H.264 Opens Up
The H.264 codec that makes a good deal of digital video possible has actually been free to use (under certain conditions) for many years, but following recent controversies over the future of web video, rightholders have agreed to extend that freedom in perpetuity. Whereas originally standards organization MPEG-LA had said it wouldn't collect royalties from those freely distributing AVC/H.264 video until 2016, the limitless new timeframe may mean that content providers banking on WebM and HTML5 video won't have an expensive surprise in the years to come.
That's great news - it means that anyone (like me!) who uploads H.264 video that they (or the company they work for) owns, there's no problem. There's a huge monkey off the back of HTML5.
