Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC and the Dirac codec

[Alex Hudson]

On Mon, 2004-05-31 at 16:19, P.L.Hayes wrote:
> Do you know where they've applied for these patents?

(I don't, but would guess UKPTO).

> I hope this isn't the reason they've never (afaik) reported anything
> about the European patent controversy.

The BBC isn't a single entity by any means, and the news team are
scrupulous about this kind of thing. As for lack of coverage; I don't
know. There has been some, I remember interviews with RMS and Bruce
Perens that mentioned it, and I know BBC radio were interested in
running a story at one point. 

> I don't really understand what is going on here; Is this work 
> being done by the BBC or by BBC Technology Ltd:

BBC R&D; it's a broadcast technology and nothing to do with the various
service organisations they are/use. In particular, it's nothing to do
with the various Ogg dabblings the BBC has done.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/

> I'm no lawyer but the MPL looks pretty useless to 
> me if someone else owns the patents to ideas expressed in the code covered by 
> it.

Yeah, that's pretty much the case, but in that respect it's the same as
copyright: if you're not the rights holder, you can't say how something
should be used.

> Is the BBC protecting Dirac from attack by corporate monopolists or is it 
> instead trying to protect corporate investment in Dirac from possible future 
> devaluation by people like those who are now creating it?

In terms of "why did they patent it?". Mostly defensively, I would guess
- the video market is possibly the biggest patent minefield I know of,
and there would be plenty of players who wouldn't want to see Dirac
used. But the BBC does indeed have it's own selfish interest at heart
with Dirac: if it can be practically useful (at the moment, you can't
playback in realtime, for example) then they will likely use it. BBC R&D
develop technologies for the BBC for a number of reasons; one of them is
to reduce costs (faster, better, cheaper - in this case, cheaper [fewer
licence fees]).

Cheers,

Alex.