Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

If I ask my city if they will enforce their explicitly written zoning policy against renting a single room to a tenant, they won’t write back. But they also have no intention of enforcing that policy.

It doesn’t make them evil…just bureaucratic.

The judiciary has decided to ignore the preamble "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". If that language was respected, the way parents currently work would be clearly unconstitutional.

I don't have ire for patent trolls, they exist within the system they create. I have ire for the patent business because I've read and written a number of patent applications, and see the entire thing as mostly bogus.

Normally you can't win a lawsuit without proving damages. My overarching point is that buying IP with no intent to use it does not create damages when someone infringes it. And relicensing IP is not "using" the IP to me - you either use it, or lose it. Unless of course, you're the original author (and by author, I mean the humans, not businesses that paid them)

The point of IP laws is to protect creators and encourage development. When the resulting markets do the opposite you have to ask if the design of those laws is flawed, and I really believe that.

My ire for patent trolls is distinct.

The patent "business" is just garbage. A company full of lawyers collecting rents on mathematical algorithms does not "promote the progress of science and useful arts".

I think there is still a place for patents, but most of the time they seem to just stifle innovation and increase the cost of everything.

You’re conflating “content creators you’re aware of” and the entire collection of industries that comprise commercial art. Indeed, the search engine optimizing celebrity influencer content creation market is booming— a lot of it either being backed by legacy media, re-using other people’s content directly, or being better at marketing AI knockoffs of other people’s content than the original creators. Do you think that any of those content creators hesitate for a second to use copyright protections against someone gaining popularity using their scripts/footage/audio, etc to make the same kind of content? Beyond that, most commercial art isn’t feasible to sell in those mediums. The people benefiting from this is so infinitesimally small compared to and not representative of the many commercial art markets at large— everything from concept artists to graphic designers to dancers— that it’s entirely forgivable to exclude it from analysis altogether, let alone basing your analysis on it. You might as well deem someone with a gunshot wound perfectly healthy based entirely on their hair.

The other direct-sell platforms you referenced have already been flooded by people bulk-creating AI knock-offs. The giant slop hose has already won the race to the bottom making it nearly impossible for people that aren’t already established to get started. It’s most obvious in stock photo markets, but in music, some of the creation tools specifically advertise generating output to avoid triggering copyright scanners.

And no, you can’t just go grab a job at the big studios because a) a lot of them are using, or assuming they’ll soon be able to effectively use, the same AI tools that everyone else is based in other peoples labor and eliminating FTEs, b) since so many commercial artists have been displaced by tech companies essentially selling their work, everybody— including former freelancers and indies— is shooting for the same dwindling set of jobs, and c) nobody in those industries is leaving their jobs because they know it might be the end of their career if they do.

I don’t expect you to understand the markets outside of your area of expertise, but I would appreciate your being less patronizing while you attempt to explain my career to me.

'MrBeast' please don't compare this nonsense to creativity. He's a business man, and an extremely dishonest one [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dslLBsHkVzE]. A genius at 'optimising' 'content' for 'the algorithm'. The man has not one creative or artistic bone in his body.

It's enormously disingenuous to compare the rise of hucksters like this to artists or creative professionals.

Further - gaming has just seen the greatest layoffs in history, as all the major studios and publishers attempt to reduce costs and leverage 'AI', since the games as a service model is winner takes all. Independent film is all but dead since the franchise film has taken the box office. And music, are you kidding? Spotify has so cucked musicians that it's actively replacing them with AI generated mush, trained on their work, and the economic disparity is so great there's nothing they can do about it - https://www.fastcompany.com/91170296/spotify-ai-music

> all made brands for themselves

Ah there's the magic word! You shouldn't have to be a "brand"... the people you listed are not who I would call "independent".

Capitalism is the root of evil to all this. Sorry.

Using ffmpeg is not illegal.

Any software you write, or even run, may or may not infringe some half-assed patent, and you will never know until the troll wielding it and deliberately trying to keep it hidden, pounces on you, usually demanding money, threatening to use their government-backed exclusive rights to their "invention" so you either pay what they ask, do what they ask, or they sue you for infringement and sometimes win. Larger companies have large troves of patents and they really don't care what's in them, they care that they have lots and you don't, and they can use them to crush you in court unless you give in to whatever they demand.

Some companies you know of may already have given in, and may already be paying licensing fees to patent holders. It sickens me.

I'm not suggesting, I'm telling you there is an entity, formerly MPEG-LA, now Via Licensing Corp, who maintain a pool of patents that supposedly claim exclusive rights to aspects of some of the video codecs implemented in FFMPEG.

If they hear you're making money, and you use video codecs -- ffmpeg's implementation or otherwise -- they may come to shake you down. They get to pick and choose who they accuse of patent infringement. They can do it at any time (before the expiry of the last patent in the pool). They can do it at the point where they'll have maximum leverage over you. Software patents give them that opportunity.

Should they get in touch with you, your response should be made in consultation with qualified lawyers.

https://ffmpeg.org/legal.html

> Q: Bottom line: Should I be worried about patent issues if I use FFmpeg?

> A: Are you a private user working with FFmpeg for your own personal purposes? If so, there is remarkably little reason to be concerned. Are you using FFmpeg in a commercial software product? Read on to the next question...

> Q: Is it perfectly alright to incorporate the whole FFmpeg core into my own commercial product?

> A: You might have a problem here. There have been cases where companies have used FFmpeg in their products. These companies found out that once you start trying to make money from patented technologies, the owners of the patents will come after their licensing fees. Notably, MPEG LA is vigilant and diligent about collecting for MPEG-related technologies.

France was one of the first countries in Europe to ban software patents, in 1968.

France is also a party to the European Patent Convention, which specifically states that programs for computers are not patentable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Eur...

Software patents are mainly a US-only thing.

No, but human nature is such that all it takes is a handful of unscrupulous people who see laws that they can use to their financial advantage. We can certainly assign blame to the people who work for MPEG-LA/Via-LA, but ultimately there will always be organizations like that as long as the law allows or incentivizes that sort of thing.

If we care about outcomes, the only thing to do is get the law changed so companies like that can't exist. Not because they are banned, but because there's no business model there.