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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."
http://www.vorbis.com/
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
I pity you fools that spent months encoding all of your music as MP3s.
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?
I swear, if people are learning this kinda crap at their respective busisness schools.. I guess it's no wonder things like Enron or WorldComm happen.
Idiots.
-'fester
i wonder how much money they're pulling in from mp3-related things? Anyone got a rough estimate?
.ogg? :)
And wouldn't this hurt the proliferation of mp3 encoders running around, thereby possibly limiting the amount of mp3s that are available to the general public? Maybe we just need to use
Lordfly
hookers and grits.
so opensource players for mp3 will have to pay a fee?
how they plan to go about enforcing this.. i wonder what AOL will think of this, I wonder if they will pull winamp or pay the one time $60,000 for decoder and $50,000 for encoder (winamp has both) fees..
and more importantly, what about all the people with multiple gb's of mp3's, i know i have ~10gb worth and i'm not alone
I think the back lash of angry users adn whatnot will squelch this quickly, surely they dont' think people will actually pay after it's been free for so many years
Let them come to me to cough-out 75 for my license. I hope they have plenty of fun!!!
RedHat has already removed its MP3 players. Most MP3 players are free to begin with, WinAmp, Sonique, Windows Media Player.. you'll start to see a lot less freeware players in the future.
.mp3. Ogg is close, but not quite there yet.
Hopefully we'll see another format step up and produce the same quality / compression as
I'm not trolling (this time). I really want to know.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
.... but what do you think will happen to WinAMP/Nullsoft?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
So who's got a list of Ogg Vorbis or other Open Source alternatives to MP3 players?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Time to make a non-american version of RedHat with mp3 players ? Or to switch to Mandrake, which shouldn't have to honor these fees ...
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!
1) gather huge user base
2) charge for making products for said user base
3) charge users on a per-site fee
4) disgrutled users move to other formats.
5) sell stock options and retire.
hmmmm?
If this spurs the release of Ogg-capable portables and car players, though, that's good news for everyone.
This is becoming ridiculous! Every format under the sun is going to become a greedy patent fest. I understand how an encoder must pay, however if you make decoders pay the royalty, that will really hurt the open-source movement.
These cash-grabs are hurting the end user, and the general software community. When will they learn.
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.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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.
So it looks like it's time for a software/firmware update for a lot of specialized players in order to play ogg files...or is MP3 too entrenched for such options to be made widely available??
Well, I guess NullSoft has decieded to pay the bill themselves. Because Winamp 3.0 is still available as of now for free download.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Instances like this demonstrate why software that is not open source is worthless.
What are you smoking? They start charging for something that people can get for cheaper/free elsewhere, and people will go elsewhere... How is that a failing of capitalism? If anything it is a good example of capitalism... freedom of choice.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
Well, looks like I'll have to hold on to my current mp3 player, cause it looks like I won't be able to download winamp for free any more :(
SIGFAULT
here's where slashdot can really shine. I, like many of you out there, have scanned my album collection into mp3 format. Why? Because this was the most popular, ubiquitous format when I did it. I'd love to go to ogg. To do so, i need a simple way to recurse through about 36 gigs of mp3s and reencode them into ogg, and delete the originals. I know there's no reason why one shell command shouldn't suffice. I know if I were to do a decent search through freshmeat, i'd be able to find a command-line program to do it, and the proper args, etc. But i know someone here already knows it. ***PLEASE*** post instructions, and whatever software i need to get, and yours is the karma and everything in it.
So, has anybody out there converted their MP3 archive to OGG? How badly did the quality suffer? Are there any other significant pitfalls to watch out for?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
faster Ogg adoption - can't say this is anything but good news.
sic transit gloria mundi
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Recently a format that could give them a run for there money has come out. Instead of trying to find ways to keep as many users as possiblem they decide to start charging more, thus running off many more than they would have lost before. Maybe its some top secret strategy or something that we can't comprehend.
There's going to be quite a few posts (and there already are some) asking if Ogg is ready for use, why people don't use Ogg, etc. As of now, Ogg is certainly a good choice, because noone is claiming to have a patent on its technology. However, there is a problem.
US patent law doesn't require you to disclose your patent within any given period of time. You can wait until half the country is using Ogg decoders, then sue all those people. Because of this, there's no such thing as a known unpatented technology. You can only make a good attempt.
So, how do we create guaranteed patent-free formats? My theory has always been you create a non-profit, and then use the nonprofit to discover new technology for you encoder, which the nonprofit patents. Then it licenses the patent as free for everyone. It's not foolproof, but it's a pretty good bet that this would have less patent issues. Then again, for now, Ogg it is...
--
Q:Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A:All my autopsies have been performed on dead peop
Affect programs which already have been created with Mp3 support, say WINAMP or even Media Player. I hope the payment is not retroactive. would MS have to remove MP3 support in mediaplayer or PAY?
Reminds me of the Simpsons when they realize the laws state that they are still in prohibition, its just that no one has enforced it...
Rev. Lovejoy-
See, it says we should be in prohibition, right below the law that states that ducks should wear pants.
Mayor Quimby-
My god, it does. Ducks must wear pants!
'nuff said.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
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.
What's your damage, Heather?
what were the old fees then? i've never heard about any fees associated with mp3's before, ever, and i've been using them since i could only fit 2 songs on a zip disk and read about the mp3 format as a theory in a magazine whiel on an airplane, i've never heard of fees associated with their use before ever and i've been accumulating mp3's for years as have many others, just because you claim that they hav ebeen around forever doesn't mean that /. editors or anyone else is a clairvoyant..
110,000 Grand isn't that much for AOL/TimeWarner. They spend that much on a Cisco 12000 router or a DNS server...
I think this could stop Kazaa quicker than anything else. They have had how many million downloads? All with an mp3 player. Hmm. That's probably a few million they don't have....
Better start selling more ads Kazaa, and fast! (Just so we can download Kazaa Lite, and get around them!).
Tibbon
tibbon.com
You know, this is actually pretty cheap. I had no idea how inexpensive this was...I thought Fraunhaufer & Co were taking a percentage of your company's profits a la Unisys, or a per song cost. $.75 per player is nothing...I have a dozen players, hardware & software alike, and they all amount to under $10. Not bad, considering how great the technology behind MP3 is.
Sure, they're profiteering, but they're profiteering off of a format they helped produce and thought to patent. MP3 encoding isn't exactly no duh stuff like hyperlinks or LZW compression (which is essentially a really fast look up table). And sure, there's Ogg, but I don't like the sound as much and my consumer devices don't support it.
You can bitch and moan about how this will kill mp3, but I think it's obvious nothing will kill MP3 -- the technology is too widely supported. What it means, though, is that GPL'd and other free decoders are going to have to ammend the license to be sure Fraunhoffer gets its money. This is a perfect time to test whether or not the GPL can play nice in the IP pool.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Sounds like what used to happen up here with housing and land-leasing... actually I think it still happens.
Lease out some really nice land, at a decent price, for say 10-20 years. When the lease ran out, the new leasing fees were somewhere in the area of 400%+
Most of the leasers couldn't afford the new rates, some fought against it but the court costs were also huge. In short, a lot of people ended up giving up the land, and the landowners got some nice houses to go with us (exempting the smart ones, who bulldozed their places and made things as messy as possible).
The moral, beware of any contract with an ability to change or a time-limit...
we can chalk another one up for ogg vorbis, but I really don't like it. I mean the only real difference I see between mp3 and vorbis is that mp3 isn't legally free. But I can still download winamp. I can download any version I want actually, it's called www.oldversion.com. And i can still get radium, and lame. CDex is totally awesome. So for me to use ogg all it would do is force me to spend hours re-encoding all my files. What at a great way to spend a weekend!
They can't charge ME for something I've already got for free. They can't take it away from me either. So until that changes I couldnt' give two craps, can you?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Before we start raising Ogg Vobis up the proverbial flagpole, let us remember that MP3 is heavily entrenched in the hardware decoder market. Will a $0.75 per unit increase change this? Probably not.
For the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."
I'd say it's a safe bet to say the overwhelming majority of mp3s are pirated over the net. If free mp3 decoders dissapear, I'm sure most of these people won't lose sleep over pirating the players aswell. Sad that the only victims of this are law-biding mp3 users. Hopefully this will encourage a wide-spread migration to a more open format than mp3, but it's still going to hang around for a while more.
Here's one disadvantage to ogg (or any lossy format) - converting to and from it is lossy. Specifically, converting all the MP3 files you currently have to ogg would lose considerable quality. (probably moreso with VBR?) Anyway, point is that unless you still have, ahem, all your original CDs (you know, the ones you ripped to MP3 since they were so fragile and your Archos jukebox doesn't play oggs) you're in trouble.
For those who say, go to vorbis, might this focus the RIAA to not only attack vorbis but also opensource as a whole? It seems to me that it may open the door to some nasty issues.
I can see people converting stuff over to vorbis if it saves them money, (too bad I just bought a mp3 cd player though.)
People aren't going to like the idea of paying for a music player. But the clever thing about this, is, to convert from mp3 to vorbis, you have to have a decoder.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Too bad my portable MP3 player won't play OGG.
:)
I already spent $150 on it, I'm not gonna spend another $.75 on it.
Now is it $.75 for every instance of every player? If so, then thats a ton of money! Hell, a Linux distro alone has how many MP3 players?
It's not a failure of capitalism in general, it's just a failure of their capitalism.
- Peter
Of course, if you already have the plugin, no need to pay for it again -- and it could make use of the Windows Media Player MP3 codecs (paid for by your Windows XP license).
who needs the RIAA around when you have these guys to kill off the MP3?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
IF I were the music industry, I would sue the owners of any and all patent holders of digitizing algorithyms like MP3 etc. Since most music was NOT distributed on MP3 etc. formats isn't it logical that you go after the owners of the TOOLS rather than those that use the tools?
Naaa, Never mind
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If they wanted to make money off of mp3 then they should have been charging decoder licenses from the start... it's too late to get cat back into the bag.
I might need to start wearing a tinfoil hat after suggesting this, but part of me wonders if maybe they were paid money by a certain Redmond Giant to do this, in order to kill off mp3 in favor of WMA. Hey, is that a black army cia helicopter on whisper mode? ;)
Either way, it looks like it's time to see if there's a good mp3 --> Ogg converter out there. Anyone know of any?
Quoting whoever made created this idea, "This announcement would be a whole lot easier if I did not have the RIAA's hand up my ass."
They sure do know how to ruin a good thing (by making people pay for something that was has been free since day one). Napster knows this.
I'm just dreading trying to explain to my parents and friends that they should ditch their beloved MP3s and switch to Ogg Vorbis. Ugh.. ^_^
proton != antielectron
I'm rather certain they used to only demand royalties for encoders, not decoders.
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
This is an aweful buisness decision though, they should just licence hardware manufactures who produce mp3 walkmans. People pay upwards of 150$ for them and if you tak on a 5$ license they are not going to stop buying hence you really do not harm the growth of MP3
But when you start charging for the software to produce mp3's thats another matter I listin to them in my computer, and Ill be damned if I am goung to pay when I can just use another format (never heard og .ogg until today but I will look into it).
I am assuming that this is not a retro active license...???... ne1?
this thread will likely result in hundreds of smug Ogg Vorbis posts, but the format doesn't have the market penetration or mindshare yet. some people will likely adopt Ogg, true, but even more will likely choose WMA or RealAudio because their players/encoders are more entrenched. this is not good...
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Since copyright means nothing to MP3 users, I doubt a silly technicality like this would really make any difference.
If MP3 is going to rapidly lose its status as "the standard," then the field becomes open to all of the other formats to replace it. Sure, Ogg Vorbis would be the ideal choice - but in reality does this not present MS with a nice advantage to further its proprietary format? (by offering free de/encoders, etc)
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
They did. The original post is just another case of a user trolling for Karma by claiming the Slashdot editors are making a big deal out of nothing.
Thanks to the provisos of the CHSFUTCATNAGBBA (Congress' head so far up their collective ass they need a glass belly button act) every single copy of WinAmp (and LinAmp, and the players built into Kazaa and windows media player) has been unpdated to include PAM (patent abuse management) which requires all software in existence to obey the directives of anyone with a patent claim, no matter how weak, ill-informed, ill-concieved or unreasonable.
.rm files on my webserver without paying an additional license? I'm confused.
Now - you need to pay them $5 for software that encodes mp3s, per unit. Having bought that license, they claim you need yet another license in order to take files on your computer and send them to other people. Lawyers - do they have a leg to stand on in making such a claim? If I buy real studio 8, can realplayer turn around and announce that I can't put
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Just don't transcode. Follow this advice and there are no pitfalls to look out for.
