Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Troll Larry Horn and Steve Jobs Prepare to Attack Google's VP8, According to FUD Sites

MPEG LA logo



Summary: Less than a week after Google's VP8 liberation announcement, foes of freedom use sites that are foes of freedom to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about VP8

THE MPEG cartel is at it again, but this time it targets Google's free VP8.



It may seem reasonable to just ignore the threats and treat them as mere FUD (bark but no bite), but it seems hard to dismiss given that ZDNet's Christopher Dawson is one among several ZDNet bloggers who throw a lot of FUD at VP8 and Theora (that's just typical ZDNet as by their own admission they get paid based on how many comments they provoke for and after Dawson's hostile case of trolling against OpenOffice.org, namely a "death" prediction, he must have been paid well, as this very recent piece of FUD received hundreds of emotional comments).

But anyway, let's ignore for a moment the noise from ZDNet and instead look at the noise from Rupert Murdock, whose blog says that patent troll Larry Horn is very, very angry and "Google’s “Royalty-Free” WebM Video May Not Be Royalty-Free For Long" (that's their scary headline)

The announcement of Google’s new WebM video format and release of the VP8 video codec as an open standard have been hailed by some as the move that will free the Web from the proprietary H.264 codec widely used for online video today and favored by Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT).

[...]

Indeed, Larry Horn, CEO of MPEG LA, the consortium that controls the AVC/H.264 video standard, tells me that the group is already looking at creating a patent pool license for VP8. Here’s an excerpt from my email exchange with him:
JP: Let me ask you this: Are you creating a patent pool license for VP8 and WebM? Have you been approached about creating one?

Larry Horn: Yes, in view of the marketplace uncertainties regarding patent licensing needs for such technologies, there have been expressions of interest from the market urging us to facilitate formation of licenses that would address the market’s need for a convenient one-stop marketplace alternative to negotiating separate licenses with individual patent holders in accessing essential patent rights for VP8 as well as other codecs, and we are looking into the prospects of doing so.


Let's assume that this is not just intimidation. Previously, Steve Jobs insinuated that they were planning the same thing against Theora. Based on Apple's storm in a teacup we wrote:



Apple's CEO is still at it. FUD or a real smear/threat with substance?

Steve Jobs email dismisses VP8 video codec



Apple boss Steve Jobs has dismissed Google's much-trumpeted open source video codec by referring to a technical analysis written by a third-year college student.

According to Apple Insider, the Messaianic chief Macolyte was asked what he thought of the VP8 WebM video in an email, to which Steve simply replied with a link to a posting on Jason Garret-Glaser's Diary Of An x264 Developer blog.

From what we can tell, what Jason (aka Dark Shikari) doesn't know about video decoding probably isn't worth knowing, and he pretty roundly castigates the VP8 code for being poorly doucumented, badly written, slow and buggy. He also questions whether the codec is really open source and suggests that the patent trolls are currently waiting to pounce as soon as the standard gets a foothold. "VP8 copies way too much from H.264 for anyone sane to be comfortable with it, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free," said Glaser.


This candidate FUD originally comes from Apple Insider, which is more of an Apple worship site (Apple compensates such sites to keep them under its fold). What's at stake here is not just Theora and VP8; it's also about GNU/Linux, which the MPEG cartel is already taxing [1, 2]. Katherine Noyes has this new assortment of takes on the subject.

Codecs have been the topic of much heated conversation on the Linux blogs of late, thanks largely to all the recent controversy surrounding H.264.


Apple and the patent troll who is the CEO of MPEG LA are both enemies of software freedom and GNU/Linux. It's not just Microsoft, which happens to be a much bigger threat.

Recent Techrights' Posts

KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
 
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
Links for the day
Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
The EPO material remains our top priority
Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
Links for the day
[Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
Links for the day
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Links 19/11/2024: War on Cables?
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Private Journals Online and Spirituality
Links for the day
Drew's Development Mailing Lists and Patches to 'Refine' His Attack Pieces Against the FSF's Founder
Way to bury oneself in one's own grave...
The Free Software Foundation is Looking to Raise Nearly Half a Million Dollars by Year's End
And it really needs the money, unlike the EFF which sits on a humongous pile of oligarchs' and GAFAM cash
What IBMers Say About IBM Causing IBMers to Resign (by Making Life Hard/Impossible) and Why Red Hat Was a Waste of Money to Buy
partnering with GAFAM
In Some Countries, Desktop/Laptop Usage Has Fallen to the Point Where Microsoft and Windows (and Intel) Barely Matter Anymore
Microsoft is the next Intel basically
[Meme] The Web Wasn't Always Proprietary Computer Programs Disguised as 'Web Pages'
The Web is getting worse each year
Re-de-centralisation Should Be Our Goal
Put the users in charge, not governments and corporations in charge of users
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Rain Music, ClockworkPi DevTerm, and More
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 18, 2024