China Proposes Rival Video Format 424
Richard Finney writes "Yahoo News is reporting that
the Chinese government is supporting an effort to develop a homegrown standard, called 'AVS,' for compressing digital audio and video in order to avoid paying royalties
on proprietary compression schemes.
The AVS groups website is online but in Chinese."
6 billion people (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus, with other players wanting to enter the market, the Chinese will probably make some money on royalties as well.
Well... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yet another proprietary codec... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's to the next 5000 years of isolationism (Score:3, Interesting)
China better than Slashdot?? (Score:5, Interesting)
China : So? We've got RedFlag Linux, we don't bother about US Copyright laws.
Slashdot: Intel settles with Via, latter not to make pin-compatible CPUs after 3 years... blah,blah,blah..
China: Here's the Dragon CPU. Forget Intel, forget Via.
Slashdot: CDMA and GSM are the top technologies for mobile phones.
China: We've developed SCDMA totally in-house. We don't pay royalties for that.
And now...
Slashdot: GIF is out of patent. Some image formats still remain in copyright and patents mess.
China: Here's our video format.
Slashdot: XBox can be hacked to run Linux.
China: Dragon CPU runs Midori Linux. We don't need any damn XBoxes..
And so on.. Slashdotters makes noise, China makes progress.
-
Re:Piracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
As ridiculous as this sounds, I don't doubt that it's possible. After all, the good DVD player that I bought a few years ago for $750 is sitting right underneath the cheap & nasty $150 DVD player that will play my burnt (S)VCDs. (please bear in mind that I live in Australia, so the prices won't sound right to anyone in the US) The truly annoying thing is that my good DVD player will quite happily play original VCDs and SVCDs, but point blank refuses to read CR-R/RW discs.
Get ready to be second (or third or fourth ...) (Score:1, Interesting)
1. Open source and free software has decimated any barriers to entry for software professionals. This is having the effect that anybody can write code, which is often of much lower quality. Now that there is no incentive to pay for any software, the software that is available will decrease in quality over time until everyone will have to write all of their own code out of necessity. Serious high-quality developers want to be paid, and when they can't make money, they will find something else to do (and maybe work on code in their "spare time"). Linux Torvalds is a rare exception; don't expect everyone to keep his kind of schedule.
2. The rate of permanent job export in this country and the accompanying lack of concern about this from business and political leaders can only be described best as "shock and awe". The loss of well-paying positions that have good potential to result in tomorrow's innovations that keep the economy moving forward will retard our leadership position. You can call me a xenophobic snob for claiming that only America can innovate, but look at history. Where have the vast majority of innovations occurred in the recent past? OSes (Linux is *not* innovation), programming languages, hardware, networking, etc. China? India? Europe? Nope. America, my friend. We built the field and now we are giving it away without a care.
I recently switched from Linux to Windows partly because of these views and partly because of low quality and lack of imagination in the Linux world. My observation was that Linux users and developers were not any better than my Windows programming friends (in fact, the best programmer I know is a hardcore Windows user.) You guys are just cheap! You don't want to pay for anything!
My views, but they're probably true.
if only theu made friends with India... (Score:5, Interesting)
Open Source is the only way to go if they want to avoid royalties...
when you have one billion inhabitant, anything can become a huge problem...
I remember my economy eacher telling us why coffee was badly seen as a morning drink in china. Because if only 1/2 of your population takes one cup coffee in the day, it amounts to 50 tons a day in purely imports...
And, also, if their standard is proposed as is in all future media players (say, how many DVD players are not made in China ?) this standard could become the worlds standards...
And the whole world will have to pay royalties to China...
Ahhhn Anticipation ! 8)
Why not use an Open Standard (Score:2, Interesting)
- from Real Networks:
- For Movies: http://www.xvid.org [xvid.org]
- for Streaming : http://www.theora.org/ [theora.org]
either they did not do enough research, or they like reinvinting thw wheelroyalty (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Piracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who the heck do you think manufactures all the players? Chinese companies. They'll throw in AVS support for nothing with their players (no point in setting up 2 production lines when 1 will do), just like they threw in support for VCD and SVCD. And then the players will get shipped to every country in the world.
In fact, this is a real shot in the arm for piracy, as they can rip the video from DVDs, repackage it in non-region encoded AVS format. Then they fire it around the wibbly-wobbly web in handy, ready-to-burn form and their little pirate buddies with an AVS-compliant player go "Woohoo! No more swapping SVCD discs!"
But, for exactly the same reasons, it'll also be a boost for amateur and small media production companies as they won't have to pay Philips and Sony a big wad of their earnings to get their media distributed worldwide.
A better question would be: given China's intransigence when it comes to upholding international intellectual property agreements, should we rip off this format, use it for publishing everything, make tools to create and edit AVS files willy-nilly, burn AVS discs, blah, blah, blah..., and not pay them one red cent for it?
Re:if only theu made friends with India... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Chinese PEOPLE won't make money (Score:2, Interesting)
Not that a democratic governments making money guarantees that *all* the people will get their fair share. If you believe yours does, you live in cloud cuckoo land.