Instead, take out your original sources and recompress from them. Don't have high quality sources? Then don't transcode!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
No need to run off and convert. Nullsoft and AOL already own FULL LISCENCES so Winamp isnt disapearing anytime soon. And there is a linux version of winamp 3 that works fine for me! Now go look for your self before you call me a lieing jack a** http://www.mp3licensing.com/licensees/index.asp
it's time for LAME to shine!
go go gadget(royalty/patent free) mp3 encoder!
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.
As others have noted Ogg Vorbis is a good replacement, I've been using them for awhile and they are definitely good enough, in my opinion to replace mp3s. I am still slightly annoyed however that this happened, its well within their rights to charge a fee, but its annoying they decided to wait until it had gain such great acceptance and then start charging when its become almost a standard for digital music.
Well, not exactly a check, more like 75 pennies.
In an envelope
Postage due
(In college once I paid a $2 [total BS] parking ticket in change, in one of those "postage will be paid by addressee" envelopes.)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Perhaps they are just getting their legal team cracking, and are just waiting for the right time to strike..
Odd, sueing someone over the IP of something that has caused more IP problems than anything else in history.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
has anyone checked out FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) or shorten32? I will not be using mp3 anymore....
Anything you say will be held against you.
Seems like a great way to kill the MP3 format. Perhaps they're being duly compensated by a certain Association of America.
Not that we can't all switch to ogg anyway, but still.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Does this mean someone who writes a totally reverse-engineered MP3 codec still has to pay the fee ? I know some guys made such codecs, but the webpage seems to imply that anyone encoding/decoding MP3 has to pay the fee. Seems weird to me.
Wrong. Or, rather, right, but wrong with respect to a very technical point that has escaped notice so far.
Previously decoders which were released for free for personal use were exempt from the licensing fees. This covers winamp, xmms, mpg123, and all the other free software players you love.
That exemption has been removed. Now everything costs 75 cents, no matter whether it's free software or not. And that, my friend, is a big deal.
Per unit. That means if somone distributes 100,000 downloads it will cost them $75,000 dollars.
Liberty in your lifetime
Fortunatly, the minimum royalty payment is a mere $15,000.
I hope the take checks...
Check out my sysadmin blog!
We'll just end up using LAME for our encoder and decoder. Enforcing a patent retroactively is bullshit in my opinion.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Winamp3 has just been released this month. I'm sure that's old news to most of you, but I'm posting it nontheless. I'm sure they'll work in some kind of ad system to pay the charges, but just in case Winamp goes for-pay, I'm downloading now.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
lol And the post right above that said basically the same thing and was posted within seconds of this one was modded +1 insightful. I'd be embarassed to be among those with mod privledges.
=0)
Everyman dies, not everyman really lives. -W.W
These prices have always been around. It's just that they have never been enforced. If everyone had to pay for a player to listen to mp3's, mp3's would be nowhere near as popular as they are today. /. editors making news out something that's been around for more than a year.
This is just another case of
Actually, you are incorrect; the editors did not do anything wrong in this case. While the rates have been around, they were lower previously. Take a look at the previous royalty page courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
I also have a feeling that if they are going to increase the rates, they are going to make a point of charging for the royalty fees as well.
What effect will this have on portable MP3 players (if any)? Will Apple update iTunes to use another format (maybe the Apple equivilent to WMA)? Will there be firmware update to the iPods?
proton != antielectron
Or will Winamp still distribute free players?
~ now you know
"Our goal is it to convince hardware manufacturers to include ogg vorbis support in their products. Ogg Vorbis is a high quality audio codec which is patent free!"
Sign here
Will you be signee 2102?
(Yeah, yeah, petitions don't work. Whatever)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
There is some tax on "music" CD-Rs in Canada, but not on "data" CD-Rs. When I heard this I said, "What!?" So you have the option of paying more for CDs that you will burn your music backups to, and the same for CDs that contain just "ordinary" data.
There has been a tax on recordable magnetic music media for more than a year now, with the proceeds supposedly going to battered musicians, or perhaps just to deter audio tape pirating, I'm not sure which...
Last year there was brief fuss when a Liberal cabinet minister in charge of Canadian Heritage, Shiela Copps, thought that a $400 surcharge on MP3 players, would be a good way to curb music piracy. I don't think the details of how to destinguish an portable MP3 player, from just another computer were able to be worked out, so this was just one reason that ill formed idea died on the table.
So much to tax, so little time. Isn't it bad enough that governments tax our purchases, now we are letting companies write taxes into their licences? Sheesh.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Who the fuck gives a shit?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Beware of greeks bearing .gifts.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
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?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Everybody's busy screaming OGG saying "death to MP3". Well, OGG isn't an answer at all. It plays nice on Mac's, X86, and sun squipment. That aint the problem. MP3's have 2 different decoders. The first one is a Floating point decoder. The second is integer decoder, which is used in many (I believe all...prove me wrong) MP3 players. OGG does NOT have a integer decoder.
Here's what's wrong with OGG, and perhaps how you can make it better:
1: No integer decoder (eg: no handheld support)
2: The Vorbis standard has NOT been solidified yet. So any developments made now would be useless
3: Patent issue: If I am correct Fraunhofer's patents are on the frequency, balancing, and general psycho-(hearing) relationships. MP3 just trims what people aren't supposed to hear. OGG uses the similar formulas too, so it could be "in violation". In my opinion, it's not a big deal (offshore server with anonymizing developer emails).
As a last note, FLAC is a great codec, however it's loseless. It's bigger, but you dont lose anything. It's also open-source and actually in 1 piece of industrial audio hardware.
...scads of people who have no problem whatsoever pirating hundreds of gigabytes of $19 CD's throwing a tizzy fit over the notion that someone else might have to pay $0.75.
Annual minimum royalties are payable upon signature and each following year in January and are fully creditable against annual royalties.
US$ 15 000.00 per calendar year.
Now that's a pain. I emailed them to see if I could get a "hobbyist license" for more per app, but without the $15k minimum (wanted to make "iTunes 3 for Classic Mac OS"). They allow you to release up to 5000 units of a game that uses mp3s royalty free, so I was hopeful. The reply? No dice. (I was impressed they sent a reply!)
Fwiw, here's a list of the licensees.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I'm getting sick of all these "free to use" technologies changing their mind after it has been widely accepted as a standard. gif...jpeg....mp3...
"I bet I'll get blamed for this." --Mayor Quimby
Now if only there were an alternative.
Is Thomson Multimedia suddenly wanting to build up a defense fund for an RIAA lawsuit? Or have they been sued already for trafficking in copyright infringement technology?
Is there a list somewhere of the packages that were removed from Rawhide? If so, I could compile new meta-rpm such that it would install the latest versions of each onto new RedHat installs.
Yeah, we knew someone would. But you don't need to thrash the first person to do so. Given that both posted at the same time modding him down seems uncalled for. At least neither of them was screaming "FP". Trying to post useful and relevant information as the first post should be encouraged.
jello.
aka aron.
Didn't these guys see what happened to the whole BetaMax thing? Real freaking Geniuses here.
Really... $0.75 per decoder? Technically, I have about 4 or 5 programs on my computer that can play mp3s... do I need to pay for each decoder, or just pay once? How about my mp3 CD player? Do I have to send three quarters to them to appease the hungry masses.
.wma format a big boost. For 90% of computer users, the decision will be simple... switch to .wma because it's free($).
I don't really think this spells victory for Ogg... I think this instead gives Microsoft and the
Loads of companies have already paid for a licence. Look here.
OK- first of all- "The Bastards!" etc.
Second- what is this going to mean for people already using mp3s ? E.g. Websites distributing free mp3s but taking revenue through adverts or something.
3rd: Here's a sneaky, semi-realistic way round it for authors of free mp3 playing software.
Make your player a game.
Yep. If you distribute less than 5000 copies of a title then you don't have to pay.
So- remember all those "9999 games" units you could get, where there were about 3 games but most of them just upped the difficulty level by giving you fewer lives or more asteroids or whatever ? Well, keep a counter of people downloading your mp3 player and every 4999 change the "game" slightly, and use a crappy perl script to generate random names that will end up like "danger turbo bang bang death circle" etc.
Note, the user doesn't have to play the game, and your title screen could have a groovy pattern or something that reacts to the music. And it's OK for games to let you use your own music in the game, right, like the Xbox ?
Anyway, got to go- I have to pull down the LAME sourcecode while you can still get that motherfucker.
graspee
windows
linux
I suppose I can understand this decision to charge fee's, i simply can't help but imagine that instead of making hordes of cash for Thomson, it will simply bring the mp3 format to a speedier death. People first starting using mp3's not only because of their relative low size and high quality, but because you could find all the tools needed to encode and enjoy your music for free. Years later, its become expected among the general populous that mp3 = free. What will happen as soon as the costs of these fees hits the general public. Will Joe-User be willing to pay to simply listen to mp3's? He doesn't seem to want to pay for the actual digital music, so why would he pay for the player? Already there are better formats for digital music that are completely free (think ogg). While perhaps this won't immediatly affect how many people listen to mp3's, newer better formats always eventualy come around. I simply hope these actions accellerate the demise of the popularity of the mp3 format and allow perhaps a better FREE format become the defacto standard.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
It's only going to hurt small projects who can't afford to subsidize the users, especially when there's a $15k annual minimum involved. :P
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
It is a sound file format(encode/decode), and indeed is the standard for digital sound for years...
cheers...
P.S.- nothing much to say except that isn't normally used for music because of the MP3 positioning in the market... some say ogg is better then mp3...
We better all go download winamp while we still can.
Well, I was already breaking the law by using bladeenc without paying any royalties, so now it will be the same way with winamp and mpg123. The only change for me is that in the future, I'll have mpg123 in /usr/local/bin instead of /usr/bin.
CfkRAp1041vYQVbFY1aIwA== RV/hBCLKKcSTP5UFK3kqsg==
It's not like we didn't all suspect something like this was gunna happen. Well yup I got lotsa mp3's gunna have to look up some way to convert them to ogg.
I'm still looking for real PNG support in IE too
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
I know this is obvious to every one but it needs to be said. The mp3 is dead.
There will be a short period of confusion while people pick a new format to replace the mp3 format. Then, over the next year that new technology will completely replace mp3s. In violation of the patents people will distribute tools to convert mp3s to other formats. All existing ripping and encoding software will be rewritten to use something other than mp3.
The mp3 will become a footnote in history and law books. In 10 years when we are being nostalgic for the Internet boom years someone will mention mp3s and someone else will mention betamax and we will take another sip of our drinks and laugh.
Stonewolf
You can fight this.
- Mirror copies of XMMS/Winamp and put them on your web site. Put them in your shared Gnutella directory. Keep some copies on CD-R's.
- Refuse to pay. Boycott any players that have paid this fee.
- Convert your collection to Ogg.
We have fought for our music to be free by supporting the P2P companies, we have fought for the record companies to eschew copy restrictions on their CD's, now we'll have to fight to keep the very format we use store our music.
--Jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
The gall of these people to expect people to pony up $.75 of their hard earned cash to use a piece of software that has revolutionized the way they listen to music. I won't cave into such greedy corporate tactics and instead I'll save my $.75 and use something that I can pay nothing for, because paying nothing is always better than paying something, that being the most important criteria for judging what software to use.
Well, at least they know everyone who uses an MP3 player will cough up the money, I mean it's not like they would ever want to pirate something.
75 times more reason to use OGG! _khl
This issue raises the question about the other MPEG formats, specifically mpeg2 and 4 which are used for video (DVD's for example). Are those algorythms under patent also?
I would write more but there is a Toonami marathon on Cartoon Central and by God you will have to take my anime from cold, dead fingers! Now which sugar filled energy drink will I consume during cartoons^H^H^H^H^H^H^H anime?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
How is this suppose to work, its not like decoding mp3's is some big mystery.
You lost some in CD -> mp3. You'll lose even more when converting to ogg. Stick with mp3 (I hardly think there's going to be a problem to find a free player in the future too) or start as (compact) disc-jockey. Of course you should encode all new ones as .ogg, but do yourself a favor and don't reencode.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Great! Its time to kill the MP3 format. The are numerous better formats now.
It really doesn't make any sense to encode any new files in MP3 format.
I hope Windows Media Player and Real Player (in its free version) will stop supporting MP3 playback in future.
PS: You can find some Non-MP3 CD rippers here.
I don't know a whole lot about MP3 encoding, but I understand it relies on Fourier series parameters to reconstruct audio, and the patents apply to the methods used to compress those parameters. A transcoder which decoded down to the series of parameters, then compressed the series differently might not involve those same patents.
