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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 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.
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.
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
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!
If this spurs the release of Ogg-capable portables and car players, though, that's good news for everyone.
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.
This won't kill MP3. This has been in effect for years now, I have NO idea why /. thinks this is news, that page hasn't even changed. Research much? Anyway, Mp3 ius entrenched, and end users still aren't being hurt, unless they have to pay for their sw mp3 player, but there will always be a huge company like AOL (WinAmp) who is willing to foot the bill. FhG has had this rule in effect, they just haven't enforced it on tiny players.
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
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
Not that I like what they did, mind you, but hurting the open-source movement isn't a good argument against it from the point of view of an executive who doesn't care about open source.
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?
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
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.
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).
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?
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 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.
I continually am amazed at firms that do this. Does not even the lowly geek admin at this place realize this will eventually kill mp3 as a used format, thus killing their source of revenue?
If they don't charge they have zero revenue. Charging $0.75 a decoder or $50k to $60 one time fee isn't that big of a deal for commercial companies making decoders. The only ones this hurt is the open source and free decoders, and they aren't making money from those anyway.
I agree that charging fees after the format is underhanded, and possibly grounds for anti-trust violations, but giving it away for free isn't exactly a great business decision either.
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.
How about piping the output of mpg123 into oggenc?
I wouldn't do it, probally for the same reason they say on the page. MP3 and Vorbis compression throw away different parts of the signal, so you could end up with a pretty poor sounding file.
But as for the software, I could whip up a shell script that would do what you want in a few minutes, including pulling the tags from the MP3 and putting them in the Ogg, and optionally removing the MP3 when you are done. (Actually I think I have seen this exact script written by someone else before.)
Recent versions of Winamp play oggs.
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
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.
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
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
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.
My wife owns an iRiver SlimX, and when we showed it off to one of my ogg-loving friends, he immediately emailed them and asked about future ogg support (for those who don't know, iRiver releases frequent firmware updates based on user suggestions). Their reply was that they were already considering ogg, and support would most likely be in one of the next major firmware releases (unfortunately, a major release could be awhile). So, there may yet be hope.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
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.
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.
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
...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.
You're wrong. Patents in the US are publicized by the PTO at the time they are issued. You can't keep a US patent a secret once you've been granted it. It's not possible.
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?
winamp 3.0 is still free, as of aug 27 2002 21:00 UTC.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
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.
Didn't these guys see what happened to the whole BetaMax thing? Real freaking Geniuses here.
Does this mean someone who writes a totally reverse-engineered MP3 codec still has to pay the fee?
I think you mean a clean-room reimplementation, not reverse engineering.
You can infringe patents even if you independently develop the same idea (which is even more drastic than the clean-room reimplementation situation). That's the way patents are designed. A limited-time monopoly to an idea in exchange for complete, public documentation of the idea.
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
What's new is that the longstanding royalty exception for free software / freeware programs has been removed. I can't find any historical info on the exception from the mp3 licensing site (probably because Fraunhofer isn't eager to publicize the fact that there once was an exception), but if you look in other places like the Debian mailing lists, you can read what the old policy was.
windows
linux
I like DAT best. It's pure digital, and doesn't do any compression, unlike Minidisc which is digital, but uses a lossy compression algorithm.
Unfortunately DAT recorders are still too spendy, so I'll probably continue to do my audio work with AIFF files and Minidisc.
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!
no one can escape the wayback machine
Couldn't they claim they licensed the patent under the previous scheme? is there something that makes such a license revokable? IANAL... or a doctor for that matter.
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.
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
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!
Neon Spiral Injector has posted 288 comments. Oh, that's too gross.
two gross and it'd be a really good pun.
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
Yeah that makes sense. RedBook CD audio is uncompressed as well, but having an overpriced, tape-based solution is always superior.
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.
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
Did you read the rest of the comments? Its only new for free decoders.
When was the last time you got a free portable mp3 player?
That cost was already factored in.
HOWEVER, there will probably be an emerging market for free audio file format players based upon this. Especially for the CD player versions (ogg-vorbis CD players must be on the way).
Maybe this will be a chance to finally get away from those horrible artifacts that result from mpeg encoding, and finally use wavelet approaches.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
um, why exactly are we "fighting" people who want money for their product? The whole P2P/DRM/RIMPAA debacle is one thing, but what's wrong with this? they used to provide their product for free, now they don't want to anymore, it's probably not the "nicest" thing anyone's ever done, but it's certainly not wrong in any way.
sic transit gloria mundi
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.
