New MPEG-4 Licensing Scheme 336
morcheeba writes: "EETimes is reporting that the licensing of MPEG-4 patents will be substantially different than the existing MPEG-2 licenses. The per-player fee will be substantially cheaper ($0.25 instead of $2.50), but a new "use fee" component of $0.02/hour will be charged to service providers. More on MPEG-4 in general at MacWeek; The MPEG-4 Industry Forum and MPEG LA are handling the licenses."
You can't GPL an algorithm (Score:3, Informative)
The way to patent an algorithm is to first invent it. For fractal compression, you're too late.
You can write a compression program and GPL it, but first you have to be careful not to infringe on anyone else's patents.
Here is a fractal decoder license. [cerious.com] I believe Iterated Systems Inc. holds a pretty comprehensive patent on fractal compression, but I don't have much in the way of details.
This may be just what Ogg Tarkin Needs (Score:2, Informative)
Tarkin is at the bottom
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/index.html
-- Tim
Just those owners making money (Score:5, Informative)
If you are getting paid for the download of your MPEG-4 video data, then you have to pay. Otherwise you can distribute the video for free.
Now of course the devil's in the details, they say at the end, "(including without limitation pay-per-view, subscription and advertiser/underwriter-supported services)" Which could be taken to mean that if you have ANY advertising on your site, you have to pay.
More like June 20, 2003 in USA (Score:3, Informative)
The patent was granted in 1985. 1985+20=2005
You're assuming granted plus 20 years plus end of calendar year. This is not the case in the United States. For some U.S. patents, the equation is filed plus 20; for others, it's granted plus 17. According to US Patent 4,558,302 [uspto.gov], filed plus 20 = June 20, 2003, and granted plus 20 = December 10, 2002. (Unlike copyrights, patents do not extend to the end of the calendar year.) To be safe, use the later date.
The patent owners CAN kill DivX (Score:5, Informative)
One thing I haven't seen asked is how does this affect DivX? That is MPEG4, right?
But MPEG4 algorithms are independent of the particular implementation. If the licensing terms for MPEG4 do not permit licensing end-user products as free software [gnu.org], then open DivX [projectmayo.com] as we know it will cease to exist in the United States, and some of the developers will move on to Ogg Tarkin [xiph.org].
Just a freely developed version
That doesn't matter. Unisys has publicly declared [unisys.com] that it will not license the LZW patents to developers of free software: "For example, the typical Unisys license for standalone software does NOT permit copying, modification, resale, use on a server or in a network, or use for Internet/Intranet/Extranet or Web site operation."
Relevant portion of the License (Score:2, Informative)
Well I think that pretty much makes if "free for free usage" in terms of providing streams.
The different MPEG-4 Codecs. (Score:5, Informative)
The ASF file format is based on Microsoft's MPEG-4 V2 codec.
The "DivX
sometimes referred to as the 3.x codec. This is the format that requires
Win32 DLLs. This is the format most people are talking about when they say
"DivX". Most movies floating around the internet are encoded in this format.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage
http://divx.euro.ru
Project Mayo is developing an implementation called OpenDivX, which is GPL.
This is a rewrite (to lose the dependency on the Win32 DLLs, trying to make it
100% legal) and is sometimes referred to as the 4.x codec. This version is
backward-compatible with 3.x, but 3.x is not forward-compatible with 4.x
OpenDivX is under development, and still has quality and performance issues.
http://www.projectmayo.com
DivX Advanced Research Centre (DARC) has an implentation called DivX4. DARC and
Project Mayo are both part of a companly called DivXNetworks. Apparently,
OpenDivX was a sort of sandbox where DARC figured out what worked and what
didn't, and used that to create DivX4 from scratch. It is closed source, but
freely downloadable. DivX4 is reported to have very high image quality.
http://www.divxnetworks.com
3ivx has a self-named MPEG-4 implementation. They also refer to it as DivX 2.0.
