If you have a predictor/compressor LLM which was trained on all the movies in the world, would that not also be infringement?
An LLM is (or can be used) as a compression algorithm, but it is not compressed data. It is possible to have an overfit algorithm exactly predict (or reproduce) an output, but it’s not possible for one to reproduce all the outputs due to the pigeonhole principle.
To reiterate - LLMs are not compressed data.
If you're interested in this, it's a good idea reading about the Hutter prize (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutter_Prize) and going from there.
In general, lossless compression works by predicting the next (letter/token/frame) and then encoding the difference from the prediction in the data stream succinctly. The better you predict, the less you need to encode, the better you compress.
The flip side of this is that all fields of compression have a lot to gain from progress in AI.
like similar to if you get a "your login" yes/no prompt on a authentication app, but a bit less easy to social engineer but a in turn also suspect to bruteforce attacks (similar to how TOTP is suspect to it)
through on the other hand
- some stuff has so low need of security that it's fine (like configuration site for email news letters or similar where you have to have a mail only based unlock)
- if someone has your email they can do a password reset
- if you replace email code with a login link you some cross device hurdles but fix some of of social enginering vectors (i.e. it's like a password reset on every login)
- you still can combine it with 2FA which if combined with link instead of pin is basically the password reset flow => should be reasonable secure
=> eitherway that login was designed for very low security use cases where you also wouldn't ever bother with 2FA as losing the account doesn't matter, IMHO don't use it for something else :smh:
His comment immediately after describes exactly what happened:
> Even before it has ceased to exists, the MPEG engine had run out of steam – technology- and business wise. The same obscure forces that have hijacked MPEG had kept it hostage to their interests impeding its technical development and keeping it locked to outmoded Intellectual Property licensing models delaying market adoption of MPEG standards. Industry has been strangled and consumers have been deprived of the benefits of new technologies. From facilitators of new opportunities and experiences, MPEG standards have morphed from into roadblocks.
Big companies abused the setup that he was responsible for. Gentlemen's agreements to work together for the benefit of all got gamed into patent landmines and it happened under his watch.
Even many of the big corps involved called out the bullshit, notably Steve Jobs refusing to release a new Quicktime till they fixed some of the most egregious parts of AAC licencing way back in 2002.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-shuns-mpeg-4-licensing-t...
Copyright is cancer. The faster AI industry is going to run it into the ground, the better.
I remember this same guy complaining investments in the MPEG extortionist group would disappear because they couldn't fight against AV1.
He was part of a patent Mafia is is only lamenting he lost power.
Hypocrisy in its finest form.
https://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-solu...
He is not a coder, not a researcher, he is only part of the worst game there is in this industry: a money maker from patents and "standards" you need to pay for to use, implement or claim compatibility.
> At long last everybody realises that the old MPEG business model is now broke
And the entire post is about how dysfunctional MPEG is and how AOM rose to deal with it. It is tragic to waste so much time and money only to produce nothing. He's criticizing the MPEG group and their infighting. He's literally criticizing MPEG's licensing model and the leadership of the companies in MPEG. He's an MPEG member saying MPEG's business model is broken yet no one has a desire to fix it, so it will be beaten by a competitor. Would you not want to see your own organization reform rather than die?
Reminder AOM is a bunch of megacorps with profit motive too, which is why he thinks this ultimately leads to stalled innovation:
> My concerns are at a different level and have to do with the way industry at large will be able to access innovation. AOM will certainly give much needed stability to the video codec market but this will come at the cost of reduced if not entirely halted technical progress. There will simply be no incentive for companies to develop new video compression technologies, at very significant cost because of the sophistication of the field, knowing that their assets will be thankfully – and nothing more – accepted and used by AOM in their video codecs.
> Companies will slash their video compression technology investments, thousands of jobs will go and millions of USD of funding to universities will be cut. A successful “access technology at no cost” model will spread to other fields.
Money is the motivator. Figuring out how to reward investment in pushing the technology forward is his concern. It sounds like he is open to suggestions.
He first points out that a royalty-free format was actually better than the patent-pending alternative that he was responsible for pushing.