If the Ogg Vorbis folks could implement something which relies on the same types of data as MP3, but which was executed in such a way that it transcodes losslessly, they could include this in the ogg standard, perhaps calling it "Degraded Mode .Ogg" or similar. Being able to quickly and losslessly convert existing material to the resulting umbrella standard would do wonders for the adoption rate of true .Ogg for new files.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
I know a lot of people are hoping that .ogg will prevail as a result of this but unfortunately I fear something much worse.
.wma format. On P2P systems and from friends. It brings back chilling memories of the not so long ago pre-decent-office-suite-4-linux days where I had to continually bitch and moan in vain that I'm not able to make use of a particular format.
.ogg will be there to save the day if it disappears. I have yet to see one single .ogg file EVER availble for download on a P2P system but I have seen the occasional .wma. So windows media is gradually gaining acceptance. If mp3s die out I highly doubt .ogg has a good chance to take it's place.
I'm already seeing a ton of songs in
Mp3 is still the most dominant format but I honestly don't think
--
Garett
i wonder what apple is going to do. would it be a wise business move to pay the license until the next version of itunes, and release a patch that plays some other format, .ogg? then when itunes 4 comes out, end mp3 support? from a license standpoint, it would make sense to switch over to .ogg, but i wonder if they would just be shooting themselves in the foot, after all, the vast majority of digital music out there is in .mp3.
A couple of points:
1. This is an open standard. It's just patented. Patents expire. Nobody is trying to prevent you from writing decoders - they just want to get paid for (I hope) work that they did in developing the technology, which is pretty cool, and which I don't think I could have invented on my own. I am not fond of software patents, but a patent on MP3 is not the same as a patent on one-click or xor cursors.
Compare this to, for example, Real Media player, where the file format isn't *patented* - it's a trade secret. So if Real doesn't support your platform, you can't play real media. This is really awful - much worse than the patent situation with mp3.
2. The royalty is quite reasonable. If you had to pay $0.75 for your copy of WinAMP, would that really seem unfair to you? That's the price of a can of coke, for Pete's sake! It it really that unfair?
3. Like it or not, this is not going to kill MP3, because most MP3 players are commercial, licensed products, and there are a ton of them out there, and they don't support Vorbis. So you don't have to do anything to keep using your MP3s, but if you want to use Vorbis in protest, it's going to be very difficult.
4. I have a large library of audio files that need to get published on the net. They're free, noncommercial, non-revenue-generating. I'll publish them at least in MP3 format, and maybe Ogg if I can get a good encoder. I have a feeling that if I publish Ogg, it's not going to get downloaded very much, but it'll be interesting to see.
IANAL, but it seems to me there would be some sort of laws against releasing something for free public use, crushing competition, then raising prices on it. Maybe something about sacrificing their intellectual property into the public domain by not enforcing their decoder licenses for such a long period of time? I know there's restrictions requiring companies to protect IP, patents and trademarks or they risk losing them to the public domain, could this be a similar case?
The difficulty here is they've kept as tight a lease on the encoders as they could all along, but now their extending that to the decoder technology, which in my mind has already been given up to the public.
Copyright is all about copying the work. Patents are about copying the idea.
That's part of what's inherently wrong with patenting software. They should treat patents in the same way they treat trademarks -- if its use becomes diluted and unchecked, it belongs to the public.
MP3, GIF and lots of other data formats are just out there everywhere and should belong to the public at large. It's not like the someone who invented LZ or MP3 formats woke up from a coma after 20 years of people using their work. The people have been using it for so long, it belongs to the people now.
People should be protesting and presuring for the release of these patents. People should be protesting against software patents in general. When it comes to historical and archival data, it's all about the format.
What would happen if MS patented EVERYTHING they did. Screw copyright -- just patented everything. We know their legal team would pose a deadly threat to everyone they came in contact with whether the claims had merit or not.
Software patents have a chilling effect on industrial and recreational software development. (Open source is largly recreational... and we should all be screaming for our rights to free expression and recreation.) They need to be officially disposed of. What political force is already supporting this view? I don't know... someone tell me. Whoever and whatever it is, they need to be backed by our support to make some change happen. Things have been out of control for far too long.
Or another lossless, free-as-in-speech format. When OGG 1.0 came out a couple months ago, I took the plunge and re-ripped all my CDs. (Lucky me, I only have about 80 CDs.)
Even if such a change as this (removing the exemption for personal-use decoders) wouldn't really affect me, there's such a thing as taking a stand against those who would abuse the rights they are granted.
If you can, switch to OGG. Rip all your new CDs in OGG. Encourage gaming companies to use the OGG format for the music in their games. And so on.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
In that case, they merely charge you $60,000.
How do we complain to these idiots?
Internet petition? Email?
Same old story. Compuserve tried to do the same thing with .GIF. MP3 is out of Fraunhofer's hands. It's pretty much defacto public domain. They can charge all the licence fees they want, but if they are to enforce it, I hope they have the money to sue the planet.
-R
They only have a patent in countries where they have applied and been granted one.
Anyone know what countries they own the patent in?
Yeah, its not like people would decide to make a free codec for nothing. Er.. um..
no sig.
That's the whole idea of patenting something. Patenting involves disclosing how something works. Then the government protects your right to use it without competition for X years.
-BrentThe big change is the removal of the "free players don't have to pay" clause.
Of course this was removed in July 2001, and Nullsoft (for example) had been licensing the tech for a few years before that.
In a few years you won't find a DIVX decoder anywhere either.
If you follow this link and look at the bottom, you will see the following:
Granted, this is on the page entitled "Electronic Music Distribution", but the phrase does include "creating a personal music library" and so forth. I would think this is arguable.
Anyhoo, there is often a big difference between having a contract and enforcing the terms. Many companies include terms and conditions that limit the use or charge for use of their services and such, but don't enforce it unless there has been abuse.
All told, I still don't get warm fuzzies thinking about why they shuffled things around and didn't make it clear where Open Source stands.
Lynn
This patent-only license is needed in case the mp3 software is developed in-house or licensed from a third party. Decoder US$ 0.75 per unit or US$ 50 000.00 one-time paid-up
Couldn't the FSF/Redhat/UnitedLinux/SOMEONE become a legal re-distributor of "third-party licensed" decoders by coughing up $50,000, so long as developers were game?
Not that anyone really wants to blow 50 grand, but this might work.
Or not.
S
Ok, people need to relax a bit.
.mp3 not in lieu of), it's going to take a lot more than an equal quality but free version to compete for market share at this point.
They are not charging you the consumer this royalty. Lots of people seem to be confused over that. They're charging software developers and hardware manufacturers. Winamp will continue to be free. iTunes will continue to be free. Windows Media Player will continue to be free (as long as winamp exists anyhow).
I could understand an open source developer working on a player being upset over the fees. I'd be pissed if I were in the process of writing a player and suddenly I couldn't release it. However, most of the comments here seem to be from misguided consumers and ogg vorbis zealots.
As for whether or not this will help ogg vorbis gain adoption... it can't hurt but it probably won't help much either. There is a lot of marketting power and name recognition behind the mp3 format. Somebody who manufactures a hardware mp3 player is going to pay these fees. No biggie - $3 added to the price tag of a $100-$600 device. Who cares? And while we'll likely see a player or two support the ogg format (in addition to
Nice. I don't have enough words to find a google cache.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
I'm still not convinced that these guys are coming down on open source players, but here's some concrete items worth mentioning:
If you use a COMMERCIAL MP3 decoder, you're OK. Nullsoft, Apple, Microsoft, Real, Musicmatch, and probably any other manufacturer ou can think of has a license. It's all listed here.
Whether or not the freebies will be forced into licensing is another question. Yes, the clause has been removed from their page that freebie players don't adhere.
Is Ogg completely open? Is there ANYONE who can claim a patent on it 10 years from now (see JPEG)? If not, what are we waiting for?? Ogg rules!
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
this is why every disc I copy to my harddrive is done in ogg. all kept in house. i use a free codec to copy my music that I bought with my money to my computer that I do not redistribute so that I can listen to it in a fashion that is more suitable for me. near as I can tell thats still legal isn't it? I'd really have no problem with xmms becoming an ogg only player. the only thing I look forward to is ogg compatibility on the iPod.
-
If you click on the Licensees link, you'll see that most major MP3 hardware/software manufacturers are already paying the licensing fees.
I just heard they shut down Napster, so you pretty soon there won't be any use for MP3 software anyway.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Betamax was at first hugely popular, until VHS became the lesser evil w.r.t technology licencing. Where is beta now? I know I have two VHS machines in this houshold, but beta never entered the picture (no pun intended). Sony wanted royalties, JVC was friendlier -- guess which won in the long term?
We need to do the same with MP3 -- tho it is entrenched, those with the means should drop it like a hot potato and pick up OGG as the best format. Eventually, MP3 == Betamax, and the rest will be history.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
I, for one, am very thankful that we have a free alternative to mp3, but how many of your friends who are outside of the slashdot community (more "mainstream" in their technological prowess) have ever heard of ogg? This is the time when we need to take it upon ourselves to make sure that our friends are aware of the alternatives. Now with a real motivation to leave mp3 for ogg it could really take off, if we all do our part. I'm sure everyone reading this knows a few people that would probably ante up the $.75 because they figure it's their only option. Take a few minutes and tell them about ogg today....
Thank goodness I bought all those CDs!
Indeed, there is nothing wrong with that. Honest, honorable people do this all the time. After all, this is business, and in business one needs to be aware of the risks.
The similarities that this variation of the bait-and-switch tactic has to the means by which many crack dealers aquire new customers is pure coincidence.
Even if you're right, it doesn't affect the value of the post you were commenting - namely the *meaning* of patent laws. They STILL weren't meant to be abused in the way that is being done today. Namely that you don't use the protection util something has already become standard.
On the other hand, of course I agree that you should usen open standards to begin with, but actually that is (or should be, anyway) another issue.
Already have winamp or another mp3 player on your computer?
I don't see a reason to give that up and pay the decoder fees.
As long as you keep your older versions of the players, you should be fine.
Hell, you should even burn a cd with all the players you can think of on it just in case you feel like switching and want to aviod the fees.
Downmix - The Artscene News Source!
. . .and within two clicks of the page SlashDot refers to, I found this in the site's FAQ:
"Do you license mp3/mp3PRO software to end users?"
"No. We license mp3/mp3PRO software and patents to developers and manufacturers of software applications and hardware devices."
So these licensing fees don't apply to Joe Blow--they apply to the companies who want to incorporate MP3/MP3Pro encoding or decoding. Yeah, it sucks for RedHat, but they're not going to send you and me a bill.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
cause they will charge all mp3 decoders (i dont think they will make money from pc users anyway...) only from hardware vendors
I highly doubt Linux's success was from the availability and use of a music format.
There will certainly be a hitch at first as Winamp won't play your 1.21 jigabytes of mp3 files, but as soon as mainstream encoders and players come out using a quality open file format as a default then users will just as quickly adopt that.
My question is, is it possible to write an mp3 to ogg conversion tool that evades definition as a "decoder" under the license? If so they're in even bigger trouble. If the next version of WinAmp is Ogg only with a nifty conversion tool, then their patent won't have very much relevance in a short amount of time.
***** Dr. Bellows ***** // Soul // Jazz
Funk
for gigs, music & more!
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
I bet Hilary Rosen and the rest of the RIAA gestappo is doing cartwheels at this, the damper being put on the further production and distribution of MP3-capable audio players.
Wouldn't it be funny if the RIAA gave them some sort of incentive to do this?
~Ben
or they could just pay the $60,000 for an unlimited distribution licence
If this is the case, isn't it possible to use this as bridge to a new format. Provide a service/product which enables users to convert their MP3s to a new - free - format and forget about MP3. I think I am missing something here, am I?
" In a few years you won't find a DIVX decoder anywhere either."
An interesting point. Currently the DIVX codec is free to download for playing (By that I mean divx 5), and free for encoding, but you have to suffer ads if you want the pro version. (Though everyone has a cracked version).
Now, what do you think would happen if DIVX started charging $hitload$ of money for encoders and decoders ?
Well, still a lot of rips use the old divx 3, and would continue to do so, although really the quality has been superseded by everything newer. There's XVID too, which is not bad. In my opinion DIVX 5 looks the nicest, but if you encode with all the funky options turned on it won't play on low-end PCs because it uses lotsa CPU.
The real difference between MP3 and DIVX with respect to licensing is that we are FULLY AWARE that DIVX could turn around at any minute and go all non-free on us, whereas with MP3 it was free for so many years for non-commercial use that we relaxed and got sloppy, and forgot.
graspee
I think the RIAA should pull together and buy out the MP3 patients and then the Ogg ones! Then ban then usage of these programs and formats.
