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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'm not trolling (this time). I really want to know.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
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!
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.
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?
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
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.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
People take mp3s for granted now, but the patents involved cover real innovation, not bullshit like the one-click Amazon patents, or such.
Oggasm does exactly what you want, with far more robustness than a shell script.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
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
Winamp has already bought a license.
AOL did however get into trouble because they tried to use the fact they owned Nullsoft to get out of buying another, see the license wasn't transferable.
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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.
The problem isn't the patents themselves. I have not heard anyone dispute any innovation that may have resulted in these patents.
The problem is the way that these patents were handled. Patents that are not enforced immediately should be automatically revoked by law. Protect them immediately, or lose them.
The use of MP3 wasn't low profile. People weren't using the patents without the patent holders knowlege.
IMHO, this is WORSE than the Amazon patents.
Almost certainly, yes. An encoder would use a different strategy to encode a 128 kbit MP3 and a 192 kbit MP3. If certain frequency ranges are discarded when encoding 128 kbit, and other frequency ranges when encoding 192kbit, if you encode to 128kbit, and decode/recode to 192kbit, you will lose both ranges of frequencies.
why wouldn't you be able to produce an ogg from an mp3 that is no worse than the mp3?
See above.
I just don't buy the blanket argument that lossy -> lossy has to produce even more lossy.
Depends on the nature of the lossiness, grasshopper.
The issue isn't over freeware players, it's over the license.
Winamp already has a license, and they don't pay 75 cents per download either. Winamp draws revenue because their mindshare gets people to winamp.com, AOL also pushes Winamp (they own Nullsoft now).
You can pay the one time fee and continue to develop a freeware player, Thomson and Fraunhofer Gesellschaft want you to continue to use mp3, they don't want to kill it. They simply are letting people know that they want everyone to pay up.
Is it kind of dumb to do this? Maybe, but you must understand this won't kill mp3. Your hardware mp3 player will come with the decoder license (of course) and your freeware player will have paid for it first too.
Simply: just because the player is freeware doesn't mean the developers are poor. Nullsoft has AOL/TW behind them and Windows Media Player? I don't know anyone tighter with Fraunhofer.
But, BTW: Ogg is just as good if not better than mp3. Maybe not as popular, but the fidelity is there.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Encoding quality isn't a simple analog scale from good to bad. When you convert from one lossy format to another you get the worst of both at best. Potentially you could have some mutual-reinforcement of quality problems.
I've just gotten into this (ignored the MP3 bandwagon), but my plan is to use flac, a lossless encoder, then re-enc to the lossy format de jour as needed.
-Peter
Actually the Fraunhofer institute did make it clear that their software was patented from the very start. The Mp3 phenomena started when someone took code that was clearly marked as proprietary, for non commercial use only and married it to a CD ripper.
The basic problem we have here is that the whole MP3 world started with people who were pretty careless about intellectual property in general. They wanted free music and they just saw MP3 as a way to get it. Napster wanter to make billions by helping consumers rip off the record labels, their due dilligence and understanding of IP turned out to be as naive as their understanding of business models.
Much as I would love to say this is a GIF type submarine patent issue, unfortunately it is not. MP3 is a part of the MPEG standard and the fact that a license was required was spelled out in advance. All you had to do was read the specification.
As a general principle the GIF situation is indefensible. The designers of GIF should have had available to them the fact that a patent had been applied for. It is only the corrupt rules of the USPTO that allowed this information to be kept secret.
Maybe if Napster and the rest of the MP3 scene had been a bit more concerned about IP issues in general then they would have realized that using a proprietary scheme would risk giving control over the technology to a private interest. In effect a non-essential patent was converted into an essential patent that every hardware vendor now has to license.
I would prefer to use Ogg or WMA simply because they are better schemes, fewer bits for the same quality. But my Archos device only supports MP3 so that is what I rip to.
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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.
do this experiment... Open a photo, save as a low-quality quality JPEG. Repeat 3 times. Look at photo. It gets worse every time.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
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.
I think you're missing a very important fact here: Algorithms as employed in the MP3 format were NOT patentable in many countries when MP3 first showed up and Fraunhofer's reference implementation was published.
I'm really glad that not that many countries have jumped that US "you can patent everything, including algorithms and IP" train even yet.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
Can we just delete this whole news article?
Or moderate this posts as +5 Dumb, Redundant?
Winamp (Nullsoft) already paid for the license. They want mindshare, they don't want to collect per client.
Many clients have already paid because this isn't news.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Don't waste your time with "hardware manufacturers". Convince Apple to include Ogg Vorbis support on the iPod.
As soon as an iPod with Ogg Vorbis is released, you can bet the rest of the mp3 player manufacturers will be scrambling to get it on their products.
Such is the power of Apple.
"Godzilla and Jaguar: Punch! Punch! Punch! Hit! Hit! Hit!
We die if they stop fighting for us."
Jet Jaguar Song, "Godzilla vs. Megalon"
Who this kills is the free (as in speech) players - Zinf, XMMS, etc. They can't afford $50k OR $0.75/copy. They can either hope Fraunhofer doesn't notice them, or try to relocate to a place with either no software patents or no Fraunhofer patent, or they can leave MP3. In fact, Linux users in general may be left out in the cold, because I'm not aware of any commercial MP3 decoders for Linux, at all.
Unfortunately, this probably won't be enough to move the world from MP3s. WinAmp will still be downloadable for free, which is all 98% of users care about.
I remember when I was at EMusic, I met with the Thompson guys, who were trying to figure out how to make money on this (circa 1999). I explained to them that nobody was going to pay for a decoder, and that their choice was either to give the decoder away or have people switch to something else. I also suggested the encoder should be free for non-commercial use, in order to cement their current dominance against (then soon-to-be-released) Windows Media.
One of them replied (imagine a German accent), "I see! Vee give avay evrysing for free, and you make more money selling music!"
So, you could say we had a meeting of the minds.
Call me when my Apex AD600A or my Rio Volt SP90 will start playing Ogg. Without hardware support, it'll go nowhere. (I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it most definitely is not there yet.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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!
So if I needed several hours to figure something out I should be able to patent it? Just figured out a new mouseclick combination to navigate faster through Slashdot...
And, regarding E=mc^2: Don't you think it took several hours as well to come to this conclusion? So why don't you think one should be able to patent this formula as well?
This is the problem with algorithm patents. They're not a "product". It's very dangerous to make mathematical formulas patentable, because most of them are just observations like "hey, this and this has happened if I combine numbers A and B like this", not inventions.
Just imagine someone would own a patent on Fast-Fourier-Transformation (FFT). What would happen? This is very close to JPEG and MP3 techniques, btw.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
Except that XMMS is not an MP3 player. It happens to have an MP3 decoder bundled with it as an input module -- and it happens that MP3s are what most people use it for -- but it can decode a *ton* of other formats, OGG included, and as a player it won't die. Just take the MP3 module out of the distribution.
V
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
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!