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Thomson Announces Royalties For MP3 Streaming
Michael Smith points to an article at techreview.com in which "we read about Thomson Multimedia announcing royalties for mp3 streaming, finally. 2% of ALL revenues related to streaming, with a $2000 minimum. A compelling reason to move to Ogg Vorbis for those who have been holding out?" RMS has been pointing out that MP3 is hampered by patents for a long time now; the proof-bearing pudding is on the way. Same Thomson that wants smart cards everywhere; the pay-for-play view of the world is at least consistent there.
Thomson developed a licensing scheme that would only charge for companies that "monetize" the codec. Users can now stream mp3 for free as long as they don't charge, and small-time users only pay $2000. Larger streaming companies, such as broadcasters, pay 2% of their revenue from streaming. Therefore, if you don't charge, you don't pay; if you make money on it, you give some back to the developers.
OK: I can now stream mp3 at will, for FREE -- unless I charge for it! But if I'm a big broadcaster, and I make $1Million from streaming, I have to pay them $20,000. Well that sounds like a damn sensible approach!
Now, the bulk of the Tech Review story is not about their licensing scheme, but Thomson's announcement that MP3Pro is going to debut next week. This codec will lead to file sizes half that of mp3 while remaining backwardly compatible - as in, MP3Pro can be played with any current mp3 player, albeit with a predictable loss in quality. In return they are asking for 50% more (free for non-monetized, $3000 minimum or 3% of revenue) to stream MP3Pro.
Certainly the encoding and decoding of MPEG audio is covered by patents, and is thus licenseable. (And obviously the content of some MPEG audio files is protected by copyright.) But once you already have encoded MPEG audio data, to stream this data requires only unencumbered, open standard protocols (TCP, or RTP (RFC2250 or RFC3119)).
It's hard to see how any restriction on the streaming of pre-encoded, non-copyrighted audio could have any legal weight. In fact, such a restriction might even be seen as a violation of free speech rights...
I read it somewhat differently.
From the anecdotes in the article, the only way to avoid paying Thomson is to eliminate all money from the picture. They want a peice of all stream-related revenue. Which is to say, that if you sell t-shirts to promote the stream, subsidize bandwidth, or equipment, or studio space, they want $2k/year (minimum), and 2% after that. This is from the revenue stream, not profit-after-expenses.
If you sell advertising, they offer a plan where you pay 3% of advertising revenue, with a $3k annual minimum. This, presumably, would also include income from any banner ads on the stream's web page.
It doesn't matter if you're making money hand over fist, or if you're just trying to gather support to keep the thing alive while working elsewhere full-time and running at a loss, just for a fun thing to do. They want a cut.
This will, should it come to pass, probably damage live365's already shaky business model to the point of complete failure.
It will mean that the low-budget streams will need to move to zero-budget, or find a source of income to cover the $2k annual minimum.
It, like so many other things, punishes the little guy. Selling a $10 hat with a inkjet-printed logo costs the seller ~$2k. I'll let the reader figure out how many $10 hats it takes annually to cover the licensing cost of the bloody ISO standard codec.
All conspiracy theories aside, I don't know that they'd be able to introduce this retroactively. I got my licensed-and-legit Fraunhoffer MP3 codec with Microsoft's Netshow. I didn't agree to pay them shit, and I'm never going to. *thumbs nose at Thomson Multimedia*
It makes sense, then, that it would only apply to the "new" MP3Pro codec.
MP3Pro, by the way, is absolutely fucking worthless - it compensates for high-frequency loss by introducing harmonic distortion and high-frequency noise. So, low-bitrate stuff sounds just as "bright" as it did before encoding. This "brightness" is entirely artificial, and entirely inaccurate with respect to the original recording.
Its only honest claim to fame, is that really-low-bitrate stuff might become tolerable (think 8-16Kbps) for voice work, and that it is backward-compatible with existing mp3 players (for the naysayers who will pop up claiming that mp3pro is god's gift to all mankind: it is this backward compatibility which requires its broken hack of a design.)
Incidentally, this works right now: Make a low-bitrate mp3 (the article says 80Kbps is good, so start there), and a high-bitrate (>224Kbps) mp3 of the same material. Grab a plugin for xmms, winamp, wmp, or whatever, that claims to boost (or "recreate" or "reproduce" or "restore") high-frequency sound. Play your low-bitrate mp3 through the plugin, for a demonstration of what MP3Pro can do. Play your high-bitrate mp3 without it, for enlightenment.
Kid-proof tablet..
the only licensing charges for the MP3 codec will apply to people profiting from MP3 streaming, I imagine most of the slashdot community will be free to use it as they wish without paying a dime
Until you realize that what Thompson considers "profit" and what you consider "profit" are two entirely separate things.
When Thompson tried enforcing the patent licenses on encoding software, they went after quite a few free (as in beer) programmers - their logic was "You are making money from your software because you have banner ads on the download site." (this is how LAME came about.)
So I wouldn't put it past them to say "Hey, you're streaming MP3's, and you have a banner ad there - so therefore you're making a profit."
This will come to pass.. just watch and see.
MP3s real success is its placement in the market i.e. its widespread adoption--they were there with the right tools at the right time, and allowed people to use it gratis. They probably aren't the best format out there, but they were good enough and fraunhoffer played the right cards at the right time. Plus they secured their dominant position when Napster chose to use mp3 as its sole file-trading format. (not that there was much of a choice at the time.)
That being said, its dominance may even come to an end when Windows XP gets adopted widely and Napster and Thomson start charging--I already know people who have switched all of their music over to the wmf format. But for now, the market has made it the standard--last time I searched for .ogg files on gnutella there were about 3 hits.
Apparently, this is the hidden hurdle that open alternatives face. The only entities that can invest enough money into something to make it a market-place standard are those who hope to make a ton of money off of wide-spread adoption.
I've an almost updated MP3 HOWTO and even though I've an OggVorbis section in it I'm going to rewrite it with as much coverage.
Boy's and Girls..... if you are using any OggVorbis apps, or know of any tools being developed, let me know.
I'll change the HOWTO's name to MP3 & OggVorbis HOWTO.
Thanks
Phil
On a similar note, isn't the LZW (Unisys, GIF) patent almost dead by now? I recall that one goes back until the mid eighties. .GIF itself, a user of LZW which was already in widespread use at GIF's birth, goes back to '87, and I believe that the Unix "compress" program is even older.
Anyone know what the liberation dates for these algorithms are?
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