HEHE!!! Monopoly!!! YEAH BABY!!!
It's times like these that I'm glad I save a lossless compressed raw PCM file from my ripping sessions. Sure, it burns a lot of tape, but it will save me the time and trouble of digging out all those CDs. (I get to spend the time and trouble locating my backup tapes instead.)
This should be one of those golden rules of audio/video processing-- save the originals!
(This gets especially annoying when your primary source, e.g. digital camera, does not have an "uncompressed image" option.)
The biggest hang-up with Ogg right now is the lack of hardware player support. Until a large number of the little gizmo type music players can get music out of a .ogg the format is not going to go that far.
There are a few others, but that's the biggest.
jello.
aka aron.
IANAL. Is it even legal to allow your patent to be used freely for so long, and THEN try and collect licensing fees? I always thought that for a patent to be valid, you must defend it. By allowing it to be used freely for so long, without defending it, shouldn't it be invalidated?
Or am I wrong? If I am, I can see a hell of a business model coming. Get a few thousand new patents, wait a few years untill a large number of people are well established users of something covered in one of them, and then sue the shit out of all of them! WE COULD MAKE BILLIONS!! MWAHAHAHAHAHA MWAHAHAHA MWAHAHAHA!
[4F08] The Twisted World of Marge Simpson
If only Marge had tried to sell MP3 enc/dec-oders, I can see it now...
Tony: Sorry we're late. Could we have the money now?
Marge: The answer -- is no.
Tony: I'm afraid I must insist. You see, my wife, she has been most vocal on the subject of the pretzel [MP3] monies. "Where's the money?" "When are you going to get the money?" "Why aren't you getting the money now?" And so on.
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
Does anyone have the terms of the actual MP3 license handy? It doesn't seem correct that Thompson can change existing license terms when the license has already been agreed to -- in other words, suddenly start charging companies that already use their codecs for something that was previously free. It makes sense that any FUTURE licenses (and licensees) will not be free, but isn't it a classic bait-and-switch when someone like, say, Nullsoft has already licensed the decoder? And isn't that illegal?
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
I don't think they mean to charge end users, they mean to charge the distrubtors (WinAmp MusicMatch, etc...) per units shipped (how many people have downloaded Winamp?) Which could kill some of them, a'la Internet Radio stations.
I could be reading the information page wrong though.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
MP3 only came up because it was available at low-to-no-cost. Regarding some of the patents, of course. Nobody would've had used it if they had charged this decoder fee from the very beginning, and they know!
Do what I am going to do: Write a letter (paper!) to Fraunhofer and Thomson and explain your concerns.
Yes, I know about Ogg Vorbis and stuff, but there's no reason not to protest against changed mp3 licenses.
I don't want to re-compress all my mp3s to Ogg because this will reduce quality. So I will still have mp3s around in several years (don't mention all those CDs I burned). So this is an issue, since I will need a player/decoder to access them.
Contact Fraunhofer:
Fraunhofer Institut für Integrierte SchaltungenAm Wolfsmantel 33
91058 Erlangen
Germany
Phone +49 (0) 91 31/7 76-0
Fax +49 (0) 91 31/7 76-9 99
Email: info@iis.fhg.de
(Interesting: On the English homepage, their postal address doesn't show up - only eMail addresses. On the German homepage, it does.)
Contact Thomson:
Thomson multimedia16935 W. Bernardo Drive # 103
San Diego, CA 92127
USA
Fax: +1.858.451.6916
Email: info@mp3licensing.com
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
standard Pronunciation Key (stndrd)
n.
Something, such as a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence.
MP3's are a standard. Sorry to burst your bubble.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The sayings are for an equivalent bitrate, I will get more quality from ogg. So theorically, converting from mp3 to ogg MIGHT be psychoacoustically lossless.
For instance, suppose my CD contained 'abcdefghij' and my mp3 encoder transformed 'abcde', which I still heard as 'abcdefghij'. It might be possible that converting from mp3 to mp3 I get 'abc', which I would still hear as being 'abcde', and therefore as 'abcdefghij'.
However, this is not necessarily the case. mp32ogg might also convert to 'abd' or even 'abz', which I would not necessarily perceive as 'abcdefghij'.
So questions to you audio engineers (IAOAEE - I Am Only An Electronics Engineer):
Will this affect you the end user.
More than likely, Companies like who Apple (iTunes and iPod) Microsoft ( windows Media Player) and Aol (Winamp) and SonicBlue (Rio) will more than likely flip the bill for it. Those companies won't drop support of popular standard because it is no longer free for who feel this will signal the death of the standard.
It is clearly good business practice to try to make money off of one's own innovation especially when it is so popular.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
I'd be willing to pay $100 towards the cause.
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
I've heard plenty of stories of bands with demos on DAT where the master was destroyed/lost. All the backups are worthless.
The Audio Home Recording Act requires consumer DAT decks sold in the United States to follow a Serial Copy Management System standard. However, professional DAT decks are completely exempt. Do these bands not know of a local small-time recording studio that can recover their audio?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now, this is what gets me thinking. The big issue of past months has been webcasting fees. I notice a link from that first page to a set of webcasting fees. But the wording is interesting:
Commercial (i.e., revenue-generating) use of mp3 / mp3PRO in real time broadcasting (terrestrial, satellite, cable and/or any other media), broadcasting / streaming via Internet, intranets and/or other networks or in other electronic content distribution systems, such as pay-audio or audio-on-demand applications.
The first part, that explicitly says "Commercial" uses, is what gets me thinking. Which tells me free radio stations (like the ones run by schools, net groups, etc) don't have to pay. But then there's the note at the bottom of the page:
Note: No license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with an annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00.
This explicitly says that if you don't make 100k per year, you don't have to pay anything. So if your college "runs" the webcasting station, they have to pay. Whereas if Joe Musik-piratt (all names are purely fictional, of course) runs a webcast out of his dorm room, with a box that he owns, no fees are needed.
But the part I'm really itching on is whether that clause applies to JUST webcasting or to the whole license scheme. It does say "no fees" and not "no fees for webcasting", but IANAL. Anyone got some insight?
I am !amused.
.
Ok, nobody has (AFAIK) stated the obvious rational response.
Thompson-Gobbldy-GooginHoffer, is the parent of Thompson Electronics and RCA.
It's time to apply pressure to the Legs and Arms of the patient.
Contact Thompson (Insert your Country Name) and RCA (Insert your Country Name) and inform them that you WILL NOT BUY until they release MP3 from the IP prison they have placed it in.
FREE MP3
.
These patents must be expiring soon. How long has it been around? THey're probably squeezing the last of the profits they can.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
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.
It's a good thing I already converted all my MP3s to Windows Media!
*ducks*
Can I patent how I can swing on tree swing?
...oh wait...that kid beat me to it!
I am going to re-invent the wheel, and this time I will make it round!
- A free fixed point decoder has been announced.
- With version 1.0 out now, Vorbis is pretty solid for decoding. Ongoing development is expected to not break decoding functionality.
- Legal complications remain embarrassingly unresolved.
(Posting in Mozilla 1.1 from WinXP. Hope this works.)Supposedly the Ogg-on-a-Chip Project has a workable hardware design. I've not heard of anyone planning to build these tho.
When MS didn't feel like paying those stupid MP3 licenses, conspiracy theories started and some people said that MS is trying to force its WMA proprietary format on people. But when RedHat does the same thing, oh its for the good of us all.
It is free for non-comercial and private use so that there keeps software like XMMS going. The only reason companys like redhat have pulled MP3 decoders from there distros is they sell versions of there distro that include them and as such would make it a commercial product. The RIAA can go screw them selfs and there is nothing to say there arent already watermarks in the files we just dont know about.
I like DAT best. It's pure digital, and doesn't do any compression
DAT is lossy. It loses all frequencies above 24 kHz (48 kHz sample rate + Nyquist-Shannon theorem). It loses all signals below -120 dB due to the effective 20-bit performance of 16-bit dithered PCM. It loses the front-and-back dimension.
The question becomes how much loss a fellow can tolerate. For audio engineers, 24-bit 96 kHz WAV works well (AIFF is limited to 65,535 Hz). (Cool Edit Pro supports 32-bit floating-point, which has incredible dynamic range.) For consumers, even audiophiles with high-quality amps and speakers, 192 kbps Ogg is more than enough for stereo audio.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If they don't charge they have zero revenue.
Untrue. If they charge a fee for encoders, consumer devices that play MP3s don't incur a cost penalty. Free versions of programs can include MP3 decoding while commercial versions can include the MP3 encoding functionality.
What/Where is a good Ogg encoder (CD->OGG) and what settings does it need to be for cd quality sound?
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
It would be awesome if Thomson and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft said that there was a licensing fee for only decoders that ran under Windows and on portable devices!
That would give them a more easily enforcable license: "Hey M$, how many copies of Media Player have you sold?"
Just wish they had some Linux zealots willing to give up a bit of profit for the cause!
I think the death of MP3 is long overdue and anything that speeds up that process is a good thing. I am really hoping that this will accelerate the acceptance ogg.
Does anyone know of any portable devices or car stereo devices that support ogg? I've been holding off purchasing a portable music device until i find one that supports ogg.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
The real question is: why did the MPEG group choose a technology that was patented, or at least had a patent pending? Shouldn't it be up to the standards body to ensure that they're not going to screw over all of their users by forcing them to pay in the future for something that's bound to become a standard?
If we don't want this to happen again in the future, shouldn't we reject future standards that are based on patentable technologies?
I'll gladly pay $1.00 ($0.75 for licensing, $0.25 for programmer's cost) to buy a batch converter to go through my 10 gigs of MP3's and convert them to OGG.
That will be the last $0.75 I'll ever spend on anything to do with MP3 -- who is programmer willing to make a couple thousand dollars for a few hours work?
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
Do you suppose that decoders can get around this issue the same way the LAME open-source mp3 encoder did -- by distributing not a decoder but the *source* to one?
Everyone uses it, and now they wanna make us pay. I thought we established this was unenforceable bull$#|+ with the recent JPEG issues, and I haven't heard about Unisys in a while regarding GIF.
This sig no verb.
What if say.. AOL->Nullsoft flat-out refused to pay these stupid software patent fees? Would they have the legal weight to get enough controversy going such that software patents are finally overturned? Or who else could perhaps do this? Public protest *does* change laws.
The article says it's $0.75 per decoder and at the very bottom of the page, it says there is also a $15,000 a year minimum license fee payable each January.
Thanks,
Me
First,
Tom's Hardware recently reviewed and compared MP3s, WMAs, and a newcomer AAC, from Dolby. It seems like AAC may turn out to be a non-microsoft based competitor. Perhaps this is a new format that will be embraced if MP3s start to downtrend?
And to those who say "So what, we don't have to pay it!",
Who is going to pay it? The software companies? You think they're not going to pass those costs on to the end consumer? You've got another thing coming.
Oh, and those freeware players you've been using? Well, most freeware/Open source companies arn't going to pay the $.75 for you to use their product, so I guess all those will be yanked.
On the one hand, this sucks -- or has the potential to. On the other hand, has anyone else considered -- the music codec market has remained pretty much unchanged for a long while now. We're constantly getting better MPEG encoding, but we've been using MP3 for ages. I refuse to believe that there is nothing better!!
Perhaps this will stimulate development of different and better technologies -- I've always been one for diversification.
I agree that charging fees after the format is underhanded, and possibly grounds for anti-trust violations
It is in no way an antitrust violation to change the license of a patent, or to discriminate in licensing the patent to (say) black people, unless the patent holder has been found to hold "market power" as defined in the antitrust law. 35 USC 271:
I predict that Fraunhofer will argue that the existence of RealPlayer, WMA, and Ogg proves that Fraunhofer lacks market power in the market for audio coding technology.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hmmmm sounds fishy to me. basically any license that is put out and you agree to does not make it so that they can change the terms of that license in the future and make you responsible to adhering to it.
.05 per mile over your allotted 12K miles per year. then when you turn the car in the now say you have to pay 1.00 per mile - saying that the license has changed....
So all the softwarethat was written previously where there was no license fees should be in the free and clear.
thats like leasing a car - and when you sign the lease it states that you are responsible for paying
Ok, as I understand this, Fraunhofer and company are now charging .75 cents for every decoder distributed. Supposively anything that decodes MP3s is subject to this tax. But that's not the end of it. Not by a long shot. His reign of terror extends to all things Fraunhofer. It just so happens my Mp3s are encoded using LAME and what do you know, damn near every decoder I use decodes LAME without a problem. So unless Fraunhofer can actually lay claim to the .mp3 extention, they're seriously SOL. I mean really. And it wouldn't be a huge shift in the industry to totally dump the Fraunhofer algorithm and use the free LAME system. Unless I've misread the situation, Fraunhofer has a seriously weak case and is threatening their already precarious position in the consumer market. And before you say Oog, it needs a lot more visibility before it even comes close to being a standard, though I have nothing against it (aside from the fact that hardely any portable player supports the format).
