They've been saying the same thing about Vorbis for the last 10 years and never found any patents despite millions of games shipping vorbis every year. Now they were supposed to form the patent pool by March and they still have nothing by July. Not holding my breath.
After Google published the WebM spec, who didn't see this coming? My only surprise is that it's only 12 companies. I'd expect more to pile on over time.
I don't know if anonymously joining a press release constitutes "piling on". If anything, this is pretty weak sauce. There's an existential threat to MPEG-LA and the best they can come up with after a year-long search is 12 anonymous companies and a secret list of patents?
Yawn. At least the handset vendors have the gumption to actually file lawsuits against each other. This is the very definition of FUD.
It absolutely is. Lets be clear, no one cares about the patents per se. What MPEG-LA wants is for people to not support WebM. Is the best way for the 12 companies to come forward and show their patents? No. I'm sure we'd like for them to do that, but strategically that's a horrible play. It allows Google to say, "We can change this part of the spec. We can invalidate this one. We have a cross-licensing deal with them." Etc... OTOH Google might be up a creek. Which is it? I don't know. Neither do Google's partners. Are you willing to bet you don't get sued in order to support a nascent technology?
A lot of techies see FUD as evil. It's business. It reminds me of when my 8 year old cousin learned about bluffing in poker. He said, "you can't do that. it's cheating. you knew you didn't have a good hand, but i folded. i could have beat you." His dad said, "next time stay in the game. but i might not be bluffing next time. it's all part of the game."
Some people think hiring hitmen to whack their enemies is part of the game of business too. This attitude bothers me. Morality doesn't suddenly cease to exist just because you happen to label the specific activity you're engaged in "business."
I would agree with you if you'd just said a lot of people take business more personally than they should. Businesses are not charities or friends. But at the same time, saying "It's business" doesn't absolve you of acting like a scumbag. (That's the generic "you," by the way — no aspersions meant towards Ken.)
Some people think hiring hitmen to whack their enemies is part of the game of business too. This attitude bothers me.
Hitmen bother me too. But there's a big difference between hitmen and saying, "I have a strategic play that I'm not going to tip my hand with."
Do you equate hitmen to Apple not showing off their new iPhone until weeks before shipping? That's a form of FUD. I've heard people say that they don't want to get a new phone until they see it. Apple knows what the iPhone looks like, why don't they just show everyone so people can make their buying decisions now?
Mozilla embarked in FUD when they said that IE wasn't modern. It was an attempt to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in IE users ability to use their browser going forward.
A business not disclosing information is not at all equivalent to hitmen. First, it's not illegal. Second, businesses do it all the time -- businesses that most people love. Third, the legal responsibility of due diligence is actually on the shoulders of Google. Admittedly not very tractable given the amount of patents, but its the responsibility of the patent holder to warn you that you maybe infringing.
My point -- FUD is a pretty normal part of business. Most people judge FUD less on the actual tactic, but more if they agree with result of the FUD. If Mozilla does FUD against IE -- well it's "just the facts". If MPEG-LA does FUD then it's like murdering people.
And don't get me started on the FUD associated with the insurance, drug, medical, food, automobile, education, cosmetics, cleaning, and gardening industries. These industries are all much worse than the SW industry with respect to FUD. And their FUD is much more targeted at the consumer.
> If Mozilla does FUD against IE -- well it's "just the facts".
You can't FUD with facts; facts preclude uncertainty.
If MPEG-LA provided a specific list of patents they claimed essential to WebM, that wouldn't qualify as FUD; however, they don't want to do that, because then their claims could get deconstructed and refuted.
Poker is zero-sum, and everybody knows that going in. Business is supposed to be positive-sum, and when it isn't we should consider changing the rules.
Business is supposed to be positive-sum, and when it isn't we should consider changing the rules.
Positive-sum isn't sufficient. With that said, I don't know if that's generally true. There is almost always winners and losers. And in SW it tends to be a bigger gap than other industries where things like geography will let a regional player still do quite well.
Positive sum doesn't imply everyone is a winner. It merely implies that at least one person is a winner, that is, that the sum of all outcomes is positive.
Not sure if even that's true: after all, if no one is buying, is business positive sum?
Anyway, what your analogy blithely ignores is that everyone playing poker has actively chosen to play that game. While the business culture you're so ok with effects everyone -- the rest of us can't walk away from the consequences.
If there's only one way to do it, and anyone faced with the same problem would have to do it the same way, it's a discovery. Otherwise, it's an invention.
Inventions are patentable. Discoveries aren't. Or shouldn't be, according to the intent of the system.
Would MPEG-LA bother to spread FUD over a random obscure proprietary codec rather than the single biggest threat to their protection racket?
If it still belonged to On2, MPEG-LA (or rather, its member companies) would just sue if they actually had anything. Here, the threat of a lawsuit does the job they actually want, but they'll never actually file a lawsuit until they find a defendant they know will settle rather than fighting.
Hopefully Google does the same thing Apple did for Lodsys: indemnify to neuter the FUD.
rather than the single biggest threat to their protection racket?
That's not true at all. VP8 is a web codec for free web streaming and that's free with H.264. MPEG-LA makes their money from volume sales like Blu-Ray Discs or Set-top-Boxes which aren't going to move to VP8 any time soon.
In this scenario, posting the actual patents would allow everyone (including Google) to publically debunk them: find prior art, show that they don't apply, show that Google has patents essential to the claimed patents, demonstrate cross-licensing arrangements, or in the worst case work around the patent via technical means. None of those tactics work against nebulous bluster, hence the concept of FUD.
As I've been talking to people about IP/software patents, I've had several say "This has been going on for forever.". Is this the opinion of fellow-HNers? Is it just more in the spotlight because the patents are being consolidated amongst "big players" in the media and mobile spaces or am I just more in-tune to it recently?
