The Fine Print: Do You Have to License h.264?

02. May, 2010 2 Comments

From: Eugenia Loli-Queru / OSNews

I don’t attest to being a lawyer and I don’t do a good job of reading the fine print in user manuals and software installations. I’ve agreed to so many “terms and conditions” that I’ve never read – and even if I had read them, I wouldn’t have understand them.

Eugenia Loli-Queru of at OSNews uncovered some interesting fine print of the manuals of many of the cameras you’re carrying around today. It seems that licensing for the video codec h.264 is controlled by MPEG-LA, and they’ve written into the terms of service in virtually all cameras that use the h.264 codec a restriction that the camera only be used for personal projects. If you use your camera for a paid project – even if the camera is advertised as a PROFESSIONAL camera – you may be subject to paying a licensing fee to MPEG-LA.

I’m not sure if they’re actually trying to collect at this time, but the potential is there.

Read the entire story for a better explanation…

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2 Responses to “The Fine Print: Do You Have to License h.264?”

  1. Bill Skinner 03. May, 2010 at 3:30 pm

    Could be that delivery via “flash” is the answer… What do you have to say about that Steve Jobs…

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