[doawoo]

Having dealt with MPEG-LA before, it makes me so wildly angry that a company composed of nothing but lawyers can suck money out of any product that wants to use a widely supported, arguably critical video codec.

The process for reporting to them for sales is also horrible. Uploading excel spreadsheets to an ASP.NET backend that's barely holding together. It's minimal effort from them to leverage all possible legal action over you. Horrible.

[duped]

I'm no lawyer but I feel like a company shouldn't have standing to contest a patent if they can't demonstrate damages, like a product losing sales because someone else is selling a competing product using technology under their patent.

And "we paid for something and want ROI" are not damages. There's no legal right to profit from an investment. You gotta use it or lose it.

[DannyBee]

Unfortunately, patent rights are quite literally the right to exclude others from doing things. That's it.

Patent owners don't even have the right to make the invention themselves (because it may infringe on other patents).

So your problem is fairly foundational.

[webstrand]

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.

[mjevans]

'useful arts' in that era meant what we'd call 'trades skills' today.

'To promote the progress of science (total human knowledge) and skilled technical artisans.'

Arguably, given the pace of technical innovation, and the clear effects on independent artisans, there shouldn't be patents at all. Copyright should also be re-evaluated, and if it still exists (it's so very easy to copy anything these days), and targeted towards maximum cultural diffusion of expressions of ideas within pop-culture cycles (20 years sounds LONG for such a timescale).

Trade Marks, however, those are consumer protection and product reputation issues and call for registered (pay a fee to the government) marks that renew as long as paid.

[DannyBee]

I'm not a fan of patents, but i'm not sure this is fair.

That phrase had a fairly specific meaning back when it was written, and they seem to be hewing to it.

It does not match today's colloquial understanding for sure, but that doesn't mean they are ignoring it.

[dylan604]

In this case though, licensing their code is their use of the product. Don't let your ire of patent trolls lump everyone together. I'm not saying MPEG/Via-LA are angels, but they own rights to code that is used by millions while holding active licenses with people using that code.

[duped]

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.

[lmm]

> 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)

If I come up with a brilliant new compression algorithm, but don't have the software development skills to make a robust production implementation, what difference does it make whether I hire someone to write that production implementation, license my algorithm to someone who writes that production implementation, or sell my patent rights to someone who writes that production implementation (or licenses my algorithm to someone else who does that)? Heck, given that software is fluffy abstract stuff rather than physical goods, would you consider selling a program to count, or is it only someone who makes a hardware device that uses the algorithm who gets to count?

[duped]

So there's three cases here worth talking about.

1) You patent something, but don't do anything with it except enforce the patent.

2) You patent something, but the only thing you do with it is license others to use it, potentially hiring someone else to manage the licenses but you retain ownership.

3) You patent something, you sell the patent to someone else to do 2)

Cases 1 and 3 have significant negative effects on both technology and society that the law should prevent. Case 2 covers your brilliant new invention but don't bring it to market yourself and is fine.

The key notion here is that you cannot sell intellectual property. It's ephemeral. You can license it and create all sorts of creative license terms, but once you're dead or the timeline of exclusive rights runs out, or you personally stop "using" it (or all companies stop using it), the patent effectively expires because you can't claim damages if you or your license holders have not seen any negative impacts.

In a perfect world, "defensive" patent strategies and rent-seeking by middlemen would be prevented by construction. This maximizes the incentive to innovate and share ideas, instead of bottling them up. If you want true, exclusive rights to something, don't share it in a patent.

[lmm]

> Cases 1 and 3 have significant negative effects on both technology and society that the law should prevent. Case 2 covers your brilliant new invention but don't bring it to market yourself and is fine.

How are 2 and 3 meaningfully different as far as anyone outside is concerned though? If I own a field and I'm not a farmer, no-one cares much whether I rent it out to someone else to farm on or sell it to (either for some proportion of their income or for a straight up flat fee). Economically it's all the same - you can rent something or you can buy it funded with a loan, and your cash flows will be more or less identical.

[kelnos]

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.

[chefandy]

As an artist, this sort of shit makes me apoplectic. I’m frustrated that society has no way to compensate people that do creative work for a living other than the same mechanism that virii like this extract money from other people’s work using a paper turnstile and heavy penalties for violations. And between the two kinds of entities, only one realistically even has the significant resources needed to engage the mechanism. I understand that a lot of folks in tech consider both of these usages to be largely equivalent but that’s a different conversation.

