[cm2187]

From the article, Via-LA just didn't respond to the author, that doesn't really say anything about their position. It's a bit premature to call them greedy bastard. The author is doing this out of an abundance of caution, not in response of a legal action.

[bayindirh]

Considering that MPEG-LA and in turn Via-LA only provides non-commercial licenses with the hardware which can encode/decode the codecs under their umbrella, and (Via-LA) stays silent on a matter so they can snipe people from the distance, they are the de-facto greedy ones.

ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42736254

[amiga386]

If I write to the Mafia asking to confirm they won't burn my store to the ground, they won't write back saying "no".

They're not obligated to respond, and they enjoy the fear, uncertainty and doubt their non-response creates.

[iambateman]

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.

[sbarre]

Your city doesn't exist primarily to extract profits though, does it?

[lmm]

If the city bureaucracy doesn't exist primarily to provide continued employment to people of a certain class who can't or won't do something more productive, it's doing a pretty good impression of it. The purpose of a system is what it does and all that.