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Google, Microsoft and Netflix team up on free video formats
It's no secret that many tech companies hate video formats that are closed, cost money or both -- enough so that they'll drop popular standards and develop their own codecs. There hasn't been a concerted attempt to tackle this problem, however, which is why several industry giants have just launched the Alliance for Open Media. Founding members Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix are working on a future video format that should be royalty-free, open to anyone and playable on just about any modern device. It's still extremely early (the group hasn't even said how others can join), but you should hear more about their efforts later this year.
Google and MPEG LA settle up, free VP8 video codec for the world wide web
The longstanding disagreement between Google and MPEG LA is finally over, as the two parties have reached a licensing agreement for several patents covering video compression. As a quick refresher, MPEG LA owns the technology behind h.264, the current king of video codecs. Meanwhile, Google's own VP8 video codec is a part of its WebM standard, but MPEG LA cried foul, claiming that Google's technology was infringing. Apparently, the companies found common ground, and with the settlement in place, WebM is free from patent encumbrances and video producers can do what they do without fear of legal retribution.
MPEG-LA makes H.264 video royalty-free forever, as long as it's freely distributed
The H.264 codec that makes a good deal of digital video possible has actually been free to use (under certain conditions) for many years, but following recent controversies over the future of web video, rightholders have agreed to extend that freedom in perpetuity. Whereas originally standards organization MPEG-LA had said it wouldn't collect royalties from those freely distributing AVC/H.264 video until 2016, the limitless new timeframe may mean that content providers banking on WebM and HTML5 video won't have an expensive surprise in the years to come. Then again, patent licensing is complicated stuff and we'd hate to get your hopes up -- just know that if you're an end-user uploading H.264 content you own and intend to freely share with the world, you shouldn't expect a collection agency to come knocking on your door. PR after the break.
Royalty-free H.264 is a big win for HTML5, big loss for Flash
Update: Mozilla responds, saying that by 2014 (when the original fee-free license for H.264 would have expired) chances are the codec won't be relevant anymore. So far, one of the main arguments against widespread implementation of HTML5 video has been the uncertain licensing future of the H.264 standard. Proponents of Flash video and organizations committed to license-free software, like the Mozilla foundation, said that while H.264 was currently royalty-free (and would remain so until 2015), there was no guarantee that MPEG LA wouldn't start charging licensing fees later on. In that event, if HTML5 had supplanted Flash as the de facto standard for video on the web, it would have meant that organizations and possibly even end users would have found themselves saddled with onerous fees after 2015. That theoretical stumbling block has disappeared. MPEG LA has announced that H.264 will be royalty-free forever so long as video encoded with the standard is free to end users. This means sites like YouTube and vimeo will never be charged licensing fees to serve video on the web; presumably, it also means that Apple will continue to pay licensing fees to sell videos in the iTunes Store. Mozilla's Firefox browser doesn't currently support HTML5 video (via H.264, that is -Ed); the uncertainty of H.264's licensing future meant Mozilla wanted to stick with Ogg Theora, a video codec Mozilla believed would be unencumbered by patenting issues. With MPEG LA's announcement that H.264 will be royalty-free in perpetuity, it's likely only a matter of time before Firefox joins browsers like Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 9 in fully supporting HTML5. This is good news for almost everyone except Adobe. Adobe's main argument against moving away from the current Flash-dominated web video landscape to one with a truly open standard like HTML5 is now invalid. While Flash may continue to hold onto its grip on interactive web content, MPEG LA's announcement likely points to an end to Flash's dominance in video. This is also the last nail in the coffin for any possibility of Flash running in iOS -- with possibly the biggest obstacle to widespread implementation of HTML5 video now gone, there's zero incentive for Apple to hitch its wagon to Flash. [Via Macworld]
Google's WebM video format might not be so free after all, says MPEG-LA
Google might be trying to shake up video on the web by releasing the WebM video format and VP8 codec under a royalty-free open-source license, but we've already heard the format's uncomfortably close relationship to H.264 might cause some patent concerns, and the MPEG-LA, which licenses the H.264 patents, doesn't seem to be sitting still. CEO Larry Horn told All Things Digital that MPEG-LA is looking into forming a patent pool in order to license vendors who want stay clear of any patent disputes while using WebM -- the idea would be to avoid any patent liability down the road by simply paying for a license now, especially since Google doesn't seem to be promising anything when it comes to protection from lawsuits. We'd wager all this means WebM will go from royalty-free to patent-encumbered just as soon as MPEG-LA gets its paperwork in order -- the same thing essentially happened to Microsoft when it tried to release the VC-1 format royalty-free -- and that means video on the web might soon be right back where it started. We'll see what happens.
Know Your Rights: H.264, patent licensing, and you
Know Your Rights is Engadget's technology law series, written by our own totally punk ex-copyright attorney Nilay Patel. In it we'll try to answer some fundamental tech-law questions to help you stay out of trouble in this brave new world. This isn't legal advice or analysis, so don't get all donked in the head. What on earth is going on with H.264, patents, and video encoding on the web? It seems like ever since Steve Jobs published his Thoughts on Flash the world has gone crazy. We know what you mean! It's getting pretty silly out there. OSNews just declared that H.264 would be the death of video art and culture because professional video cameras are only licensed by AT&T for personal and non-commercial usage. Terrifying, although most of the creative people we know have continued working free of devastating laser attacks from space.
Target agrees to pay MPEG-2 licensing fee for Trutech store brand displays, is Vizio next?
Target has apparently come around to MPEG-LA's way of thinking, agreeing to pay royalties to the licensing consortium for its store-brand TruTech HDTVs and DVD players that contain MPEG-2 technology, in return for dropping their pending patent enforcement action. How this affects Vizio's claim that it doesn't have to pay royalties because its suppliers already do remains to be seen, but the delta between the cheaper and cheapest displays could be narrower than ever soon. Check out the admittedly scant details beyond the read link (warning: PDF).
Vizio supplier says it paid MPEG-2 patents
Just an update on that Vizio vs. the world tiff, one of the major shareholders of the company and major manufacturer for the brand, Taiwan-based Amtran, chimes in that it already paid royalties for the disputed MPEG-2 patents between the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008. It's important to note that the company apparently had not seen the details of the lawsuit yet and couldn't give details, but we'll see how this affects things between the cheap HDTV manufacturer and MPEG LA.
