Software patents [LWN.net]

Software patents

Posted Jul 6, 2009 23:19 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
Parent article: Ogg codecs dropped from HTML5

So, does anyone sane still think software patents are a good idea? I think this episode will be quoted in the future as an example of how software patents stand in the way of progress. Yet again.

Unfortunatelly this argument does not fly

Posted Jul 6, 2009 23:49 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (34 responses)

I think this episode will be quoted in the future as an example of how software patents stand in the way of progress.

But the video support can be shown as pro-patent example as well! Patent-encumbered formats were developed faster then totally free ones - and diffirence is sizable: years, not days or months.

So this controversy is not so clear-cut as you want to show. If anything is supports IBM's position: that some form or software patents can be good for progress, but at the same time they can slow down progress to so we need to balance the system, not destroy it totally... Software patents do increase number of innovations creation (like any other patents), but the do slow down rate of innovations adoption (the same: like any other patents) and currently the score is totally skewed to the "creation" side and it's stupid: innovations are only useful when they are are adopted and integrated in real products...

you're confused

Posted Jul 6, 2009 23:59 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (16 responses)

The reason the patent-free codec development has been slower is not that patent incentives speed development. Rather, the need to work around hundreds of patents cripples development.

Are you sure?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 0:33 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (15 responses)

The reason the patent-free codec development has been slower is not that patent incentives speed development. Rather, the need to work around hundreds of patents cripples development.

You mean: by the 1990 we had some form of "free" codec and it was unreleased just because "hundred of patents" crippled the development and it was unusable? Hard to believe, you know... Remember: H.261 was already standard in 1990! And H.264 is it's direct descendant...

The fact remains true: development of many patent-encumbered codecs was finished before development of free codecs even started! The reason you cite is excuse for slower development, but as free codecs development started as response to existence and wide usage of patent-encumbered codecs it can be argued that without patents there will be no codecs - free or encumbered ones! This is extreme position but it's kinda hard to refute.

Are you sure?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 0:48 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (14 responses)

Please. What you claiming here is that were it not for software patents, there would practically not be digital video. That is just rubbish.

The reason patented codecs were invented before the non-patented ones is simple. What proprietary software company would not apply for a patent when they could? Why would such a company want to minimize their profits?

If software patents were not available, those wanting to bring digital video the market would do it just the same. Their implementations would be copyrighted, which would give them decent market advantage. If their implementation was constantly improved, this would keep their market advantage for a while.

Asking proprietary software industry whether they like software patents or not is like asking a used car dealer if the car you are pointing at on his lot is good. It's the best, of course! The credibility of the one making the statement is what should be questioned, though.

Again: why are you so sure?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 1:06 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (13 responses)

If software patents were not available, those wanting to bring digital video the market would do it just the same. Their implementations would be copyrighted, which would give them decent market advantage. If their implementation was constantly improved, this would keep their market advantage for a while.

Why are you so sure this is the only outcome? There are another, simpler and cleaner solution: introduce some analog component. You can do a lot of transformations using less transistors in their analog mode for cheap. Sure, the quality may suffer, but this implementation is clearly patentable (it's physical thing like radio, right), so why not?

Industry was at crossroads back then. Before that all processing was in analog. Industry wanted to switch to digital - but they wanted the same form of protection they had in "real" world! You assume that without that protection switch was unavoidable too - perhaps but it can be pushed back for many-many years (think mobile and VoIP). Will it be better outcome? I'm not so sure...

Again: why are you so sure?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 1:45 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (8 responses)

Analogue? Yeah, that'd be cheaper, faster and more flexible. Not. There is a very good reason we are in a digital age right now. Many things are done with "smaller, faster, cheaper, better" gizmos - computers.

Industry understands volume. If you produce enough of things and over long enough time, the initial development cost is insignificant. Your customers get better things to replace their old things. You make sales. You make profits. That's all there is to it.

