As a separate though, an interesting discussion came up at work last week, centered around H.264 licensing, and why VideoLAN Organization (makers of VLC) is based in France. It seems the H.264 license is based on paying for the number of encoders or decoders. In France, a decoder is defined as having a hardware component. So if a computer maker shipped a computer in France with VLC preloaded, it would count. But software alone without a computer doesn't count. Thus VLC doesn't have to worry about licensing, and simply passes it downstream. In most other places, including the US, software does count, however source code doesn't. Source code can't decode H.264, it's just a description of how to, similar in idea to the patents. For end users, they don't need to pay anything to the MPEG-LA due to their stance that the first 0-100,000 are exempt from fees. Even if an end user uses an encoder to send a video to YouTube and it gets more then 100,000 unique view, it then falls under the free clause for internet distribution.