Firm quietly boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100,000 up to staggering $4.5 million — backbone codec of the internet gets meteoric increase, AVC hikes follow disastrous H.265 licensing increa
2026-04-04 18:47 UTC
Replies (23)
-
@jaykrown@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 21:58
Here’s why it doesn’t matter: “AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia),[3] a consortium founded in 2015 that includes semiconductor firms, video on demand providers, video content producers, software development companies and web browser vendors.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1
-
@mlg@lemmy.world 2026-04-05 04:53
Man I can’t wait to upgrade my device/GPU with AV1 hardware support AI slop bubble fart reverb sfx
-
@Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-04-04 22:29
tiny bit clickbait, small companies are still at $100,000 unchanged not that that should exist, either
-
@raicon@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 19:16
open formats is the way to go. Patents seems more and more like a scam
-
@Fontasia@feddit.nl 2026-04-05 07:24
Oh look just as the AV1 consortium is also deciding to do shakedowns. It’s a good thing the open source community have a history of building functional and well performing codecs, especially when it comes to media formats.
-
@FalschgeldFurkan@lemmy.world 2026-04-05 12:58
Does this have any impact towards the consumer?
-
@SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today 2026-04-04 19:50
Thing that bothers me is these guys are claiming to have patents over AV1. The whole point of av1 is it supposed to be free of this bullshit.
-
@Paragone@lemmy.world 2026-04-05 13:37
Legally VP8 is beginning to look like the go-to format for video… _ /\ _
-
@Cantaloupe@lemmy.fedioasis.cc 2026-04-05 20:58
Long Live WebM I guess.
-
@LordMayor@piefed.social 2026-04-04 19:44
The [patents have expired everywhere except USA, Brazil and Malaysia](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F). This is a blatant money grab before they expire everywhere.
-
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 19:26
> quietly Stop putting "quietly" in your fucking headlines, you hacks. This wasn't "quiet", it was very publicly announced.
-
@silverneedle@lemmy.ca 2026-04-05 00:26
If I come up with a concept in philosophy can I patent it and charge money when people use it in their philosophy? Fees for codecs operate on this plane of backwardness. Patents in and of themselves are stupid enough, but the capacity for stupidity within patenting knows no bounds apparently.
-
@sanpo@sopuli.xyz 2026-04-04 19:21
Last attempt to squeeze some money before these formats are abandoned in favor of competition, I guess.
-
@nonentity@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-05 21:20
The entire notion of ‘Intellectual Property’ is a cancer on society. Information and ideas intrinsically accrue value the more they’re known and used, and the incentives provided around their collation and attribution should embody that, not punish them with imaginary locks that provide ownership.
-
@collapse_already@lemmy.ml 2026-04-05 22:13
H.264 came out in 2003. Shouldn't the patents associated with it have expired by now? 23 years is more than 20 years from the filing date or else the codec's release itself is prior art. The 17 years from issuance rule ended in 1995. I don't think they can have any Lemelson style submarine patents that are still valid.
-
@njordomir@lemmy.world 2026-04-05 18:44
We need a "right of retrieval" where,once encoded, it must be free to decode and play back. If we're going to allow proprietary media, all the prices should be clear and up front. No charging on the back end after everyone has already encoded their baby vids to avc; no changing prices after the fact.
-
@CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 22:45
I’m pretty sure most of the H.264 patents expired or are set to expire next year. Maybe it’s one last cash grab before the best codec ever made is liberated
-
@Glitchvid@lemmy.world 2026-04-04 22:12
Honestly probably a good thing long-term, lots of platforms have been dragging their heels in adopting better newer codecs, so maybe this will finally give the justification required to put in the engineering hours.
-
@HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2026-04-05 17:03
is this why youtube is lagging and buffering?
-
@yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca 2026-04-04 20:44
fuck the authority, chaining down anything digital because the law is far behind the relative breakneck speed of technological progress.
-
@t0fr@lemmy.ca 2026-04-05 22:42
So am I not affected if I don't stream anything? What about SmartTubeNext will Google just make the streaming even worse for me?
-
@thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-04-06 18:39
-
@rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 2026-04-05 03:18
[🪴🪴🪴](https://stallman-report.org/)