Dear Jason Garret-Glaser,
In December a reporter for thestreetsweeper.org published an article about a startup company called Raystream Inc. In this article by Janice Shell, she quotes you stating that Raystream's video compression software is the exact same as X264, of which you are a lead developer. I have recently been talking with Janice and had some questions regarding whether or not this company really is a fraudulent hoax or if it were possibly misunderstood initially and has a real intent to be a real business. She told me to contact you myself to ask my questions. Also, she referred me to her article and what she printed from you. I was previously unaware I was speaking to the author. I read her article and my impression of it was one filled with bias and intent to do direct material harm to this company. TheStreetsweeper.org published a disclaimer at the end of this article expressing that they had a short position in this company and stood to directly profit from a decline in its value. Incidently once the article broke there was an immediate drop in its share price. Of course the large decline in its price cannot be entirely attributed to this lone article. I do believe that Raystream's intitial price movement was way overvalued, but In my opinion I do not believe Raystream to have no value at all or to even be an outright fraud.
My suspician is that you have a much more detailed, interested, and expert opinion on Raystream's product/service to share than was reported in that article. In it you were referenced as saying,
"Raystream could have better concealed its secret by simply removing the header that included the telling “x264” within it. Thanks to that oversight, however, that four-digit introductory code jumps out as the first thing that anyone who examines the code will see.
Garret-Glaser offered two more important observations as well. For starters, he said, any company that distributes x264 as part of its commercial proprietary software without purchasing an appropriate license from x264 LLC has violated copyright infringement rules. It remains unclear whether Raystream itself has complied with those mandatory guidelines.
Secondly, Garret-Glaser indicated, Raystream has touted a compression rate that – even when boosted toward 90% -- falls well short of that recorded by others in the field.
“Modern video compression can achieve 100 to 1,000 times compression over raw video, or "99.9%,” he said. “For example, raw 1080p RGB is 1.5 gigabits per second, but can be compressed to 3-6 megabits at relatively reasonable quality.” "
After this article a Raystream press release stated,"Raystream announced an independent international property rights management law firm conducted a thorough investigation of Raystream’s algorithm and has issued an opinion letter verifying that all aspects of Raystream’s software and technology are in compliance with the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) held by the Free Software Foundation.
Raystream’s compression algorithm is built on the x264 encoder licensed by CoreCodec, making it compliant with the worldwide standard format for video output."
I know I have been longwinded here so here are my main questions for you.
Does this change anything?
Does X264 compress live HD/3D video as it is being created?
Would a compression algorithm built on X264 still be called X264? Or even possible?
Have you kept up with Raystream or are even more than passingly interested in what they claim?
What would be the benefits of hiring a company like Raystream to compress and stream your video as opposed to doing it yourself? Is this practice commonplace?
Are there any companies that currently use x264 and profit from it in the way Raystream is trying to?
Would you allow me to post this email and/or your reply to the message board community? If not then I will myself rest assured with your opinion on this matter for myself. Please know that I am trying to get my own answers about this company which I am currently invested in. I will be making phone calls, emails and literally beating the door down to find out for myself if my investment is folly. I am not a wealthy man but I have saved enough to try and get in with a startup company like Raystream. Please help spare me the potential agony of going broke. If you do not wish to answer these questions then please let me know that you have no further comments. I am eagerly awaiting your reply.
AI
