[whatwg] The truth about Nokias claims

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Shannon wrote:
>
> 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.

Again, as far as I can tell nobody is actually suggesting requiring H.264. 
I don't think it is productive to really discuss whether H.264 would be a 
possible codec at this time, since it clearly isn't.


> 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.

No, the issue is about finding a codec that everyone will implement. To 
that end, Theora is not an option, since we have clear statements from 
multiple vendors that they will not implement Theora.

Again, as I noted in this e-mail:

   http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-December/013411.html

I would please like to ask everyone participating in this discussion to 
focus on the future and on how we can move forward.

Thanks,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'