A Future Without MPEG

For next-generation video beyond H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC), that consensus has broken-down and his prediction seems to be that open-source standards like Alliance for Open Media behind the AV1 video codec will prevail. It’s worth noting that H.264 and H.265 are telecom videoconferencing standards defined by the ITU-T, not consumer electronics standards defined by ISO, so I’d say the loss of relevance of MPEG happened 20 years ago, even if MPEG (part of ISO) was involved in both standards.

So the idea of patents is, if Alice invents something really fucking amazing she explains the invention, pays the government some money and they publicise her explanation but she is entitled to control who uses the invention for a period of time.

This is a trade because now Alice's invention is available to everybody, no chance Alice loses interest and it's lost for a thousand years before somebody else re-discovers it, but on the other hand Alice doesn't need to secure investors and risk the invention being a failure, she can demand terms like 10% of the profits from anyone taking those risks.

But, it soon turned out you don't need a complete working invention. Alice describes half an invention, and then nobody else can use it without the other half, but even if they figure out the other half on their own they owe Alice! Alice doesn't even need to invent the whole thing, she can just describe the easy half, the government signs off and then when somebody smarter finishes it Alice gets rich!

Today in most of the world people have found ways to argue that computer software, which is a work of literature and thus protected by Copyright (which has different problems we won't discuss here) can also count as an invention and be patented.

So the best outcome for an outfit like MPEG is that Bob invents a really clever technique that turns moving images into much less data than before, totally just as a single flash of inspiration somehow, and rather than keeping it secret, or using just in one MSDOS program in 1989 and then never again he publishes it as a patentable invention, then MPEG incorporates it in a video standard called, say, MPEG Bob. And maybe everybody in the world cheerfully pays Bob $100 each for this amazing invention. Hooray.

But very quickly the problem with MPEG is that Charlie gets a government patent for the invention of, say, dividing five into three equal integers and then hires a very good lawyer. Charlie's lawyer says it doesn't matter that this is nonsense and can't work, because $10M worth of lawyers say you owe Charlie for using this invention in MPEG Bob.

In between these extremes there are lots of problems less intrusive than Charlie. The Springfield Higher Institute of Technology gets a patent on an idea you, an expert in the field, have been telling people about for years, but you never wrote it down so you can't prove it. Did they really invent it, or just hear it second hand? Either way, they demand $1 each, but they are a university so maybe that's good? Although it is billions of dollars, and it was really your idea if it was anybody's...

Leonardo, the author of this piece and MPEG leader, is quite sure that patents are necessary, mostly because of the Bobs in this world though I suspect he'd be sympathetic to the Springfield Institute too - to him the existence of Charlie is an annoyance that we should all try to find some way past rather than a fatal flaw in the entire endeavour.

I think that is a very partial reading of the forces at play.

Apple may be 20% of unit sales, but an overwhelming majority of industry profits and has a lock on the best demographics (the rich and the young). AFAIK they haven’t decided, even if historically they tended to prefer ITU/MPEG standards (but boycotted Blu-Ray).

AV1 has Netflix and Google/YouTube behind it. Not sure about Amazon, but they own Twitch which is on the AV1 side. In an era where the content providers also control the app through which it is delivered, they have the control over which codec gets chosen, not the hardware manufacturer. They may tactically choose to use hardware-accelerated standards like HEVC when trading off the royalties they have to pay vs. using less battery life on their customers’ devices, but in the long term it seems to me AV1 will prevail