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Can someone help me understand how this matters at all? Yes, this changes things from here out, but I'm sure that most of us have many versions of Winamp archived or have some sort of hardware device that plays MP3s. How does this effect my ability to encode, burn and play MP3's discs in my car or home mp3 players (not even talking about Winamp)? I don't see that it does.
The action of sticking your finger in the hole when the damn is already broken wide open seems pretty pointless. Am I incorrect?
TIA!
I cant remember what license it uses, but its not open source. mpg321 is though :)
But aren't existing decoders (ones already distributed) clear of this nonsense?
Isn't it still entirely "legal" to use the decoder you already have installed to transcode your library to Ogg Vorbis?
(I put "legal" in quotes because I don't believe Fraunhofer has an ethical leg to stand on; they waited until the majority of online music content was encoded into their format, and then imposed a fee on decoding. That is absolutely wrong. I'm not going to think twice about ignoring their silly patent, personally.)
-John
It doesn't mean being nickel and dimed for everything, and it doesn't mean it's free now and you pay later.
Redhat 7.2 has 1,144 packages. If they were to charge $0.75 for each package, you would be charged $858.00 to use Redhat.
This means that they will have to foot the bill for every copy of an mp3 player that they have ever bundled or sold or let you download for free and put crap icons on my desktop. Granted $0.75 is not a lot, but it sure adds up. Most of the geeks that use an alternative OS will (if they already aren't) start using Ogg/Vorbis and the switch over will be painless. For once a patent hurts the companies that I really hate and doesnt' affect me. I can just use Ogg, I like it better. Good news for a Tuesday if you ask me.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Browsing around the licensing website for a bit it appears as though a number of companies (Nullsoft -- makers of winamp) are already licensed, although it makes no mention of whether or not they will retain their license under the new scheme. Although Thomson does not sell the mp3 libraries for non windows/mac operating systems they do offer their SDK for linux and other operating systems (for a price). It is also interesting that winamp has plans to come out with a version for linux soon. Although many windows mp3 players are licensed, I would guess that no open source players/encoders are. Therefore those who will get shafted will be linux users who rely upon these. I sincerely doubt win users will have any obstacles.
A computer is a valuable tool, so use it and stop whining.
You can see the old Freeamp site in archive. But the current site is down.
Let them come to me to cough-out 75 for my license.
If they win, they get not 75 cents but $15,000 in actual damages, as that's the annual minimum royalty. From the software royalty rate page:
Will I retire or break 10K?
Everyone here is gushing about how Nullsoft must be ponying up the $.75 or that future distributions won't include the decoder DLL and other assorted nonsense.
Did you even bother to read the licensing terms?
Thomson will license the decoder patent for a one-time fee of $50,000... Not a small chunk of change, but literally nothing for a company of AOL's size.
End of story.
Once it's patented, then yes, it's up to you to do the due diligence to see if your "new" technology has not been patented. That is why you pay IP lawyers truckloads of money to make sure that you can actually release this product.
However, the situation that you present is a typical technique that some companies use, however it's not a terrible as it seems. I believe there is a 6 year statute of limitations, so it somewhat limits the damages.
In any case, I believe Ogg has a royalty-free license, which means that anyone who uses it doesn't have to pay anything.
But this does severely hurt open source programmers. If you decide to release a new piece of software, you need to make sure you're not violating any previous patents, otherwise you will be liable, much like the article last week regarding patents and the Linux Kernel
I emailed Rio asking if they would be supporting Ogg in a later version of their firmware. No answer... :(
Yeah, it's a reasonble price. Depending on who gets it. Sorry, but Fraunhofer isn't the worthy cause I had in mind. I'd pay much more for winamp. It has always been a super reliable program. But pay because Fraunhofer is extorting them? Don't think so.
You're right. It won't kill MP3 and like Wile E. Coyote, Fraunhofer will be lucky to ever actually catch a profit. Someday Ogg may come... And when it does, I hope everybody has a player with upgradable firmware handy.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Sure -- they don't really want your .75 cents, individually -- they want $0.75 from commerical makers of MP3 playing hardware, broadcasters, etc.
But be nice, and don't let the petty bickering of hardware makers etc. get in the way of rewarding the hard work of the Frauenhofers who waited just a little bit before giving you a chance to pay up. If you enjoy MP3s, send them 3 of your favorite quarters. Better yet, a roll and a half of pennies.
Sure, it will cost more in postage, but it could be worth it. Ask for a receipt.
Perhaps you could send them to Frauenhofer's USA office, care of:
Vice President: Dr. Keith F. Blurton
46025 Port St.
Plymouth, MI 48170, USA
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Even if you're right, it doesn't affect the value of the post you were commenting - namely the *meaning* of patent laws. They STILL weren't meant to be abused in the way that is being done today. Namely that you don't use the protection util something has already become standard.
There was no deception. Patents were disclosed, known, and awarded before ANY serious use of mp3's occurred. All of the mp3 explosion occurred with full knowledge that this could easily happen. This action by Fraunhofer is in stark contrast to people who push for standards BEFORE disclosing patents.
If you don't like it, don't use the patent. They are not free, you know. Ogg is. Open royalty-free standards are good. Mp3 is not such a standard, nor has it ever been one.
What if we make one decoder that uses a standardized input/output scheme designed to interoperate with other programs. We could then make any mp3 player app we wanted, and have it run said decoder in the background. In this way we would only need to pay the one time fee per decoder, but still have all the different front ends we want. This seems the cheap and effective way to rescue most of the linux players.
Is it -any- MP3 player, or just ones that use the Frauenhoffer reference implementation?
The very act of encoding a waveform into an MPEG audio layer 3 stream is patented, no matter how it is performed (because all possible methods simplify ultimately to the invention listed in the patent claims), and I'd assume decoding is patented as well.
I mean, LAME has managed to get arround patent issues by completely reimplementing the encoder.
Wrong. LAME managed to get around the copyright on the ISO MPEG audio distribution. Copyrights are not patents, and patents are not copyrights. Unlike copyrights, which can be circumvented through "clean room" reverse engineering because they have a limited defense of "independent creation of a work" that those with enough money for a legal defense (i.e. not an individual songwriter) can use, once an invention is patented, it's considered published to the whole United States, and you can't clean-room around it.
Will I retire or break 10K?
mpg123, which did the actual decoding, is no longer there. And if you check the logs of the xmms RPM, you'll see that on Aug 20 they removed the mpg123 plugin.
Oggasm
mp32ogg
Mp3 to Vorbis
Karma
Yes, mostly. The FgH patents were issued in Germany in 1989, one year after ISO-11172 (mpeg1 standard) was published. In the USA, the patent was issued sometime in the mid-90's, 1996 I seem to recall.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
You could always get a sharp zaurus and use it to play your ogg files.
Sharp Zaurus PDA: $350.
Cheap low-end MP3 CD player at Best Buy: $50.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm not trolling either but... Ogg Vorbis?? Please.
mmmmm.... i wonder.... is that valid/legal in europe ? marc :)
You can submarine a patent for as long as you like *cough*GIF*cough*.
Nope, that's copyright. A patent lasts only 20 years after it is filed, plus any time necessary for products such as new drugs to get federal regulatory approval.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Think about it, they only have a licencing fee of $0.75 for a peice of software. That's $0.75! Come on, are people saying they couldn't afford paying $0.75 to use a program? That would raise software prices by a very small amount. From what I understand on this Licencing agreement Apple or Microsoft only have to pay $90,000 and they can include decoding in all of their products. That's a fairly small amount for a companies that sells billions in products.
I think that the company that spent money into the research for creating the MP3 codec should deserve some sort of compensations. After all, how many of us could hack together our own MP3 decoder, create the mathematical models from scratch, and then standardize it? Yes, ogg is good and it will probably succeed in the Linux community, but for the commercial world MP3 (and it's next iterations) are what are popular now.
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?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
But even that change happened sometime last year (before October 2001). Given that the current fee structure has been in place for a year, it seems silly to post Slashdot stories about "new licensing terms" and comments about how everything's going to change. Notice how it didn't change last fall when the licensing terms were actually new?
This won't kill -- or probably even hurt -- the MP3 format. It's too entrenched. What it will do is make it harder to release Free players that support MP3. And which players have the best support for OGG? That's right, the Free ones. So if this succeeds in making it harder to distribute Free players, it reduces the number of available OGG players.
Since no one will want a player that can't handle OGG, the only remaining players with significant market share will be those that have paid the fees. The organizations that can afford the fees mostly have a vested interest in restricting distribution.
Nope, no sig
We do have royalty-free formats such as ogg vorbis, I mean who still uses mp3 these days?
I pity the poor fools who still keep their CD collection solely in mp3.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Does this affect open source players? I'm not sure about this, but I read it somewhere a while ago:
Fraunhofer and Thomson wanted a fee for all encoders back then... but could not make oss developers to pay, cause code is considered speech.
Is this true? If so, there's always a way around this problem...
.sig: No such file or directory
This is a common misconception.
The Paris convention allows the patent holder to apply for a patent in other countries, within a year of the initial filing, and use the initial filing date in the first country as the filing date.
It does not give automatic patents in all countries.
IANAL, but that is how the Patent Lawyer explained it to me.
Since I do 90% of my music listening at work using Winamp, and I have plugins to read Windows Media and Real Audio, I don't care. I don't have sensitive enough hearing (or phony snobbishness) to tell the difference between formats on average PC speakers either.
It always reminds me of Og Mandingo, the greatest salesman of them all (tm).
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
If you had bought an iPod for your MP3 player, you could have been secure in the knowledge that ogg can be added at any time with an extremely simple firmware upgrade.
Are you sure? How do you know that the iPod player doesn't have a dedicated MP3 chip that takes an MPEG audio bitstream on one set of pins and produces WAV audio on another? (It does.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
I've warned many average users about the MP3 patent issues, but they simply don't care because the players are free. But now, since even the decoders need a license, I expect that that all existing free MP3 players will either die or become non-free (as in price).
:-)
Hello Joe Average, thanks for not caring. This is what you get.
Not that I'm complaining; this will only push people harder to switch to Vorbis.
Sorry I forgot a link
/ te xts/BH004.txt
http://www.tufts.edu/departments/fletcher/multi
So they want $0.75 per MP3 player, hardware or software.
How am I supposed to pay 75 Cents? In an envelope? Bank transaction? (Which is aka "horrible transaction fees if you cross any country boundary")
I recognize that most people in the US own a credit card. In Europe, this is quite different. Many, many people don't own a credit card and don't trust in online transaction software, either (I'm not talking about online banking but all those "Internet Cash" companies).
So now I shall not be able to download my favorite mp3 player anymore but have to figure out how to send $0.75 to the programmers or licensers?
Won't work. MP3 will die.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
Oggasm is a program that makes converting your mp3 collection into oggs a all but painless process.
In other words: As easy as pulling your own teeth out...
g
In theory, they had to link to the full postal address from everywhere in their pages IIRC. It's european right that's enforced at least in Germany. You have to put it on commercial websites. I don't know how other countries in the EU handle this.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Well, I believe the folks at Xiph sell one, and there's also a free one (a fork of the Xiph libraries) for ARM processors, so you can play Vorbis files on your Zaurus or iPAQ under Linux. The iPAQ version is at http://ipaq.vmlinuz.org/ogg/ . (I use it all the time.) So yes, there are now two integerized decoders (after a long delay during which I could only play Oggs on my desktop).
Seems most MP3 players play WMA now too. Any fees for that decoder?
-- taking over the world, we are.
US patent law doesn't require you to disclose your patent within any given period of time.
Not exactly. The common-law doctrine of laches states that if a patent holder is aware of an infringement that has been ongoing for years, he can't sue for damages on infringements that occurred before the suit was filed; all he can get is an injunction and perhaps damages for infringements that occurred during litigation. If it has been going on for six or more years, the alleged infringer has more of a chance in court because the burden of proof shifts to the patent holder.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How else would they get everyone to stop using mp3 and start using Microsoft's audio format.
There is a rumor that Microsoft funded this change in License.
Get a free ipod.
