[M4IF Discuss] RE: [M4IF News] To those concerned about MPEG- 4 Licensing ...

[Craig Birkmaier]

At 11:00 AM -0700 5/3/02, Jeyendran Balakrishnan wrote:
>	The people most happy with the current sorry state of MPEG-4
>licensing
>will be those who already have widely used proprietary codecs (we all know
>who
>they are!). They must be praying that MPEG-LA never gets its act together
>to come up with terms which potential licensees fell are fair and
>reasonable.
>
>	By all current evidence, their prayers appear likely to be answered.
>
>	As for me, I'm looking at MPEG-4 Part 10 and hoping that it is
>patent-free ;-)

Actually there is a group that is happier with the current situation 
that proprietary would-be competitors.
They are the people who took control of MPEG-2, created a mountain of 
new IP that entrenches this standard for the next 10 years. A 
standard that entrenches legacy analog video practices such as 
interlace for both SDTV and HDTV. A standard that entrenches the old 
business model of dumb receivers that display only linear programming 
controlled from afar. A standard they are now deploying at the rate 
of 40-50 million new devices each year, producing very healthy 
royalty streams.
A standard which they used to get their foot in the door with usage 
fees for DVD. A standard that is simply too inefficient to be useful 
for new distribution infrastructures such as the web.
They are the people who now seek to control the Internet and any 
other emerging technology that might threaten their control over the 
distribution of digital media content. The same people who have 
killed data broadcasting. The same people who have killed interactive 
television. The same people who want perfect control over every bit 
that is delivered to every consumer.
Did you really think that they would let MPEG-4 compete with all of this?
You could see this train wreck on the horizon long before MPEG-4 
reached DIS status.
-- 
Regards
Craig Birkmaier
Pcube Labs