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Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

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Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#31

Post by dogma1138 »

Animats wrote: post #30
dogma1138 wrote: post #4

Would be interesting to see if this can be pulled off mostly due to existing patents. H.265 license covers over 500 patents you can find quite a few of them dating form the 90's which will expire in 2-3 years, but also quite a few that wont. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/hevc/Documents/hevc-att1... Considering that many companies patent everything and their mother I wonder if it's possible to actually have a Ro…

This came up a few weeks ago.[1] MPEG-LA's patent portfolio isn't that strong any more. MPEG-LA has a long list of patents, but most of them have expired. The key patents on video compression involved motion estimation, and those expired this year. MPEG-LA got their twenty years of patent protection, and it's over. The remaining patents are mostly on things you don't need for Internet video. US #6,181,712, has to do…

It seems that MPEG-1 Layer 3 patents are mostly expired, the core patents for MPEG-2 will expire in 2016-2018, but MPEG-4 MPEGLA patents are safe till 2025-2027. Also if the patents expire the organizations loses it's ability to collect royalties for the codec it self from what i understand so if that would've been the case there's little need to create a new codec but MPEG4/AVC patent protection seem to remain quite strong for about another decade.

The MPEG4 licensing scheme is kinda confusing to me it seems that several organizations collect royalties individually even tho it states that MPEGLA collects them in the US, AT&T seems to do so too for their share of the patents.

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#32

Post by kibwen »

cpeterso wrote: post #29
kibwen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting your codec supported in hardware is a tricky business, and as much as I've been a huge fan of the Daala initiative it was always going to be an insurmountable hurdle for Mozilla alone. IMO getting buy-in from Cisco and Youtube actually gives us a fighting chance at an actual royalty-free hardware-supported codec, which is why I'm so excited at this news.

I'm sure Intel, one of the AOM partners, is interested in hardware codecs. :)

Yes, not sure how I managed to miss that one. :P

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#33

Post by Daiz »

Sounds nice and all, but part of me can't help but feel quite "eh" to see names like Netflix, Google and Microsoft in there, all responsible for bringing DRM into HTML and moving the open web more toward a closed one. So while they might champion for the open web in cases like these, it's obvious that the only thing they really care about is their bottom line and not paying license fees on video formats.

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#34

Post by Caspy7 »

1ris wrote: post #13

I wonder what that means for Daala. It's scheduled to be finished by the end of this year. I hope it still gets finised.

Technologies from Daala, Thor, VP10 and contributions from other participants in the group will all be combined to essentially make one uber codec.

Since Thor was released Daala already started incorporating parts of it that made sense (and vice versa for Thor). So this will just expand that pattern.

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#35

Post by NeutronBoy »

Daiz wrote: post #33

Sounds nice and all, but part of me can't help but feel quite "eh" to see names like Netflix, Google and Microsoft in there, all responsible for bringing DRM into HTML and moving the open web more toward a closed one. So while they might champion for the open web in cases like these, it's obvious that the only thing they really care about is their bottom line and not paying license fees on video formats.

> So while they might champion for the open web in cases like these, it's obvious that the only thing they really care about is their bottom line and not paying license fees on video formats.

So? Netflix and Google are the two biggest online video players. Without them, adoption is going to be pretty pathetic. You want to start excluding people because of perceived (or actual) motivations?

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#36

Post by Caspy7 »

Daiz wrote: post #33

Sounds nice and all, but part of me can't help but feel quite "eh" to see names like Netflix, Google and Microsoft in there, all responsible for bringing DRM into HTML and moving the open web more toward a closed one. So while they might champion for the open web in cases like these, it's obvious that the only thing they really care about is their bottom line and not paying license fees on video formats.

Companies definitely look for things that serve themselves. But they are not binary "all good" and "all bad." Those companies have also contributed open technologies as well. And this codec would have nothing in it inherently DRM or "closing."

If successful this will be good for all of us, not just good for them and bad for us.

