Indeed. The most likely result of all this is that MPEG-LA never dares milk their cashcow, H.264 wins but no one ends up paying much for it, H.264/MPEG-LA dare not commit to too much centrally managed DRM for fear of losing it all to VP8, and VP8 dies as a result. If this does come to pass, make no mistake about it, google wins, 100%. That's their goal. Whether VP8 is that codec or H.264. We would do well to remember this when, 4 years down the line, this really is what happens - all due credit go to google for making that happen and putting in the work, the funds, and the will, but it won't be obvious google won the fight.
Same, incidentally, for apple. If in the future apple starts relaxing their app store and/or never truly goes power insane (though some claim they already have, what with section 3.3.1), apple supporters may well say: See, they are fine stewards! But that would be unfair. We'll never know if apple would have done the same thing if there hadn't been this much backlash. On May 20, 3:45 pm, Chris Adamson <[email protected]> wrote: > That, in turn, assumes that MPEG-LA is so stupid as to demand content > license fees that drive people to the alternatives. FWIW, when they > first proposed content streaming license fees a few years ago (before > suspending them to put the issue off), I believe they had a very large > grace window, to the effect that like 100,000 individual streams per > year would be royalty free. Part of the problem with that is figuring > out what a "stream" even is: does one individual watching a piano- > playing cat on YouTube merit the same fee as a DirecTV downlink > that's watched by millions? Those issues are still being hammered > out. > > My bet, FWIW: they'll make enough money off big players in broadcast > media and leave web content well enough alone. To wit: DirecTV's > operating costs are over $4B/year. MPEG-LA demanding millions more > for content fees (on top of the encoding and decoding license fees > they're already paying), would be less than a rounding error on the > balance sheet. > > --Chris > > On May 20, 7:58 am, Casper Bang <[email protected]> wrote: > > > It's an uphill battle, but I'm counting on VP8 to attract attention > > from the right people; and also see an analogy to GIF vs. PNG - > > especially if/when MPEG-LA starts to milk their cash cow in 2016. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group > athttp://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
