New MP3 License Terms Demand $0.75 Per Decoder

Götz writes "The licensing terms of Thomson and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, who are the owners of the mp3 patents, have changed. Now not only mp3 encoders but also mp3 decoders require a license. This page lists the fees -- it's $0.75 per decoder. As a consequence, Red Hat has already removed all mp3 players from the Rawhide development version."

Comments

There outta be a law...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I thought the whole idea of patent law was to get new ideas to market by providing a temporary monopoly to the creator.

It seems like we have the cart leading the horse. Inventors are now embedding their ideas into standards, waiting until adoption, and then enforcing their monopoly.

This is dirty pool, and I hope it doesn't last.

Re:There outta be a law...

[mshiltonj]

It seems like we have the cart leading the horse. Inventors are now embedding their ideas into standards, waiting until adoption, and then enforcing their monopoly.

This is dirty pool, and I hope it doesn't last.

I agree with you completely. Unfortunately, I think it will last. We, as techies and as citizens, will need to more vigilant determining what we will adopt as 'standard'.

JPG, GIF, MP3, etc. We have to learn the lesson eventually.

More evidence to oppose the W3C RAND lisencing proposal.

What about overseas distributions?

[Karpe]

I wonder if distributions made on countries that do not accept software patents can still include MP3 decoders. That would, of course, mean the end of sales of this distributions on the US, or the development of US versions and "patent infringing" versions of the distributions, the same way there was a strong and weak crypto version of RH. I live in a country where (until the US forces us to change our laws) we do not believe that software or algorithmic ideas can be patented, and we have our own distros. I wouldnt like these distros to change just because of US laws and the US market.

Re:Do they not realize the effect of this?

[PunkXRock]

This won't kill MP3. This has been in effect for years now, I have NO idea why /. thinks this is news, that page hasn't even changed. Research much? Anyway, Mp3 ius entrenched, and end users still aren't being hurt, unless they have to pay for their sw mp3 player, but there will always be a huge company like AOL (WinAmp) who is willing to foot the bill. FhG has had this rule in effect, they just haven't enforced it on tiny players.

Re:Do they not realize the effect of this?

[flatrock]

I continually am amazed at firms that do this. Does not even the lowly geek admin at this place realize this will eventually kill mp3 as a used format, thus killing their source of revenue?

If they don't charge they have zero revenue. Charging $0.75 a decoder or $50k to $60 one time fee isn't that big of a deal for commercial companies making decoders. The only ones this hurt is the open source and free decoders, and they aren't making money from those anyway.

I agree that charging fees after the format is underhanded, and possibly grounds for anti-trust violations, but giving it away for free isn't exactly a great business decision either.

The far side of patents

[koreth]

One thing everyone seems to forget in this kind of discussion: patents expire. I remember lots of hubbub about the RSA patents on public-key encryption. Well, they came, they went, and the world didn't end in the meantime. Now everyone is free to use those algorithms with no worries about patent infringement.

Now, one could convincingly argue that software patents shouldn't be allowed in the first place, or that they should have shorter terms, or that the patent office doesn't do a competent job of checking for obviousness or prior art. I'd probably agree. But the fact remains that any damage done by patents is at worst a temporary setback to everyone else, not an irretrievable disaster.

At some point, MP3s will no longer be encumbered by patents.

Re:The far side of patents

[Kindaian]

The problem is that if a industrial patent has a expiration time of 25 years and that is reasonable, because it covers 1 or 2 generations of technology at the most, in the IT industry it isn't, because it covers something between 6 to 10 generations of software...

And that is way to much time to wait for a patent to expire... [and effectivelly kills the usability of the technology or the patent system].

Cheers...

P.S.- I'm not against software patents (per si), just against stupid patents and the patent expiration time...

Re:The far side of patents

[coyote-san]

There's two small problems with this idea.

First, patents were orginally keyed to the length of your working life. You would spend decades becoming a master of your field, then a patent would protect you during the remainder of your working life. Meanwhile your apprentices would learn this new skill, then extend the art as they became masters.

That worked fine until Britain changed the length of patents to 100 years, to protect some key industries. The net result was that the British industry stalled while Germany (a nation of scofflaws that ignored British IP rights) went from an agarian society to an industrial one.

In this field, your working life is closer to 15 years, with maybe 5 years from your first paying job to when you're (usually) considered to be a fully competent journeyman capable of being "the master" at most reasonably complex shops. The high end is softer, but there's definitely a bias against older programmers. You start to notice it at 35, and it's a real problem at 40.

By this measure, a patent should last maybe 7-10 years, max. Long enough to drive a generation or two of your product, but not so long that a person who just started out when you got your patent can't build on it during their working lifetime.

But this brings up the second point - copyrights used to have a reasonable limit, but for all practical purposes they're now essentially eternal. Maybe the law won't extend the term of copyrights yet again, but I probably won't live long enough for anything written during my lifetime - or even substantially before it - to enter the public domain.

If this stands, I expect to see patent law soon follow. This might be tolerable if patents covered legitimate innovations, but not with the current Patent Office of approving virtually every patent that crosses their desk and letting the courts decide which ones are valid.

Re:They've got a good racket going...

[MisterBlister]

Racket? If you ask me, the mp3 patents are some of the few decent patents we regularly hear about.

People take mp3s for granted now, but the patents involved cover real innovation, not bullshit like the one-click Amazon patents, or such.

Re:Portable Ogg-based players?

[thesolo]

How is a $0.75 fee per decoder gonna impact MP3 players, exactly? Do you think that *anybody, manufacturer or buyer, is gonna notice $0.75 in a several hundred dollar product? Come on.

The user won't notice, most likely. However, if you notice, the minimum annual licensing is $15,000 US per year. So even if a manufacturer's product flops, they have to shell out 15 grand anyway. And if the product does well, say it ships 2 million units, that's $1.5 Million dollars in royalties.

When presented with those options, which one would you pick? Some people, especially much smaller companies, will go with the royalty-free solution.

Re:Hmm. Not bad.

[V. Mole]

So, are you going to donate the $60K to SPI so that Debian can redistribute xmms? I'd guess not. This won't kill MP3, but it will kill MP3 with free software. Oh well...

Yes, the have the patent, and the right to license the patent as they choose. Their choice (make it free until it's widely used, then start charging money) makes them assholes. This is exactly what happens when you start relying on patented technology, and proves that the folks over at Xiph were right all along.

As far as $0.75/per unit being trivial, you should investigate the economics of consumer electronics. That $0.75 might well be half the profit on a low-end device.

Re:Winamp has been ready for this for a while...

[ImaLamer]

Can we just delete this whole news article?

Or moderate this posts as +5 Dumb, Redundant?

Winamp (Nullsoft) already paid for the license. They want mindshare, they don't want to collect per client.

Many clients have already paid because this isn't news.

Re:Probable consequences?

[ncc74656]

Ogg is most definitely "there yet."

Call me when my Apex AD600A or my Rio Volt SP90 will start playing Ogg. Without hardware support, it'll go nowhere. (I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it most definitely is not there yet.)

MiniDisc?

[ShavenYak]

Expensive discs (per MB, compared to CD-R), expensive players (compared to MP3-capable CD players), proprietary format controlled by evil giant Sony, none of my friends have them, can't store them on my hard drive, can't download them off the 'net, can't burn to audio CD (without going to analog or using a pro CD burner which defeats SCMS), what's to like?