Industry also understands monopolies. These are licences to print money. Generally, the attitude is "get yourself one of those, if you can". Of course, nobody gives a crap about the next guy as long as the profits are all that much higher.

If you take away (partially) the ability to do the second one, the industry will continue doing the first one. And they'll make a ton of money in the process.

Volume vs monopoly? Does not work...

Posted Jul 7, 2009 3:32 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (7 responses)

Industry understands volume. If you produce enough of things and over long enough time, the initial development cost is insignificant.

If and only if you have monopoly. Otherwise your own chinese partners will kill all your profits before you can recompense your development cost. Patents are not the only way to achive monopoly - there are trademarks, exclusive contracts and so on. But patents are important part of the whole. Even if they close just one market (US one) for would-be contenders - it's important market.

Industry also understands monopolies. These are licences to print money. Generally, the attitude is "get yourself one of those, if you can".

The more secure your monopoly the better. And industry does not understand that well enough - that's why they are losing money with ineffective DRM (like DVD or Blu Ray). But certain level of future monopoly's security is a requirement - or the development will not even start.

If you take away (partially) the ability to do the second one, the industry will continue doing the first one.

If you take the monopoly away significant part of the industry will go bankrupt - this is exactly what is starting to happen to a lot of firms in last few years. Is it any wonder that industry fights for its survival tooth and nail?

Note: I'm not saying we need to keep raising monopoly to the more and more ridiculous levels for the sake of the industry. After all well-being if the industry is not an end in itself. But to say that without patents we'll have the same technological landscape we have today is equally naive.

Analogue? Yeah, that'd be cheaper, faster and more flexible. Not. There is a very good reason we are in a digital age right now. Many things are done with "smaller, faster, cheaper, better" gizmos - computers.

You don't need to push everything to the analogue part. Just enough to make effective unauthorized use of your gadget impossible. Sony did this even without analogue today (Ok, they did it three years ago, not today), but it was not an option 20 years ago.

Volume vs monopoly? Does not work...

Posted Jul 7, 2009 23:32 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (6 responses)

I'm all in tears for the bankrupting industry! Not.

It's called capitalism. Meaning, you have competitors. Meaning, you cannot stay on top forever. It's no picnic, but that is how it works.

In the end, it is not about the industry. It is about the public and if they are getting the goods at the most competitive price. Monopolies of any kind create price increases, so if you like paying more for goods, then keep advocating software patents.

And let's not forget, the software industry already has a monopoly protection awarded to them - copyright (which includes the most draconian law there is: DMCA). And it's been awarded patent protection at the time when development and competition was fierce and there was no good reason to give them another monopoly. Now that they do have it, of course they don't want to give it up. They'll be screaming bloody murder for a long time. We've seen it all before.

Would things develop down a different path? Sure. Would we get similar results? Most likely. In the end, people develop and use things that work well and are cheap to produce. Just look at non-patented landscape of IP devices and web. Absolutely amazing what kind of software and devices evolved around this. But I'm sure you've heard all these before - no need to repeat them here.

Glad we agree in the end...

Posted Jul 8, 2009 1:26 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

Would things develop down a different path? Sure.

And this was my initial point. Please read again the statement I objected to again. I never said world is better for software patents. I never said innovations induced by software patents system are worth it. I just said software patents encourage innovations but they discourage adoption - and you never convincingly disproved this point.

It's called capitalism. Meaning, you have competitors. Meaning, you cannot stay on top forever. It's no picnic, but that is how it works.

Yes, but this system only works if rules are not changing. If you were offered one deal (monopoly for 20 years) and later this deal is changed (let's abolish the software patents after 2010, for example) - it's fraud. Just like copyright extensions were transgression of "big boys" (like Disney) against public (when Mickey Mouse was created the reasonable expectation was that this character will be available to everyone in 1984) - just in opposite direction.

Of course Congress is entitledto change rules "on the fly" (otherwise you can not ever change rules at all), but this is not something to be done at the drop of hat. And when this change is contemplated it's good to consider both sides of the software patents coin...