Re:Patent Policy Bites U.S.? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is indeed something which I think will happen if the present US laws are allowed to stand and are perhaps extended into Europe.
There is a term for this type of regulatory aid to National Enterprises: Mercantilism
As each Block seeks to protect its own markets with regulation including copyrights and patents which favour companies from within the block versus those from elsewhere, the markets will become increasingly reluctant to innovate and as many innovations will possibly infringe on existing patents, copyrights, national protective legislation etc, overbroad and lacking in utility.
Most innovation will occur in areas where such regulations are slack in comparison.
Perversely these innovations will not benefit the large closed markets for the same reasons, and lacking in the ability to make use of these new innovations by either importing or internal manufacturing due to high Intellectual Property costs making innovations uneconomic in comparison to exisiting products and services.
It could well be that as Large Multi-National corporations take flight to less regulated economies to gain low cost labour and low cost innovation, those jobs lost will not be replaced by new jobs created via the utilisation of new innovations, in effect locking unemployment into the system.
We can follow this up with an examination of how the USPTO has been increasing the number of patents granted for seemingly spurious claims and look at the fact that the EU is considering enacting a similar set of rules, thanks to the tireless lobbying of US Corporations and US led Industry Pressure Groups, and see that if such Laws are made compatible with existing US patents and US issued patents have the same legal status as EU patents within the EU then a financial bonanza will be the reward for the lobbyists and the US economy in general.
This will however be very short-term and will likely result in an enormous amount of cross regulation where the US Coporations will face IP claims from EU Corporations designed to close out US entry to the EU marketplace and vice versa. And almost certainly an increase in the amount of Industrial Espionage in order to be first to file IP for Patents.
It becomes difficult to see why such measures could be considered useful, but in the short term view which afflicts most corporations worldwide, the opportunity to grab a legal monopoly over entire areas of innovation, potentialy bringing many billions of $ of revenue for little to no outlay, will define how our Governments regulate on these matters.
Re:You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:5, Interesting)
This goes even further, as the grandfather of the guy currently occupying your president's seat has built the family fortune by dealing with the nazis:
http://www.baltech.org/lederman/bush-nazi-fortu
Lotsa codecs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Chinese PEOPLE won't make money (Score:3, Interesting)
You say that as if the purpose of government is to make money for it's citizens. Not only has that ideology, when put into practice, failed repeatedly, but a truly free society has a government that simply allows its citizens to create their own success.
"The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." -Benjamin Franklin
Remember, we're talking about China (Score:1, Interesting)
Wouldn't it make more sense to presume they're developing technology from scratch in order to fill it up with the equivalent of the Palladium? The rest of the world gets their panties up in a bunch when Palladium and the likes are mentioned. But not in China: they're putting together a CPU, an operating system and various standards of their own.
Hello, this is the government that tried to close up all Internet connections to outside the country and make their own little censorship-ridden Internet, remember? The ones that are monitoring most Chinese ISP's and Internet Cafe's? The ones that banned news sites out of China alltogether so the Chinese people wouldn't get a whiff of anything else except gov propaganda?
They're gonna close up most external sources of technology and tell the Chinese people to use the in-house products or else rot in prisons, and the gov will finally be able to be all over their asses in the darkest cyber-punk distopia style.
Palladium? Carnivore? DRM? Ha ha. The US gov never even dreamed of the level of digital privacy invasion that the Chinese are cooking up.
Wake up, people, this is not China opening up to the warmth of Open Source, this is the tortionists updating their tools to match the digital age.
Re:You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:1, Interesting)
They were tools of psychological warfare, intended to break the British people's resolve.
They were infinitely more humane than the firebombing employed by the British. Not only were 100 times more civilians killed in Germany than in Britain, but many cities were completely destroyed.
If the Germans had been terrorists, they would never have let the British evacuate home at Dunkirk, and London would have been gassed in 1941. If the Germans had employed British terrorist tactics, the war would have been over by 1942. But that didn't happen, and Germany ended up once again fighting a two front war and failed.
Re:You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:1, Interesting)
Dunkirk was under constant attack for the entire time of the evacuation. Only a fierce rear-guard action and a flotilla of boats of all sizes allowed them to escape.
"They were infinitely more humane than the firebombing employed by the British."
Yes, the "V" rockets were inefficient. However, the Germans also launched many firebombing missions as well. They didn't solely lob missiles at the British.
Learn some history.
Re:Probably Nationalism (Score:4, Interesting)
Likely the government of the Orkney Islands. Possibly the government of Iceland.
Notice that those are all really small governments? That isn't happenstance. Notice that none of those countries are powerful? That isn't happenstance.
When a large amount of centralized power is available, it attracts those more interested in power than in doing the ostensible job. This is a part of what happened to ICANN. This is a repeated happening.
Many control freaks can do a good job. That's just not thier interest. So if they don't have to, they won't bother. But they will act so as to increase the amount of control that they can exercise, because that's what they're interested in. So the upper levels of successful corporations and governments tend to be infested with these psychos. (Psychopath may be too strong a word, but I can't think of a better one. Sociopath, perhaps?)