In the end, he concludes that the that the progress of video compression would stop if developers can't make money from patents, providing a comparison table on codec improvements that conveniently omits the aforementioned royalty-free code being better than the commercial alternatives pushed by his group.
Besides the above fallacy, the article is simply full of boasting about his own self-importance and religious connotations.
DCVC-RT (https://github.com/microsoft/DCVC) - A deep learning based video codec claims to deliver 21% more compression than h266.
One of the compelling edge AI usecases is to create deep learning based audio/video codecs on consumer hardwares.
One of the large/enterprise AI usecases is to create a coding model that generates deep learning based audio/video codecs for consumer hardwares.
This makes zero sense, right? Even if this was applicable, why would it need a standard? There is no interoperability between game servers of different games
wheybags•3h ago
jbverschoor•3h ago
wheybags•3h ago
egeozcan•3h ago
Taek•2h ago
jbverschoor•2h ago
Av1 for 7
The problem is every platform wants to force their own codec, and get earn royalties from the rest of the world.
They literally sabotaging it. Jxl support even got removed from chrome.
Investment in adopting in software is next to 0.
In hardware it’s a different story, and I’m not sure to what extent which codec can be properly accelerated
TiredOfLife•1h ago
rs186•1h ago
mike_hearn•3h ago
wheybags•3h ago
newsclues•3h ago
Audio and video codecs, document formats like PDF, are all foundational to computing and modern life from government to business, so there is a great incentive to make it all open, and free.
oblio•2h ago
Basically MBA drool material.
newsclues•27m ago
mike_hearn•2h ago
yxhuvud•2h ago
master-lincoln•26m ago
newsclues•31m ago
But education receives a lot of funding from the government.
I think academia should build open source technology (that people can commercialize on their own with the expertise).
Higher education doesn’t need to have massive endowments of real estate and patent portfolio to further educ… administration salaries and vanity building projects.
Academia can serve the world with technology and educated minds.
thinkingQueen•3h ago
And regarding ”royalty-free” codecs please read this https://ipeurope.org/blog/royalty-free-standards-are-not-fre...
bjoli•2h ago
blendergeek•2h ago
Unsurprisingly companies that are losing money because their rent-seeking on media codecs is now over will spread FUD [0] about royalty free codecs.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear%2C_uncertainty_and_doubt
chrismorgan•2h ago
cnst•42m ago
Such a huge catch that the companies that offer you a royalty-free license, only do so on the condition that you're not gonna turn around and abuse your own patents against them!
How exactly is that a bad thing?
How is it different from the (unwritten) social contracts of all humans and even of animals? How is it different from the primal instincts?
pornel•2h ago
In the early days of MPEG codec development was difficult, because most computers weren't capable of encoding video, and the field was in its infancy.
However, by the end of '00s computers were fast enough for anybody to do video encoding R&D, and there was a ton of research to build upon. At that point MPEG's role changed from being a pioneer in the field to being an incumbent with a patent minefield, stopping others from moving the field forward.
mike_hearn•2h ago
The point is, if there had been no incentives to develop codecs, there would have been no MPEG. Other people would have stepped into the void and sometimes did, e.g. RealVideo, but without legal IP protection the codecs would just have been entirely undocumented and heavily obfuscated, relying on tamper-proofed ASICs much faster.
badsectoracula•1h ago
strogonoff•1h ago
tsimionescu•1h ago
The browsers are an interesting case. Neither Chrome nor Edge are really open source, despite Chromium being so, and they are both funded by advertising and marketing money from huge corporations. Safari is of course closed source. And Firefox is an increasingly tiny runner-up. So I don't know if I'd really count Chromium as a FLOSS success story.
Overall, I don't think FLOSS has had the kind of effect that many activists were going for. What has generally happened is that companies building software have realized that there is a lot of value to be found in treating FLOSS software as a kind of barter agreement between companies, where maybe Microsoft helps improve Linux for the benefit of all, but in turn it gets to use, say, Google's efforts on Chromium, and so on. The fact that other companies then get to mooch off of these big collaborations doesn't really matter compared to getting rid of the hassle of actually setting up explicit agreements with so many others.
_alternator_•19m ago
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4693148
sitkack•12m ago
The entire internet, end to end, runs on FLOSS.
zozbot234•1h ago
sitkack•13m ago
The firewall of patents exist precisely because digital video is a way to shakedown the route media would have to travel to get to the end user.
Codecs are not, "harder than" compilers, yet the field of compilers was blown completely open by GCC. Capital didn't see the market opportunity because there wasn't the same possibility of being a gatekeeper for so much attention and money.
The patents aren't because it is difficult, the patents are there because they can extract money from the revenue streams.
cornholio•2h ago
As long as IP law continues in the same form, the alternative to that is completely closed agreements among major companies that will push their own proprietary formats and aggressively enforce their patents.
The fair world where everyone is free to create a new thing, improve upon the frontier codecs, and get a fair reward for their efforts, is simply a fantasy without patent law reform. In the current geopolitical climate, it's very very unlikely for nations where these developments traditionally happened, such as US and western Europe, to weaken their IP laws.
ZeroGravitas•1h ago
They didn't get people to agree on terms up front, they made the final codec with interlocking patents embedded from hundreds of parties and made no attempt to avoid random outsider's patents and then once it was done tried to come to a licence agreement when every minor patent holder had an effective veto on the resulting pool. That's how you end up with multiple pools plus people who own patents and aren't members of any of the pools. It's ridiculous.
My minor conspiracy theory is that if you did it right, then you'd basically end up with something close to open source codecs as that's the best overall outcome.
Everyone benefits from only putting in freely available ideas. So if you want to gouge people with your patents you need to mess this up and "accidentally" create a patent mess.
scotty79•1h ago
phkahler•27m ago
You can say that, but this discussion is in response to the guy who started MPEG and later shut it down. I don't think he'd say its harsh.
Taek•2h ago
Codec development is slow and expensive becuase you can't just release a new codec, you have to dance around patents.
mike_hearn•2h ago
astrange•1h ago
rowanG077•54m ago
deadbabe•1h ago
ghm2199•1h ago
thinkingQueen•1h ago
Until the new codec comes to together all those small optimizations aren’t really worth much, so it’s a long term research project with potentially zero return on investement.
And yes, most of the small optimizations are patented, something that I’ve come to understand isnt’t viewed very favorably by most.
phkahler•13m ago
Codecs are like infrastructure not products. From cameras to servers to iPhones, they all have to use the same codecs to interoperate. If someone comes along with a small optimization it's hard enough to deploy that across the industry. If it's patented you've got another obstacle: nobody wants to pay the incremental cost for a small improvement (it's not even incremental cost once you've got free codecs, it's a complete hassle).
bsindicatr3•1h ago
Maybe you don’t remember the way that the gif format (there was no jpeg, png, or webp initially) had problems with licensing, and then years later having scares about it potentially becoming illegal to use gifs. Here’s a mention of some of the problems with Unisys, though I didn’t find info about these scares on Wikipedia’s GIF or Compuserve pages:
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-in-1994-the-company-wh...
Similarly, the awful history of digital content restriction technology in-general (DRM, etc.). I’m not against companies trying to protect assets, but data assets historically over all time are inherently prone to “use”, whether that use is intentional or unintentional by the one that provided the data. The problem has always been about the means of dissemination, not that the data itself needed to be encoded with a lock that anyone with the key or means to get/make one could unlock nor that it should need to call home, basically preventing the user from actually legitimately being able to use the data.
adzm•1h ago
The GIF page on wikipedia has an entire section for the patent troubles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Unisys_and_LZW_patent_enfo...
tomrod•1h ago
(I know nothing about the legal side of all this, just remembering the time period of Ubuntu circa 2005-2008).
zappb•1h ago
notpushkin•1h ago
Source? I’ve seen Vorbis used in a whole bunch of places.
Notably, Spotify only used Vorbis for a while (still does, but also includes AAC now, for Apple platforms I think).
scott_w•5m ago
breve•6m ago
It's hard to get more mainstream than YouTube and Netflix.
lightedman•1h ago
No, just no. We've had free community codec packs for years before Google even existed. Anyone remember CCCP?
notpushkin•47m ago
leguminous•43m ago
cxr•25m ago
The release of VP3 as open source predates Google's later acquisition of On2 (2010) by nearly a decade.
zoeysmithe•13m ago
If that stuff worked better, linux would have failed entirely, instead near everyone interfaces with a linux machine probably hundreds if not thousands of times a day in some form. Maybe millions if we consider how complex just accessing internet services is and the many servers, routers, mirrors, proxies, etc one encounters in just a trivial app refresh. If not linux, then the open mach/bsd derivatives ios uses.
Then looking even previous to the ascent of linux, we had all manner of free/open stuff informally in the 70s and 80s. Shareware, open culture, etc that led to today where this entire medium only exists because of open standards and open source and volunteering.
Software patents are net loss for society. For profit systems are less efficient than open non-profit systems. No 'middle-man' system is better than a system that goes out of its way to eliminate the middle-man rent-seeker.
thinkingQueen•3h ago
Not to mention the computer clusters to run all the coding sims, thousands and thousands of CPUs are needed per research team.
People who are outside the video coding industry do not understand that it is an industry. It’s run by big companies with large R&D budgets. It’s like saying ”where would we be with AI if Google, OpenAI and Nvidia didn’t have an iron grip”.
MPEG and especially JVET are doing just fine. The same companies and engineers who worked on AVC, HEVC and VVC are still there with many new ones especially from Asia.
MPEG was reorganized because this Leonardo guy became an obstacle, and he’s been angry about ever since. Other than that I’d say business as usual in the video coding realm.
roenxi•3h ago
We'd be where we are. All the codec-equivalent aspects of their work are unencumbered by patents and there are very high quality free models available in the market that are just given away. If the multimedia world had followed the Google example it'd be quite hard to complain about the codecs.
thinkingQueen•2h ago
The top AI companies use very restrictive licenses.
I think it’s actually the other way around and AI industry will actually end up following the video coding industry when it comes to patents, royalties, licenses etc.
roenxi•2h ago
If it is a matter of laws, China would just declare the law doesn't count to dodge around the US chip sanctions. Which, admittedly, might happen - but I don't see how that could result in much more freedom than we already have now. Having more Chinese people involved is generally good for prices, but that doesn't have much to do with market structure as much as they work hard and do things at scale.
> The top AI companies use very restrictive licenses.
These models are supported by the Apache 2.0 license ~ https://openai.com/open-models/
Are they lying to me? It is hard to get much more permissive than Apache 2.
mike_hearn•2h ago
NVIDIA's advantage over AMD is largely in the drivers and CUDA i.e. their software. If it weren't for IP law or if NVIDIA had foolishly made their software fully open source, AMD could have just forked their PTX compiler and NVIDIAs advantage would never have been established. In turn that'd have meant they wouldn't have any special privileges at TSMC.
oblio•2h ago
rwmj•3h ago
(The answer is that most of the work would be done by companies who have an interest in video distribution - eg. Google - but don't profit directly by selling codecs. And universities for the more research side of things. Plus volunteers gluing it all together into the final system.)
thinkingQueen•2h ago
People don’t develop video codecs for fun like they do with software. And the reason is that it’s almost impossible to do without support from the industry.
eqvinox•2h ago
You wouldn't know if it had already happened, since such a codec would have little chance of success, possibly not even publication. Your proposition is really unprovable in either direction due to the circular feedback on itself.
bayindirh•2h ago
Hmm, let me check my notes:
Some of these guys have standards bodies as supporters, but in all cases, bigger groups formed behind them, after they made considerable effort. QOI and QOA is written by a single guy just because he's bored.For example, FLAC is a worst of all worlds codec for industry to back. A streamable, seekable, hardware-implementable, error-resistant, lossless codec with 8 channels, 32 bit samples, and up to 640KHz sample rate, with no DRM support. Yet we have it, and it rules consumer lossless audio while giggling and waving at everyone.