Glad we agree in the end...

Posted Jul 8, 2009 1:42 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (4 responses)

> I just said software patents encourage innovations but they discourage adoption - and you never convincingly disproved this point.

Short memory - that's what we all have. Software was being developed just fine without patents. Plenty of innovation. I mention that before. But, you claim this does not disprove your theory of software patents. Back in the 90's just about everyone in the thriving proprietary software industry was _against_ software patents. Now they are for them, because they want to protect status quo. This is monopolies 101.

> Yes, but this system only works if rules are not changing.

Rules (laws) are constantly changing. Otherwise, parliaments would be out of business. The deal is that there are always transition periods. You tell people that what they have will be respected, but going forward after some point in the future, rules will be different. So, they adjust the expectations and continue. This is standard legislative practice.

Straw man attack - here we come!

Posted Jul 8, 2009 3:00 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

Software was being developed just fine without patents. Plenty of innovation. I mention that before.

And it's now what I'm talking about at all. I'm not saying (and never said) lack of software patents will bring number of innovations down to zero. Just like lack of copyright will not bring number of stories down to zero.

Back in the 90's just about everyone in the thriving proprietary software industry was _against_ software patents.

Suuure. IBM was against patents? Or may be Philips was against software patents? Microsoft was against software patents because it had none - but to say that the whole industry was against them is just... how come they were ever created and used (including in audio/video codec standards) if everyone was against them?

Straw man attack - here we come!

Posted Jul 8, 2009 4:21 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (2 responses)

> Microsoft was against software patents because it had none - but to say that the whole industry was against them is just... how come they were ever created and used (including in audio/video codec standards) if everyone was against them?

And Oracle. And Autodesk. And Adobe. And Borland. And Lotus. All innovators at the time.

As usual, there is always enough of the established players that want to retain status quo for a greedy proposal to go through. Just think of that used car salesman again. Do you really need to ask him what he thinks of the car you're pointing at?

Have it your way. Software patents are just peachy and everybody loves them. Let's have more of them. Then we'll have to have even more stupid workarounds like the recent VFAT kernel stuff. Awesome. And we have digital video today because we had software patents. Otherwise, we'd still be stuck with the old analogue gear.

PS. BTW, any idiot working at USPTO or any other patent office that sees fit to approve moronic things like Microsoft's "computer bolted to the car that has wireless" should be immediately fired and words "patently stupid" tattooed on his/her forehead.

PPS. When we entrust patents to the morons that come up with rationales like this: http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/strategies/case_kambrk.shtml, all kinds of things go wrong. Note: the company is alive and well, despite the fact it didn't get that patent, when it supposedly should have.

Now you are just bitter...

Posted Jul 8, 2009 5:30 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

And Oracle. And Autodesk. And Adobe. And Borland. And Lotus. All innovators at the time.

All? You mean Apple or AT&T were against software patents too? Industry was divided back then like it was now. World is not white and black - there are other colors.

Have it your way. Software patents are just peachy and everybody loves them. Let's have more of them. Then we'll have to have even more stupid workarounds like the recent VFAT kernel stuff. Awesome.

Again: don't oversiplify things. I never said software patents "are just peachy" - on the contrary I think they must be abolished. Not because they are pure evil, but because benefits are not big enough and fallout is way too big. But when you are starting the whole "software patents have no good sides to them at all" you just show yourself as someone totally detached from reality - and so make all your other argument suspicious too.

And we have digital video today because we had software patents. Otherwise, we'd still be stuck with the old analogue gear.

Today? Nope. Not even close. We had diginal video 20 years ago because of the patents and now we have huge mess in this area related to said patents. Was the advantage of getting digital video sooner rather then later worth it? Hard to say, but probably not. But it's no coincidence that this area is so heavily patented - and to ignore the fact is to throw out the baby with the bath water...

