Liaison statement
W3C's position on RTCWEB mandatory to implement video codec

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State Posted
Submitted Date 2012-11-03
From Group W3C
From Contact Philippe Le Hégaret
To Group rtcweb
To Contacts Cullen Jennings <fluffy@iii.ca>
Ted Hardie <ted.ietf@gmail.com>
Magnus Westerlund <magnus.westerlund@ericsson.com>
Cc Gonzalo Camarillo <gonzalo.camarillo@ericsson.com>
Robert Sparks <rjsparks@nostrum.com>
Real-Time Communication in WEB-browsers Discussion List <rtcweb@ietf.org>
Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
Response Contact Philippe Le Hégaret <plh@w3.org>
Thomas Roessler <tlr@w3.org>
Purpose For information
Attachments (None)
Body 
We understand that the IETF rtcweb Working Group is expecting to select a
mandatory-to-implement video codec.

W3C believes that there should be a royalty-free standard web infrastructure
which should include Real Time Communications on the Web.

W3C is not expressing any preference among the codecs based on the technical
merits of the proposals before the working group. We wish to bring a few
background facts to participants' attention.

In 2011 W3C approached MPEG-LA, the licensing authority for the generally-known
patent pool for H.264, with a proposal for royalty-free licensing of the H.264
baseline codec, to be referenced for use by the HTML5 video tag. MPEG-LA was
receptive to this proposal; however, the proposal was turned down by a narrow
margin within the MPEG-LA membership.

Whatever codec the rtcweb Working Group might choose, we encourage the Working
Group to work toward technologies that implementers can be confident are
available on a royalty-free basis and W3C is willing to work with the IETF in
achieving this.

Regards,

For Tim Berners-Lee, Director, and Jeff Jaffe, CEO,
Philippe Le Hégaret and Thomas Roessler, IETF Contacts for W3C