[M4IF Discuss] hourly usage fee for MPEG4

[Craig Birkmaier]

At 4:06 PM -0800 3/5/02, Rob Koenen wrote:
>Let me correct a potantial misunderstanding that arose in the
>discussio nbetween Craig and Olivier, and then get the discussion
>on the right track again (yes, at the risk of reviving it :-)

This is not an effort to revive the thread.
Some of what I posted originally was a 'blue sky" look at what might 
be desirable to avoid problems such as those being faced by MPEG-4 
now, in the future.
I interpreted Olivier's comment that it is not possible to ask 
participants to contribute IP on a royalty free basis at its face 
value. Then I was provided with a copy of the patent statement that 
JVT participants are being asked to execute. This appeared to 
contradict what Olivier had suggested, so I brought this to the 
attention of the list.
I do think that this is relevant to the current MPEG-4 licensing 
discussions. The major arguments I am hearing on this list are based 
in assumptions about the viability of various business models. 
Clearly the JVT is trying to avoid a repeat of the current situation. 
While we cannot ask the MPEG-4 IPR holders to act retroactively 
regarding their positions with MPEG-4 visual, AAC and systems, we CAN 
point out that their proposed license is out of sync with emerging 
industry business models, and that this is now being reflected in the 
current work of MPEG.
One more data point. Today at the VidTrans Conference, Gorden Castle 
of CNN presented a very comprehensive overview of how CNN is moving 
to compression based storage and IP networking for both internal and 
field operations. His presentation stopped short of discussing 
emission coding for Internet streaming. In the Q&A I asked him what 
CNN's position is on the proposed usage fees for MPEG-4. He made it 
quite clear that CNN is very interested in what MPEG-4 has to offer, 
and noted the strength of the object coding tools; AND he made it 
clear that usage fees are unacceptable, and CNN would be forced to 
look to other alternatives. He noted that much of what CNN is 
streaming is intended to cross promote other services; that they want 
consumers to access and use these services freely.
-- 
Regards
Craig Birkmaier
Pcube Labs