BTW, any idiot working at USPTO or any other patent office that sees fit to approve moronic things like Microsoft's "computer bolted to the car that has wireless" should be immediately fired and words "patently stupid" tattooed on his/her forehead.

Nope. The system is designed in such a way as to punish honest worker (lost royalties! waaah!) and reward hustlers (Ok - this patent was thrown out by court... let's try the other 100 patents we have available).

If the problem was moved to courts - it should be fixed there. Right now the patent litigation process is designed in such a way as to make it great for patent trolls and disaster for honest guys. Even if you win patent litigation and prove that patent was frivolous - you get nothing in return! May be pat on the head... If we know that a lot of patents are bogus - why not introduce something like "reverse treble damages" for litigator? I mean: Microsoft is free to claim it lost $100'000'000 because TomTom refused to buy license patents in question - but then it should be ready to pay $300'000'000 if the patents are reexamined and invalidated. This will make 99% patents useless - but the rock-solid ones will be kept around.

I'm not the sure it's the best way to fix the patent mess. May be, may be not. But we should think in this direction and not in direction of deus ex machine which can remove all frivolous patents from existence after the fact...

Now you are just bitter...

Posted Jul 8, 2009 21:36 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> But when you are starting the whole "software patents have no good sides to them at all" you just show yourself as someone totally detached from reality - and so make all your other argument suspicious too.

Oh, there are good sides to software patents. For the patent holders, that is.

Once again, history is forgotten. Software was being developed _without_ patents just fine. But, as usual, lawyers have found an angle, so they pursued it. And now we have the mess, as you said yourself.

> But it's no coincidence that this area is so heavily patented - and to ignore the fact is to throw out the baby with the bath water...

Coming back to your original remark:

> Patent-encumbered formats were developed faster then totally free ones - and diffirence is sizable: years, not days or months.

The only question here is this: if software patents were not available, would the same companies develop digital video at the time?

Your answer to this question is "probably not" (i.e. maybe there is something to having software patents after all).

I'm pretty sure they would. Said companies would licence their product differently - using just copyright - but they'd do it just the same. Even 20 years ago people understood Moore's law. They knew processing power in the future would make digital players cheaper than analogue ones. The also knew that storage would improve, making it practical to have a superior digital recording on a medium that can actually hold it. And they knew that if they didn't keep improving their products, nobody would want to buy them.

So, yeah, I _really_ do think that software patents are a terrible idea. Digital video included. If this makes me a lunatic, then fine.

Again: why are you so sure?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 14:17 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (3 responses)

Why are you so sure this is the only outcome? There are another, simpler and cleaner solution: introduce some analog component. You can do a lot of transformations using less transistors in their analog mode for cheap. Sure, the quality may suffer, but this implementation is clearly patentable (it's physical thing like radio, right), so why not?

By asserting that patents were the crucial factor in making digital video a reality in a timely fashion, you're confusing at least two different things: hypothetical incentives and technical readiness. You actually touch upon the real reasons for the rapid availability of digital video solutions in your own comments.

In fact, the people already doing "proto-digital" video (such as Philips - a known patent cartel member - with their laserdisc solutions) were obviously in a position to leverage their existing expertise in video, regardless of whether patents might be offered as incentives. Such companies could obviously introduce hardware components at will in order to retain monopoly control over certain solutions, mostly because this was already what was happening (although one could argue that their motivation was to sell boxes to consumers, as seen with the multitude of failed CD-based formats and units).

Even so, other companies with limited experience of pre-digital video were able to deploy digital video solutions (such as Acorn, with their Replay codecs), demonstrating that capable innovators were actually able to enter the market satisfactorily. These days, such innovators would be excluded by the kind of innuendo and veiled threats that sees open video standards excluded from open Web standards by, naturally, members of the existing patent cartels. Meanwhile, well-researched (technically and legally) open codecs, such as Dirac, are the elephant in the room: Apple and friends would rather that people didn't hear about something that quite probably isn't encumbered at all (and BBC Research are probably the people most likely to know); it's best for Apple and company that the proprietary status quo persists and that they can blame some mystery third party for restricting the user's freedom, rather than owning up to their role in the whole affair.