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#38

Post by Daiz »

NeutronBoy wrote: post #35
Daiz wrote: post #33

Sounds nice and all, but part of me can't help but feel quite "eh" to see names like Netflix, Google and Microsoft in there, all responsible for bringing DRM into HTML and moving the open web more toward a closed one. So while they might champion for the open web in cases like these, it's obvious that the only thing they really care about is their bottom line and not paying license fees on video formats.

> So while they might champion for the open web in cases like these, it's obvious that the only thing they really care about is their bottom line and not paying license fees on video formats. So? Netflix and Google are the two biggest online video players. Without them, adoption is going to be pretty pathetic. You want to start excluding people because of perceived (or actual) motivations?

>You want to start excluding people because of perceived (or actual) motivations?

Nah, I don't subscribe to the (unfortunately common) mentality of being exclusionary based on ideological purity evaluations. But since they obviously don't really subscribe to the idea of Open Web (as evident by their enthusiastic support for DRM in HTML, which is about as anti-Open Web as it gets), I guess I just wish they could be more honest about it. After all, what good is it that someone uses an "Open Media" format when it's put behind a completely closed black box barrier of DRM that you aren't even allowed to legally poke at thanks to anti-circumvention laws?

I do think this particular development is very much a good thing for the Open Web, and I certainly don't doubt Mozilla commitment to that. But the whole HTML DRM debacle did leave a really bitter taste in my mouth.

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#39

Post by keeperofdakeys »

dogma1138 wrote: post #4

Would be interesting to see if this can be pulled off mostly due to existing patents. H.265 license covers over 500 patents you can find quite a few of them dating form the 90's which will expire in 2-3 years, but also quite a few that wont. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/hevc/Documents/hevc-att1... Considering that many companies patent everything and their mother I wonder if it's possible to actually have a Ro…

That's the great thing about Daala, they are exploring alternate ways to build a video codec.I'm really hopeful that one day it will be as successful as Opus.

There was a great talk about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmho4gcRvQ4

Re: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video

#40

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dogma1138 wrote: post #12
jmvalin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, DRM is completely independent from the codec. You can put DRM on a free codec and you can have a non-free codec without DRM. As for Hollywood... note that the Alliance also includes Netflix.

DRM has to be kinda an integral part of the Codec in order for it to work efficiently especially with streaming any other type of DRM will not be really viable since it will either require you to get the entire file or to chop the video into smaller blocks. DRM for the most part is encryption and if you want to have it with all the vector voodoo of video compression it has to be built in. That said today there is no…

DRM is dying.

CSS, AACS and HDCP are all broken, Flash is on its last legs and music downloads have largely abandoned it to positive consequences. Streams seem to be the last bastion, but that doesn't even make sense -- the reason people subscribe to Netflix is to watch new content every month, not to watch the same content over and over. If they wanted to do that they would just buy the Blu-ray (or, if so inclined, pirate it once). And pirates have no reason to rip a 6Mbps stream when they can rip a 40Mbps Blu-ray.

DRM is a box you have to check when a suit was bamboozled by a DRM snake oil salesman into putting it in a contract. How the DRM works is irrelevant because it won't actually work anyway. A fig leaf doesn't need codec support.

That's what EME is about, and that's why you hear the free software people griping about it but not the actual pirates. EME makes piracy easier. It separates the DRM into its own little box which makes it easier to circumvent. Which is what the pirates will do because they don't care about breaking the law, but which law-abiding free software people are proscribed from doing by DMCA 1201.

But the most fundamental flaw in your argument is that you misunderstand who decides what DRM gets used. DRM is not content. What gets supported is ultimately decided by the platform companies. When Apple says there will be no DRM on iTunes, there will be no DRM on iTunes. The only thing Disney or Universal can do about it is withhold their content, but that costs them more than it costs Apple or Google. Which means it isn't something they can credibly threaten unless the dispute is of a make or break significance, and the particulars of DRM implementation are not on that level.

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