[humanmarkup] It looks bad for MPEG-4

Hi Everyone,

I'm busily getting caught up after the anti-climactic finish of last 
week's face to face WSIA meetings, so this article caught my 
attention, and, sadly, confirmed my fears about MPEG-4 as a useful 
standard for video, despite the fact that it is integrated with 
VRML97/X3D. Luckily, we in the Web3D Consortium did not join our 
standard at the hip to MPEG-4 and have strongly resisted the attempt 
to include it as de facto standard for video streaming in this year's 
architecture review in January. Good thing, too, as events a short 
while later, that I did not follow until this article opened my eyes, 
have since proved.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-892259.html

So, since the patent holders in the MPEG-4 group have shown their 
intention to charge for the use of the standard, I think we can put 
the idea of including a recommendation for the use of MPEG-4 for 
streaming HumanMarkup into cold storage. I recommend asking them 
formally to change their minds with a legally binding agreement to 
never charge for use of the standard in applications which include 
other standards which likewise do not charge for use of patents, 
although I do not recommend doing this until after we have a 
recommended standard ourselves in the approval-vote stage.

Ciao,
Rex
-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
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Tel: 510-849-2309
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