Re: [rtcweb] (resend) RE: Draft agenda for RTCWeb session 2 at IETF85

[Ron <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 08:50:11PM -0700, Matthew Kaufman wrote:
> On 10/21/2012 2:01 PM, Ron wrote:
> >Unless the presentations are going to announce new perpetual RF
> >licencing conditions for H.264, I don't really see what new facts
> >might be presented that can change the reality of:
> >
> >"People invested in H.264 licences or owning its IPR prefer H.264
> >  and the exclusivity and revenue streams it brings them."
> >
> >"People who don't qualify for H.264 licences will be screwed unless
> >  we pick VP8 as the baseline - and will need to either fork RTCWeb,
> >  or adopt or create an alternative to it."
> 
> If only it were this simple. My employer spends more on H.264
> licensing than it receives in return, and it isn't about
> "exclusivity" or "revenue streams"

It is fairly normal to need to pay for exclusivity :)

It certainly means that I could not ship a Free RTCWeb implementation
with H.264 as MTI to the same volume of users that your employer might.
If the cost of simply tracking all those users didn't bankrupt me all
by itself, then the licence fees certainly would try to finish the job.

That sounds like exclusivity to me.  If not a little Deja Vu of the
good old days of the First Browser Wars ...


> John Leslie said:
> 
> "The actual decisions will
> be made by folks [who] won't be in the room.
> 
>    Those decisions won't be driven by which codec is better: they'll
> be driven by what _risks_ are taken by implementing one or the other."
> 
> And this is a much more accurate way of saying it... and why, for
> anyone in the room actually on the "implementation" side, there's
> not much point in continuing to debate the potential merits unless
> the landscape is *significantly* changed from its current state (for
> example, RF licenses for H.264 or total indemnification provided by
> VP8's owner.)

I don't really understand this repeated insistence that VP8 is somehow
more risky unless it comes with Total Indemnification?

H.264 certainly doesn't come with total indemnification, and MPEG-LA
is very clear that absolutely nothing which they licence comes with
even token indemnification from them or anyone else - or even with a
licence from all the people you might actually need a licence from.

This requirement is totally unprecedented, and such offers are near
to totally non-existent in the real world.  The landscape would most
certainly be changed if we woke up to find it covered in unicorns,
but I don't think anybody would take that seriously as a technical
prerequisite for some candidate technology.


The reality today is that H.264 is currently being prosecuted in the
courts over infringement claims -- while the only apparent threat to
VP8 is a mythical pool, that hasn't actually been formed, that hasn't
actually issued any licencing demands, and that the people who wanted
to form it have refused to say anything about for over a year, since
they last mumbled "yeah, some people responded.  really they did."

H.264 being released under an RF licence would indeed be a game-changer,
though even if that happened, on the evidence at hand today it is still
clearly the more patently risky (no pun intended) of the two unless you
happen to be one of its IPR holders (and even then, so it would seem).

If the current lawsuit against H.264 had instead been prosecuted against
a user of VP8, the prosecuting party would have lost their licence to
use VP8.  No such protection exists for me if I use H.264.

So the balance of both risk and protection would already seem tilted
in favour of VP8 too.  If anyone should be required to provide a total
indemnity, then surely H.264 is in more evident and urgent need of such
a thing, given the risk to it is already *known* to not be hypothetical.


What am I missing that means VP8 should need to jump over an even
higher bar for acceptance in this respect?  So far as I can see it
already has, hasn't it?


 Cheers,
 Ron