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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."
Well, reading the standard, then implementing one's own decoder would be legal - naah, quite a dreamworld. Would be good if it were so, it even would be logical to quite an extent, unless you like waking up by smelling patent litigation papers.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Noble of them.. however we prefer to use non-proprietary stuff though.. So, ogg-vorbis is the way.. Now if Real were to use ogg in their commercial products so (and maybe challenge the ipod with ogg player hooked up to their online music store???) we wouldn't need proprietary licenses then we would all bow down and hail the penguin lova!
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
I have a SB Live! card that has hardware mp3 decoding built-in, but the linux drivers support it. I assume I paid for a license as part of the purchase price of the card. I feel no qualms about using LAME, etc. and in fact they are doing a great service to those of us who already paid but are unable to use that capablility on our OS of choice...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The patent holder for the mp3 codic has never gone after distributors of "free" mp3 players, so long as they were not being used in a for profit product. So download the source and build it for yourself..no worries. (Not true with mp3 ENCODERS, however you can still download bladeenc or lame sources). However because this limits your freedom you won't find an MP3 player in Debain main. Since Real won't give you the source, it isn't 'free' either, again Debain won't distribute it, even if Real says they can.
Say it: Software patents. These are not trivial patents and they're not on algorithms which existed before the patents either. They are the kind of software patents that politicians and many people in the industry really want. You can come up with your very own compression scheme, but if you happen to have the same ideas that somebody has patented, you're screwed anyway.
...but there's nary a software package I despise nore than Real. Those clowns continually teeter so close the edge of being ad/spy/malware it isn't even funny. They don't play nice with others, and they definately qualify as bloatware as far as I am concerned...
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
Well, actually no. I installed the real player gold to be able to watch tagesschau.de streams and it works like a charm. Installation is a breeze and aside from the obligatory trouble with sound servers it works good aswell, it features a nice gtk+2 interface which is perfectly responsible in any means. If I would figure out how to play avi files etc. (it says that this is possible via plugins, however I didn't find any) it would be my favorite player.
Of course there are some features missing, for example choosing between different audio channels (multiple languages) in one file but for most users it would be perfectly suited.
I think that its high time for Apple to release a version of iTunes in binary form for linux. They did it on Windows and they are making money from ITMS they could do the same on linux for sure.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
I'll admit to being a Real skeptic, but
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Your correct, but you have to remember which freedoms the zealots are fighting for. They're fighting for the right to modify, improve and redistribute software.
Unfortunatly, most of the general public has no use for these freedoms, since they're not software developers.
Software like realplayer can legally be distributed for free because Real, Inc. has done the legal footwork to license other codecs. This makes Helix player "the best choice" by default since no open source alternative can legally exist. (thanks to patents and what not)
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
If Real paid the US$60,000 one-time MP3 license fee and added the MP3 decoder to HelixPlayer, would HelixPlayer's MP3 decoder constitute a legal free software MP3 player for users in software patent-burdened countries like the US?
As it is, I don't see how this story is any more interesting than running Windows Media Player or WinAMP via WINE on an i386-based GNU/Linux system.
Digital Citizen
I'll clarify that. It takes a lot of money to get such an invention into a working state; it is fiddly to get it going. This is why patents were invented. Wheras an algorithm just requires thinking (which may take a long time) until you discover an appropriate one (and an algorithm could even be discovered by a computer).
Why do you think that (non trivial) algorithms are any different to inventing any other system? A lot of patented devices would have been produced by trial and error until a working one is "discovered".
Or are you saying a computer could just test algorithms until it found an appropriate one? Goodness me. Let's say you can code an MP3 decoder in 1KByte. That would mean the computer would only have to try ~10^8000 programs before it "discoverd" it. It might be finished before the heat death of the universe but I doubt it.
Am I the only one who think the XMMS interface sucks? Maybe I'm missing something here, but whatever happened to media players that organized your various songs in different folders into one logical media library, as in Musicmatch? Anyone know of any plugins to make XMMS do this?
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.
Sure, their site says that end users don't need a license, but does using an unlicensed decoder expose you as well? Or is there also an exemption for people who develop decoders for their own personal use?
For someone who doesn't want to participate in patent civil disobedience, isn't it just as unethical to use an unlicensed decoder as it is to release your own decoder and ignore the licensing?
I agree about the likelihood of a lawsuit from Thomson, but I think the availability of a legal alternative makes Linux a more attractive solution for those who want to live on the right side of the law.
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