What I want to know is what this means for me as an end-user. I'm not talking about the adoption of the technologies across the web or the cost in effort and tech to upload videos. I'm talking about what this means in terms of how I view videos on Chrome vs. Safari vs. Firefox.Practically nothing. Content providers are already encoding most video twice (high-quality H.264 for desktop, low-quality H.264 for mobile); now they'll be encoding it into high-quality WebM (for desktop) and low-quality H.264 (for mobile and IE6). The only difference you'll notice is that watching large YouTube videos won't turn your laptop into a griddle.
Finally, the problem of patents appears to be rearing its ugly head again. VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264: a pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be “H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder”. Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents. It’s quite possible that VP8 has no patent issues, but until we get some hard evidence that VP8 is safe, I would be cautious. Since Google is not indemnifying users of VP8 from patent lawsuits, this is even more of a potential problem. Most importantly, Google has not released any justifications for why the various parts of VP8 do not violate patents, as Sun did with their OMS standard: such information would certainly cut down on speculation and make it more clear what their position actually is.posted by Rhomboid at 12:52 PM on January 13, 2011 [3 favorites]
But if luck is on Google’s side and VP8 does pass through the patent gauntlet unscathed, it will undoubtedly be a major upgrade as compared to Theora.
I think everyone is forgetting that WebM is not necessarily safe from patent issues.Neither is H.264; submarine patents apply to every format equally. If you want to avoid any format that might be covered by unknown patents, you'll have to upload videos in .bmp.
Remember back when Compuserve started enforcing the LZ patent against GIFs? And how half the major browser manufacturers removed GIF support because it was non-free and for awhile we had to use lossy JPGs to encode our text mastheads and it looked like crap? Fortunately PNG finally took over and we used that, except of course PNG support wasn't consistent in all browsers for awhile.Browser vendors never removed .gif support, because Unisys's patents only applied to the compression process.
And patents (submarine or otherwise) do not apply equally. An absolutely enormous amount of due diligence work went into the MPEG LA portfolio, and h.264 is supported directly by a laundry list of licensors that would present an extremely formidable opponent in patent litigation. And even if someone successfully sued over h.264, MPEG LA could simply raise the royalty rates or divert revenue to cover it.MPEG-LA does not provide indemnity against patent suites. If I license H.264 from them, and it turns out that H.264 infringes on some third party's patents, that third party will be able to sue me for damages without MPEG-LA lifting a finger.
It's free now, but there's nothing legally binding Google to keep it free forever. I think that's what people are worried about -- it'll get huge adoption and then Google will crank up the pain. The first hit is always free, etc etc.Google has granted a perpetual, royalty-free patent license to VP8 (WebM's codec). There's no take-backsies.
1. Google doesn't indemnify WebM users, either.I never claimed they did. My point is that if you're worried about being sued for patent infringement, MPEG-LA's portfolio is irrelevant -- the safety of VP8 and H.264 against unknown patents is equal.
2. Chances are the MPEG LA members and major licensees have much, much deeper pockets than you do and have accrued far more in the way of damages. Thus, it's more likely that a hypothetical patentee would sue one of them rather than some startup or open source project.Exactly why any patent owner will come after me, and other small fry -- I don't have the money to defend myself. They can build up a few wins before going after the money. That's why patent trolls often start off by suing small companies, so they can get precedent on their side.
3. It's in MPEG LA's interest to ensure that everyone with applicable patents is in the patent pool and that anyone who won't play ball gets their patents invalidated. That's one of the main reasons for having a pool in the first place. So even if this hypothetical patentee started suing only small players in the H.264 world, MPEG LA might still intervene in a number of ways.In other words, you're relying on MPEG-LA's goodwill to bail you out of potential patent lawsuits?
It's likely that far more due diligence went into ensuring that every relevant patent is in the H.264 pool than went into clearing WebM.According to what evidence?
That's so misinformed it's not even wrong. If a patentee sues a small company because it can't defend itself, then that small company is just going to cave and settle. Heck, over 95% of patent cases settle anyway. Settlements do not build precedent, and a large company is not going to be snowed by seeing a list of tiny companies that settled.I never said anything about settlements. If a third party sues me for patent infringement, and I fight, and they win, then they will have precedent to use against larger companies.
No, they aren't. The H.264 patent pool likely drew off anyone with a relevant patent. Litigation is expensive. Adding your patent to the pool is comparatively cheap and easy.Litigation is only expensive if litigating against somebody with the means to fight back. Look at the RIAA for a counterexample: they are making money by filing many thousands of lawsuits against individuals without the means to mount an equal defense.
Furthermore, the basic H.264 specification was finalized back in March of 2003. The statute of limitations on patent infringement in the US is 6 years. Anyone with a relevant patent is already losing potential revenue to the statute of limitations and is starting to run up pretty hard against the doctrine of laches.There is no statute of limitations on patent infringement in the US; valid patents are a source of risk until they expire. Laches only applies if the delay is unreasonable -- if some company somewhere has a patent covering H.264 or VP8 , but doesn't realize it for a decade, they can still win suits when they begin enforcement.
By contrast, WebM is relatively new. It's based on VP8, which only dates back to September of 2008.WebM isn't "based on VP8"; VP8 is a component of WebM. VP8 is the codec, WebM is the codec plus a container based on Matroska.
That's a contradiction. "There's no reason to believe it's covered by a patent, except for the claims made by people with patents that could very well cover it."It's not a contradiction because I never said their claims are true. MPEG-LA have a financial interest in preventing open codecs such as Theora and VP8 from gaining traction, and therefore, in making false claims that such codecs are covered by their patents.
Second, If Google really wants to promote open technologies, they why is it so cozy with Adobe and Flash? For most definitions of “open”, HTML5 and CSS3 are open but Flash is not. Think of all the resources Google put in to sandboxing Flash and checking for Flash updates. Google could use those resources towards making HTML5 more functional and making Flash and other plug-ins obsolete. Ah, but Apple doesn’t support Flash, and there’s the rub.posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:18 AM on January 15, 2011
Google can use Flash as a foil against Apple because Android supports Flash but iOS does not. Google’s double standard is especially noticeable if you realize that Flash supports H.264 video. So Chrome will still play H.264 video, but only if you use a Flash plug-in instead of the standard <video> tag. Clearly, it’s not about openness or cost savings: this codec announcement is just another political jab at Apple.
Where the choice is not being able to view the standard codec at all in Safari because Apple is insisting on h264, or being able to view it through a plugin, I fail to see how Google's plugin is anything but promoting the standard.This choice of language, "the standard," is at the very least controversial, but more fairly would be described as outright false. There are many video standards, and if one of them is going to be called "the" standard, it's the one that has support of hundreds of companies and projects and is broadly deployed with many interoperating implementations both in hardware and software.
Haavard:
"So the question of Google’s bundling of Flash is a red herring which takes away the focus from the real issue: Whether native video support in browsers is based on open or closed technologies."
The problem is that it isn’t a red herring. It’s just another, actually larger, issue which he’s sidestepping.
As Google themselves wrote two days ago (bolding mine):
"Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies."
How can that be your stated goal and you still bundle Flash? If you really want to enable “open innovations”, remove H.264 AND Flash from the browser.
Why is “open” allowed to be selectively applied to certain things and not others? Isn’t that what Google always gives Apple shit for?
It’s totally hypocritical. But the truth, as we all know, is that the “open” argument here is actually the red herring. Reading this, I’m not sure the people at Opera actually understand that, though.
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posted by kenko at 12:01 PM on January 13, 2011