Free Rides Are Disappearing

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Unisys recently decided to collect license fees for the data-compression algorithm used in GIF, a popular graphics standard of the on-line world. This illustrates how certain Internet components that users now take for granted may eventually cost them money.

Seven years after its patent on the LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) data-compression algorithm had been granted, Unisys (Blue Bell, PA) began requiring licensing fees for programs using LZW. CompuServe's (Columbus, OH) GIF uses LZW. Last year, developers in the graphics and on-line communities expressed dismay when CompuServe announced that as a result of Unisys's request for licensing fees, CompuServe would start charging fees for programs that use GIF images.

acto standard as well as a popular graphics format for graphics and desktop publishing. Faced with a storm of disapproval from developers and users, CompuServe said it would coordinate the development of a non-LZW follow-up format called GIF24, which will be a 24-bit, lossless open graphics format.

This controversy made users more wary of informal open standards and helped dispel the notion that the Internet and its resources are free. Jeremy Allaire, who is president of New World Media (Minneapolis, MN), a company that tracks trends and events in on-line publishing, says that users who assume that everything on the Internet is free are "sadly mistaken."

Some costs associated with the Internet, such as network setup, can be hidden from users when their employer pays them. Other costs of using the Internet will become evident to end users due to supply-and-demand issues. Users who can't afford to wait the half hour or so it can take to access a Veronica or Web searching site during its busiest ho urs may have to turn to surcharged Internet services.

Meanwhile, developers are exploring GIF replacements, including Graphics Exchange Format (a version of GIF that doesn't use LZW), the Portable Bit-Map Format, and the Free Graphics Format. Other developers are exploring the use of preexisting graphics formats in their applications, such as the open JPEG format.