Well done, Apple. There's been

Well done, Apple. There's been a lot of argument recently about the terms demanded by the group of patent owners with a financial interest in the new MPEG-4 standard. Everybody expected to pay a fee for encoders and decoders, but not a 2c per hour "tax" on streams. Apple, one of the patent holders, now says it will delay QuickTime 6 until more reasonable terms are agreed. And if they aren't, MPEG-4 is as good as dead anyway, because neither Real Networks nor Microsoft -- who dominate the streaming market -- is likely to support it. Why should they? Microsoft doesn't even like paying licensing fees for MP3, which was developed by Fraunhofer Gesellschaft in Munich.