Selling H.264 files

J

joobny

Member
Hey all,

A friend of mine was asking me what the situation is with creating H.264 files to be sold from a website as a download. He's been reading a few articles online about how it's potentially a legal minefield but they're all a few years out of date so I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on the situation?

Cheers,
Jonnie.
 
MPEG LA own the rights to the format and codec. In 2010 they agreed to not seek royalties on internet distribution that is free to the user - as it's common on youtube and vimeo, but they retained the rights for other use. They stated back then that
Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing.
Click to expand...

As far as I know this hasn't changed - so internet distribution for free is ok, but downloading as a paid for product does require a rights clearance? No idea how you would actually do this, of course.
 
Wow- seems like it would be a legal minefield for the many stock sites online that use the codec. Had no idea the format was supposed to be "licensed".
 
mainstreetprod said:
Wow- seems like it would be a legal minefield for the many stock sites online that use the codec. Had no idea the format was supposed to be "licensed".
Click to expand...
It's not a minefield if you pay the licensing fees.

Like all other intellectual property issues, this is only a problem if you don't do your homework first and respect other parties ownership rights.
 
I asked the guys at Pond5 and Shutterstock about that and they said they pay a "blanket license fee" rather than anything that requires accounting (adding up all the downloads, etc..).

I've been told if you approach the licensee rather than waiting on them to find you, it goes easier and costs less.
 
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