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MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

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Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#151

Post by pbhjpbhj »

cornholio wrote: post #133
pitaj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather the patent system be abolished than have the current patent system. Same applies to Copyright. The entire state of IP with the DMCA is just abysmal.

There is a fundamental difference between copyright and patents: the field of content creators if infinite and no works will ever by identical, writing a great symphony or game does not prevent anybody in the future do write another; in stark contrast inventors deal with the limitations of the real world, with physics and technology, there are a limited number of good solutions to a given problem and a patent on an o…

>and a patent on an obvious and straightforward solution is a major hindrance to everybody else.//

Which is why every patent act has the requirements of novelty and non-obviousness.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#152

Post by Zigurd »

Solar19 wrote: post #116
Zigurd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that claims of innovation and creativity shutting down without patent and copyright protection are, in fact, correct? It seems like the purpose of these supposed protections is bent so far out of share that the threat of "getting what you wish for" carries no weight. Some media might shrink, but other media would grow to take it's place. Neither patent now copyright "ownership" are natural right…

We can deduce from the math that drug companies would not spend nearly as much money on R&D without being able to earn it back. Without patents, they would need a new business model that involved much less cost upfront. We could choose to live with more risk as far as new drugs are concerned, less testing, etc. That might not be a net negative. No one would make big expensive movies and GoT type shows without copyrig…

Those are not macro-scale arguments, and both have strong counter-arguments: Pharma can still make money manufacturing, distributing, and selling, and it does for out-of-patent products. Their patented products are often born in government and university research labs, and are privatized in what amounts to rent-seeking based on a public good.

Anyone who has written books about specific kinds of software development knows that business is perhaps 10% as big as it used to be because manuals and experiential knowledge are freely available. Things change. So should patent and copyright protection. See you at the local stage production of GoT.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#153

Post by q3k »

reacweb wrote: post #129
mmozeiko wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is cracked. Here's a simple patch: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/5x7xbo/patch_...

Do you mean that enabling the Pi's hardware decoding of MPEG-2 and VC-1 video files without paying for a license key just requires to patch a single byte with this command ? cd /boot ; cp start.elf start.elf_backup && perl -pne 's/\x47\xE9362H\x3C\x18/\x47\xE9362H\x3C\x1F/g' start.elf

Yes, it seems to patch a licensing function at 0xEC95FD4 [1] to always return 1, by patching the jump at 0xEC95FE2 (that should be only taken for the always-allowed H263 codec) to always be taken, thus always allowing all codecs.

[1] - https://q3k.org/u/8e3173aef341df726e4f38f30e58417239423250f3...

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#154

Post by dumbneurologist »

notyourwork wrote: post #59
zanny wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the sweet taste of abusing state institutions to hold back scientific progress. First it was efficient video and audio compression, now it will be life saving treatment. Ain't the world such a better place for MPEG-LA existing... (that being said, if MPEG-LA wasn't around, someone else would have formed just as evil a patent tyrant company to act as the arm of big media). MPEG-LA is just a symptom of broken I…

Without disagreeing I would encourage you to provide an alternative solution to the current (as you describe) broken system. The system was put in place to protect us, if it isn't serving its purpose we need to be more objective and declare how it could be better implemented.

> The system was put in place to protect us

That's a little bit overly generous.

It was put in place to incentivize invention and creation. But I think clear with examples like this that it's holding us back. There are so many people, and there is so much innovation, and so much ability to understand how something new works that these laws do nothing to help the public.

And even if they started with the public good in mind, we are now far from it.

As other responders are suggesting: scrap it completely, and see where things end up.

And even though we are discussing patents, the benefit to the public is ten times larger for copyright.

Copyright maximalists had a stroke of genius when they started calling it "intellectual property" and "IP rights". This allows you to make it a moral issue, rather than a public policy issue (which is what it really is).

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#155

Post by phkahler »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #109
Solar19 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with some of this, and I think most software patents are garbage and should not be legally permitted. But I'm stuck on codecs. Codecs are real, as real as a bag of apples. And they're complicated, extremely specific (and necessarily formally specified), and the result of a lot of work, sometimes brilliant work. If there's any software that has a chance of convincing me of patent worthiness, it's probably code…

> HEVC is pretty amazing though, and it's clearly better than VP9, so it looks like the proprietary stuff beats open source in this field This is just a restatement of the fact that codec patents exist. When the state of the art advances because of improvements A to Z and A to W are in the public domain, the proprietary codecs are still "better" because they use A to W plus X, Y and Z which the open source codecs can…

AV1 is better than HEVC, is not patented, and was invented by companies interested in conserving bandwidth out of need. So yes, things get invented without patents.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#156

Post by phkahler »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #148
amluto wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abolish it entirely. I'm not really kidding. I think that evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking. Alternatively, a few major reforms would help. For example: 1. Decrease patent terms to just a few years in most fields. 2. Make it clear that math, in any form, is not patentable. Codec patents, for example, should never have been valid. 3. Eliminate submarine patents. Specifically, require patent…

> evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking Pharma? It's trendy to pretend that pharma patents are the Devil incarnate because they enable exploitative pricepoints by the patent-holder, but the fact is that's what enables the profit motive for the research in the first place. (At least, I've never seen a serious argument against this, only righteous blustering.) (The fact that US pharma companies s…

Much of the research is done in non-commercial settings. Then companies pick the most promising stuff, patent it and run clinical trials. The real cost is the clinical trials, not the basic research. Read the wording, they often talk about the "cost of bringing a drug to market" which isn't so much the discovery phase as the "prove it" phase.

