Much as I have been enjoying Linux, one of the biggest hassles I have had (more in some distros, and less in others) has been in the video streaming department. I previously discussed the Flashplayer problem, and a way to work around it, but the main reason for these problems is not technology per se, but licensing. Linux is free, Open Source software and that poses quite a problem in the video department. Sure, there are plenty of codecs that can be installed and configured later, but building them into the distributions is impossible because of licensing laws.

Anyway, in the course of looking at the problem I kept stumbling onto something that I find downright creepy. Glenn Reynolds had mentioned it a little while back, and the piece he linked is something I keep running into in these discussions.

I keep kvetching about how things are getting to the point where your computer is not yours.

Well, it turns out that your camera is not yours.

...there is something very important, that the vast majority of both consumers and video professionals don't know: ALL modern video cameras and camcorders that shoot in h.264 or mpeg2, come with a license agreement that says that you can only use that camera to shoot video for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes (go on, read your manuals). I was first made aware of such a restriction when someone mentioned that in a forum, about the Canon 7D dSLR. I thought it didn't apply to me, since I had bought the double-the-price, professional (or at least prosumer), Canon 5D Mark II. But looking at its license agreement last night (page 241), I found out that even my $3000 camera comes with such a basic license. So, I downloaded the manual for the Canon 1D Mark IV, a camera that costs $5000, and where Canon consistently used the word "professional" and "video" on the same sentence on their press release for that camera. Nope! Same restriction: you can only use your professional video dSLR camera (professional, according to Canon's press release), for non-professional reasons. And going even further, I found that even their truly professional video camcorder, the $8000 Canon XL-H1A that uses mpeg2, also comes with a similar restriction. You can only use your professional camera for non-commercial purposes. For any other purpose, you must get a license from MPEG-LA and pay them royalties for each copy sold. I personally find this utterly unacceptable.

This sucks big time. But most users are not worried, because the MPEG-LA lobby is holding off on enforcement until 2015. So you can go right ahead and have your YouTube videos and you don't have to worry that they might not be yours, because the camera you made them with wasn't yours.

It's as if they're deliberately leading everyone into an open corral, to be closed later. All cameras, and all video editors and players are encumbered by this restriction:

And no, this is not just a Canon problem (which to me sounds like false advertising). Sony and Panasonic, and heck, even the Flip HD, have the exact same licensing restriction. Also, all video editors and official media players come with similarly restricted codec licenses! Apparently, MPEG-LA makes it difficult for camera manufacturers, or video editor software houses, to obtain a cheap-enough license that allows their users to use their codec any way they want! This way, MPEG-LA caches in not only from the manufacturers and software providers, but also artists, and even viewers (more on that later). Maximizing their profit, they are!

Recently, MPEG-LA extended their "free internet broadcasting AVC license" until 2015. So until then, users can use a licensed encoder (x264 doesn't count, in their view this makes both the video producer AND every random viewer of that video *liable*), to stream online royalty-free, as long as that video is free to stream. However, what's "free to stream"? According to one interpretation of the U.S. law (disclaimer: I'm no lawyer), if you stream your video with ads (e.g. Youtube, Vimeo), then that's a non-free usage. It's commercial video, even if you, the producer, makes no dime out of it (and that's a definition and interpretation of the US law that even Creative Commons believes so, if I am to judge from their last year's "what's a commercial video" survey). MPEG-LA never made a distinction in their newly renewed license between "free streaming on your own personal ad-free homepage", and "streaming via youtube/vimeo". For all we know, they can still go against Youtube/Vimeo for not paying them [extra] royalties (to what, I assume, they already pay) for EVERY video viewed via their service, or go against the video producer himself.

And then there's the other thing too: Both Youtube and Vimeo use the open source x264 encoder to encode their videos, as far as I know. Youtube's version is a highly modified x264 version (forked, I believe), and Vimeo's is a much more vanilla version (since their company has fewer C/C++ engineers than Youtube). Vimeo is probably in even worse situation because they offer their in-house encoded x264 MP4 videos for free download too, prompting users to download these x264-created videos, and break their license agreement with MPEG-LA for using unlicensed videos with their [licensed] decoder installed on their PC! Since we know for a fact that x264 is breaking the MPEG-LA license agreements (because their devs didn't license it with MPEG-LA), can this make Vimeo, myself the video producer, AND every of these millions of viewers, liable, in the eyes of MPEG-LA?

Is this kind of licensing even enforceable? Possibly no. Am I panicking for nothing? Quite possibly, yes. But I still don't like the language of the license and the restrictions it opposes.

In my opinion, while the current MPEG-LA execs still seem to have some small common sense, there's nothing protecting us from changing their current somewhat-common-sense execs in 5 or 10 years time, with some bat-shit crazy ones. Their license agreement is so broad, that ALLOWS for crazy lawsuits against 99.999% of the population (most people have watched a Youtube video, you see, even if themselves might not even own a PC).

Think about it.

Worried enough to return to something I said in a previous post:

...Software is one of those gray areas between property and freedom, and the waters are further muddied by the fact that it's a form of speech. So, copyright law applies, and Microsoft and Apple are therefore fully justified in licensing and selling their software, as well as (as I must grudgingly admit), use the power of the police to thwart those who violate their property rights. This is problematic, though, especially when they want to go further, and insist on finding property rights in things which are embedded in Open Source software. Wars can result from such stuff, and it is wise for everyone to remember Hemingway's and MacArthur's warnings about "undefended wealth."

Moreover, when property rights are found in something, and those rights yield great profits, they can become expansionist and hegemonic, and greed can set in. When that happens, it is not always clear whether the hegemony was caused by a need for greater profits or by the philosophy that wealth has to be defended. Which is why a leading cause of the Civil War was not so much slavery per se, but its expansion into new territory. (As well as the obnoxious idea that free blacks were not free, but should be liable to become property.)

Some people think they own what others think is not theirs to own. The corporations which constitute MPEG-LA think you do not have the right to do what you want with your own property, because they think that part of it is theirs.

This problem is not going to go away.