Re: [W3C Web and TV IG] Adaptive streaming MPEG DASH liaison

On Apr 1, 2011, at 9:13 AM, Alexander Adolf wrote:

> Sorry, I couldn't resist being the cynical old man once more.
> 
> On 2011-03-20, at 22:24 , Mark Watson wrote:
> 
>> [...]
>> I am also not saying that ISO and MPEG should not undertake work that is explicitly RF from the outset. Indeed I believe it would be a good thing for them to do so more often.
> 
> Fully agreed. Other participants in this discussion seem to be hoping though that ISO, ETSI etc. might change their IPR policy to provide W3C with RF standards. This is not going to happen. These SDOs have provided flourishing industries with successful standards on FRAND terms. Why on earth should they change? FRom their point of view there would be no reason. If W3C wouldn't want  to adopt their technology? That'd be sad, but they wouldn't care overly to be frank. They are successful enough in their sectors.
> 
> So to make the inquiry to MPEG clearer, we might consider speaking about "free of charge" instead of "RF" to avoid the assumption that it would need to be totally licence-free? Should it always be free of charge, or only for free-to-air services (i.e. would it be ok for pay services to pay licence fees)? And yes, we need to look at the whole end-2-end system, not just DASH.
> 

This is again where I would suggest we just refer to the W3C policy and its goal of standards implementable without payment of royalties. There are indeed many options which fulfil this goal and people will need to decide what is/is not acceptable to them.

At some point there is a tradeoff between technology fragmentation (which has its own very real costs) and precise IPR status.

>> [...]
>> RAND does not imply royalty-bearing.
>> [...]
> 
> Absolutely. Some people in this thread however seem to imply "licence-free" when talking about RF.
> 

According to my understanding the W3C policy means you get an implicit license to any IPR owned by W3C members on a W3C Recommendation. I don't think it says much, though, about IPR owned by non-W3C members other than the overall goal of standards implementable without payment of royalties.

...Mark

> 
> Thanks for listening and cheers,
> 
>  --alex
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 5 April 2011 16:24:53 UTC