[alt-photo] For those of you with the latest wiz-bang Canon digital camera

[Greg Schmitz]

Here's an interesting little something for those of you that like to 
shoot video with your cameras but hate reading the manual:

"Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the 
MPEG-LA, by Eugenia Loli-Queru

We've all heard how the h.264 is rolled over on patents and royalties. 
Even with these facts, I kept supporting the best-performing "delivery" 
codec in the market, which is h.264. "Let the best win", I kept 
thinking. But it wasn't until very recently when I was made aware that 
the problem is way deeper. No, my friends. It's not just a matter of 
just "picking Theora" to export a video to Youtube and be clear of any 
litigation. MPEG-LA's trick runs way deeper! The [street-smart] people 
at MPEG-LA have made sure that from the moment we use a camera or 
camcorder to shoot an mpeg2 (e.g. HDV cams) or h.264 video (e.g. 
digicams, HD dSLRs, AVCHD cams), we owe them royalties, even if the 
final video distributed was not encoded using their codecs! Let me show 
you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

...ALL modern video cameras and camcorders that shoot in h.264 or mpeg2, 
come with a license agreement that says that you can only use that 
camera to shoot video for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes (go 
on, read your manuals)."

http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA 
<http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA>