Jpeg pwnage
MonsieurEvil
Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 4Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 4Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
in Off-Topic
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Yeah I rememember that. But it was a complete faliure anyway, as I know this will turn into. It's just idiotic.
Dang.
<!--EDIT|MonsieurEvil|July 18 2002,16:38-->
and yes i remember back when CompuServe was going to take all our GIF's away. heh. this will most likely end up the same thing I think. But then again the GIF thing was really before e-commerse and all the money making crap on the net, that's back when it was just to exchange pr0n errm i mean information... yeah.. yeah that's it...
p.s. don't use jpeg for pr0n use mpeg! no lawsuits for you (cept from the pr0n company who's copyrights you are infringing)
anyone trying to prevent usage of jpegs are useless idiots
Fraunhofer.
<a href="http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25713.html" target="_blank">ISO Withdraws Support for JPEG format</a>
Be sure to read the whole thing, as there are points on both sides, and it's still up in the air. But it could easily amount to the death of open-source and freeware apps that create or render JPEGS until 2004. They will need to pay to play. So why a company like Adobe will just fork over the millions to use the JPEG standard, the guys making Opera or Mozilla will be up a creek.
<!--EDIT|MonsieurEvil|July 23 2002,17:39-->
ISO is the International Office of Standards. They decide what's what in the world of business practices - basically, they set the standards. They have said there is enough evidence in this case by Forgent Networks to declare JPEG something which is somebody's patented property, and can't be covered as a royalty-free standard anymore.
So what does this mean?
This gives the Forgent company (who wants to get money for licensing the ability to created JPEG files) a lot of credibility. If this happens and they win their patent suit, it means Forgent will charge each company that wants to make software which creates or displays JPEG files. Each one.
Big deal, you say. Who cares if someone sticks it to Microsoft to get Internet Explorer legal, or Adobe to be able to legally create JPEG's in photoshop?
Well, big companies like Adobe or Microsoft can easily afford to pay. Groups like the makers of Mozilla or Opera browsers, or most of the graphics apps in Linux, or anybody else working on a low budget (like the 4000 different multimedia projects at SourceForge) will no longer be able to make software that display JPEG's. That means, they will be useless to anyone, and will all go away forever.
On the flipside, the patent (even if legal) is only until 2004. Which means that it may be tied up in court until it's too late and JPEG's become royalty free again. Still, if they win an injunction, a big company like Adobe settles, etc. then it won't matter, as 2 years will be too long for the likes of PaintShop Pro to be missing an entire massive aspect of multimedia.
Now do you see?
Eeeeep!