Joshua Judson Rosen <roz...@geekspace.com> writes:
>
> "Jon 'maddog' Hall" <mad...@li.org> writes:
[...]
> > H.264? Mpeg3/4/2?
> >
> > Have your friends send you Ogg Vorbis stuff. Plays fine.
> >
> > Apple and Microsoft have paid up royalties on these things (or at least
> > Microsoft thought it had paid up royalties on mp3 until Alcatel/Lucent
> > raised their hand a couple of years ago), so they can ship as many
> > royalty-bearing codecs as they want.
>
> ... which has me wondering: how does Ubuntu get away with shipping all
> of the stuff necessary to do DVD-authoring!?
>
> I looked into making DVDs with one of my Debian machines at one point,
> and quickly accumulated a long list of things that had been intentionally
> left out of Debian due to clear-and-present patent dangers, and that I
> decided against pursuing *not* out of fear for the *technical* issues
> involved (pshaw!) but out of fear that I end up setting myself up for
> some patent-troll to `pursue a cross-licensing relationship with' me
> (did I get that euphamism right?) in the future.
And, actually..., I saw came upon these interesting articles the other day:
http://bemasc.net/wordpress/2010/02/02/no-you-cant-do-that-with-h264/
http://www.wedding-day-beauty.com/tag/final-cut
... which reveal that even "Apple and Microsoft have paid up royalties..."
is only really about half-true:
While Apple and Microsoft have paid so that *they* can *distribute*
the codecs, it turns out that they have *not* paid for *the users* to
be able to *use them* in all cases. In the first article, Ben Schwartz
explores the prohibitive language used in the EULA for `Final Cut Pro',
ultimately deciding that "Final Cut Hobbyist" would be less misleading.
And after looking at the the EULA for Windows 7 Ultimate, he says:
"Doesn't seem so Ultimate to me.".
In the second article, the (different) author actually follows-up and
asks the various involved parties (Apple, Microsoft, MPEG LA):
"Schwartz's contention caught my attention: my SLR shoots 1080p
video encoded with H.264, and I'm in a position both to publish
some videos online for my main job and sell others on the
side. and with bubbling controversies regarding how HTML is
reshaping online video, any troubles with H.264 constraints take
on new interest.
"It seemed like a good time to call Apple, Adobe, and the MPEG-LA,
the industry group that licenses the H.264 patent portfolio to the
likes of software companies, optical-disc duplicators, Blu-ray
player makers, and others who have need to use H.264."
After a bit of run-around, it seems, the determination is made that
yes, many individuals *do* need to pay their own added licensing-fees,
for use of legitimately-obtained the codecs:
"When I heard back from Allen Harkness, MPEG LA's director of
global licensing, though, I was relieved to learn that Final Cut
Pro isn't just for making YouTube cat videos.
"But H.264 use isn't all free all the time--the wedding
videographer might need to pay 2 cents per disc they sell, for
example--and even experts can be thrown off by the complications."
It's worth reading both of these articles in their entirety.
Ben Schwartz ends, I gather, in agreement with maddog:
"My advice: use a codec that doesn’t need a license:
_Q. What is the license for Theora?_
Theora (and all associated technologies released by the Xiph.org
Foundation) is released to the public via a BSD-style license. It
is completely free for commercial or noncommercial use. That means
that commercial developers may independently write Theora software
which is compatible with the specification for no charge and
without restrictions of any kind."
Me too.
--
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."
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