According to StreamingMedia, HEVC Advance, a new group that formed a patent pool for licensing HEVC technology, plans on charging something to the effect of 0.5% of gross revenue for HEVC usage, that is retroactive “to the date of first sale“. The best part, they are going directly after content owners like Netflix, Apple and Facebook. This brings back memories of the days when Adobe charged all CDNs an Internet Tax for RTMP streaming. The first thing Steve Jobs did was trample on RTMP, and Apple moved forward with HLS.
HEVC Advance actions are atrocious. If Steve Jobs were here, he would go nuclear on HEVC Advance in a millisecond, like he did on Google, when they came out with the Android. HEVC Advance is drunk on power. It’s not the 1980’s, and they can’t act like a world power charging an exorbitant Internet tax on worldwide streaming. There is no way that the $1.7 trillion dollar GAFAN Mafia is going to sit back and do nothing. After all, GAFAN is pushing the envelope in every sector of technology known to man. Their next stop is HEVC Advance. We haven’t seen the last of this, either Mark Zuckerberg or Reed Hastings will go nuclear soon. That’s it for us mortals now.