On the other hand, we have LAME. An encoder which also uses psycho-acoustic techniques to improve the resulting sound quality and almost everyone is using it, because the closed source encoders generally sound lamer than LAME in the same bit-rates. Remember, MP3 format doesn't have an reference encoder. If the decoder can read the file and it sounds the way you expect, then you have a valid encoder. There's no spec for that.
> Are you really saying that patents are preventing people from writing the next great video codec?
Yes, yes, and, yes. MPEG and similar groups openly threatened free and open codecs by opening "patent portfolio forming calls" to create portfolios to fight with these codecs, because they are terrified of being deprived of their monies.
If patents and license fees are not a problem for these guys, can you tell me why all professional camera gear which can take videos only come with "personal, non-profit and non-professional" licenses on board, and you have pay blanket extort ^H^H^H^H^H licensing fees to these bodies to take a video you can monetize?
For the license disclaimers in camera manuals, see [0].
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42736254
Taek•2h ago
You don't *have* to add all the rigour. If you develop a new technique for video compression, a new container for holding data, etc, you can just try it out and share it with the technical community.
Well, you could, if you weren't afraid of getting sued for infringing on patents.
fires10•2h ago
unlord•2h ago
As someone who lead an open source team (of majority volunteers) for nearly a decade at Mozilla, I can tell you that people do work on video codecs for fun, see https://github.com/xiph/daala
Working with fine people from Xiph.Org and the IETF (and later AOM) on royalty free formats Theora, Opus, Daala and AV1 was by far the most fun, interesting and fulfilling work I've had as professional engineer.
tux3•1h ago
Actually, are Xiph people still involved in AVM? It seems like it's being developed a little bit differently than AV1. I might have lost track a bit.
scott_w•2h ago
Yes, that’s exactly what people are saying.
People are also saying that companies aren’t writing video codecs.
In both cases, they can be sued for patent infringement if they do.
raverbashing•2h ago
The question is more, "who would write the HTTP spec?" except instead of sending text back and forth you need experts in compression, visual perception, video formats, etc
rwmj•1h ago
mike_hearn•2h ago
Our industry has come to take Google's enormous corporate generosity for granted, but there was zero need for it to be as helpful to open computing as it has been. It would have been just as successful with YouTube if Chrome was entirely closed source and they paid for video codec licensing, or if they developed entirely closed codecs just for their own use. In fact nearly all Google's codebase is closed source and it hasn't held them back at all.
Google did give a lot away though, and for that we should be very grateful. They not only released a ton of useful code and algorithms for free, they also inspired a culture where other companies also do that sometimes (e.g. Llama). But we should also recognize that relying on the benevolence of 2-3 idealistic billionaires with a browser fetish is a very time and place specific one-off, it's not a thing that can be demanded or generalized.
In general, R&D is costly and requires incentives. Patent pools aren't perfect, but they do work well enough to always be defining the state-of-the-art and establish global standards too (digital TV, DVDs, streaming.... all patent pool based mechanisms).
breve•8m ago
It's not a social mechanism. And it's not generosity.
Google pushes huge amounts of video and audio through YouTube. It's in Google's direct financial interest to have better video and audio codecs implemented and deployed in as many browsers and devices as possible. It reduces Google's costs.
Royalty-free video and audio codecs makes that implementation and deployment more likely in more places.
> Patent pools aren't perfect
They are a long way from perfect. Patent pools will contact you and say, "That's a nice codec you've got there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it."
Three different patent pools are trying to collect licencing fees for AV1:
https://www.sisvel.com/licensing-programmes/audio-and-video-...
https://accessadvance.com/licensing-programs/vdp-pool/
https://www.avanci.com/video/
mschuster91•2h ago
How about governments? Radar, Laser, Microwaves - all offshoots of US military R&D.
There's nothing stopping either the US or European governments from stepping up and funding academic progress again.
rs186•1h ago
If we did that we would probably be stuck with low-bitrate 720p videos on YouTube.
somethingsome•49m ago
fidotron•1h ago
Reason077•36m ago
Has AV1 solved this, to some extent? Although there are patent claims against it (patents for technologies that are fundamental to all the modern video codecs), it still seems better than the patent & licensing situation for h264 / h265.