-BrentIn a few years you won't find a DIVX decoder anywhere either.
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
One of the little tragedies of the emerging legal climate is that your attitude is the only sane response. The 'content providers' - the Sonys, Disneys, Warners, RIAAs and MPAAs of the world - have pushed through a network of laws about 'intellectual property' that are all so counter-intuitive, so opposed to the normal day-to-day human individual and social practice, that it makes just about all of us criminals (or at least liable). I don't know how long this can stand - history shows that essentially unjust systems can last a long, long time, and slavery, for example, was far more unjust than this. But the only reasonable response, IMO, is just to do what we would otherwise do, because increasing, being scrupulous would be paralyzing.
The funny thing is that I was trolling. There are a ton of people here on /. that feel that MP3 is going to continue to be standard despite the fact that the MP3 patent holders want to see it killed dead (they would rather pimp MP3Pro).
With this one stroke, however, MP3 has become a legacy format. New players will avoid the MP3 format, new encoders will avoid the MP3 format, and new hardware will avoid the MP3 format. So all of you that have spent time encoding in the MP3 format make sure you hang onto the original CDs, because your next hardware player won't play MP3s, and neither will the next update of your software. And you fools that use Windows update probably have already lost the ability to play MP3s and you just haven't realized it yet.
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.
-
Thank goodness I bought all those CDs!
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.
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
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.)
Who in their right mind would build an expensive home (or any home, for that matter) on leased land?!
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
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?
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):
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
.
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*
- 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.
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.
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?
... being scrupulous would be paralyzing.
Not really. I'm always scrupulous. Okay, almost always. :) In any case, I know the difference between being ethical and being legal, and I think the former is far more important. I always worry about being scrupulous, but I only worry about the legalities when a man in blue is watching...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Professional DAT recorders (every studio would have one) don't respect the SCMS flag.
John
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
It's not about "their product". They want money for the algorithms involved.
In many countries, this still isn't patentable at all.
This is so different from "I wrote a good program and people are pirating it".
People tend to confuse US patent law with the rest of the world these days.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
How is this BS insightful?
I have a collection of 7 GB of MP3s.
And for every MP3 I have a matching CD (mostly scratch free) sitting on a rack.
In other words, bite me, and keep your idiotic generalizations to yourself.
Better yet load them with Liras.
...
Now how many millions would $0.75 that be
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?
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?
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!
Not only does a "professional" DAT drive not honor this flag as mentioned in the above posts, but for a couple of bucks you can make a small chip that strips off the copy prevention bits on the DAT output, allowing a consumer DAT to read them fine. Also, some PC sound cards with SPDIF will record copies just fine, as general purpose PCs are (at least they were pre-DMCA) excempt from the bill that mandates the copy managment.
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
I'll ignore them unless a man in blue happens to be watching...
Yeah next thing you know they'll be trying to pass a law for the RIAA to crack into our personal computers to see if we have MP3 files on them... oh wait...
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.
mpg123 IS open source, but it is not GPL. The licence goes something like, "Use this for non-commercial uses only. Don't sell it without cutting me in on the profits."
BSD = "Go ahead, fuck me in the ass. Ass sex should be free."
GPL = "If you're going to fuck me in the ass, at least give me a reach-around."
My other first post is car post.
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?
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...
Also, the USPTO does not operate at a profit. They spend more then they take in (as of last I looked, anyway)
You seem mistaken. The USPTO produces a net profit from patent and trademark application fees, which Congress siphons off into the general treasury, leaving the USPTO unable to hire more examiners to handle the influx of patent applications properly, with a full prior art search.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You may not agree with lossy Ogg compression or not like it but don't spread FUD dude:
/ www.thekompany.com/embedded/tkcplayer/
...
1: No integer decoder (eg: no handheld support)
http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp#fpsupport
http:/
I don't think a lot of people complain about licensing the hardware decoder which has been done by portable mp3 player manufacturers for a long time.
2: The Vorbis standard has NOT been solidified yet. So any developments made now would be useless
You mean this?
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).
Any software program "could" or "might" be subject to one or more of the numerous software patents outstanding without anybody's knowledge. What's your point?
As a last note, FLAC is a great codec
This is like comparing JPEG to PNG. Sure their uses overlap, but mostly uses are different.
