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Comment by shocks | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't look like it; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

> H.264 is protected by patents owned by various parties. A license covering most (but not all) patents essential to H.264 is administered by patent pool MPEG LA.[2] Commercial use of patented H.264 technologies requires the payment of royalties to MPEG LA and other patent owners. MPEG LA has allowed the free use of H.264 technologies for streaming internet video that is free to end users, and Cisco Systems pays royalties to MPEG LA on behalf of the users of binaries for its open source H.264 encoder.

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It is an open standard. Anyone can purchase and implement it, and it was developed by ISO. The technologies are not royalty free in the US. Don't conflate the two. *

Edit: I emphasize this mainly because the terms have a specific meaning in standards jargon but also because it places the blame for software patent abuses on the wrong parties (the standards developers rather than the lawyers and legislators).

blame for software patent abuses on the wrong parties (the standards developers)

Uh, anyone familiar with the MPEG process will assure you that the companies involved love (let me restate that: PREFER) to bring in technology on which they own the patents so they get a good cut of the resulting patent pool.

Sometimes this is even done even though it technically makes no sense. Best example: hybrid filter-bank in MP3.

The process also provides no protection or discouragement from patents from semi-involved industry partners appearing later on, etc.

This difference in approach is a stark contrast to the IETF, which is why Opus work, and future AV1 work are happening under the IETF rather than the MPEG groups.

OK, so it is open, but not free ? Is it available for academic purposes free of cost ?

No, not at all. There's even restrictions on distributing H264/AVC video files themselves.

You have to pay royalties to actually use it, but if you just want to read the thing, you can get it for free from the ITU. https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264-201602-S/en

As the grandparent comment says, it is free for non-commercial use.

Of course, this also only applies in countries which enforce software patents.

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