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Bug 11614 - AAC and MP4 are ABSOLUTELY not acceptable for the open web. I don't care how many strings Apple are pulling - keep your patented encumbered trash - we don't want it.
Summary: AAC and MP4 are ABSOLUTELY not acceptable for the open web. I don't care how ...
Status: RESOLVED NEEDSINFO
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LC1 HTML5 spec (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Other other
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-12-29 08:18 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2011-08-04 05:16 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description contributor 2010-12-29 08:18:46 UTC 
Specification: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/video.html
Section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-source-element

Comment:
AAC and MP4 are ABSOLUTELY not acceptable for the open web. I don't care how
many strings Apple are pulling - keep your patented encumbered trash - we
don't want it.

Posted from: 119.31.80.139
Comment 1 Olivier Gendrin 2010-12-29 08:54:07 UTC 
I think JPEG and GIF have patents too. Should we get rid of them too ?
Comment 2 Aryeh Gregor 2010-12-29 20:00:35 UTC 
HTML5 does not require or encourage browsers to support AAC, MP4, or any other format.  What change do you want made to the specification?

Note that changing the spec to prohibit support of patent-encumbered formats would not actually make any browsers stop supporting them.  Thus no such change is likely, because the spec's primary goal is to reflect reality.  This is why the spec no longer requires Theora support.

(In reply to comment #1)
> I think JPEG and GIF have patents too. Should we get rid of them too ?

GIF was finalized in 1989, so all its patents have necessarily expired.  JPEG might theoretically have patents that apply to it, and some parties have tried to enforce patents on it (and failed AFAICT), but JPEG users do not typically pay royalties.  The JPEG committee, like the W3C, operates on the principle that its standards should be usable royalty-free.  Ogg, Theora, Vorbis, V8, Matroska, and WebM are all developed under similar principles.

The MPEG group operates on the totally incompatible principle of "reasonable and non-discriminatory" patent fees, so AAC and MP4 are covered by a large number of known and aggressively enforced patents.  Thus their patent situation is not really comparable at all.
Comment 3 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2011-02-16 09:17:32 UTC 
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Did Not Understand Request
Change Description: no spec change
Rationale: see comment 2.
Comment 4 Michael[tm] Smith 2011-08-04 05:16:33 UTC 
mass-move component to LC1