[Wikimedia-l] RfC: Should we support MP4 Video on our sites?

[Andrew Lih]

As much as I am pushing for MP4 adoption in Wikimedia to help our lagging
video efforts, MPEG-4 patent holders/licensors are not helping their case:

1. The consumer licensing agreement from AT&T is scary and weird, and
Geni's first NO vote has set the tone for many to follow.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video#No_MP4_support

2. The secrecy around the "the full license agreements cannot be disclosed
in public" sounds bad and we'd have to trust WMF's legal team to find it
acceptable. Wikimedians hate non transparency. Some folks are voting NO
because of this.

3. The CNET interview with MPEG-LA's legal folks seems to indicate a
bizarre stance: Yes, they intentionally have scary, inconsistent and
confusing licensing terms. This is to make sure people with deep pockets
wind up paying the patent pool lots of money. For smaller users? Those
onerous terms sound like they apply to you but you can disregard them. This
is NOT a good state of affairs for a conscientious, detail-oriented free
culture contributors.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000101-264.html

4. One of the better resources to explains things is in this post from
LibreVideo.org, but even then there are many unanswered questions:
http://www.librevideo.org/blog/2010/06/14/mpeg-la-answers-some-questions-about-avch-264-licensing/

-Andrew



On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 5:28 AM, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi at gmx.net> wrote:

> * Fabrice Florin wrote:
> >The Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team (1) seeks your guidance on a
> >proposal to support the MP4 video format. As you know, this digital
> >video standard is used widely around the world to record, edit and watch
> >videos on mobile phones, desktop computers and home video devices. It is
> >also known as H.264/MPEG-4 or AVC. (2)
>
> Actually, "MP4" is a container format and H.264 a video codec, and it is
> quite normal to use variants of H.264 with other container formats like
> AVI. Likewise, "MP4" does not imply using AAC as audio codec, MP3 could
> be used instead, for instance. An analysis why AAC is being proposed may
> be useful here.
>
> >However, MP4 is a patent-encumbered format, and using a proprietary
> >format would be a departure from our current practice of only supporting
> >open formats on our sites -- even though the licenses appear to have
> >acceptable legal terms, with only a small fee required.
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=114053933 notes "Though
> the full license agreements cannot be disclosed in public". That is not
> very helpful in analysing claims later on like "Merely distributing MP4
> files never requires a patent license."
>
> What is the exact language to be used to inform anyone handling H.264
> video downloaded from Wikimedia Foundation servers of their rights and
> restrictions, specifically with regards to the relevant patent porfolio?
> Making it abundantly clear what users can and cannot do with such files
> should be considered a pre-condition for considering such a proposal.
> --
> Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern at hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
> Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
> 25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/
>
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