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Real Pays For Legal MP3 Playback On Linux
kforeman (aka Kevin Foreman, GM of Helix RealNetworks, Inc.) writes "As part of the free RealPlayer 10 for Linux, Real has paid Thomson for a legal MP3 playback license and then includes it at no cost as part of the newly released RealPlayer 10. As I speak to people, many are under the false impression that MP3 playback patent and royalty rights are free, since there are open source implementations of MP3 playback available. Not true. Nonetheless, we are glad to do our part of making the Linux desktop a first class citizen by legally providing MP3 playback to users via our new RealPlayer."
No, mp3 has always been patent encumbered.
Also, does anyone know were the patent on decoding is so we can check whether it is valid (in the USA--it is obviously invalid in the free (i.e.: non-US) world)?
And, if you don't want to be sued, use a free and better lossy format (e.g.: Ogg Vorbis for music or Ogg Speex for speech).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
RTFA, it brings legal MP3 playback to Linux.
Have you metaroderated recently?
While you may have paid for decoding LAME is an encoder and will cost you more.
Have you metaroderated recently?
The licence file says
Helix DNA Technology Binary Research Use License
REDISTRIBUTION NOT PERMITTED
Rad Complete license.
The MP3 "license" is of course for a software patent, and hence only enforceable in USA and Japan at the moment. Check out the previous news "EU Software Patents Delayed Again". If your are a developer living in EU, this doesn't apply to you.
Yours sincerely,
shurdeek
Well, Helix is available under an (OSI certified) open source licence. Only the Real Audio/Video codecs are binary only. Parts of it are also available under the GPL. See https://helixcommunity.org/content/licenses
Only if you are in the USA and are encoding/decoding MP3s for certain commercial purposes (as Thomson explicitly let you do it for personal use) does this patent apply to you.
Even then, you are highly unlikely to be sued by Thomson and can claim ignorance of their stupid (and possibly invalid) patent claims.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
That's not specific to mp3 at all, that's more like a patent on constant bit rate encoding (if you use an entropic encoder inside the loop). The mp3 patent holders initially couldn't even believe themselves that ogg did not infringe on any of their (broad) patents.
Donate free food here
In many years of exposure to Real Player under Linux, I've never seen a single ad from it. Apparently, it's been a problem on Windows, but it never has been under Linux. Indeed, Real Player 10 seems to be quite a reasonable product on Linux. No more proprietary GUI, it now just looks like any other application, it loads quickly, and runs well. Looks like the Helix community stuff might actually be paying dividends. Now if only they'd open up the Real codecs...
That said, nothing has really changed. There is still no legal way for distributions to include open source MP3 playback. It's not a major issue for me, since all of my music is in Ogg Vorbis and/or FLAC format, but it's annoying when I want to download a sampler from a band's website and have to go and grab a separate player before I can hear it.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Someone could invent this from their armchair and it is just a mathematical formula.
You do not patent a physical item, you patent the devices for creating the physical item. Do you think you ship a new washing machine down to the patent office to patent it? No, you submit the technical drawings and a description of the processes used to create the machine, and how the machine operates. Hence processes are what patents are all about. You don't ever have to even create the physical item to patent it, just have the idea. Your arguments on patent law are about as valid as a blind person's critique of a painting.
RTFA and cite your sources or prepare to get pwnd
Excerpted from the URL above:
II.a) Software DECODERS
*****
Q. I wish to distribute a FREE MPEG Layer-3 software decoder on my WEB-site. Do I have to pay royalties?
A. For the FREE distribution of decoders we do not charge a royalty. At the Fraunhofer IIS and OPTICOM web-sites you can find the players we have developed and which may be downloaded for FREE also. Fraunhofer IIS and OPTICOM do not give any technical support for the free players. Emails complaining about bugs in free software will not be answered!
More in general, as long as desktop software decoders are distributed free-of-charge for personal use, no license fee is expected. However, in all cases we expect that MPEG Layer-3 products reference the licensors, like "MPEG Layer-3 audio compression technology licensed by Fraunhofer IIS and THOMSON multimedia".
*****
Q. And what if I sell the software decoder?
A. In this case, the royalty per decoder is US $ 1,00. We just remark that we have not asserted our patents against decoders of which less than 10 000 units have been sold.
You haven't paid for the licence. You've paid someone else to pay for the licence on your behalf. This is an important distinction, because your vendor probably got a much better deal for mass-producing thousands of copies than you could possibly get for your single licence.
You don't pay to use the MP3 decoding, you pay to have MP3 decoding in your product. Therefore everyone who puts MP3 decoding in their product must pay.
Following the great history of GNU naming, LAME originally stood for LAME Ain't an Mp3 Encoder. LAME started life as a GPL'd patch against the dist10 ISO demonstration source, and thus was incapable of producing an mp3 stream or even being compiled by itself. But in May 2000, the last remnants of the ISO source code were replaced, and now LAME is the source code for a fully LGPL'd MP3 encoder, with speed and quality to rival all commercial competitors.
... that many MP3 players (including the iPod) have dedicated MPEG audio frame-decoding hardware. They can't easily decode MP3s in software either. There have been single chip solutions for MP3 decoding since like before the year 2000. Vorbis decoding will be more difficult to implement on a chip, and the standard was only finalized recently, so a) no lead-time for chipmakers to develop the hardware b) not enough market to justify the R&D. This is why you don't see it in many portables (and then in only the most powerful ones CPU-wise).
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Realplayer requires you to download a plugin for Ogg Vorbis and Theora files though. It's not built in by default :(
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Yes, and you can do it legally with a free decoder.
Thomson have licensed the MP3 codec universally to software developers providing it's not for profit. Though, strictly speaking, a patent only covers the commercial exploitability of a product or concept, so that kind gesture is a little empty.
Remember that guy who patented the "means of exercising a cat" using a laser pointer? Does that mean you can't tease a cat in your home? No. You can do that all you like. What you can't do is charge money for the service of exercising cats using laser pointers.
As an aside, the argument "people wouldn't pay for you to play with their cat" doesn't apply with MP3 players. That said, no-one in their right mind would pay for a software MP3 player...
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
That is correct. MP3 reference is only for the software. It's marketing...
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I suppose it appeals to those who cut their teeth on Winamp, and so are used to its ideosyncracies. However, some of the rest of us would like something that is less flashy and more functional.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I haven't used them but I hear Kaffine, Amarok, and Juk are all very good players and more full-featured than XMMS.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
To clarify. Real player for Linux does come with Ogg, but the windows version does not. The windows guys are the one's who really need the extra ogg support, there are hundreds of ogg players for Linux.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
I wonder if Real are positioning themselves to get their client distributed with distributions.
Yes, we are.
Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks
Documentation on using the gtk helix widget
Info on our awesome mp3 decoder
mp3 codec source (fixed and floating point)
For the real scoop on licensing, contact the public mailing list open-licensing@helixcommunity.org. The parent post is largely incorrect.
Check out Helix Player
We work with the xiph guys. Helix Player is a great GPL-only player that plays back ogg theora and vorbis, and excludes binary only components like RA/RV. http://xiph.helixcommunity.org
Check out Helix Player
The player doesn't claim the rpm extension. It does claim audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin mime type, which traditionally has an rpm extension. Some webservers serve redhat rpm packages as audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin instead of application/binary (or application/x-redhat-package-manager or whatever). Because of this, rpm's will go to RealPlayer.
Check out Helix Player