The means are different, the result is the same...

Posted Jul 7, 2009 17:33 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

Even so, other companies with limited experience of pre-digital video were able to deploy digital video solutions (such as Acorn, with their Replay codecs), demonstrating that capable innovators were actually able to enter the market satisfactorily.

Yup - and where this enterprise went? Right: nowhere - to the extinction. The same people founded another enterprise (heavily-based on patents) and it's thriving today (I mean ARM Ltd).

These days, such innovators would be excluded by the kind of innuendo and veiled threats that sees open video standards excluded from open Web standards by, naturally, members of the existing patent cartels.

1. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about adoption oproblems
2. Acorn was easily excluded by other means back when Acorn Replay was relevant.

Meanwhile, well-researched (technically and legally) open codecs, such as Dirac, are the elephant in the room.

Not really. There are very few ways to produce Dirac (do you know a can which can save files in Dirac format?) while H.264 can be produced easily. There are a lot of hardware and software to play H.264 - not so with Dirac. Typical case of sunk costs. Thus I'm pretty sure dirac will not displace H.264 (like vorbis failed to displace MP3). It's good to have all these backup plans but you can be pretty sure mainstream will continue to be MP3 and H.264. And in the long run it's irreleant: by 2024 (may be earlier) all H.264-related tools will be free for anyone to use, so this particular was is lost. MP3 tools will be free by 2012 - do you still believe in future of vorbis?

The means are different, the result is the same...

Posted Jul 8, 2009 11:09 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

>MP3 tools will be free by 2012 - do you still believe in future of vorbis?

Absolutely. Vorbis eclipses MP3 in technical quality, which is really the only thing that matters in cases where you control the player.

All the world is not an iPod, and the uses for compressed audio stretch far beyond personal music players.

The means are different, the result is the same...

Posted Jul 8, 2009 11:13 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

Yup - and where this enterprise went? Right: nowhere - to the extinction. The same people founded another enterprise (heavily-based on patents) and it's thriving today (I mean ARM Ltd).

Careful: the people who did Replay may have had a lot to do with the ARM architecture, but that doesn't mean that they wrote ARM Ltd's business model. Moreover, ARM is a hardware design licensing business, albeit with dubious aspects which probably get people into trouble even for making stuff that interprets their instruction sets. So it isn't as simple as saying that patentability makes for good business in all/any fields, even if Acorn made the mistake of not licensing their software in any sense to other people. In fact, had Acorn merely made their software available for other platforms and relied on good old copyright, it would have helped them a lot more than letting them have software patents.

Do I still believe in the future of Vorbis? Yes. The quality was better than MP3 ten years ago, at least with the tools I had available, although I really prefer lossless formats. Likewise, the myths about Theora's quality compared to the cartel formats are being put to bed as I write this. Sure, "sunk costs" ensure that there's little incentive for established companies to adopt other formats, but it's the effect on everyone else that needs addressing, at the very least.

It's easy for people to argue for more patents on the basis of giving people incentives because that's what patents are supposed to be about, but it's far from accepted that patents have been the vehicle for stimulating innovation that such people claim. Instead of going along with such claims, I suggest that the burden of proof is shifted onto those making such claims because there's plenty of evidence of the negative aspects of imposing patents on a domain.

My point about Replay undermines the assertions that people need patents to develop such stuff and that large teams in large corporations are also required. Not only are those two supposed factors independent of each other, they are also independent of whether innovation actually occurs.

Unfortunatelly this argument does not fly

Posted Jul 7, 2009 0:27 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (3 responses)

The only reason these codecs were patented, is because there was a possibility to do so (read: sweet sound of monopoly - ka-ching!). If that wasn't a possibility, they would still get invented just fine. And that's because they were required to get digital video going. Which was a requirement of _other_ industries, not (only) the software industry.

