H.264, patent licensing, and you (Engadget)

Posted May 5, 2010 23:30 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
Parent article: H.264, patent licensing, and you (Engadget)

Hilarious. Users don't have to pay. Since when? Users ultimately pay for _everything_.

Now, if anyone still thinks software patents are good for progress, just consider how much time and money it's going to cost to just come to an agreement here. That, to me, seems like obstruction of progress.

And, the five year "we'll hook you on our drugs first" period is just lovely.

H.264, patent licensing, and you (Engadget)

Posted May 6, 2010 0:11 UTC (Thu) by literfizzer (subscriber, #31274) [Link] (2 responses)

No kidding! Does this guy really think Google's going to suck it up and let royalty payments for H.264 content eat a hole in its profits?

And what if I want to put my own H.264-encoded content up for free download on my own web site? Now I have to count downloads and make royalty payments?

I just lost a lot of respect for Engadget.

H.264, patent licensing, and you (Engadget)

Posted May 6, 2010 0:27 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (1 responses)

You should lose respect for them, the author wrote a press release for MPEG-LA and marketed it as news. He hit every single talking point that MPEG-LA has been using and I wouldn't be surprised if MPEG-LA paid them to do it. Paid "journalism" is quite common and most people don't realize it. I mistakenly believed that engadget didn't engage in it, but it's clear that's not the case anymore. That "story" was nothing more than a paid advertisement and FUD expedition for MPEG-LA.

What's interesting to me is how much this stuff is being talked about recently, I can only conclude it's fear by the patent holders that Google will release VP8 for free and emasculate their patent revenues.

H.264, patent licensing, and you (Engadget)

Posted May 6, 2010 3:04 UTC (Thu) by xnox (guest, #63320) [Link]

I haven't read anything different or new when comparing to all the other blogospheres I'm following..... their edition was full of Engadget toungue in cheek and funny puns.

The do paid journalism and this is one way or the other way paid for (i haven't seen anyone yet getting any words out of MPEG-LA) but Engadget has enough page views to choose not to run a story even if someoone pays a lot.

All for paid articles do start with "So and so invited us to chat to them about this and that." And then it continues on "when we tried to press this button it didn't work and we were asked to move on"