Many organizations, including governments, are founded with worthy purposes, and organized to work efficiently. But the most efficient organizations are easy for the control freaks to subvert, because they depend on the good intentions of those who work there. Checks and balences is a good consideration. That the US design secumbed to the whackos doesn't negate that. Most early designs have bugs. What it is missing is a good debugging procedure. (N.B.: The Alien and Sedition acts were among the first laws passed by Congress. So the perversion of the design didn't take long. But the built in checks and balences stabilised the system, and it recovered. Perhaps we will again, though the corrupt voting machines make me a bit dubious. And being the "pre-eimient nation" has caused the whackos to be even more interested in grabbing power, putting increased strains on the system. Another destabilizing factor is the vast increase in the powers of the executive branch since WWII. A third is the increase in the clandestine branches of government (CIA, NSA, FBI,
Re:Piracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Region-free sometimes isn't enough, though. The ideal DVD player allows you to set it to any region, because DVDs can play tricks like trying one region, and if it plays on that, refusing to play the main content which is from another region.
In general, I've found the whole DVD script stuff to be a PITA. Often to play a disc, rather than selecting play I have to go to the "chapter select" screen and select the first chapter to get it to play the movie.
Re:You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:3, Interesting)
FrankOlsonProject [frankolsonproject.org]
and watch the show named "Code Name Artichoke" on WorldLink TV channel
10.33
Also at Kransberg Castle: Some of the leading scientific experts in Nazi Germany had been involved in biological warfare, testing the effects of deadly germs on human beings in Dachau and other concentration camps. One of them was Professor Kurt Blome. Blome was the Third Reich's Deputy Surgeon General and the man behind German research into biological weapons.
10.55
Blome will be among those charged in the case against concentration camp doctors brought before the military tribunal in Nuremberg. He will face the death penalty.
11.07
In spite of the fact that there is enough evidence against him, Kurt Blome will be acquitted in Nuremberg. The Americans have other plans for him.
11.21 Voice of Professor Kurt Blome: Untertitel
1) I stated publicly and openly that I was a conscientious National Socialist...
2) and a follower of Adolf Hitler.
11.29 Voice of Norman Cournoyer
"We were interested in anyone who did work in biological warfare. Did they want to use that? The Nazis? Yes, absolutely! They wanted to use anything that killed people. Anything!"
11.48
The Americans save Kurt Blome, seen here on the left, from death by hanging. In turn, he provides them with information about the Nazi biological weapons program. One of the specialists interrogating Blome is Donald Falconer, a friend and colleague of Frank Olson. Falconer is responsible for developing anthrax bombs.
12.12
Today, more than 50 years later, Donald Falconer lives in a convalescent home not far from Frederick.
Re:China better than Slashdot?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Never underestemate the power of intelligent people. Educated people can create new things faster than anything we know about in this universe. When you put a human into the right environment, one that doesn't hurt them with rhetoric, propoganda, etc. One that nourishes their natural desire for progress. If you put a person in an environment that will take care of them, give them all the tools and supplies they need, loving people around them to guide them, educate them, etc. Then what you end up with after 20 years is an intelligent peaceful being capable of creating wonderful new things. They are the most valuable object in the world. They are world more than all other objects combined.
China is simply making use of this resource, perhaps haphazardly, but has plenty of it to go around. If they value this resource like I do I bet they will be second to only India's economy in the next 10 years.
Think about it, if you're like, "Hey I'll watch your back.." and take care of your friends and loved ones, financially if necessary, through communism. They might be more willing to go out and work those long days on the farm to help feed several hundred people. WIth modern technology they could help feed several thousand or million people. I believe this is the value of communism. Recognising your resources and working together to use them efficiently. Communism without a head, er something. I dunno. But with out current system we waste everything, our physical and mental resources are just left to rott, while we enslave everyone into a lifelong job with the promise of retirement.
I bet we'd live a lot longer if we could focus on our job instead of being constantly interrupted to pay taxes and interest and count up those coins. Stress kills people slowly, its a known fact. And money causes people a LOT of stress. So I conclude that money kills you slowly. I plead that you just consider what we could accomplish together if we shed it.
Think psychology. We understand ourselves. Collectively we do. We could use that knowledge for something better than what we've created here in the USA, don't you think?
Re:Probably Nationalism (Score:3, Interesting)
China has all the potential of becoming a 1st world nation throughout (the major cities are comparable to most 1st world nations already - but the peasantry hasn't caught up yet). What is distrubing is that the chinese government seems to be embracing the worst of both worlds - a capitalist-style economy with a communist-style toltolitarian government. It really isn't communism at all, but an oligarchy dressed up as one. This may make them immune to the problems that brought down the soviet union - their economy isn't being held down by communist policies.
Re:if companies paid their taxes maybe it would he (Score:2, Interesting)
Democrats may or may not believe in taxation but capitalists certainly don't. If you understand the underlying principles of capitalism, you'll realize that taxes are not supported by capitalists. They consider taxes to be inefficient and harm free markets (similar to how duties, tariffs, floors (eg. min wage), ceilings (eg. rent control) all harm free market). Most capitalists really want NO TAXES, and until they get that, they want FLAT TAXES.
Re:Chinese PEOPLE won't make money (Score:2, Interesting)