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."

Comments

Don't need a license for personal use anyway

[sepluv]

From Thomson's MP3 Licensing FAQ:

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.

That applies to decoding and encoding.

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).

Depends on where you are from

[shurdeek]

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

Re:buffered stuff..

[sepluv]

I repeat the grandparent's post: it doesn't bring anything to Linux.

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.

Re:no surprise

[Halo1]

they patented their algorithm

They patented a ton of high level algorithms in fact, including compressing (using any compression algorithm) a sample in a loop until it can be represented in the desired number of bits, as long as you use spectral analysis up front and huffman coding (or another entropic encoder) inside the loop.

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.

Re:no surprise

[l3pYr]

It did not take the time and effort that a real physical invention (e.g.: a washing machine) requires, and that the inventors of the patent system (who thankfully (or maybe not so) didn't get a patent on their idea...oh wait...) envisaged being required for a patent to be granted.

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.

http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/mp3-licensing-faq.html

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:How many times do I have to license it?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:How many times do I have to license it?

[RonnyJ]

From the about page of LAME:

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.

Re:buffered stuff..

[aardvarkjoe]

It reminds me of Winamp 2...

This is exactly my problem with XMMS. It was designed to look and feel like Winamp. However, the developers failed to notice that Winamp had one of the most horrible interfaces ever designed. The icons were cryptic, and the widgets didn't work anything like the standard ones. Far from being a "clean player," Winamp (and XMMS) have an exceedingly annoying, difficult-to-use UI.

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.

Re:buffered stuff..

[LilMikey]

I haven't used them but I hear Kaffine, Amarok, and Juk are all very good players and more full-featured than XMMS.