Why Our Civilization’s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA

“We’ve all heard how the h.264 is rolled over on patents and
royalties. Even with these facts, I kept supporting the
best-performing ‘delivery’ codec in the market, which is h.264.
‘Let the best win’, I kept thinking. But it wasn’t until very
recently when I was made aware that the problem is way deeper. No,
my friends. It’s not just a matter of just “picking Theora” to
export a video to Youtube and be clear of any litigation. MPEG-LA’s
trick runs way deeper! The [street-smart] people at MPEG-LA have
made sure that from the moment we use a camera or camcorder to
shoot an mpeg2 (e.g. HDV cams) or h.264 video (e.g. digicams, HD
dSLRs, AVCHD cams), we owe them royalties, even if the final video
distributed was not encoded using their codecs! Let me show you how
deep the rabbit hole goes.”

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