[whatwg] Codec mess with <video> and <audio> tags

[Ian Hickson]

On Sun, 7 Jun 2009, David Gerard wrote:
> 2009/6/7 Geoffrey Sneddon <foolistbar at googlemail.com>:
> > 
> > How is it incredible? Who has looked at the submarine patents? They by 
> > definition are unpublished! Yes, certainly, published patents are well 
> > researched, but this is not the objection that anyone has made to it.
> 
> It is not credible to claim that any other codec whatsoever does not 
> have the same problems - and paying Thomson or the MPEG-LA does *not* 
> protect one from submarine claims from others, as Microsoft found out to 
> its cost with MP3 - nor is it credible to claim that Ogg formats have 
> more such problems.

Every codec has the same problem; the difference is that companies like 
Apple have already taken on the patent risk with MPEG-LA licensed codecs 
and are not willing to double their exposure. (Other companies like Google 
apparently _are_ willing to take this risk.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'