The companies should never be allowed to deny the user/public's rights. For
software (and everything which aims at doing a work: cooking recipes, scholar
manual, etc.), they should be (I believe) the four freedoms as defined here:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
For the sport games, music, videos and so on, the public does not really need
to directly have the right to modify (but this right should come after a few
years, not after 70 or even 90 years, because many artist make great
contribution reusing previous pieces of art: Shakespeare, De La Fontaine,
etc.). But the right to share its culture should never be denied.
Finally there are the works that engage the author politically (say a
manifesto), scientifically (say a thesis) and so on. Again the public must
have the rights to share those works. However they should never be modified.
Those are basically RMS' words and I completely share his opinions on the
subject.
Finally, you are talking about patents and what has nothing to do with
copyright. Contrary to H264, WebM aims at being patent-free and therefore
raises less risks for people implementing or merely using this format. That
said, it probably infringes many patents because any piece of software
implements thousands of "ideas" and software patents are about patenting
"ideas" (even trivial ones). They inhibit innovation (the whole objective of
the patent law!) and should be abolished.
