Hold The Celebrations; H.264 Is Not The Sort Of Free That Matters

While the "free for web use" claims for H.264 by MPEG-LA sound great and have deceived many commentators, they are nothing new and contain no good news for open source software.

At the end of last week, the MPEG-LA consortium announced they were extending the arrangement whereby they allow 'web uses' of the patents reading on the H.264 standard that they administer for their members to be licensed without charge. The arrangement, which runs in five-year periods, has now been extended to the expiration of the patents in the pool. At first sight, this sounds great. Headlines have popped up all over the place which might lead one to believe that everything is now fine in the area of video streaming on the internet and we can all proceed without fear of having video taxed. But I'd suggest leaving the champagne corked for now.

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