Apple Delays QuickTime 6 Over Proposed MPEG-4 Licenses 245
znu writes: "Apple announced at the QuickTime Live! conference today that there's a public preview of QuickTime 6 with full MPEG-4 support ready to ship, but the terms of the proposed MPEG-4 license are holding it back. For those who haven't been following this, MPEG wants $0.25 per encoder/decoder for MPEG-4, up to $2 million per company per year. Apple is fine with that. But MPEG also wants content distributers to pony up $0.02/hour for any content that's distributed for profit. Apple feels that determining just what is "for profit" will be problematic, and that this pricing will seriously inhibit MPEG-4 adoption.
You are encouraged to complain to MPEG LA about this situation."
Re:Its a good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Why wouldn't the TV model work on the net? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then they can go as far as to order merchandise for that show. "Click here to purchase a Transformers: Robots in Disguise Optimus Prime Toy for your kids." The can reward me for watching commercials. "Click now and we'll give you $1.00 off your next burger." They can even do things like broadcast a show live, just like TV does today for free. But if you want to see earlier episodes, you have to pay for a subscription to access them.
The idea of saying 'your time on the net is metered' scares me. Using the Internet for entertainment is a luxury, not a need. If the market thinks the price is unfair, then programs like Morpheus will suddenly reign supreme.
The Irony (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I find Apple's position extremely sensible. Charging per-use is the sort of accounting nightmare that a lot of webcasters want to avoid. Add to that the fact that, as Apple says, it is hard to draw the line in the grey area between for-profit and non-profit/for fun usage. This is especially irritating for Apple, as they want their technologies to be adapted by hobbyists.
If the MPEG Group wins, it would only be a matter of time before some smart-ass lawyer then starts collecting data on amateur webcasters, and claims that they are costing the MPEG Group revenue...
Re:but aren't we already using mpeg4? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, divx.com says "DivX is the most widely distributed MPEG-4 compatible", which I take to mean it is similar to MPEG-4 but is a completely different codec.
I could be wrong, but that's what I've gathered from what I've read on the web. If anyone knows more about this, feel free to correct me.
A step... (Score:1, Interesting)
As for pay-per-play, this is just another thing that a content provider will have to add into a sponser's bill. If I have to sit through their adds anyway, let 'em pay more...
It's about streaming, not QT (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Greedy bastards! (Score:3, Interesting)
If the program is gratis (like free beer) but it's not a free software, it can be possible to control how many people are using it, so you can control how much money you have to pay to MPEG people. But if it's a free software, you can't control how many people are using it.
So I suppose, you wanted to say:
which is exaclty right. We already have proprietary Quicktime [apple.com] or Windows Media [microsoft.com] players to download for free. Apple and Microsoft can pay $2M/year for MPEG-4 but if they don't want to, they can always offer a fixed number of copies to download, forcing you ro gegister [arachnoid.com]. But people making a free software movie player [mplayerhq.hu], can't force such restrictions.Re:Why wouldn't the TV model work on the net? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're paying for your content, one way or the other. One is with your time (watching commercials), the other is with your money.
People are used to paying for content by putting up with commercials, and after you get used to it, it hardly seems like it costs you much at all. But once you make it easy enough for people to ditch the commercials entirely, you can bet many will do that. Putting content on the internet makes it that much easier for people to ditch the commercials, thereby devaluing the amount the networks get paid for each ad.
There are at least two different ways to respond to this problem: 1) pay-per-view, or 2) make sure it's not easier to ditch the commercials. Which method do you think will cost the networks more to implement and enforce?
Until they can come up with a streaming protocol that makes you sit through the ads (either through ingenious new technology, or more likely though a half-baked, legally enforced "can't break this or else" protocol), you will probably see more of these pay-per-view strategies, since they are otherwise at a loss for how to keep making the same kind of profit off their content in this new medium.
Re:Greedy bastards! (Score:5, Interesting)
We already have proprietary Quicktime
If you mean proprietary as in fully documented [apple.com] (you probably want to start in the API section) and open you'd be correct. In fact, there are several projects started that will play Quicktime movies fine under Linux.*
Perhaps you meant the proprietary and closed Sorenson codec?
*Of course, they won't be able to play the ones that use the Sorenson codec, which is the most popular codec to use with Quicktime
Apple: Go open... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Apple: Go open... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Apple: Go open... (Score:1, Interesting)