[echelon]

> I’m frustrated that society has no way to compensate people that do creative work for a living other than the same mechanism that virii like this extract money from other people’s work using a paper turnstile and heavy penalties for violations.

Steam, YouTube, Instagram, Patreon, BandCamp, commissions... The creator economy is booming and is on the rise. I've seen some metrics say it's got a 40% CAGR.

MrBeast, PsychicPebbles, VivziePop, Joel Haver - all made brands for themselves. The currency is personal brand. Most of the creators I follow these days are indies, not big studios.

But even excepting that, you can always work for a big studio if you're not interested in the additional headache of working for yourself and building a personal brand. Gaming, film, and music are huge and there are companies hiring in these spaces.

[chefandy]

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.

[dbspin]

'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

[chefandy]

Additionally, Mr. Beast and other “content creators” are really just the face of small-to-medium-sized companies with brands established in much lower-competition markets with much lower standards and almost certainly could not recreate that success today as indie YouTubers, etc. Beast had over 250 employees as of a 2023 interview with a former employee. At one point I saw more 3D generalist ads for positions in his thumbnails department than from most huge studios, and they’re not looking for one-off work from freelancers— they’ve got an established 3D pipeline set up and they’re looking for full time staff that have experience with it. For THUMBNAILS. So now, when you’re starting out, you’re competing for search results space and recommendations with corporate, or legacy-media-backed marketing agencies presenting themselves as independent creators. Good. Fucking. Luck.

The only naive “Kumbaya, my lord” perspective around here is that the current “creative” tooling the corporate tech sector is building is positive for humanity’s creative landscape, and they didn’t just take what used to be the largest and healthiest independent creative marketplace humanity has ever experienced and hand it directly to corporate entities and low-effort, low-value bullshit “content” hucksters.

[doawoo]

> 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.

[echelon]

Every single indie band I like is a brand.

Pardon my French, but get the stick out of your eye and lighten up a little bit about this.

Not everything should be "kumbaya, my lord" neighborhood arts and crafts, string beads, hillbilly woodworking, or stay at home mom Etsy finds. You can enjoy things that have their own distinctive brand identity. Where the artist becomes inseparable from the art.

Web comics, their own brands. Fan fiction authors, their own brands and followings. YouTubers and Twitch streamers, even the smallest of the small - duh. Brand. Bloggers. Columnists. Photographers. Even illustrators have their own brands. They don't want to be generic fungible goods. They want to be unique. That's what it is to be an artist and the name of the artist carries recognition, accolade, and following.

So sorry there's an element of marketing and self promotion involved, but that's the name of the business for everyone. If you don't like it, you can work for somebody else and follow their brand guidelines and direction.

[ToucanLoucan]

> Every single indie band I like is a brand.

because they have to be.

> Not everything should be "kumbaya, my lord" neighborhood arts and crafts, string beads, hillbilly woodworking, or stay at home mom Etsy finds.

False dichotomy.

The commenter is not bemoaning that it is impossible to make a living as a creative (though it is difficult); they are bemoaning that the mechanisms of enforcing, in law, that what is yours is yours requires a substantial amount of capital and legal expertise. If Ubisoft, for example, were to steal the IP of an indie developer and integrate it into their own game, is there a realistic path for that developer to take to get the dividends of their creation from Ubisoft? Yes, technically. But how much money, time, and work will it take? And how can it possibly be fair, when Ubisoft has an entire legal division at their disposal who's job it is to make sure they don't have to pay, and the indie developer has to take time away from their job to do all of the same things?

[chefandy]

Reasoning about the universe of commercial art based solely on the tiny consumer-facing facade doesn’t work. It’s even more detached than speaking confidently about restaurant management because you go out to eat a lot. At least 90% of the moving parts are totally invisible to the consumer. The markets for indie bands, fan art commission artists, product photographers, architecture photographers, VFX artists, comedy writers, 2D animators, beachside caricature artists, branding and identity designers, textile designers, industrial designers, technical artists, industrial jewelry designers, independent jewelry artists, live TV producers, motion designers, and fine art painters, just to name a few, share many challenges, but are far too different from each other to fall under your sweeping generalizations based entirely on your assumptions about the tiny slice of it that you see. Like most “common sense” oversimplified understandings of complex problems, the simplicity you see in this topic is rooted in your lack of understanding and knowledge rather than some unique ability to find a simple solutions to complex problems.