[whatwg] The truth about Nokias claims

Arguing the definition of "proprietary" and "standards" is irrelevant. 
Neither has any bearing on the problem which is that in 2010 the MPEG-LA 
(of which Nokia is a member) will impose fees on all use of h.264 on the 
Internet equivalent to those of 'free television'. As near as I can tell 
that will mean all websites serving h.264 content will be liable for 
fees of between $2,500 - $10,000 USD per annum. This makes it 
inappropriate for any public standard and makes other technical and 
legal comparisons between Ogg and h.264 irrelevant. x264 is a nice 
program but it is doubtful it is exempt from these fees nor is the 
content it produces or the websites that host them.

The ONLY issue here is about the inclusion of Ogg as a SUGGESTION (not 
requirement) and the ONLY argument against the format is that it *might* 
be subject to submarine patents - however since this applies to EVERY 
video codec and even HTML5 itself  it is also irrelevant.

Shannon

Received on Thursday, 13 December 2007 18:35:39 UTC