If anything, global financial crisis has shown how short memories we all have. Market will never crash again, house prices will never go down, blah, blah. Same thing here. Software was being written before it was protected by patents just fine. Innovation aplenty. The rest is just greed.

Unfortunatelly this argument does not fly

Posted Jul 7, 2009 0:35 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> global financial crisis

And the ultimate irony is that many of the financial instruments that spurred the crisis along were - you guessed it - patented! Such valuable intellectual property ;-)

Why are you so sure?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 0:55 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

If that wasn't a possibility, they would still get invented just fine.

As patentable hardware solution, perhaps? Sure if the history went this way free software we'd all used some form of hardware video/audio encoders today (with analog and digital parts). Whole different world... Better then current one? I'm not so sure...

Why are you so sure?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 13:20 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Fine by me, as long as I am free to build my own decoder in software.

Unfortunatelly this argument does not fly

Posted Jul 7, 2009 1:08 UTC (Tue) by PaulWay (guest, #45600) [Link] (12 responses)

I don't think you're truly comparing apples and oranges. If you can point out a company about the same size as Microsoft, Apple or Nokia who is also publishing their work unencumbered by patents then I think we can fairly say that publishing work without patents takes longer. But your example misses the obvious detail that the companies working on patent-free technologies (e.g. Xiph) are small, relatively low-budget groups - even the Dirac project has been slow simply because it's a very small part of the BBC and has about three developers over its lifetime. This is probably related to the fact that these groups don't charge for licenses for using their products.

In reality, swift development is caused by large, well-funded teams, not by patent licenses. (And it's still not a guarantee of smooth sailing - look at all the companies now claiming to own patents on parts of the MP3 decoding or playback process...) Patent licenses are just coincident with well-funded teams.

Another counterexample: the CELT codec developed by Xiph.org is an excellent low-latency codec that competes with the best high-latency codecs in quality, and it was developed over two years by a very small team. Its core mathematics is unpatentable as the main paper covering the idea was written in 1975...

I agree with you on the point that patents improve the landscape for creators at the expense of technology adopters. Other organisations and governments are realising this too and I think we are starting to see a shift in the landscape away from encouraging pure creation to encouraging adoption.

(We need to keep the balance, however, because it's easy to argue that adoption is best served by a monopoly on who can create new software, and that's just what Apple and Microsoft would be happy to support.)

Creators harmed by software patents too

Posted Jul 7, 2009 3:13 UTC (Tue) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link]

Creators are harmed by software patents, too. If there were only a few dozen software patents, it'd be easy to determine if some software you wanted to create was patented. But there's such a forest of patents that no one has a good idea of what's in there. In the software field, patents have created disincentives, not incentives, for creativity.

Huh? What are you talking about?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 3:51 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (10 responses)

But your example misses the obvious detail that the companies working on patent-free technologies (e.g. Xiph) are small, relatively low- budget groups - even the Dirac project has been slow simply because it's a very small part of the BBC and has about three developers over its lifetime.

Miss? What miss? This is central part of my example: wave smell of future royalties - and "big boys" will come and make everything swiftly and effectively. Remove this smell - and development takes years because only small groups of enthusiasts are doing it.

This is probably related to the fact that these groups don't charge for licenses for using their products.

Bingo!

In reality, swift development is caused by large, well-funded teams, not by patent licenses.

Sure, but patents are one way to make large, well-funded team possible. Not the way to do, but a way to do it. If it's the best way - that's the question.

Another counterexample: the CELT codec developed by Xiph.org is an excellent low-latency codec that competes with the best high-latency codecs in quality, and it was developed over two years by a very small team. Its core mathematics is unpatentable as the main paper covering the idea was written in 1975...

And that's it's probably why it was not use in H.26x standards. Patents are two-edged sword, and that is my point.

