The "crummy patents" and "having patents at all" are very much intertwined. The problem is the bit about obviousness to someone skilled in the art. Even though I am a programmer, I know nothing at all about video codecs, so nothing seems obvious at all. But to someone skilled at making codecs, it's a different matter.

I remember very clearly when Ogg Theora was being developed the difficulty they had in choosing a technique that would work and was not already patented. It's not like they were looking up algorithms in a big book and saying "I wonder if that one is patented". They were coming up with techniques independently and then having to search to see if it was patented.

At what point is something obvious to a person skilled in the art? What should be patentable? Should you be able to get a patent across a whole field of techniques because you managed to implement one example of that technique?

The overall approach might be obvious to someone skilled in the art, but the devil is in the details. If someone can patent the overall approach because they have implemented an example of that approach, then it shuts down everybody else. If you have a company that goes around buying up (or making strategic partnerships with companies that own) patents that cover all conceivable approaches, then they can completely lock down any new developments for a couple of decades.

This is the reality of codec development right now. Is this what we want? Is it good for the industry and society in general?

Imagine as a programmer being told, "No matter what idea you have, it is already patented. You are not allowed to program without paying someone a fee. If they decide not to sell to you, then you can't program at all". That's the world of a codec developer. It's something that I personally do not want.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#112

Post by tracker1 »

adultSwim wrote: post #89
smithkl42 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen. As Thomas Jefferson (correctly) described patents, they're a part of positive law, not natural law. In other words, their only justification is pragmatic, not moral. You can't "own" an idea the way that you can own a couch or a car. We allow for (temporary) patent protection because it's supposed to encourage innovation and help our economy. If it doesn't - and it's clearly reached the point where it hinders ra…

Are we saying you can no longer commercially develop a video codec? If it's so good for the industry, the patent holders could just choose to make it free. Everyone else could choose to :gasp: pay. I actually agree with your point. I just want to make it clear what that means. When it comes to patents, to me a compression algorithm is the closest thing in software to a mechanic device. At that level could patent equi…

The thing with ideas, is many of them aren't really unique or particularly innovative. Most build on other ideas and concepts, this includes audio, video and other compression schemes. The issue at hand is that with many ideas, they take heavy manufacturing and physical models for testing that are expensive and time consuming. Where as an idea expressed in software is an extremely small fraction in terms of resources.

I've always felt that if we allow for software patents (which I'm not sure even that is a good idea), then they should be much more limited (say 5 years) where commercial costs can be recouped, and some profits made as well as being a short enough time that the greater society can still benefit.

Both the scale and scope of what is being approved regarding software patents in this country are ridiculous compared to the natural rate of change and innovation... 20 years ago the average computer would have a lot of trouble trying to display a 1080p video stream. Today just about everyone has something in their pocket that can handle this. We can't limit software expression and bind it for 20 years at a time, for ideas that take a fraction of that time for multiple people to come up with and implement.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#113

Post by throwawaykf05 »

jngreenlee wrote: post #2

"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. Our efforts are far from complete, but we felt it was time to open this up to the world." This burden is becoming far too great, when this is the…

As has been said elsewhere, this is not the cost need to achieve innovation, this is the cost needed to avoid paying others who have already invented something before.

And as often it is with patents, the outcome is more invention. All those workarounds are also innovation.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#114

Post by [deleted] »

vetinari wrote: post #56
TD-Linux wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by MP4 you are referring to H.264, there are still many years remaining on most of the patents. MPEG-LA publishes patent lists, if you're interested to look. You are right in that there are many other encumbered technologies that have patents expiring soon. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video, MP3 and AC3 audio, and several container formats are included. Notably, this is almost all of the technologies required to make a DVD.

MP4 usually means MPEG-4 Part 2 or MPEG-4 Visual (ISO 14496-2). That's the codec that DivX and XviD implemented.

[deleted]

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#115

Post by nitrogen »

astrange wrote: post #100
jerf wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Video encoding is not embarrassingly parallel; no kind of compression ever can be, because if any bit doesn't depend on the previous bit you've wasted it." That objection makes no sense. That just implies that at worse parallelization may cost some encoding efficiency. In general, we are quite often willing to pay for that encoding efficiency with gusto given the speedup we can obtain. For instance, http://compressi…

* no compression aiming for efficiency can be If you have that much need for a speedup, you probably have multiple video streams going (like you're Youtube or a livestream broadcaster). In that case, it's better to do one video per CPU, and now you really are parallel. Also, you can get up to 4x parallel through slice-threads safely on one video, or 16x through x264's frame-threads if you don't care about your target…

Are there not stages of compression that are highly parallelizable, though? Like basic transformations that operate locally on the image (maybe DCT, per-block motion vector calculation)?

