Internet companies get tired of patent trolls, will create their own video codec to use with their video applications

Sep 2, 2015 09:44 GMT  ·  By
Internet companies get tired of patent trolls, will create their own video codec to use with their video applications
   Internet companies get tired of patent trolls, will create their own video codec to use with their video applications

A group of Web industry giants have come together to help create the future's next-gen video file format, in an attempt to thwart the actions of today's patent trolls.

This new initiative is called the Alliance for Open Media, and its founding members include seven of the biggest names in tech: Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix.

As the alliance's mission states, their goal is to provide a new video format that is, above all, open, interoperable, optimized for Web delivery, and scales well with different bandwidth conditions and device types.

This new video format also needs to have a lower computation footprint than current solutions, needs to deliver a consistent high-quality experience, and must work with real-time video delivery systems.

The Alliance for Open Media also plans to provide their new video codec as a royalty-free specification, one for which companies won't have to pay to use, as is the case with current video formats like MPEG.

The new video file format will be open sourced

According to a blog post on the Mozilla Foundation's website, the new video file format will follow W3C's Patent Policy and code will be released under the very permissive Apache 2.0 License.

"This means all Alliance participants are waiving royalties both for the codec implementation and for any patents on the codec itself," said David Bryant, Vice President of Platform Engineering and Interim CTO at Mozilla.

Currently, the Alliance for Open Media only consists of its seven founding members, but they plan to let other companies join in in the upcoming months and participate to discussions related to the video format and/or its development.

In the past, founding members like Mozilla, Google and Cisco have developed their own video codecs. Google created WebM, VP9 and VP10, Cisco created Thor, while Mozilla helped design Daala with the Xiph.org Foundation.

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