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Real Pays For Legal MP3 Playback On Linux

Posted by timothy on from the stepping-up-to-the-plate dept.

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."

2 of 618 comments (clear)

  1. Don't need a license for personal use anyway by sepluv · · Score: 5, Informative
    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).

    --
    Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
    [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
  2. http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/mp3-licensing-faq.html by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.