(We need to keep the balance, however, because it's easy to argue that adoption is best served by a monopoly on who can create new software, and that's just what Apple and Microsoft would be happy to support.)

It's not easy at all. Sure, it's easy to push one new idea if you have the monopoly, but then the temptation is high to stifle all other ideas (again: think mobile phones and VoIP), so monopoly is not an answer. I can not see how you can ever argue it's the best way: problems with adoption of patented/copyrighted solutions are the monopoly (that's what the patents and copyrights grant the creator). To try to fix this problem of excessive monopolization by introduction of another monopoly is like the advice to extinguish a fire with gasoline...

Huh? What are you talking about?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 5:01 UTC (Tue) by wblew (subscriber, #39088) [Link] (2 responses)

Digital video technology has been developed and sold in Europe where software patents are (mostly?) not applicable.

The argument fails to hold water.

Huh? What are you talking about?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 5:14 UTC (Tue) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048) [Link]

What are all these European patent numbers? http://www.mpegla.com/avc/avc-att1.pdf

Are you sure?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 5:17 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

1. How many codecs developed in Europe without help from US companies do you know? How successfull they are?

2. MPEG-LA does have patens in other countries besides US. The full list is not easy to find (why the hell do we have "open standards" which unclude closed list of patents), but here are list of MPGE-audio-related from a single ~~patent troll~~ firm. I presume video patents include equally impressive list.

Learn the facts before writing the answers. It's not clear what role patents played in audio/video codecs development, but to claim that the fact that some codecs can be used in some small parts of the world without fear changes the situation totally is to fool yourself.

Huh? What are you talking about?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 5:08 UTC (Tue) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048) [Link]

There is an effort underway to get the IETF to allow an (audio) codec working group which would focus on the creating and standardization of royalty free (audio) codecs for the Internet.

If you're interested in this I strongly suggest you read the archives and get involved: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/codec/current/mail9....

Huh? What are you talking about?

Posted Jul 7, 2009 14:11 UTC (Tue) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (5 responses)

I don't see what makes video codecs so much different/more special than other areas of software development. Surely you're not suggesting that software development was stymied and slow before patents? Surely you're not suggesting that the only motivating factor for interesting or innovative (or rapid/efficient) software development is patents? That is demonstrably false. So why are video codecs unique in this way?

For what it's worth I've worked on a LOT of software projects for companies both big and small, and never once in all those years was ANY decision about what to build or whether or not to build something EVER based on whether we could get a patent or not. It's just not true that that this is something companies think at all about, or depend on in revenue forecasts etc., before they commit resources. Similarly, I've NEVER been involved with or even heard about a situation where development was stopped because it was discovered that the work was not patentable after all (obviously stopping or changing work because it was discovered that the work was or might have been already patented is quite another thing).

What really happens is that mid-to-late in the software development cycle managers ask the more senior developers to consider whether anything they've been working on might be patentable, and if so to help the legal department fill out a patent application. Most of the time you don't hear anything about the patent until you've already moved on to completely new things.

There are similarities, there are differences...

Posted Jul 7, 2009 17:12 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

I don't see what makes video codecs so much different/more special than other areas of software development.

There are no differences if we are talking about "just a codec" (things like Theora, Vorbis or Dirac). There are big differences if we are talking about "media format" (be it VHS, CD, DVD or MPEG4).

Surely you're not suggesting that software development was stymied and slow before patents?

Not at all.

So why are video codecs unique in this way?

Videocodecs are not unique: there are audio codecs too. That's because it's place where software development mets content distribution. CD, VHS, DVD, ATRAC, MPEG, etc - all these developments are heavily influenced by future royalties and huge firm create and break huge alliances in fight to control future markets. The latest such battle was HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray - have you already forgotten about this? Questions about patents and future royalties figured prominently in the fight.

For what it's worth I've worked on a LOT of software projects for companies both big and small, and never once in all those years was ANY decision about what to build or whether or not to build something EVER based on whether we could get a patent or not.

