February 12, 2002

2:59 PM

Apple announced QuickTime 6 today with MPEG 4 support but refused to release it. Apple, along with other members of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance are not happy with the the MPEG-4 licensing scheme. And they have good reason, among other fees, the plan includes per minute charges for viewing content, with no maximum amount.

Is this the Moving Picture Experts Group and their licensing partners admitting that content will be worthless in 5 years? Is the financial future of the entertainment industry modeled on the utility companies?
posted by joemaller (5 comments total)

My company is also having some misgivings about MPEG4's licensing scheme. I don't know much about the details except that no one seems to like it much.

On the other hand, I tried the new Quicktime Streaming Server4 (free, opensource, works on unix/pc/mac) and was very impressed.
posted by jragon at 3:37 PM on February 12, 2002

Interesting that MS and Real are not members or even participants in the ISMA. Guess they don't give a hoot about standards.
posted by benh57 at 3:47 PM on February 12, 2002

I was also wondering if this mean that we'll have a marketplace (aka: college file-sharing underground) free for all between the open source codecs like VP3, Ogg Tarkin or OpenDivX? Whose compression will reign supreme?
posted by joemaller at 3:57 PM on February 12, 2002

Whoa there, I wouldn't be making the leap to content being "worthless in 5 years" from this plan.

First of all this is just a plan, down at the end of the article the mpeg la rep admits that it's not set in stone. This is a standard negotiating ploy, ask for more than you could imagine and count on settling for less. 2 cents an hour streaming fee is absurd and they know it, but they've got pretty good leverage. Eventually they'll settle for less, we'll get access to Mpeg-4 and content will continue to be worth something.
posted by jeremias at 4:50 PM on February 12, 2002

I love watching the imbeciles trying to push the genie back into the bottle. Too little too late.
posted by ZachsMind at 6:21 PM on February 12, 2002