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

What can MP3 do for me that Ogg Vorbis can't?

[puckhead]

I'm not trolling (this time). I really want to know.

Portable Ogg-based players?

[thesolo]

I'm hoping that this decision will result in (more?) portable Ogg-based players hitting the market! I would have purchased an iPod immediately had it supported Ogg; however, it didn't, and I was not about to convert my music back to MP3 just for it.

If anyone knows of any portable players that support Ogg Vorbis, please post below! Thank You!

Pass it on

[Brento]

Absolutely brilliant. Wait until it gets mass market acceptance, then start charging fees. Now that I've got a portable MP3 player, an MP3-compatible DVD player, and all 300+ CD's in my collection digitized in MP3 format, now bring out the fees. You win, guys, here's my $3.00 for the car, the DVD deck, and WinAmp on my laptop and desktop. Sure beats re-recording everything in Ogg, which wasn't mainstream enough when I first started ripping my CD's a couple of years back.

What? You don't agree? Well, my time's worth the $3. If they charged $10 per decoder, I'd still probably pay it - and in fact, that's the only mistake I think they're making, not charging enough. Because while I'd gladly pay $3 today, they should realize that going forward, I won't rip a single song in MP3 format. They'll make short-term revenues by screwing guys like me, but they're digging a hole in the long run.

Where's the facts?

[Lxy]

Ok. Most people have figured out by now that these prices have been up for a long time. Is there A) any evidence that open source decoders (like mpg123) are being bullied around, and B) any official statement from Redhat that they're intentionally pulling MP3 decoders from Rawhide?

Hold the phone.

[johnlcallaway]

From their own site :

Q. Do I need a license to stream mp3/mp3PRO encoded content over the Internet?

Yes. A license is needed for commercial (i.e., revenue-generating) use of mp3 / mp3PRO in real time broadcasting (terrestrial, satellite, cable and/or any other media), broadcasting / streaming via Internet, intranets and/or other networks or in other electronic content distribution systems, such as pay-audio or audio-on-demand applications.

However, no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with an annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00.(emphasis mine)

Does this mean that open source free ware is still...well...free??

Re:Show your support for this petition then.

[Melantha_Bacchae]

Don't waste your time with "hardware manufacturers". Convince Apple to include Ogg Vorbis support on the iPod.

As soon as an iPod with Ogg Vorbis is released, you can bet the rest of the mp3 player manufacturers will be scrambling to get it on their products.

Such is the power of Apple.

"Godzilla and Jaguar: Punch! Punch! Punch! Hit! Hit! Hit!
We die if they stop fighting for us."
Jet Jaguar Song, "Godzilla vs. Megalon"

Re:Not charging end users

[the_quark]

WinAmp and MusicMatch will do just fine. Note there is a "patent only" option at $50,000 flat-rate. As much as AOL paid for WinAmp, they should have no problem paying 50 grand to keep the doors open (and in fact probably already have a licensing deal in place with Fraunhofer that covers WinAmp). Ditto MusicMatch.

Who this kills is the free (as in speech) players - Zinf, XMMS, etc. They can't afford $50k OR $0.75/copy. They can either hope Fraunhofer doesn't notice them, or try to relocate to a place with either no software patents or no Fraunhofer patent, or they can leave MP3. In fact, Linux users in general may be left out in the cold, because I'm not aware of any commercial MP3 decoders for Linux, at all.

Unfortunately, this probably won't be enough to move the world from MP3s. WinAmp will still be downloadable for free, which is all 98% of users care about.

I remember when I was at EMusic, I met with the Thompson guys, who were trying to figure out how to make money on this (circa 1999). I explained to them that nobody was going to pay for a decoder, and that their choice was either to give the decoder away or have people switch to something else. I also suggested the encoder should be free for non-commercial use, in order to cement their current dominance against (then soon-to-be-released) Windows Media.

One of them replied (imagine a German accent), "I see! Vee give avay evrysing for free, and you make more money selling music!"

So, you could say we had a meeting of the minds. :)

Re:Thank god for ogg!

[norton_I]

However, as long as you are willing to live with a slight loss of quality and/or a slight increase in file size, it should be nowhere near as bad as for analog files. If you do mp3->wav, the wave file should already be quantized in such a way that it is easily compressable by another program. In principle, for instance, you should be able to re MP3 encode with no further loss of quality (whether actual MP3 encoders do this is another question). Ogg uses a different algorithm, so there will be a slight degredation, but it shouldn't be that bad if the encoder is designed to handle low entropy input well.

Whether this happens in reality, I don't know, but I am sure some smart people could figure out a way to do it.

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

[Antity]

So if I needed several hours to figure something out I should be able to patent it? Just figured out a new mouseclick combination to navigate faster through Slashdot...

And, regarding E=mc^2: Don't you think it took several hours as well to come to this conclusion? So why don't you think one should be able to patent this formula as well?

This is the problem with algorithm patents. They're not a "product". It's very dangerous to make mathematical formulas patentable, because most of them are just observations like "hey, this and this has happened if I combine numbers A and B like this", not inventions.

Just imagine someone would own a patent on Fast-Fourier-Transformation (FFT). What would happen? This is very close to JPEG and MP3 techniques, btw.