How many of these projects were about collaborative development by fierce competitors?

The fact that as result of this collision we've got all this patent mess is unfortunate, but it's quite obvious that we only get these standards (H.261, MPEG1 and all others) as early as we did is because software become patentable at this point.

There are similarities, there are differences...

Posted Jul 7, 2009 23:50 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (3 responses)

> Videocodecs are not unique: there are audio codecs too. That's because it's place where software development mets content distribution. CD, VHS, DVD, ATRAC, MPEG, etc - all these developments are heavily influenced by future royalties and huge firm create and break huge alliances in fight to control future markets. The latest such battle was HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray - have you already forgotten about this? Questions about patents and future royalties figured prominently in the fight.

This is by far the biggest pile of crap big copyright holders are peddling. Even if there was not a patent in site, these would still hold true:

- many people would go and watch films in theatres
- many people would rent media
- many people would buy media

It is not about whether they can make good money on all this. Oh, no! It is about whether they can rip you off for _more_ than they would normally be able to. That's why they want patents - no other reason.

Huh? What are you talking about?

Posted Jul 8, 2009 3:15 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

It is not about whether they can make good money on all this. Oh, no! It is about whether they can rip you off for _more_ than they would normally be able to. That's why they want patents - no other reason.

Nice new collection of straw mans you have here. Again: we are talking not about guys who develop DRM and sell movies, but about guys who develop codecs for these movies. Some (but not all!) of them have one and only one incentive: future royalties from associated patents. Kinda like Rambus. People may hate them, people may love them but it does not change the fact that such firms do exist.

Huh? What are you talking about?

Posted Jul 8, 2009 11:39 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

I too am struggling to see what is being discussed now:

I don't see what makes video codecs so much different/more special than other areas of software development.
There are no differences if we are talking about "just a codec" (things like Theora, Vorbis or Dirac). There are big differences if we are talking about "media format" (be it VHS, CD, DVD or MPEG4).

Plus...

The fact that as result of this collision we've got all this patent mess is unfortunate, but it's quite obvious that we only get these standards (H.261, MPEG1 and all others) as early as we did is because software become patentable at this point.

Then...

Again: we are talking not about guys who develop DRM and sell movies, but about guys who develop codecs for these movies.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that a significant incentive for people to develop codecs is the ability to patent them, although that incentive doesn't exist for other software. But then you suggest that a patent isn't really an incentive for developing a codec after all, but it's the ability to bundle the patent in a standard which is the incentive, and by insisting on everyone using that standard, a nice little tax is imposed on a whole domain.

Again, there's an assumption that one thing follows from another: in this case, that patents lead to standards. Yet we know that standards quite happily emerge without people asserting patents on those standards: various Web standards have convincingly demolished the top-down, patent-heavy, pay-per-copy standardisation model. If anything, patents merely lead to standards cartels and that pernicious little tax I mentioned above that becomes impossible to avoid.

Meanwhile, I think it's disingenuous to claim that the people who want DRM are distinct from those making the standards. An insistence on the most egregious DRM mechanisms is a well-known excuse used to discourage people from using open formats on an open Web, all under the banner of standardisation.

Huh? What are you talking about?

Posted Jul 8, 2009 21:57 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Some (but not all!) of them have one and only one incentive: future royalties from associated patents.

For something to be distributed, it has to exist (i.e. you need to make a movie, music etc.). So, without these folks (the content providers), there is no mass distribution. If they want to distribute this in digital format, one has to exist. If software patents exist and one technology corners the market, royalty collection is not just from the content, but also from the patents enabling the content to be seen (in some cases it is the same company collecting both: see Sony). That would be the double dipping.

Now, if software patents didn't exist, digital media still would (same reason as before: smaller, faster, cheaper, better). Content producers would make sure someone develops the codecs for them, so they can sell the content. Everyone still gets paid, just not in perpetuity.