The MPEG
LA, a consortium of patent holders to H.264, has announced today to demand the end of 2016, no license fees for the use of H.264 video for free on the Internet . Hitherto it has been feared that, from 2011 as target date of the last license period in accordance with the provisions of the license, MPEG LA has not only like to pay commercial vendors for the use of H.264 would need, but also providers of free videos, so video portals such as YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion . Only smaller sites with less than 100,000 users per year would not have been subject to licensing - as well as providers of videos under 12 minutes in length. Probably wants to MPEG LA, the gradual development of H.264 the de facto standard for video on the net waiting for their own strengthen market power. The presently relevant decision takes the wind of the threat of alternative codecs for H.264 licensing payment for the time being out of the sails and let the MPEG LA may do so in increasing revenue by En-/Decoder licenses, which must now be purchased by browser manufacturers, they want to http:/ enable / www.slashcam.de/news/single/YouTube-startet-ein-bisschen-Filmverleih-8160.html (playback of H.264 directly from the browser by HTML5), hope. After 2016, the MPEG LA may then still decide to demand royalties for Internet video, all according to their view that will be achieved even with free video revenue (eg advertising) to which it wants to be involved - a danger that only through the alternative use of an open, free video codecs like Ogg Theora would be averted.
