OT:H.264 legal license info

[David Roth weiss]

I doubt they’ll be knocking at our doors with arrest warrants anytime soon.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Michael Sacci]

You see all thing stuff coming up a lot lately, I think there are a lot of legal hooks for the patent holders to do “something” down the road if they feel like it. IMO it is something to be aware of but not worried about. Don’t think SNL and FOX would be shooting with Canon DSLRs if a lawsuit was coming down the road.

[Arnie Schlissel]

These claims are probably unenforceable. How can you retroactively collect royalties from the millions of viewers of YouTube or Vimeo videos? Send them an invoice? I doubt that YouTube’s parent, Google, would allow them to make a profit at their expense.

The historical precedent is Thomas Edison’s film trust. In the end Edison failed to control the market for motion picture film, but he did succeed in two things. He succeeded in marginalizing his own company and making Biograph, his chief rival, the dominant player in the film business. He also succeeded in shifting the film industry’s center of gravity from the greater New York city area to the LA/Hollywood area.

If the MPEG-LA tried to enforce their patents, they would simply drive that segment of the pro market to other technology.

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[David Roth weiss]

[Arnie Schlissel] “He also succeeded in shifting the film industry’s center of gravity from the greater New York city area to the LA/Hollywood area. “

And, thankfully so!!! Trust me, the winters here make a huge difference.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

EPK Colorist – UP IN THE AIR – nominated for six academy awards

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Scott Sheriff]

“How can you retroactively collect royalties from the millions of viewers of YouTube or Vimeo videos?”

Well, it’s not royalties, but right now Amazon is fighting North Carolina Department of Revenue over their attempt to get the Amazon NC customer records going back to 2003. This would be millions of records.
Why? To go back and retroactively collect tax.
NC isn’t an isolated incident. If this type of thing succeeds in courts, then the door could be open for others to retroactively collect taxes, fees, and even royalties, and to force companies to hand over customer/user databases to enforce the collection.
Is it too far fetched? I don’t think so.
In the future, I think if the legal table were to tilt in their direction, I could see this becoming an issue. Because when it comes to money and lawyers, anything is possible.

Scott Sheriff
Director
SST Digital Media
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

[Scott Sheriff]

I read the article, and I noticed that it also included HDV mpeg2 gear. So I pulled out my docs for my camera and my deck to check it out. I found no mention of an mpeg LA. In fact there was no LA at all.
So is this something that has just surfaced with the H.264 gear?
Has anyone seen this in their documents?

Scott Sheriff
Director
SST Digital Media
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

[Michael Sacci]

not sure I follow how these two things are related. A software company and a government agency? The Rev Dept is trying to collect and taxes that were required at that time, not deciding, “hey lets start changing for X, and lets go back 7 years and charge them also. Or at least I hope that is not what NC DofR is doing. And for the record, I’m not saying that NC has the right to levy this or any other tax.

[Scott Sheriff]

“hey lets start changing for X, and lets go back 7 years and charge them also. “

That is exactly what they want to do. Internet sales were not taxed. Now that they are having a budget shortfall, they want to go back and apply taxes to internet sales for the last seven years retroactively, and to do that, they want Amazons customer records of who bought what.

Amazon says no. The fight is really about who owns customer records, and has the right to control them.

How does this relate to mpeg royalties? It really relates back to what Arnie said about how could they collect royalties from millions of YT users.
If the courts allow a state to do this, and force Amazon to cough up the customer records, it will open the door for others to try for retroactive judgments knowing they could use the court to obtain customer records to collect the judgment if they win.

And what you said about SNL and FOX, is interesting. My guess is if anything were to happen like this, they would just buy a blanket license, like they do for music.

I’m not saying its going to happen. I’m just saying that if the camels nose gets under the tent…
So in the future we all might want to see EULA before we buy stuff, and be a little less willing to just let them shove things like this on us.
Just a thought.

Scott Sheriff
Director
SST Digital Media
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

[Michael Sacci]

not to argue but internet sales are taxable, always have been, most people don’t pay them, most state didn’t go to any effort to collect them. The payment falls to the buyer not the shipper if it is shipped out of state. The state where the product lands has the right (according to tax code) to the sales tax on the purchase. They just have not tried very hard to get this tax before. Most major companies pay this tax because they cannot afford to be liable.

Don’t agree that this is right but the tax is just uncollected, they are now going after what they use to turn a blind eye towards. The reason is just like you said, they are short of money and internet sales have grown big time. I will hold off my comments on tax in general.

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Quote from link:
You can only use your professional camera for non-commercial purposes. For any other purpose, you must get a license from MPEG-LA and pay them royalties for each copy sold…. this is not just a Canon problem… Sony and Panasonic… have the exact same licensing restriction. Also, all video editors and official media players come with similarly restricted codec licenses! Apparently, MPEG-LA makes it difficult for camera manufacturers, or video editor software houses, to obtain a cheap-enough license that allows their users to use their codec any way they want!

MPEG-LA extended their “free internet broadcasting AVC license” until 2015. So until then, users can use a licensed encoder (x264 doesn’t count, in their view this makes both the video producer AND every random viewer of that video *liable*), to stream online royalty-free, as long as that video is free to stream.

Now who was it who mentioned “a bag of hurt”, and has focussed solely on an online Store?
Or the Share To Internet function of other software? 😉