[M4IF Discuss] the packaged content fees

[Dave Singer]

At 10:53 -0800 2/11/02, Yuval Fisher wrote:
>Dave, Larry,
>
>>  >I apologize that I have not responded sooner:
>>  >
>>  >1)     Yes - the files in this media would appear to be MPEG-4 Packaged
>>  >Media and therefore, subject to the applicable royalty.
>>
>>  ouch.
>
>It seems to me that no PC manufacturer would use MPEG-4 to provide the
>type of short sequences Dave describes, because there are alternative,
>free solutions available.

Perhaps not intentionally.  But generally we don't expect our media 
authors to know the details of when it is and is not permissible to 
use a codec.  The policing we'd have to do here would be horrendous 
-- checking every help file and so on.
>But wouldn't that be the case irrespective of
>the details of the  license ? That is, how does the specific form of the
>license affect whether someone would use MPEG-4 or not ?
>
>For example, if the fee was per encoder, it would still be a fee. There
>would still be alternative, free solutions, no ?
>
>
>>
>>  >2)     The pressing plant is using MPEG-4 and under the proposed
>>  >license terms, would be responsible for paying the applicable MPEG-4
>>  >Packaged Medium royalty.
>>
>>  double ouch.  generally I send a master disk to a pressing plant and
>>  they copy it.  they have no interest in the nature or technology of
>>  the content -- audio, computer, video CD, they don't care.  this is,
>>  I suspect, impossibly onerous for them.
>
>This is a case where licensing per encoder would alleviate the problem.
>The content creator would have paid the fee as part of the encoder cost,
>and there would be no extra burden on the replicator. This makes much
>more sense.
>
>How does this compare with MPEG-2 ? Currenly, CDs with some MPEG-2 are
>all MPEG-2 -- that's almost the only content on the (DVD) disk. This
>would work with MPEG-4, if it was never going to be used as (say)
>interactive help, short clips, etc..
>
>So it seems that the current license terms discourage the use of MPEG-4
>for sub-presentations that are part of a larger group consisting of
>media represented in various formats (e.g. HTML). In such presentations,
>replicators have to do very careful bookkeeping, which is probably
>impossible, since they did not create the content.
>
>Best, Yuval

-- 
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime