[M4IF Discuss] RE: RE: Thanks Larry & another question.
Rob Koenen
rkoenen intertrust.com
Thu Feb 7 15:19:13 EST 2002
> Hi, Todd. I appreciate hearing your thoughts. Maybe you understood
> this, but just to be clear, the "service provider" (meaning the entity
> that disseminates the MPEG-4 video) is the one that pays the
That brings me to another question.
Wouldn't the State of Florida pay more with increased usage anyway?
Isn't that the way most ISP work: baseline charges + usage based
additional charges?
Rob
ps: w.r.t. point 4: the use fee isn't capped.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Larry Horn [mailto:LHorn mpegla.com]
> Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2024 14:15
> To: Todd Smith
> Cc: discuss lists.m4if.org; chodge5 utk.edu; jeffh bisk.com
> Subject: [M4IF Discuss] RE: RE: Thanks Larry & another question.
>
>
> Hi, Todd. I appreciate hearing your thoughts. Maybe you understood
> this, but just to be clear, the "service provider" (meaning the entity
> that disseminates the MPEG-4 video) is the one that pays the
> streaming/downloading royalty (for the use of MPEG-4 video data in
> connection with which a service provider or content owner receives
> remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for
> viewing or
> having the video viewed). Therefore, assuming the State of
> Florida (in
> your example) contracts with a service provider for the
> streaming/download of such MPEG-4 video, then the service
> provider with
> whom the State of Florida contracts would be the Licensee responsible
> for paying the applicable royalty to MPEG LA. From your email, it
> wasn't clear to me that this was understood, and I just
> wanted to clear
> that up.
>
> Regards,
> Larry Horn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Todd Smith [mailto:todsmith mailer.fsu.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2024 3:56 PM
> To: Larry Horn
> Cc: discuss lists.m4if.org; chodge5 utk.edu; jeffh bisk.com
> Subject: Re: RE: Thanks Larry & another question.
>
>
> 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
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