As an example of exploitation see the statin drugs used to lower cholesterol. These were originally isolated from an ancient Chinese herbal "red yeast rice" and found to be effective. So some company patented the molecule, did clinical trials, and profit! I chose this one because I have personal experience getting dramatic reduction in my cholesterol from taking red-yeast-rice. It's also a nice example of how the system is broken. We all could have benefited from trials proving that red-yeast-rice reduces cholesterol, but that's not what happened. The company would not have funded the trials if they couldn't patent the molecule.

IMHO if clinical trials were cheaper there would be no need for granting monopolies (via patents) to cover the costs. I also don't see why trials are so expensive. There are plenty of doctors treating plenty of patients that are willing to try things. All we really need is a set of rules to protect people from irresponsible trials, and formal study procedures to document results and determine efficacy. It doesn't seem too complicated right?

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#157

Post by phkahler »

userbinator wrote: post #101
phkahler wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ripoffs would have to compete. Some would compete on price, which might benefit the public by making things more available. Others might compete on quality, which might benefit the public by having alternatives to the cheapest crap someone can produce. Neither of those things happen automatically with patents.

The ripoffs would have to compete. ...which of course means that they have to do something more than just copy IP --- in other words, make some sort of improvement. I'd argue that this sort of unrestricted sharing and competition will benefit the public more than the restricted form of competition that IP laws bring, because now everyone is free to remix and improve. In fact, that sort of thing has been going on in C…

That was my point, without patents they compete on price or quality. With patents there is no incentive for the sole provider of a product to improve it in either way.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#158

Post by contravariant »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #148
amluto wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abolish it entirely. I'm not really kidding. I think that evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking. Alternatively, a few major reforms would help. For example: 1. Decrease patent terms to just a few years in most fields. 2. Make it clear that math, in any form, is not patentable. Codec patents, for example, should never have been valid. 3. Eliminate submarine patents. Specifically, require patent…

> evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking Pharma? It's trendy to pretend that pharma patents are the Devil incarnate because they enable exploitative pricepoints by the patent-holder, but the fact is that's what enables the profit motive for the research in the first place. (At least, I've never seen a serious argument against this, only righteous blustering.) (The fact that US pharma companies s…

An observation without any kind of control is not really good evidence. Of course that means it's not evidence of the contrary either.

However I do agree that profit is a very powerful motivator, and I see no easy way to make sure the money is better spent otherwise (although there's no reason for all research to be profit driven, publicly funded research can definitely be good thing even if only as competition).

However I get the impression that we're at the point where there are so many things that can be cured if money is no objection that money is starting to become an objection, and nobody seems to be prepared to do what is essentially putting a price on human life.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#159

Post by ksec »

phkahler wrote: post #155
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HEVC is pretty amazing though, and it's clearly better than VP9, so it looks like the proprietary stuff beats open source in this field This is just a restatement of the fact that codec patents exist. When the state of the art advances because of improvements A to Z and A to W are in the public domain, the proprietary codecs are still "better" because they use A to W plus X, Y and Z which the open source codecs can…

AV1 is better than HEVC, is not patented, and was invented by companies interested in conserving bandwidth out of need. So yes, things get invented without patents.

>AV1 is better than HEVC, is not patented,

Being royalty free does not mean it is not patented.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#160

Post by jacquesm »

Zigurd wrote: post #150
jacquesm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realize that for instance the GPL is based in ... tadaa ... copyright. And there are a lot more examples like that. If you start throwing rocks that large you have to be very careful about unintended consequences and I'm not sure that I oversee the complexity of it all to the point that I think that a 'let's get rid of it all' solution won't create it's own particular kinds of problems and until we have feel for the…

"If you start throwing rocks that large" is a terrible argument. It is the same as arguments about keeping treatments for which there is no clinical evidence just because money, reputation, and public morality might at stake in varying degrees. If overreach in patent and copyright law is a drag on the economy, which it very likely is, it's costing not just freedom, but it amounts to the theft of wider prosperity for…

If you read the first sentence of the comment you replied to you will see that I gave a very specific example.

Copyright and patent law are cornerstones of the economy, removing them outright without due consideration of the consequences is simply irresponsible.

A measured approach is advisable and doing this step-by-step would seem to be the wiser course of action. If you feel that radically dropping both copyright and patent law from one day to the next is the way to go then the onus is on you to show that this will not have unintended consequences, not on me.

So: be specific.

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