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

Sat May 4 20:58:25 EDT 2002

I think Bill's post describes the state of affairs mightily well.  As one
of the potentially 'nefarious' little companies struggling to promote a
non-MPEG format, I can say that customers care about standards ONLY when
they can do what the customer needs.  Customers do care about longevity of
the format, interoperability, etc., but first and foremost, they need a
solution that works and is priced rationally.  It should be obvious that
if customers start demanding MPEG-4 and nothing else, everyone from MS on
down will have no choice but to respond.  However, it won't happen because
it is intellectually preferable, or elegant, or theoretically in the
common good but not in the specific interest of customers and vendors.
As the music industry has found to its dismay (and the rest of the
entertainment giants are becoming aware), it is simply not possible to
legislate technolgy adoption in a free market.
If MPEG-4 really does become a standard (in the defacto,
near-universal-adoption sense as opposed to something agreed upon by a
standards body), it will be because it works in the marketplace, both
technically and businesswise.  It needs to do so under the same legal and
regulatory constraints that any business venture must adhere to.
Otherwise, it will fail for the same reason every attempt to regulate
markets unnaturally fails -- because it is simply not possible to keep
consenting parties from making deals that make sense to them.
 ___  Dan Miller
(++,) CTO and founder, On2 Technologies
On Sat, 4 May 2002, William J. Fulco wrote:
> Sorry Rob (and Craig),
>
> I addressed my little barb to the wrong person...
>
> While I agree with Craig that there are very likely "nefarious" forces that
> wish to see the MPEG-2 infrastructure continue (certainly for current
> applications like DVD) - I believe that what prompted the usage fee for
> MPEG-4 was "them" not wanting to lose the MPEG-2 Royalty stream for packaged
> media... after all, if MPEG-4 were RF in places that MPEG-2 is RB (Royalty
> Bering?) - then clearly there is an incentive to move from MPEG-2 DVDs and
> such to MPEG-4 DVDs and such.  Given that most manufacturers are already
> considering "net-connected" consumer electronic devices - this kind of move
> would be easy to do (for some definition of the word "easy").... I think
> their thinking was "How do you prevent MPEG-2 IP for things like DVDs from
> becoming "useless"?  Make MPEG-4 cost "the same" " (for some definition of
> "the same"...)
>
> Anyway, I'm not the pessimist that perhaps Craig is. Capitalism has this
> nasty habit of producing what "the market wants" (for some definition... )
> by hook or by crook (sometimes literally in the case of a "black market").
> People will get what they want...  so, while we're all quite fond of a
> hard-fought international standard called MPEG-4 which will (may?) let us
> all find format-nirvana - two things come to mind:
>
> 1) There never was and never will be one-algorithm-fits-all "format
> nirvana" - though MPEG-4 offers hope of a greatly lessened "format war" and
>
> 2) There are similar and even better technologies out there right now - from
> the "big three" - Apple, Real, MS as well as smaller players... we WILL get
> our internet A/V/G/I, hot-to-trot format - and maybe we'll have to suffer
> MS, Real and Apple battling out the container formats and maybe we'll have
> to suffer with On2, DivX, Pulsnat, DGFX, Real, MS, Sorensen, Apple and a
> dozen other garage-shops that have not yet appeared in public battling for
> compression "standards" – however – IF THERE IS A MARKET DEMAND for what
> MPEG-4 can do (that MPEG-2 can't) – then it WILL get satisfied... "The
> market" is messy but it almost always works - eventually (unless big
> government entity outlaws the "correct" solution - and even then it often
> still works).
>
> Let me note a quick example...
>
> NAPLS (North American Presentation Level Syntax) – was THE "standard" that
> was going to give us something fabulous like France's MINITEL – a
> "wonderful" online-system for ordering stuff and getting weather reports and
> ordering theater ticks and making dinner reservations at the local
> restaurant... NAPLS was at last going to allow North-America to "catch up"
> with the technologically-advanced French and their "graphical" terminals at
> home. Telco-supplied, government-approved "system”... darn if that just
> didn't catch on and got superceded by some little
> college-kid/physicist-hack-document-sharing-system that was messy, and
> terrible, and barely standardized system called – the world-wide-web... yes
> the web happened because there was an SGML knockoff called HTML/HTTP – but
> that "standard" moved quickly etc etc. Another example – MUSE was going to
> be the dominant HDTV format world-wide... etc etc.
>
> My point is there are ALWAYS ways to get what we TRULY WANT (willing to pay
> for somehow) and while I think that MPEG-LA mess runs the risk of relegating
> MPEG-4 to virtual irrelevancy - if it does – that does not mean we don't get
> all the MPEG-4 goodies we want... it just means we get them in a different
> way with a different time-frame.
>
> What did Henry Ford say "If I built what people asked for, I would have
> invented a faster horse. I built what people really wanted"...
>
> The competitors of MPEG-4 standard are not "evil" - they're just, well,
> competitors - and if MPEG-LA is so stupid as to kill MPEG-4 - then so be it-
> we'll live, we'll survive. We’ll still get our Net-connected DVD-players and
> downloadable music will still occur and movies on demand will still come to
> pass and net-porn will still be shot and distributed and wireless web-cams
> will still be built. It’s just that it might not be wrapped-up in a handy
> little "standard" - all neat and tidy like us "knowledgeable" engineers and
> scientists and business people might like. And it might not happen as
> quickly - and people that make programmable video-processors will have an
> advantage over the cheaper fixed-algorithm processors... ya de ya di ya
> di...
>
> Fear not the future will arrive no matter what way this goes. Fight the good
> fight - try to convince the IP holders and the (I believe protectors of the
> status-quo) MPEG-LA folks to come to their senses... but don't worry the
> world will not come to an end if MPEG-4 goes the way of H.263 (useful in a
> limited set of applications) or NAPLS (useful in NO applications).
>
> And as far as wanting to avoid "submarine patents" - is it my imagination or
> am I remembering correctly that the concept of motion compensation is
> subject to IP licenses - so any Codec that uses ME/MC can theoretically be
> nuked?
>
> I'm tellin' ya - go look at your local library for 20yo technology for video
> compression - there's lots of useful stuff there - LOL
>
> ++Bill
>
>
> William J. Fulco
> wjf   NetworkXXIII.com
> 310-927-4263 Cell
> ---------------------------------
> Logic: When you absolutely, positively
> have to refute every fallacy in the room.
>
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