They're not slowing down progress AT ALL - their patent is remarkably easy to understand, their reference implementation is available, and if you wanted to reimplement it, they will send you a complete spec by email! They are using patents for their intended purpose - they're making money by licensing the method of doing something they figured out how to do better than anybody else.

If you don't know how software patents are slowing down progress, there are a lot of materials that explain it in detail. Some might be proponents of that approach (for the sake of profiteering), but claiming that it's helping progress is hypocrisy.

While software patents may be broken in many instances, I don’t think video codecs are one of them. It’s not like MPEG-LA is suing people for using independently-developed designs that just happen to infringe. If you’re infringing the MPEG patents it’s likely because you’re purposefully building on their work.

And that’s okay in my book. I much preferred the old days when everyone just paid Sony and Panasonic for a license than the current model where “free” codecs are bankrolled by spying on everyone’s email and helping Russians fix elections.

> It’s not like MPEG-LA is suing people for using independently-developed designs that just happen to infringe

I think you missed the whole FUD campaign against VPx, where they tried to persuade the public that VPx does infringe patents in their pool.

The problem comes in when patents have the effect of walling off an entire subfield of computer science from the perspective of the commercial R&D world.

Classic cases in point are IBM's patent on arithmetic encoding, which rendered that entire class of algorithms radioactive in the 1980s-1990s era, and the original Lempel-Ziv patent claims dating back to 1978.

We are most certainly not better off as a society because we granted decade+ monopolies on those claims, and I see no reason to think any differently of MPEG.

MPEG-LA are actively trying to impede development of open codecs, or slow them down with FUD and threats. They are acting like a classic racketeer thug. I'm surprised some are trying to whitewash their behavior. I guess glorified mafia is the way to "move things into the future" according to MPEG-LA supporters.