[M4IF Discuss] Re: EuroLinux Alliance: Patent Tax Threatens the Freedom of Movie Picture Artists in Europe
christian vanderborght
christian.vander canalweb.net
Fri Feb 22 14:13:23 EST 2002
ISMA consortium and other industrials are looking a lot about the MPEG4
format mostly for wireless and STbox ( type MHP)
If you read this info coming from LINUX netwotk these industrials want to
get a fee of 0.02 USD when every user will play a mpeg4 file
on any plat-form using mpeg4 format.
It will change the business models of ISP and users if these rules is
accepted.
for the moment the situation is not clarified about the fee of the content
delivery ( no rules really concrete about the financial ressources of the
content providers.
Maybe we can use this opportunity to apply the same kind of rules for any
content file crossing the network!!!
get my some feedback.
vander
----- Original Message -----
From: Martin Jacklin
To: M4IF Discussion List (E-mail)
Cc: christian.vander canalweb.net
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2024 12:04 PM
Subject: EuroLinux Alliance: Patent Tax Threatens the Freedom of Movie
Picture Artists in Europe
This just came in. I don't have an opinion I can share at this point, for
a multiplicity of reasons (chiefly my MPEG-4 learning curve!). Perhaps folks
from this organization, and maybe even my good friend Christian Vanderborght
would like to join this discussion.
-----Original Message-----
From: christian vanderborght [mailto:christian.vander canalweb.net]
Sent: 22 February 2024 10:21
To: info europeanstreaming.com
Subject: flash Info - europeanstreaming.com
MPEG LA to Charge for MPEG4 Streaming in Europe
Patent Tax Threatens the Freedom of Movie Picture Artists in Europe
EuroLinux Alliance <petition.EuroLinux.org>
For immediate Release
Paris, Munich, Amsterdam - 2024-02-20 - EuroLinux has been informed by
Larry Horn, Vice President for Licensing at the MPEG association, that
"the patents that will constitute the MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio
License support the charging of royalties on the use of MPEG-4 Visual
streams in Europe" and that a license should be available within
several months.
MPEG LA is a group of large corporations which control the MPEG
standards through a large patent portfolio. MPEG LA includes notceably
Canon, Inc., Fujitsu, General Instrument Corp., GE Technology
Development, Inc., Hitachi, Ltd., KDDI Corporation, Matsushita,
Mitsubishi, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Philips,
Samsung, Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., Scientific Atlanta, Sony, Toshiba,
and Victor Company of Japan, Limited. [1]
MPEG LA strategy consists in charging all possible uses of MPEG4
technologies wordwide and to block the diffusion of independently
developped innovations in the field of video software technology. In
particular, MPEG LA is charging 0.02 USD per hour of compressed MPEG4,
which is actually more than the copyright royalties most movie writers
receive.
The MPEG LA strategy leads to levying a tax on all cultural goods and
is a typical example of the way patents on Internet standards are a
tool for private taxing of all economic activities.
MPEG LA is not the only group of companies trying to patent common
Internet standards and create new forms of taxes managed by private
interests. Organisations such as the W3C or the IETF, under the
influence of large IT companies, are also starting to accept patents
on Internet standards.
"Patents on Internet standards have absolutely no economic
justification since the economic value of a standard is related to the
number of its users, not to the R&D spent to develop the standard or
its technical quality." says Bernard Lang, Directeur de Recherche at
INRIA. "Also, Internet standards are extremely cheap to develop.
Corporate Members of the EuroLinux Alliance have for example
developped innovative fractal based digital video software in less
than 3 months."
However, and although all economic studies show that software patents
harm software innovation [3, 4, 6, 7, 8], software patents on Internet
standards are likely to be legalised by the European Commission
according to current informations on the proposed directive [9]. It
would give control to a few large corporations on the whole digital
culture and threaten European cultural diversity.
The MPEG LA Email to EuroLinux
Subject: RE: Submit Your Question to MPEGLA
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2024 10:54:29 -0700
From: "Larry Horn"
To: XXXX
Hello, XXXX.
Thanks for your question. The patents that will constitute the MPEG-4
Visual Patent Portfolio License support the charging of royalties on the
use of MPEG-4 Visual streams in Europe. Details of the actual license
agreement are still being worked out, however, and a license may not be
available for several more months.
Regards,
Larry Horn
Vice President, Licensing
References
[0] Apple Delays QuickTime 6 Over Proposed MPEG-4 Licenses -
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/13/041234&mode=thread
[1] MPEG-LA - http://www.mpegla.com/l_patentlist.html
[2] European Software Patent Horror Gallery -
http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/pikta/mupli/index.en.html
[3] What is behind the recent surge in patenting? Samuel Kortum, Josh
Lerner. Research Policy 28. 1999. Elesevier
[4] Abstraction oriented property of software and its relation to
patentability. Tetsuo Tamai. Information and Software Technology.
1998. Elsevier.
[5] Juridical Coup at the European Patent Office -
http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr14.html
[6] Software Patentability with Compensatory Regulation: a Cost
Evaluation. Jean Paul Smets and Hartmut Pilch. Upgrade February 2002
http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/pleji/
http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2001/6/up2-6Smets.pdf
[7] Fraunhofer Study about the Economic Effects of Software Patents.
Micro and Macroeconomic Implications of the Patentability of Software
Innovations. German Federal Ministry Economics and Technology.
November 2001.
http://www.bmwi.de/Homepage/Politikfelder/Technologiepolitik/Technologiepoli
tik.jsp#softwarepatentstudie
http://www.bmwi.de/Homepage/download/technologie/Softwarepatentstudie_E.pdf
[8] Stimulating competition and innovation in the information society.
Conseil Général des Mines. September 2000. -
http://www.pro-innovation.org
[9] Collusion Discovered between BSA and European Commission -
http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr18.html
About EuroLinux - www.EuroLinux.org
The EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information Infrastructure is an
open coalition of commercial companies and non-profit associations
united to promote and protect a vigourous European Software Culture
based on Open Standards, Open Competition, Linux and Open Source
Software. Companies, members or supporters of EuroLinux develop or
sell software under free, semi-free and non-free licenses for
operating systems such as Linux, MacOS or Windows.
The EuroLinux Alliance launched on 2023-06-15 an electronic petition
to protect software innovation in Europe. The EuroLinux petition has
received so far massive support from more than 100.000 European
citizens, 2000 corporate managers and 300 companies.
Press Contacts
France & Europe: Jean-Paul Smets <jp smets.com> +33-6 62 05 76 14
Germany & Europe: Hartmut Pilch <phm ffii.org> +49-89 127 89 608
Denmark and Northern Europe: Anne Østergaard <aoe sslug.dk>
Belgium: Nicolas Pettiaux <nicolas.pettiaux openbe.org>
Netherlands: Luuk van Dijk <lvd mndmttr.nl>
Permanent URL for this PR
http://petition.EuroLinux.org/pr/pr18.html
Legalese
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
All other trademarks and copyrights are owned by their respective
companies.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/discuss/attachments/20020222/631e3cfa/attachment.html
More information about the Discuss
mailing list