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Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to staggering $4.5M

tomshardware.com

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Re: Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to staggering $4.5M

#41

Post by cs702 »

Profit-seeking at society's expense.

Also known as rent-seeking: "The act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth. Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, stifled competition, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, heightened debt levels, risk of growing corruption and cronyism, decreased public trust in institutions, and potential national decline."[a]

Sigh.

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[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Re: Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to staggering $4.5M

#42

Post by ndiddy »

silotis wrote: post #19
adrian_b wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you are in Europe or in any other place where the H.264 patents have expired. The patents are still valid in USA, Brazil and a few other places.

*Claimed to still be valid. If you're just hosting videos on your website you are probably using High Profile which was standardized in March of 2005, i.e. more than 20 years ago. That doesn't stop VIA and MPEG-LA from claiming they still have relevant patents, but that claim is dubious and hasn't been tested in court.

Note that there's some patents that haven't yet expired, at least in the US. AFAIK this is because if there's delays in patent examination you get extra duration on your patent to compensate. Here's a list of the patents that were filed before High Profile was standardized and are still valid: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M...

Of course MPEG-LA deliberately makes figuring out which patents cover which parts of H.264 (which is really a set of multiple standards spanning a 10+ year period) ambiguous and hard to determine in order to sell more licenses.

Re: Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to staggering $4.5M

#44

Post by userbinator »

Trying to milk the last drop before the patents expire? H.264 patents have already expired in most of the world and the remaining ones, which might not even be necessary for the vast majority of H.264 use, are also approaching expiry very soon:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M...

Re: Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to staggering $4.5M

#45

Post by m-p-3 »

Veliladon wrote: post #38
KronisLV wrote: post #26

That's an insane amount. That makes me feel even more strongly about throwing proprietary and predatory codecs in the trash and opting to use AV1 et al wherever possible, it's better anyways and surely close to a decade after coming out, we'd expect devices to support it well enough.

The problem is that open codecs can still be encumbered by patents and the holders will sue. VP9 and AV1 have their own patent pool for that very reason. Google may have open sourced its codecs but if they don’t indemnify users people who think they’re safe might be in for a bad time.

Looks like that isn't stopping Dolby.

https://www.techspot.com/news/111865-dolby-sues-snap-over-vi...

Re: Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to staggering $4.5M

#46

Post by asadotzler »

chromacity wrote: post #12
topranks wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VP9, AV1

As the article says, there are companies seeking royalties for both of these codecs.

Seeking is not getting, not even close. Suggesting it is only supports their propaganda and adds momentum to their bogus race to a cash grab.

Re: Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to staggering $4.5M

#47

Post by themafia »

silotis wrote: post #19
adrian_b wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you are in Europe or in any other place where the H.264 patents have expired. The patents are still valid in USA, Brazil and a few other places.

*Claimed to still be valid. If you're just hosting videos on your website you are probably using High Profile which was standardized in March of 2005, i.e. more than 20 years ago. That doesn't stop VIA and MPEG-LA from claiming they still have relevant patents, but that claim is dubious and hasn't been tested in court.

> *Claimed to still be valid.

I can't afford to claim otherwise.

Re: Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to staggering $4.5M

#49

Post by adriand »

nine_k wrote: post #33
KronisLV wrote: post #26

That's an insane amount. That makes me feel even more strongly about throwing proprietary and predatory codecs in the trash and opting to use AV1 et al wherever possible, it's better anyways and surely close to a decade after coming out, we'd expect devices to support it well enough.

Insane in absolute terms, but not per user. Take look at the actual fee schedule [1]. The most costly is the license for cable TV, which costs 50¢ per year per subscriber. The least costly is social media, which goes up to whopping 4.5¢ per MAU per user. I very much understand how the licensing alliance likely was bothered by the fact that they are leaving money on the table, when TikTok's revenue per user is $50 a y…

Is it insane at all? The biggest fees are charged to the biggest providers. With short form video now the dominant form of addictive social media content, it doesn’t seem insane at all that large media companies ought to compensate inventors/owners of patented video technology. A company with 100 million or more subscribers is not a company I feel a lot of empathy for if they’re trying to avoid paying licensing fees.
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