[M4IF Discuss] Re: RE: Thanks Larry & another question.

[Todd Smith]

Larry,
	Thanks also for your participation.  Speaking unofficially, due to the
proposed licensing of MPEG-4, I seriously doubt whether my university,
or any other governmental institution, would be willing to participate
in MPEG-4 deployment for these (and other) reasons:
	1. It is a violation of law.  Specifically, no state agency is
permitted to create a blanket, open expenditure -- a budget line without
a limit.  All expenditures must be foreseen, and budgeted accordingly.  
	Explanation: It seems the proposed licensing scheme could leave the
State of Florida (or any other governmental institution) open for
unforeseeable expenses based on user demand.  Should demand for, say,
one of our videos on www.fsufilms.com skyrocket, then (barring some
technical limit being developed and put in place, which would seriously
diminish the incentive to offer such materials), the State would have to
foot the bill for whatever usage appears.  That is unbudgetable on the
face of it, and moreover, would seem to make usage of MPEG-4 illegal by
this (and many other, if not all) "balanced budget" State and its
respective agencies.
	2. The framing of the "royalties follow [whenever the] owner receives
remuneration" statement seems chillingly reminiscent of the legal
challenges many non-profit/education/government agencies have faced of
late, in which it is argued: These institutions all operate with money;
Since these operating funds are gained/continued/prompted by those
operations; Therefore any operation constitutes a "profit"-making
effort.  When the courts have agreed, the citizens have had to foot the
bill for what were heretofore considered legitimate non-profit
educational/governmental efforts by the People's governing and
educational institutions.  
	3. The licensing doesn't seem to anticipate such pending changes as,
for instance, the proposed Federal TEACH Act, which would allow
educational institutions to stream copyrighted video at no cost, given
certain restrictions (such as password-protection and that it be related
to a course).  This proposed licensing agreement fails to anticipate
that streaming media is a fast-changing industry, in which technical,
legal, economic, and social/user paradigms are changing monthly.  Seems
like a dead-end, permanent arrangement to me.
	4. Are there any distinctions made about what exactly constitutes an
entity?  Would it be a department?  A University?  A State?  A Nation? 
Could a consortia of, say, all Southeastern higher education
institutions pay the $1 million use fee on behalf of all its member
institutions?  This is how "use" fees are covered for many popular and
successful electronic services, such as Lexis-Nexis' Academic Universe. 
Or could such consortia, should they later be rejected by any one of the
companies behind the the license agreement,  be annulled leaving the
respective parties open for unforeseen fees.
	5. There are many "what ifs" presented by this untested spec, such as
what if: The video looks bad?  Has poor sound? Is hard to implement? 
Is, through accident or design, poorly tracked in terms of usage (who
enforces that)?  Isn't as good/cost-effective as QuickTime? Real?
Windows Media?   And many others mentioned elsewhere on the list...
	When you put all those together, along with all the work it takes to
get up to speed on such a thing...  I see most
state/education/non-profit workers seeing zero motivation endorsing
something that could be a costly time sink (at a time when jobs are
scarce).  Not a good career to push for unproven, but certainly costly,
initiatives.
	6.  On its face, the license appears to set up MPEG-4 as a Pay per
view/use standard.  Need I point out that PPV/U has not gone swimmingly
for WWW content in general, so how & why would MPEG-4 streaming video be
any different?  In a general sense, what could the rationale behind this
possibly be (besides, because they deserve your money)?  It seems as
though these developer companies have assumed a grand manifest destiny
for MPEG-4.  I recognize each contributed, but how many would have a
marketable product without the other parts?  And doesn't that mean that
each individual company is due exactly zip?  I mean, isn't the purpose
of an open standard to develop options that are free, in every sense of
the word?  The developer companies do have other avenues to capitalize
on their investments...
	This whole licensing scheme seems just so very disappointing.  To be
frank, the bitter irony of this licensing scheme claiming to offer
"fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory, worldwide access to patents" makes
you and the developer companies all seem *unbelievably* elitist.  So,
Larry, if you could stream me some of that Kool-Aid you all have been
drinking, maybe this whole scheme will make more sense to me.  But
please, don't bother streaming it via MPEG-4, cause I don't know how
much that'll ending up costing me, money's sort of tight out here in the
real world, and besides, I bet I can get it for free somewhere else. 
	Thanks again,
		Todd Smith
discuss-request   lists.m4if.org wrote:
> Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2024 11:45:51 -0500 (EST)
> From: Chris Hodge <>
> To: Larry Horn <LHorn   mpegla.com>
> cc: Jeff Handy <jeffh   bisk.com>, <discuss   lists.m4if.org>
> Subject: RE: [M4IF Discuss] Thanks Larry  & another question.
> 
> Sorry for my earlier post. I think this answers the question I was asking.
> 
> (Sigh.)
> 
> -c
> 
> On Wed, 6 Feb 2002, Larry Horn wrote:
> 
> > Hi, Jeff.  From your description, I assume your company or the
> > university (or both) receives remuneration for this material.
> > Therefore, yes, it would apply.
> >
> > Larry
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jeff Handy [mailto:jeffh   bisk.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2024 4:37 PM
> > To: discuss   lists.m4if.org
> > Subject: [M4IF Discuss] Thanks Larry & another question.
> >
> >
> > Larry:
> >
> > Thanks for helping to bring this issues some clarity.  Since you're
> > here, perhaps you can answer my concern about our educational content.
> > We "sell" degree coursework that we host for universities.  The courses
> > include CD and web-based media components to serve as lecture material.
> > So, it is lengthy.  Any given course could contain between two and six
> > hours of lecture material.  The same course material is offered both on
> > CD and on the web at different data rates.  Since we aren't really
> > selling the content, but instructor-led courses; does the "use fee"
> > still apply?  Do we need to sign a license agreement regardless?
> >
> >
> > Jeff Handy - Senior Digital Media Specialist
> > Bisk Education - Technology Development
> > World Headquarters - Tampa, FL
> > 800-874-7877 x360
> > jeffh   bisk.com
> > http://www.bisk.com
> >
> > Cleaner Forum COWmunity Leader
> > http://www.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/select_forum.cgi?forum=cleaner