Mod parent up! I'm out of points. 3 is not high enough.
One simple rule for its versus it's
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
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.
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?
Fraunhofer is somewhat half-government-driven.
All you get if you navigate from the Thomson page over to Fraunhofer IIS's pages is a list of eMail addresses. This is their "Contact" link on the English pages.
Only if you switch to German (little flag on the upper left beneath the search box which only becomes available if you click on "Home" first) and go to "Kontakt", you are shown their postal address.
First is "index.html" , second is "index_d.html" . Surprise, surprise.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
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?
It isn't open source unless it can be freely distributed and modified. Something is only open source when it complies to the Open Source Definition
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 $0.75 and so on until you pay when you get the player. And being such a big company like TI or the others that make MP3 decoding chips, I would think they would have worked out patent stuff before, and since they were charging (just not enforcing) I bet that this is already happening.
The real bind is when it comes to software, and they've been doing this with encoding, and stuff like BLADE and LAME are still around and kicking, so I don't see why things like XMMS and mpeg123 would be effected.. I think RedHat's move is silly, but that's just me.
Free Mac Mini
That's not news either. It happened a year ago, with no apparent change in Thomson's enforcement policy.
Does this mean that open source free ware is still...well...free??
No, it means it isn't. Its not Open Source if it doesn't meet the Open Source Definition and this violates sections 1 and 6.
That sounds about right. Although it would be much cooler if the hacker community were to put Ogg Vorbis on the iPod first. I'd be happier to buy an iPod if I knew I could run open source software on it, including my choice of transcoder. It would be nice if FLAC were also available (Ogg Vorbis is lossy, FLAC isn't).
So what I really want is for Apple to publish the APIs for programming the iPod.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
now linux won't support mp3, a standard, but I'm sure windows will.
I don't think alot of people are going to switch to linux now if it doesn't play a standard format.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
I can hear the websites going down as we speak.
/. that say "this is not a lot to pay" - then you are a freaking moron.
/. bumming me out that i practically don't give a shit any more.
To all of you who have said "no big deal" "$.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!
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
This was easy to see coming for several years. There was even historical precedent with the LZW/GIF thing. And unlike the situation in early 1995 where there was a couple of months between GIF LZW enforcement and PNG scrambling to get invented and become viable, Vorbis has been usable a couple of years before this happened. Fraunhofer has been easy on us.
Anyone who got caught with their pants down this time, deserved to lose. Pity?! Fuck 'em!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
Why not post with your login and allow the moderators to moderate you. Fuck Karma and stand up for what you belive in. What you're doing is protesting the DMCA by sendind an anonymous letter to congress.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Creating a personal music library does not require a license, but the software you use to do it does need a license.
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.
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
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'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
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
Yes, they most definitely are. The exact nature of the licensing agreement varies somewhat for this software, though in general it is a lot MORE restrictive then the license for MPEG1 (video or audio). Actually, that's a large part of the reason why MP3 audio (mpeg1) became so popular even though at that time mpeg2 audio was already available and a well known quantity. Mpeg1 was cheap/free while mpeg2 was expensive.
Standard disclaimer: IANAL
Ah yes... but Microsoft is busy pimpint WMA as the heir apparent to MP3. Microsoft wants MP3 dead, and they aren't above using excuses like this to kill it. It's no different than disabling Netscape style plugins in IE, except for the fact that a lot of corporate customers actually cared about Netscape style plugins. I know it hit us pretty bad.
Just wait, MP3 has just become a legacy format, it just hasn't realize it yet.
Well said! That's an excellent analogy.
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.
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!
They won't rake in bazillions from the big names, because they will pay 50 000 $/year instead of 0.75*several*10^6 $/year.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Encoder / Codec US$ 5.00 per unit
Yikes!!
So much for free MP3 encoders.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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!
I don't see why not - it's worked well enough until now.
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
Right, and if a patented idea occurs to me, the thought police will prosecute me for patent violation.
That's why patents should cover *implementations* of ideas, not the ideas themselves, which is just absurd.
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
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.
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.
The worst you can loose over the period of one post is 3 points (2->1, 1->0, 0->3) That's not a whole lot. Espesialy if you're already at the cap. You can freely express your opinions.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
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
You don't get my sarcasm, therefore you are the twit.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If you know a bully wants to hit you and you walk within arm's reach of him, then you're stupid. But the bully still bears most of the responsibility for the unpleasantness.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.