I don't know. What do you guys think about this. I'm sure it might be legitimate in some ways, but what if Newton had patented calculus? After all, differentiation is esssentially an algorithm, no? Is it legitimate? Not legal, but ethical?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I know that US patent law is stupid but I find it hard to believe it is that stupid. If you use Ogg now you are accepting the terms that they offer now as a contract. They cannot come back in 5 years and change those terms retrospectively. Sorry, I mean they cannot do that in Europe. If people like yourself are right then all this is doing is helping send business to Europe.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
How deep does the patent for the format go? Would it be able to make a new format through simple changes, somewhat in the way that some AVI formats are really just, say, DiVX but with a different FourCC code? Also, can you distribute mp3 encoders/decoders that were written before this licencing was issued but still update other parts of the program as long as you don't touch the mp3 stuff?
The don't have to go after everyone. Just the high-profile people.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Is Fraunhoffer, et al., charging for the use of their decoder or any decoder that works on their technology? If it's the former, don't most Linux MP3 players (ie. mpg321) use their own MPEG Layer-3 decoders? If it's the latter, is that even legal? I mean if it is, what's stopping Microsoft from charging any program that reads MS Word files?
Do they charge the software developers or the users?
Mod parent up! I'm out of points. 3 is not high enough.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Does anyone know the details of this patent?
When it was granted?
When it expires?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Since MP3 > Ogg will sound worse than CD > Ogg, those who aren't bound to MP3-specific hardware might want to re-rip everything.
Gorak replied to a post of mine a while ago, with a link to the Ripperbot - a cd-changer style machine that holds and rips 200 CDs or DVDs at once.
Sure beats sitting at a PC for a week opening and closing the drink-holder!
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
Right. Further, if they were leading people to believe that what they were doing was royalty-free, and those people relied on it, there is also a doctrine of "estoppel" that would prevent them from changing the rules as to those people, at least to the extent they reasonably relied.
Are these changes retroactive? Can they be?
IANAL, but if not, you can continue to use whatever players you currently have, free of charge.
I don't think they could charge you 75 cents for an mp3 player you already bought. Or downloaded for that matter.
-kidlinux.
Except that the crack dealer does not tell you crack will kill you. These people never lied (to the best of my knowledge) to anyone. They said from day one that MP3 was patented. If anyone is at fault in this it is the people who ran hell bent for leather with MP3 and turned it into the dominant encoding system without looking at what it would cost them.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
i still have winamp 0.99 :-)
yay!
This is an open standard. It's just patented. Patents expire.
Not if Fraunhofer and the pharmaceutical companies manage to stuff a few thousand dollars down a few senators' pants and get some sort of "Cherilyn Lapierre Patent Term Extension Act" passed. Hell, if it worked for Sonny...
I'll publish them at least in MP3 format, and maybe Ogg if I can get a good encoder.
OggDropXPd.
I have a feeling that if I publish Ogg, it's not going to get downloaded very much
As !Xabbu mentioned, Winamp 2.80 and later support Ogg out of the box.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I love the MP3 format, so my check is in the mail.
Well, not exactly a check, more like 75 pennies.
Did you send them your ass pennies?
I'm not very fond of OGG over MP3, but I've always had a little bit of a problem with MP3. It's about time it got cancer.
long after there is an equal/better alternative?
Let me get this straight.
First, they say it's okay for free software to use the patent royalty-free.
Then they change their mind? Isn't there already a prior agreement with free software?
First off, like somebody said, this has always been the case, but there was no enforcement. So it's really not new.. As far as hardware players, a LOT of them use chips made by other companies (like TI or whatever). Now, I would think that TI would have to pay, not the company selling the MP3 players made with the device.. so then they charge the company making the player with their device an extra $0.75 and so on until you pay when you get the player. And being such a big company like TI or the others that make MP3 decoding chips, I would think they would have worked out patent stuff before, and since they were charging (just not enforcing) I bet that this is already happening.
The real bind is when it comes to software, and they've been doing this with encoding, and stuff like BLADE and LAME are still around and kicking, so I don't see why things like XMMS and mpeg123 would be effected.. I think RedHat's move is silly, but that's just me.
Free Mac Mini
Yiou don't pay for squat. Unless you make MP3 decoders. The license is paid by the manufaturer, not the end user.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
That's not news either. It happened a year ago, with no apparent change in Thomson's enforcement policy.
Does this mean that open source free ware is still...well...free??
No, it means it isn't. Its not Open Source if it doesn't meet the Open Source Definition and this violates sections 1 and 6.
---- Put Sig here:
That sounds about right. Although it would be much cooler if the hacker community were to put Ogg Vorbis on the iPod first. I'd be happier to buy an iPod if I knew I could run open source software on it, including my choice of transcoder. It would be nice if FLAC were also available (Ogg Vorbis is lossy, FLAC isn't).
So what I really want is for Apple to publish the APIs for programming the iPod.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
Nice troll. Like RedHat can't afford $50K for a license... What's next from your witty repertoire?
"Anyone that uses a computer is a loser!"
Seriously. Go find something more productive to do with your time.
You know, this is actually pretty cheap. I had no idea how inexpensive this was...I thought Fraunhaufer & Co were taking a percentage of your company's profits a la Unisys, or a per song cost. $.75 per player is nothing...I have a dozen players, hardware & software alike, and they all amount to under $10.
It went from $0.00 per player to $0.75 per player in one day, what makes you think it will stop there? Oh, and you are wrong about the percentage of profits. You obviously did not bother to look at Fraunhofer's posted rates for streaming mp3.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Fucking bunch of nazi's .....
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
now linux won't support mp3, a standard, but I'm sure windows will.
I don't think alot of people are going to switch to linux now if it doesn't play a standard format.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
I can hear the websites going down as we speak.
/. that say "this is not a lot to pay" - then you are a freaking moron.
/. bumming me out that i practically don't give a shit any more.
To all of you who have said "no big deal" "$.75 is not a lot of money" - you are mad.
I ran the numbers - and they are staggering.
The list of licensees guarantees them $2,295,000 PER YEAR for the MINIMUM licenseing fees. I notice that i DIDN'T notice a lot of the super-simple little Mac OS 9 mp3 players that were out there on the licensee list - so i guess that their days are now over.
And that is just the tip of the "ability to buy small governments and a few senators" pile of money.
As a Mac bigot, i see that Apple has had 100,000,000 downloads of Quicktime. If they had supported the MP3 format from the beginning (they haven't) that would be $75,000,000 from Apple, and $75,000,000 to Thompson Multimedia. But you get my point.
Fine - what about RealPlayer?
Their site claims that they have 285 million players out there! So much for Apple.. if these rules were in place, that would be a cool $213,750,000 from Real to Thompson. Their software has been shit up until recently, so i can't tell you how long they've supported mp3's. but if it was the beginning, then that's what it woulda cost them.
That's just crap. And that's just two of the licensees. I can't imagine how many bazillions they plan on making here in the near future.
This will and SHOULD kill mp3. I grow weary of saying it, but if I come up with a good idea, i shouldn't be able to live a thousand lifetimes off of it. There's just no justification. Hell, i don't plan on making money off the work i did today tomorrow - so why the hell do so many other people believe that just because they worked yesterday that they should be paid into perpituity?
IP is a bullshit idea.
For all of you dumbasses on
This is NOT cheap - and this WILL stifle creativity and future MP3 deployment. If you come up with a great piece of software that decodes mp3s, pray to God it doesn't become popular (if you're a little-guy developer).
What kills me is that instead of providing SOMETHING of value TODAY - they are going to kill off all the little guys who make mp3 players or force them to 123.
Whatever.. i'm so sick of
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
What is with the free-as-in-beer IIS FastEnc
win32 codec (l3codeca.acm - encode up to 56 kbps,
decode unlimited, (c) 1999, corrects decoding error
at 128 kbps from the (c) 1997 codec) - I got that
one in original, with no license terms applied.
What do I do if I just put it up at
this site? Would that mean IIS has to pay
themselfes?
AFAIK&IANAL Licenses cannot be applied retrospectively
except if said so in the original one.
*narf* too bad that I don't use Windows any longer.
Time to move to Ogg Vorbis - does my Pentium-90 with
OpenBSD and 32 MB RAM bear it?
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
The guys over at Xiph.org have posted a reply, in the form of a highly sarcastic open letter to Thompson. :)
All Glory To The Hypnotoad!
Wait. GIF isn't dead, is it?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
...whom?"
The users?
Sure, I'll throw in my three bits, not!
Everything I have will be converted by a script to a free format.
Those who don't wany to pay will still want portability.
...thank fucking hell. Im in the process of developing a console based Ogg Vorbis player. There wasn't a sniff I was going to add mp* supprt. This has confirmed it.
Sun pulled downloads of the Java Media Framework last week because of an undisclosed "licensing issue". Wonder if this it.
Guess there's no point promoting my open-source shoutcast/icecast support for JMF anymore. Damn. Almost topped 20 downloads.
--realinvalidname
Do the Macromedia Flash players have MP3 decoding built into them? If so, wouldn't that mean Macromedia would have to start paying $0.75 per download of the player, even for someone upgrading from the version 5 to the version 6 player? Likewise, all new machines shipping with Internet Explorer with the Flash player pre-installed would cost Macromedia another $0.75, etc...
So unless Flash player is somehow using software external to itself in order to playback MP3s, Macromedia has to be sweating this, right?
save the decoders and encoders that you have! They will ineviedbly become worth thier memory usage, slow speed, and hard drive space in GOLD! (when you want to listen to a "lossy" format)
From TheOnion.com:
CINCINNATI--Lawyers for Dr. Henry Heimlich, inventor of the Heimlich maneuver, warned Monday that the doctor will sue anyone who performs his patented procedure without paying royalties. "The Heimlich maneuver is a registered trademark of my client," attorney Steve Greene said. "We are prepared to protect Mr. Heimlich's proprietary rights, even if it means filing a legal injunction against any non-royalty-paying choking victims."
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
We have arrived at the day when there is no significant open standard possible that does not tread on someone's existing ip monopoly. This is the techies' fault for assuming the legal folks know best. They obviously know best for someone.
It's really awful that Real Media uses un-published formats because it means that if my bits are in Real Media format, I am Real Media's captive - I can only run software that Real Media likes.
If Real Media gets bought by someone who wants to discourage users of certain operating systems, all they have to do is introduce incompatibilities in the undocumented format and do a new release that doesn't support the operating systems they don't like. Because the format is a trade secret, we have no defense against this.
Because MP3 is an open standard, and there are open source programs that decode it, I can play mp3s on any operating system I want. The only thing I have to do is pay the patent fee.
The only way of extending patents that I was able to find in my brief search of the PTO's regulations is that if a prescription drug trial delays release of the drug, the owner of the patent applying to the drug can apply to have the patent extended. So that doesn't apply here.
The difference between this patent and the one-click patent is that the one-click patent patents something that is obvious. The MP3 patent patents something that is not obvious, and that required quite a bit of ingenuity to design. Look into it sometime - mp3 is not something you'd come up with in an afternoon's hacking, or even a month's hacking. It really is a nice piece of science. I don't mind that the people who designed it are getting money for it.
I do wish there were some way for them to get paid that didn't involve coercion. But don't think that a system that would compensate them justly is a simple thing to set up. If you've got any genuinely thoughtful ideas for how to create such a system, I'd be interested in hearing them.
According to a Sound and Vision magazine blind hearing test a few months ago. People who spend their entire lives judging and listening to music judged mp3,wma,rp at different samplings with different types of audio and WMA won. Of course maybe MS owns Sound and Vision and we are all blunted, but the limits of MS have to end somewhere, don't they?
Note that the Fraudmeister people have already stated that if Ogg catches on, they're sure that they have some patent, somewhere, in their patent portfolio that can be used to kill it. So going Ogg doesn't remove the need for lawyers :-(.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Err, AAC has had draconian licensing right from the very start. This is why you don't see loads of free AAC stuff around because when people try, they get letters from Dolby's lawyers.
Sounds like it's time to get my CD's out of the closet, dust off the cases, and reencode with a different format.
as soon as my iPod supports .ogg, i'm going to re-rip my entire collection into vorbis format. until then, i'm kind of stuck with .mp3 ...
*** For a better tommorow, change your life today ***
Creating a personal music library does not require a license, but the software you use to do it does need a license.
Say, I've got an idea... let's make some data format that will be really useful that we can make some money off of. But, wait - it gets better. We'll initially give it away for free for a year or two... or at least until it gets really popular....and then...BAM! - we'll start hitting people up for money when they really are dependant on the data format. This is absolutely crappy. There should be laws forbidding people from changing the terms of a license for a data format once they've released it publicly. Or at least something saying "if you don't ask for royalties from a data format initially when it's released, then you can't ever ask for royalties"....something like that, anyway. jpg, gif, mp3..some greedy as!*ole always has to ruin things..
You know, this is actually pretty cheap. I had no idea how inexpensive this was
Which part? The $0.75 per decoder or the MINIMUM $50,000 per year license fee. Either way, software patents are bad at a very basic personal-freedom level. (Not to mention they're destructive to the entire industry.)