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#116

Post by Retra »

rayiner wrote: post #107
ZenoArrow wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural law does exist. The difference between natural law and laws of a civilisation? I'll let Feynman hint at it... "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled". To give the context, this was said in relation to the Challenger Shuttle explosion.

Evidence showing the existence of natural law?

Natural (physical) laws are presumed to exist. Natural (social, moral) laws don't. (At least not in a readily usable form.)

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#117

Post by harryh »

smithkl42 wrote: post #21
jngreenlee wrote: post #2

"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. Our efforts are far from complete, but we felt it was time to open this up to the world." This burden is becoming far too great, when this is the…

Amen. As Thomas Jefferson (correctly) described patents, they're a part of positive law, not natural law. In other words, their only justification is pragmatic, not moral. You can't "own" an idea the way that you can own a couch or a car. We allow for (temporary) patent protection because it's supposed to encourage innovation and help our economy. If it doesn't - and it's clearly reached the point where it hinders ra…

Hate to break it to you, but your treasured natural laws are just as man made is the positive law that you dislike.

We allow for (temporary) ownership of property because it's supposed to encourage benefits to society of various varieties. If it doesn't - and it's starting to become clear that, say, inequality in the US is becoming too high - then we need to change things.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#118

Post by AnthonyMouse »

joepie91_ wrote: post #57
manachar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, because some forget this part of patent law, the encouragement towards innovation was to encourage people to share and build on a communal set of ideas. The temporary monopoly on ideas was the carrot to get people to register their ideas in a central location (patent office) rather than lock ideas behind closed doors and secrecy. Too many people think the carrot of the temporary monopoly was the point of…

Copyright was built with a similar purpose - enriching the public domain - and has failed in a similar manner. Both patents and copyright are failed experiments. They weren't meant to 'benefit creators' or 'guarantee an income', and they cannot take that role in a healthy society.

> Copyright was built with a similar purpose - enriching the public domain - and has failed in a similar manner.

Copyright has failed in an altogether different manner. The trouble with copyright is what has been erected to enforce it: Laws against circumventing DRM that encourage monopolization of copyright-adjacent markets, absurd statutory damages, internet censorship, easily abused takedown schemes. And the term is far too long.

But if "copyright" is only the ability of an author to sue copyright infringers in court for actual damages, it's basically harmless. If you don't like proprietary software then you can excise it from your life by simply not using it, and actually doing that is continually becoming more practical as free software improves.

The trouble with software patents is that you can't do that. There is no option to build your own system because independent creation is not a defense. And that failure is inherent in the nature of what a patent is. You can't fix it without eliminating software patents entirely.

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#119

Post by bithive123 »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #103
rhino369 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural law doesn't exist. It's essentially a religious belief Jefferson had.

Natural law does exist. The difference between natural law and laws of a civilisation? I'll let Feynman hint at it... "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled". To give the context, this was said in relation to the Challenger Shuttle explosion.

I think what GP meant is that it's like the "Scroll direction: natural" option that appeared in OS X system preferences after Apple changed the default scroll behavior to match what happens on mobile devices.

I am guessing that a lot of us "see what they did there".

Re: Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

#120

Post by forrestthewoods »

joepie91_ wrote: post #57
manachar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, because some forget this part of patent law, the encouragement towards innovation was to encourage people to share and build on a communal set of ideas. The temporary monopoly on ideas was the carrot to get people to register their ideas in a central location (patent office) rather than lock ideas behind closed doors and secrecy. Too many people think the carrot of the temporary monopoly was the point of…

Copyright was built with a similar purpose - enriching the public domain - and has failed in a similar manner. Both patents and copyright are failed experiments. They weren't meant to 'benefit creators' or 'guarantee an income', and they cannot take that role in a healthy society.

Copyright has succeeded a thousand times more than its failed. It's pretty great for the most part. It enables a vast, vast number of jobs and new creations. It could certainly be better. But I'd much rather have what copyright as it exists today than for it to not exist at all. And don't forget that GPL is only enforceable due to copyright law.
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