I agree that's a risk and would prefer to see some clear direction as to how patents covering h.264 will be enforced in the future.
Flash decodes h.264 video so it will still get swept up in the same issues as HTML5 will, should those issues arise, so I don't see how Flash is the answer to this problem. On 05/05/2010, at 8:43 AM, Baz wrote: > The best part is that HTML5 video is going to be based on H.264 - which is > not only a proprietary codec, BUT COSTS MONEY! At least flash is free. Here's > an excerpt of what happened with gif: > > > The web in 1999 was a lot smaller than it is today, so a lot of people don’t > remember what happened back when Unisys decided to start to enforce their > GIF-related patents. GIF was already widely used on the web as a fundamental > web technology. Much like the codecs we’re talking about today it wasn’t in > any particular spec but thanks to network effects it was in use basically > everywhere. > > Unisys was asking some web site owners $5,000-$7,500 to able to use GIFs on > their sites. Note that these patents expired about five years ago, so this > isn’t an issue today, but it’s still instructive. It’s scary to think of a > world where you would have to fork up $5000 just to be able to use images on > a web site. Think about all of the opportunity, the weblogs, the search > engines (even Google!) and all the other the simple ideas that became major > services that would never have been started because of a huge tax being put > on being able to use afundamental web technology. It makes the web as a > democratic technology distinctly un-democratic. > > from > (http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/) > >