Sure, they're profiteering, but they're profiteering off of a format they helped produce and thought to patent. MP3 encoding isn't exactly no duh stuff like hyperlinks or LZW compression.
Maybe to you it's "not exactly no duh stuff" but to most mathematicians and computer scientists, the MP3 encoding process is pretty trivial. Fraunhaufer took a bunch of old ideas, threw them together, added their own psychoacoustic / statistic model, and called it a standard. And MP3 is not even cutting edge anymore. Free software developers have come up with superior psychoacoustic models both for MP3 and for the unpatented Ogg Vorbis codec, which is more advanced anyhow. So supporting this stupid patent is supporting old, inferior technology just so that some greedy jerks can get their money for nothing. Take a look at any software patent and you'll find the same scenario.
What it means, though, is that GPL'd and other free decoders are going to have to ammend the license to be sure Fraunhoffer gets its money. This is a perfect time to test whether or not the GPL can play nice in the IP pool.
Bullcrap. Fraunhoffer does not have a legitimate case for being paid ANYTHING by developers / distributers of free software. Instead, this is the perfect time to see whether or not Open Source coders and businesses have the balls to stand up against bad, anti-free-market laws.
As for me, I'll use OGG Vorbis regardless, simply because it is the superior lossy algorithm. Otherwise, with hard drives so large and cheap these days, FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) may be a better option for archiving my albums anyhow.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Take a visit to SQAM:
http://sound.media.mit.edu/mpeg4/audio/sqam
Contrast the sample of the Glockenspiel with a LAME encoding -vs- Oggenc. No comparison! You can barely tell the difference between OGG and the original sample, but with the MP3 sample it's quite clear how the attack of the mallet has been obstructed.
Another interesting contrast is ATRAC, which also fails under some circumstances (http://www.minidisc.org/atrac_breakdown.html).
Yes -- these are lossy algorithms so we should expect them to be less than representative of the original sound. But let's at least aim for something of reasonable quality, and I think OGG clearly has MP3 beat in this regard.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
Get if from http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/ , and transcode all them Mp3s. Using your external, fully licensed, MP3 decoder of course :p
What about LAME? They've managed to create an MP3 encoder without, from what I understand, infringing upon FhG's patents.
As I mentioned in another comment, LAME is covered by the same patents that affect all other MP3 software. The only thing the LAME developers have managed to work their way out of was the copyright on the ISO reference encoder. The patents on the basic process of MP3 encoding (spectral transform, hearing model, bit allocation in critical bands, quantization of spectral coefficients, entropy coding) and decoding (reversing the process) still cover any coder that creates an MP3 compatible bitstream.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't see how they can enforce a patent on decoders. After all there is more than one way to decode some thing. At least that's how I thought the argument went for GIF. Really I would think Unisys would have been eager to get some cash for all the web browsers out there.
I'm listening to some Oggs I encoded at quality 10, and do they sound sweet? They sound very sweet! I never bother with CD after I buy them and rip them - now, I won't bother with MP3s either. Not needed.
I'm the stranger...posting to
This patent is more directly relevant to DivX than you described. Basically, classic Divx is an AVI file that combines MPEG-4 video with MP3 audio. Without paying a fee, none of the open source DivX codecs are legal, since they are all using MP3 for their audio.
Since DivX is traditionally using MP3 to encode the sound, we're going to see some effects here as well.
.avi for sound. Seems like it's working pretty well.
One alternative that's explored by some projects, like transcode is to continue to use the DivX codec for video, but embed Ogg instead of MP3 in the
its 75 cents for every decoder program charged to the programmer, not to the end user...
To get this .75 cent tax anywhere near enforceble, you are going to have to specifically identify who uses Fraunhofer encoding because "MP3" isn't in dispute; The codec is. Somehow, they're going to have to prove that people are using the decoder (say, Winamp) to specifically decode MP3s using the Fraunhofer format. I compress using LAME or BLADE, personally. Whatdaya know, Winamp decodes em just fine, the entire reason for LAME being a codec was to be readily distinguishable from and thus not subject to Fraunhofer copyrights. In otherwords, there's already a precedent. And if the decoders really wanted to get nasty, they could simply block the use of that codec, even point the user to LAME or BLADE when it discovers you using one. Or... Be particuarly devious and, though refusing to play it, offer to convert it to LAME, BLADE or Ogg standards right there on the spot. Doing that with the user base of Winamp alone would destroy any dreams Fraunhofer and company has of easy $$$$$
"Huhuhuh... Everybody has an MP3 decoder, we can make some serious-- Oh shit! Where'd our market base go!? Nobodies using our codec anymore!" but seriously, I doubt it'll get that nasty. Their case is toilet paper thin at best.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
These packages do not have to be removed completely from the distributions. Most all of them can decode several file formats, and it would be a trivial thing to distribute a version that does not contain mp3 decoding software, and a plugin that has this ability seperately. This is what has to be done with crypto software, what debian does with all non-free software, and is a technique used in several projects I have seen that offer support for proprietary technology. Those linux users who refuse to use non-free software, dont want to pay the price for the non-free packages or simply don't need mp3 won't have to use it.
In my opinion, this does not hurt open source software, it just makes it slightly inconvienient to use proprietary formats that we probably shouldn't have been using in the first place (and no longer have any need to since we have exellent alternatives now).
For me, this just solidifies my decision to reencode all of my music into ogg format since my hard-drive died and I plan upgrading from cheap PC speakers, so I will probably be able to hear distortions in my 96kbps mp3s.
...and, it looks as though Thomson might want them to pay up for the dreaded ATRAC3...
(from http://mp3licensing.com/other/index2.html)
>Atrac 3
We believe that Atrac 3 uses principles like Hybrid-Filter bank, Gain Control, Huffman-Coding and Rate Loop, which means that at least a license under the following patents of Fraunhofer or Thomson multimedia is needed:
ep0287578b1 (OCF Basis: Rate Loop)
ep0612156b1 (OCF Supplement: ESC)
ep0193143b1 (Grouping of values, suppression of signal compression below thresshold)
ep0251028b1 (Masking threshold covering more than one group)
ep0277613b1 (Masking threshold in adjacent groups)
Note: This list is not exhaustive; other patents of Fraunhofer and Thomson multimedia might be used.
We have not yet determined our licensing policy for this format nor do we have details of the licensing program of Sony.
>
Good - let them slog it out. As it stands now, though, I'll be glad to send my 75 cents to mein music furher, FhG, for my Archos recorder. Of course, it will be in store coupons, at 1/20 cents each, so I'll need a big envelope.
Well, that leaves OGG and WMA. Now MS can help the Windows crowd by herding 'em to WMA, with lots of nice DRM. Jack "Actually, I own ALL the music" Valenti is peeing his pants he's so happy : "One down and one to go". Fraunhoffer has a case for scanning everyone's computer to see if they have one of those fully automatic MP3 assault codecs.
I have seen The Future, and it is analogue.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
And thank God for you knee-jerk reactionary types! It's people like you who give alternatives to mainstream platforms a bad name.
What so many of you seem to fail to realize is that that these guys just hit Microsoft for 75 cents per copy of WINDOWS! Heh. Media player is now PART OF XP and cannot be uninstalled! Media Player decodes MP3's! I Love it.
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
It works for me. And it's free. Fuck 'em.
see, the scary thing is, i can't tell if you're talking about Ogg or WMA/Real.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Well, I bet 45kbps oggs sound similar whether they come from the original CD or an 192kbps mp3. So just use lower bitrates (quality), especially if the mp3 originally comes from an old tape or other low-quality sources.
But you must be mistaken, I mean, millions of fans love Backstreet Boys and they can't all be wrong? And what about N'Sync, I mean, they almost sorta had cameo's in Eps2. Certainly the majority of people can determine what is true quality!
(see subj.)
They won't rake in bazillions from the big names, because they will pay 50 000 $/year instead of 0.75*several*10^6 $/year.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
IANAL so I don't understand how they can really license how you use the data that you create with their encoder (streaming server)?
It seems to me that it would be like Compuserve not only controlling GIF encoders/decoders, but controlling the GIFs you have made.
If I create an mp3 of some kind and decide to stream it off my computer, can Fraunhofer really (legally) demand a cut of any profit I make from it? Microsoft doesn't (yet) get a cut of a novel that I author using Microsoft Word.
What am I missing here?
From the Thompson site:
"Annual minimum royalties are payable upon signature and each following year in January and are fully creditable against annual royalties."
We're talking $15,000.00 US/year. Even if the $0.75 isn't an issue, 15G's a year would bury any OSS project. Even if the software were to be free (as in speech), it could no longer be free (as in beer).
Encoder / Codec US$ 5.00 per unit
Yikes!!
So much for free MP3 encoders.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I'd wait a while. There are a lot of legal implications involved with suddenly beginning to charge for something that has been free all along, and I am sure the patent-holders are going to face some stiff legal opposition to this.
IAC - no matter *what* they do - they cannot enforce it on products you already *own/use*. This could only be applicable to products produced in the future.
You aren't remembered for doing what is expected of you
So here's the solution: write your code, set up a distribution site in India and lean back. When that's too far, try Poland or Mexico.
Don't forget to register a company or other legal entity in India, since you may be sued in your own country where there's still a patent. Fraunhofer and ST may not win, but you'll sure be broke looking at the costs of litigation.
It's basically the same trick as KaZaa:
When they were sued in The Netherlands, they moved the whole stuff to Australia (however, in appeal, KaZaa won).
IANAL (yet)
Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.
.ogg.
Theora is the name of the open source multimedia project that will combine the Vorbis audio codec and the vp3 video codec from On2 Technologies into one package.
Tarkin is essentially a proof-of-concept wavelet-based codec. Its experimental nature means it will not be ready for general use for some time.
Since it is part of the Ogg project, Vorbis files have the extension
Get CDex to encode!
As people have said in other threads, Fraunhofer deserves the 75 Cents for their efforts and from this license change mp3 will not die out.
...) could be implemented even stating in the corresponding software license that disabling the license authentication is not allowed.
:-)
Therefore, I would like to suggest here that we move down from our open-sourced ivory tower to the realms of reality and allow ourselves the thought of "patent-covered open source".
I would like to suggest a repository for pluggable open-source applications (no GPL here, because we *want* to link) for every patented algorithm we feel like using. That repository (much like SourceForge) would be more than just the location of the source code. When somebody wants to download the software (equals to a customer who wants to purchase a software), that somebody must make a payment to the repository people covering the license fee. If necessary, more complicated license authentication schemes (license files, license servers,
An mp3 package could be linked whereever an open-source media player wants to play mp3s, much like most open-source image viewers use libjpeg, or XML-handling applications use libxml.
Happy flaming
A few weeks ago I extended a tool called mp3make (GPL) to be able to rip ogg-files as well. It now supports:
I used it to rip about 30 cds and it was pretty reliable, so it should be suited for reripping your favourite collection.
i'd make an one time expensive purchase of the patent/IP for MP3 and push the format rather than trying to kill it.
Is there something that prevents Ogg to be patented next year?
the old royalty has been 0,50 US$ so now switch on your brain and start thinking what could this mean... http://web.archive.org/web/20010715041449/http://w ww.mp3licensing.com/royalty/
and what does it mean of the quality for red-hat management? where ist the source for this distri-change???
greetings
dalini
There is not ONE mp3 patent, there are several patents covering different technologies used with mp3... there are also patents describing the streams generated... so if you can decode the stream you touch the patents... mainly... thats why they can get royalties for decoders... anyway... decoders have never been free - offically... see my other posting... why now this blabla - i don't understand it...
Seems to me that Ogg isn't really the issue here.
MP3 is an integral part of MPEG1/2, any opensource project capable of decoding MPEG video is the target of this attack.
Mplayer,etc, etc cannot afford to front $15000/$50000 to continue to distribute.
The alterations to FhG's licencing terms are solely targeted at 'free' decoders which for the most part means opensource decoders.
FhG must know that all these little projects cannot afford to pay these fee's and will simply be forced to shut up shop and go home.
Many have suggested that the RIAA has had a hand in this although it strikes me as more likely to have been the doing of the MPAA (or perhaps M$).
What really needs to be done here is for all the big players to get together (IBM, Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, Debian etc) pay the one of fee and release an LGPL decoder that everyone else can link to or even simply to act as a distribution channel for everyone else's decoders.
Screw FhG, this isn't a move designed to improve profits, it's a move designed to drive the opensource guy's to the wall.
Trust The Computer, The Computer is your friend.
