MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Not Charge Royalties for Internet Video that is Free

[tengo]

A step forward... but....

(DENVER, CO, US – 26 August 2010) – MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License. MPEG LA previously announced it would not charge royalties for such video through December 31, 2015 (see http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG LA News List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf), and today’s announcement makes clear that royalties will continue not to be charged for such video beyond that time. Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/Pages/Media.aspx

 

[Carlos Corral]

Celebration?

 

[TwistedLincoln]

Celebration?

Certainly not. This changes nothing regarding the h.264 format's nature. Just because MPEG-LA is not going to charge royalties for web use does not change the fact that you must still pay to use h.264 for other types of distribution. And software makers must still pay for encoders/decoders, making a compliant Free Software implimentation impossible.

What's worse, it makes it even harder to get people to use truly Free formats such as Theora, which is more than good enough for web use, if a bit limited for final distribution in some cases.

My only hope is that VP8 will become widespread fast enough to stop h.264 from completely taking over video. Though my fear is that it may already be too late.