Casper-- That blog is *highly* speculative, borderline childish, and it doesn't follow that MPEG-LA has done a nefarious misdeed, that Nero's problems are anybody's but their own, and that this has anything to do with Java media.
Starting with the last of these, Sun had a history of having to pull codecs because they couldn't afford the licensing. In 2002, they put out a release of Java Media Framework (JMF) whose only new feature was to remove the MP3 encoder and decoder, apparently because of licensing problems (they returned MP3 decoding to JMF and JavaSound several years later, by which point it was really too late for anyone to care). Sun never had passion for media, expertise in media, or credibility in media, and nobody should be surprised that JavaFX media has fallen on its face just like Java media technologies before it. I haven't really looked at the Nero case (IANAL), but the idea of MPEG- LA adding patents to its pool is the whole point of the organization: it attempts to represent a one-stop shop for licensing all the patent- encumbered technologies needed to use MPEG standards. If someone has a patent that is used in H.264, MPEG-LA wants to be able to collect royalties on behalf of that owner, because the alternative would be chaos: MPEG standards would be dead if you had to license hundreds or thousands of patents separately. In fact, SBC (later AT&T) started threatening/suing large users of H. 264 <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1923218,00.asp>, claiming that H.264 infringed on AT&T patents. This was after MPEG-LA had carried out, over the course of several years, an open call to collect all patents related to H.264 so they could be pooled, meaning AT&T is sleaze either way: either they ignored the call and submarined their patent, or they don't have a relevant patent and wanted to just shake down 264 users for money that they didn't deserve. I know, the obvious reply is, "then don't use patent-encumbered video codecs". My position is that patents are granted so freely, and are so over-broad, that it may not actually be possible to develop a useful patent-unencumbered codec. On2 asserts its VP series to have cleared IP hurdles; perhaps it will be possible to tell from reading the source, although the fact that the source is reportedly unreadable doesn't help resolve this issue. Worse, the state of patent law in the US is so bad, VP8 might genuinely not infringe on anyone's patents, and still lose in court: this is apparently why there's such a place as west Texas. Given all that, there's plenty of common sense in aligning one's business interests with the rest of the industry (every cable and satellite company, nearly every consumer electronics company, etc.) in the MPEG pool. As Kevin Marks and Leo Laporte pointed out on This Week in Google, the WebM gambit might offer an alternative: as with YouTube, Google has basically made itself a legal target and dared anyone with an IP problem with VP8 to come sue them. We'll see if any trolls really feel like spending the next decade in court. If nothing else, more lawyers will be made rich. --Chris On May 25, 7:55 pm, Casper Bang <[email protected]> wrote: > ...and why we should > care:http://www.dzone.com/links/r/did_mpeg_la_kill_media_support_in_java.html -- 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.