Their implementation is closed source, and only the decoder is freely available
(in Windows, as a Windows Media Player or QuickTime plug-in; in Linux, as an
XAnim plug-in). You cannot play a DivX movie with the 3ivx codec.
http://www.3ivx.com
Nandub in an encoder which sports the Smart Bitrate Control (SBC) method of
encoding DivX. Nandub is a modified version of the VirtualDub program (which is
a general AVI editing and capture tool). Both Nandub and VirtualDub are
released under the GPL. SBC is not a codec, it's an encoding method based from
DivX 3.x which generally yields higher quality than normal.
http://www.nandub.org
http://www.virtualdub.org
The FFmpeg project has another rewritten from scratch MPEG-4 codec. They are
striving for real time encoding, and their code (GPLed) is written in ANSI C for
portability.
http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net
Re:Economics of the past (Score:4, Informative)
Bzzt! The law is 17 years from issue or 20 years from filing, whichever is longer. The filing date on 4,558,302 is June 20, 1983, the issue date is December 10, 1985.
So the patent expires on the later of Dec 10, 2002 or June 20 2003.
What I don't quite understand is why anyone would use MPEG 4 under the proposed license instead of MPEG 2. Chances are that devices will have to support MPEG2 far into the future. It is not very likely that MPEG4 will offer such a devastating improvement in performance that many will be paying 2 cents an hour.
The problem with razor and blades type business models is that they are only good for the seller. Given the choice the customer will strategise to avoid razor and blades type models. Polaroid has gone chapter 11 because people prefer to pay $300 for a good digital camera that costs $0.00 per shot rather than pay $30 for a Polaroid camera and $1 for every shot they take.
Re:Another sign that these guys JUST DON'T GET IT (Score:2, Informative)
Surprised? (Score:2, Informative)
Doesn't that make sense? "Popular" web sites/companies generally have to pay more for equipment because they get more hits, and thus (hopefully) more revenue. The little guys who are less popular pay less because they don't need an Enterprise/Oracle solution - they can stick to the cheaper stuff.
Everyone pays more for success, and hopefully also makes more money in the process. A popular site costs more to build/maintain/license/etc. This is included in that cost.
Re:Economics of the past (Score:2, Informative)
Since they made it, they want to profit from it. That is perfectable exceptable seeing how they did all the work.
I doubt many people will be seriously harmed because of the fees they are levying. What effects will it have other than causing people to whine, I don't know.
And if people are upset with the licensing fee, support an open source effort. Give your time or money along with complaining. Someone needs to do the work cause you are not getting something for free here.
What do the people who are doing the work want in the end? I know what the MPEG-4 people want.
Re:MPEG2, then (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry, yeah I meant raw computing power. For example, most MP3 chips are just DSP processors with a MP3 codec in the ROM. Its the most economical way to implement the codec. Good designs would naturally have hardware acceleration for the operations performed [hence using a DSP core as the basis].
While I think Div/x is great [looks very good at low rates like 512kbit/sec for 320x240x30fps] its just not scalable like the MPEG-4 standard.
Another important concept is that MPEG-4 is not just one codec. Its a set of several codecs.
One thing that pisses me off is that the specs for MPEG-4 are not free. I can agree with the license for use since it takes time/money to develop it, but for research students and such its a pain, specially when your college doesnt spend money on books without pullout diagrams.
Tom
"No royalty" != free software (Score:3, Informative)
In certain cases, no license fees may be required
OK, so that potentially makes LZW-writing software gratis, but gratis != free. As I stated above, the typical Unisys LZW license [unisys.com] "does NOT permit copying [or] modification" and thus prohibits use of LZW technology in free software as defined by FSF [gnu.org] or by the Debian social contract [debian.org].
There are fewer than 17 months left in the U.S. patent on LZW [uspto.gov], which expires no later than June 20, 2003 (filed + 20 years).
Re:DivX (Score:1, Informative)