Now the RIAA has a basis to sue for damages, since Fraunhofer is (or at least will) obviously profiting from the piracy of their music!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Can someone who's in the know comment on what this means for the user? Can, for example, SuSE, which is German-based, still offer a MP3 decoder with their distribution? Can they make it available for free download on their website? Could RedHat offer a non-US version of its distribution with a MP3 decoder included? Can RedHat set up a website that's not physically located in the US, where RedHat customers (of course only non-US-residents ;) can download a decoder for their system?
if you value sound quality, DONT convert your MP3 files to OGG using these utilities!
Thats essentially twice-lossy-encoding your original data, its not a seamless conversion. By double encoding your files, you will have horrible sound quality.
If you want OGG files, encode them from WAV directly. If you have MP3 files but no WAV masters, then its far better to stick with the MP3 file format.
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
Or do you manufacture your own ic chips, wires, ... to make your own computer. In the end if not for corporations we would not have MP3's cause we could not afford to manufacture computers.
Yeesh, this thread is full of such bullshit, it's ridiculous.
Now, kiddies, can we please understand the *real* significance of this?
Point #1: it's not actually clear how new all this is. I've been looking at the relevant page with the Wayback Machine (www.archive.org) and it seems from that that the current terms came in in August 2001, which hardly makes this news.
But, for the moment, let's assume this is NEW and EXCITING! What's changed?
Well, for a long time, Fraunhofer have charged patent royalty for all MP3 encoders and all non-freely distributed MP3 decoders. This means there is exactly zero difference for your hardware MP3 player and any software MP3 player which costs money; the makers of these will have already been paying these (minuscule) patent royalties since they started manufacturing the device.
The change (if it *is* a new development) is that there used to be an exemption for freely-distributed MP3 decoders. Now there isn't. This means that to distribute such players you need to purchase a license for the distribution from the patent holder.
The charges they are asking, in commercial terms, are *peanuts*. AOL, owners of Nullsoft who publish Winamp, can pay a flat fee of $50k to be able to distribute Winamp with MP3 decoding capability forever. They no doubt already have. $50k is absolutely NOTHING to AOL, it probably came out of petty cash. Same goes for Microsoft (WMP) and Apple (iTunes or whatever).
To you as an end-user the impact of this is precisely zero. If you use a freely downloaded MP3 encoder in the US you're almost certainly already breaking patent legislation; no-one seems to care about doing this, and certainly no-one's going to try and arrest you for it. Most people use iTunes, WMP or WinAmp to play their audio anyway; as mentioned already, the owners of these will have paid their patent fees already and it's perfectly legal to do so. (By the by, you can't send Fraunhofer 75 cents to pay for your usage of some decoder; that's what the $15k minimum payment is about. These terms are exclusively aimed at publishers, that's how patent law works; the publisher pays the patent royalty and passes the cost on to the consumer, somehow. You don't pay it yourself directly.)
So all this doesn't matter two fucks as far as you personally are concerned, as far as people who use WMP, iTunes or Winamp are concerned, and as far as encoding MP3s is concerned.
THE ONLY SIGNIFICANT EFFECT OF THIS "NEWS" IS ON POOR COMPANIES WHO DISTRIBUTE FREE MP3 DECODERS. i.e. - Linux distribution vendors.
As mentioned, to Microsoft, Apple or AOL, $50k is peanuts. To SuSE, Mandrake, or Debian, it's not necessarily. Plus, for Linux distributors, there's an ancillary problem. Linux vendors generally license their product as being freely redistributable; when you download Mandrake you can perfectly legally then pass it on to someone else. The terms of the patent license you can buy for MP3s wouldn't allow this; even if Mandrake or Debian or Red Hat purchased a license to distribute an MP3 decoder they couldn't legally distribute it under a license which allowed it to be freely redistributed.
So the big problem is for Linux vendors. They're faced with a dilemma. They have several possible options. 1, carry on as before and hope they don't get prosecuted for patent infringement, out of the goodness of Fraunhofer's heart. 2, immediately take all MP3 decoding functionality out of their distribution. 3, buy a patent license and somehow modify the license of their distribution so the MP3 decoding functionality cannot be legally redistributed. 4, somehow fork the distribution so the MP3 decoding functionality is not legally available in countries where Fraunhofer have a patent on MP3 decoding but is available in countries where they don't - remember, there's countries where this whole issue is void because Fraunhofer have no patent. Patent law is national, not international.
There's dirtier options, too. One i've suggested exploits the fact that you can legally distribute the source code to something that infringes patent under US law. (This is why you can legally download the LAME encoder source code in the US). Thus it would probably be legal for distros to remove the binary RPMs for MP3 decoding functionality but include source RPMs and instructions on compiling them, along with a disclaimer stating that it would be illegal to do so in the US.
But I digress. My basic point is a lot of stuff in this thread is silly, frivolous, misinformed, and irrelevant. The big issue of this patent is purely and simply a problem for Linux vendors.
How could that happen? Surely the presence of the standard should count as prior art. A patent does not serve its stated purpose unless it is the first publication of the technique.
If you can have 256 small ones?
A player 4 times smaller has to be more expensive...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Most people don't have Macs.
Most people here rely on hardware neutral stuff that can run in several hardware and software platforms.
I want my NextII to support ogg now!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Who started the rumor? Yourself? Just now?
Jeez...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by the response to my posting. The majority of the posts are from people who are not only happy, but out right joyful, that this move hurts open source developers and independent software developers while it helps Microsoft maintain and extend its monopoly.
I'll never be able to understand people who like having their chains tightened. I will never understand people who joyfully demand to be enslaved.
Stonewolf
Of the iPod that the x86 users can use with ephpod, or a handful of other pieces of software.
This shows that at one time Winamp was working on a version of Winamp 3 for Linux. It seems to have had its problems, and some people seemed to feel it might have been overlap, but now it seems the Linux community has a very large secret gorilla as an ally. Wouldn't we be better spending our energy lobbying Nullsoft to step-up development of a current build of Winamp for Linux than complaining about what has already happened? Now, please don't dismiss the idea since the Linux community already has Ogg/Vorbis. I have nothing but praise for Ogg, but as deeply entrenched in the market as MP3 is, it would be foolish for every distro to suddenly drop support for it and coerce people into re-encoding to another format as their only option. One solitary solution, although Free and Open, can never be a good solution. For those of you who have already re-encoded their library, kudos for you. But for the rest of us, the possibilities are looking fairly grim. Either even more lossy compression or a total re-encode of our libraries. But hear me out:
Since Nullsoft works off of "mindshare", and the Linux community seems to be a as-of-yet untapped source of said "mindshare" for Winamp, the Linux community could be in a good position to rally for more development. Plus all the coverage of Linux in the news lately could add more weight to that argument making it something Nullsoft couldn't easily turn down. This could be seen as expanding into a new market for them, and once the muscle starts flexing over the encoder fees, Linux shouldn't be so quick to turn any help from them down.
Although, I don't know if this would be considered a kluge since it doesn't address the issue of the possible loss of other great free players like XMMS. It definitely is a limiting possibility, but for those of us/you that don't want to re-encode MP3s to Ogg (Sorry Ogg Supporters) it could prove a viable option. Plus, out of all the people we can blame/complain about, Nullsoft seems the most receptive to the Linux Way of Life. Either way, something needs to be done that doesn't exclude new users and fills in our new loss of free players.
Zech Harvey, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA
Well, there's a bit more to it, and while I don't understand it entirely, I'll tell you what I know (perhaps someone more knowledgeable can enlighten us further). When vacuum tubes distort, they introduce "even" harmonics into the output, whereas transistors introduce "odd" harmonics, and people simply prefer the former.
However, I can't tell you what "even" and "odd" harmonics mean, and I definitely couldn't tell you what the quantum mechanical processes going on are.
Think about it: // Conspiracy Theory
// End Conspiracy Theory
MS, RIAA, MPAA, and the surviving Roswell Aliens sign a pact with the devil (who owns the soul of FhG) to force FhG to put a premium on the decoder. What does that do? It forces free mp3 decoders off the market, and let's not forget about the world's #1: WinAmp (created by NullSoft, owned by AOL, another enemy of MS). This accomplishes several things for the interested parties:
1. MS: "Phooey! Mp3 costs money, so we're gonna leave it out and pass the savings on to consumers, yay! Use WMA instead!"
2. RIAA and MPAA: "Mp3 is killing us! But WMA has DRM built-in, it is our savior! Viva WMA!"
3. Roswell Aliens: "clik-clik, clik-clik, Elvis..., click-cluck-cluck..., phone home..."
It's actually kind of scary what level of mafia-type pull these organizations have. I'll bet you that FhG knows what's happening, but have somehow gotten strongarmed into compliance. Suppose that someone from the RIAA started thinking, "Hey, you know, we wouldn't have this whole Internet piracy issue if it weren't for mp3..., so why don't we just go after the people that invented it?" FhG is *not* a big institution..., I doubt they'd have the resources to wage a legal battle.
I wonder how much RIAA paid them to make this change! or maybe it was Microsoft, yea Microsoft. Those pesky Freedom lovers can't distribute their software free if they need to pay to distribute it.
I've published software under the GPL that can do MP3 decoding. (It's a collection of small tweaks to the GPLed Quake1 engine, and uses the GPLed Amp11lib library decode MP3s.)
The modified engine isn't really meant for anyone other than a few fellow developers to use right now, but it is on SourceForge, so I believe it's effectively published anyway.
Possibly I'm worrying too much, but I like to know what I should do now in principle, so I consider what action is pragmatic.
I believe the GPL tells me what to do: I should not distribute my program.
"7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program."
The fee is only an example, I believe, so perhaps just the existence of the patent has always disallowed the distribution of MP3 decoding software under the GPL. Mp3licensing.com certainly thinks it can enforce a license fee on publishers of MP3 decoding software product, and since the distinction between source and binary is fuzzy, I assume they would seek the same from those who publish source.
Now, this confuses me a bit for two reasons.
Firstly, isn't there loads of relatively high profile GPLed MP3 decoding software? Some of those mention that _use_ of the software may require a patent license in some countries, but that isn't necessarily good enough, is it? Section 8. of the GPL itself seems to suggest one should include an explicit list of countries which are patent-encumbered, and that peoples of those countries should then not consider themselves to have been granted the GPL for one's program. The fact that other projects aren't doing this leads me to wonder if I've misunderstood the GPL.
Secondly, how can I "refrain entirely from distribution of the Program"? Even if I take out the offending code, it's all on a CVS server. Is it my responsibility to get it removed? Is it SourceForge's responsibility?
--Anthony.
It's not just a Mac thing.
Apple now sells a Windows compatible iPod along with the Mac version. The cost is the same.
Perhaps the fact that Ogg Vorbis is not covered by any patents, so there is nothing to license?
Yes, this has been independently verified - Xiphophorus almost certainly does not have a "submarine patent" hidden away somewhere until such time as Ogg Vorbis takes over the world.
The worst Xiph could do to you is to relicense their codec - that is, deny you the use of new versions of their reference implementation. But the spec is freely available, so you would still have two choices: use a version of the Xiph codec not yet covered by objectionable license terms, or write your own compatible codec.
With MP3 you don't have either of those options - patents don't cover the exact code used, but the algorithm. That means that if the patent is written right, it may be impossible to write an MP3 decoder that doesn't infringe it. (If the patent is written properly. I know there has been an assumption in the MP3 community that while encoding is covered by the Fraunhofer patents, decoding isn't. I have no idea if this is the truth, or mere hopeful / wishful thinking. Fraunhofer, of course, says it covers both - but then, they would.)
Summary: don't worry, all your oggs are still belong to you.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Taken from the XMMS website:
.75 cents per mp3 player (on average selling over $200 dollars) has no measurable impact on the consumer experience.
Statement from Thomson Multimedia, mp3 Licensing Aug 29, 2002
In a posting appearing Tuesday August 27, 2002 on the Web site 'slashdot.org,' an individual cited a change in the mp3 license fee structure of Thomson and Fraunhofer. The writer of the post apparently misread the mp3 licensing conditions, as Thomson's mp3 licensing policy has not experienced any change.
To clarify, since the beginning of our mp3 licensing program in 1995, Thomson has never charged a per unit royalty for freely distributed software decoders. For commercially sold decoders - primarily hardware mp3 players - the per-unit royalty has always been in place since the beginning of the program.
Therefore, there is no change in our licensing policy and we continue to believe that the royalty fees of
Stefan Geyersberger Business Manager - Audio & Multimedia
I believe that the rationale is:
1) any company which pratices predatory licensing like this can potentially change their licensing terms at any time so it's safer to not include it.
2) To punish Thompson Media.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
on http://www.xmms.org they clarify what was posted here on Aug 27. Only for commercial hardware decoders.