New MP3 License Terms Demand $0.75 Per Decoder 1249
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."
Thank god for ogg! (Score:4, Insightful)
They've got a good racket going... (Score:3, Insightful)
And wouldn't this hurt the proliferation of mp3 encoders running around, thereby possibly limiting the amount of mp3s that are available to the general public? Maybe we just need to use
Lordfly
There outta be a law... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
What about overseas distributions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do they not realize the effect of this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:2, Insightful)
RIP MP3 and welcome Ogg Vorbis !!!!
Hmm. Not bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Kind of Dumb... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now is the perfect time to pull this stunt!
Winamp has been ready for this for a while... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, if you already have the plugin, no need to pay for it again -- and it could make use of the Windows Media Player MP3 codecs (paid for by your Windows XP license).
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:2, Insightful)
And now I ask, Is there an mp3-to-ogg converter?
Please post links
Re:These prices were up last year. (Score:3, Insightful)
Big Deal (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Do they not realize the effect of this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Heh (Score:3, Insightful)
it just might - no one said these things happen quickly. one way to find out though, someone write this down and email me in 10 years or so to remind me, we'll see where it goes. :)
The far side of patents (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Hmm. Not bad. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cost not issue for AOL, perhaps for Kazaa (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The far side of patents (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is way to much time to wait for a patent to expire... [and effectivelly kills the usability of the technology or the patent system].
Cheers...
P.S.- I'm not against software patents (per si), just against stupid patents and the patent expiration time...
Do you really think that, (Score:3, Insightful)
There are also already a billion free mp3 players out there, not to mention the free ones that comes with Windows and Macs, which make up like 95% of the desktop computer market. Worst case is Microsoft and Apple budget that extra fee into their new OS. Net imapact on regular people 0.
So while I lament this added fee which will probably turn out to be unenforceable, Ogg will still find itself a solution in search of a problem. Not that I don't realize that there are definite benefits to Ogg both legally and technically, but considering 99% of people are happy with MP3 as the defacto standard, I don't see or even want the situation to change much.
Re:They've got a good racket going... (Score:5, Insightful)
People take mp3s for granted now, but the patents involved cover real innovation, not bullshit like the one-click Amazon patents, or such.
Be Afraid (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm already seeing a ton of songs in
Mp3 is still the most dominant format but I honestly don't think
--
Garett
Re:They've got a good racket going... (Score:4, Insightful)
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 anything can be killed with patents (Score:3, Insightful)
That's part of what's inherently wrong with patenting software. They should treat patents in the same way they treat trademarks -- if its use becomes diluted and unchecked, it belongs to the public.
MP3, GIF and lots of other data formats are just out there everywhere and should belong to the public at large. It's not like the someone who invented LZ or MP3 formats woke up from a coma after 20 years of people using their work. The people have been using it for so long, it belongs to the people now.
People should be protesting and presuring for the release of these patents. People should be protesting against software patents in general. When it comes to historical and archival data, it's all about the format.
What would happen if MS patented EVERYTHING they did. Screw copyright -- just patented everything. We know their legal team would pose a deadly threat to everyone they came in contact with whether the claims had merit or not.
Software patents have a chilling effect on industrial and recreational software development. (Open source is largly recreational... and we should all be screaming for our rights to free expression and recreation.) They need to be officially disposed of. What political force is already supporting this view? I don't know... someone tell me. Whoever and whatever it is, they need to be backed by our support to make some change happen. Things have been out of control for far too long.
Reencode to OGG. (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if such a change as this (removing the exemption for personal-use decoders) wouldn't really affect me, there's such a thing as taking a stand against those who would abuse the rights they are granted.
If you can, switch to OGG. Rip all your new CDs in OGG. Encourage gaming companies to use the OGG format for the music in their games. And so on.
Re:There outta be a law... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do you really think that, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternate Title: OGG Becomes New Standard (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the little tragedies of the emerging legal climate is that your attitude is the only sane response. The 'content providers' - the Sonys, Disneys, Warners, RIAAs and MPAAs of the world - have pushed through a network of laws about 'intellectual property' that are all so counter-intuitive, so opposed to the normal day-to-day human individual and social practice, that it makes just about all of us criminals (or at least liable). I don't know how long this can stand - history shows that essentially unjust systems can last a long, long time, and slavery, for example, was far more unjust than this. But the only reasonable response, IMO, is just to do what we would otherwise do, because increasing, being scrupulous would be paralyzing.
They can't charge for what you already have. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see a reason to give that up and pay the decoder fees.
As long as you keep your older versions of the players, you should be fine.
Hell, you should even burn a cd with all the players you can think of on it just in case you feel like switching and want to aviod the fees.
Re:i wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess: too many commercial companies were using the free license for free player to skirt licensing the patent. i.e. "Hey, you didn't buy any MP3 player.. you bought something else and we thru the MP3 player in for free".
call me a conspiracy theorist but i wouldn't be suprised if the RIAA is behind this somehow
Doubtful, since if you think about it MP3 (the patent and its owners) would be opposed to the RIAA. The RIAA want to stamp MP3s out and replace them with something they consider secure (and no doubt they own the intellectual property on as well). Thompson, et al stand to make more money with greater prolifieration of MP3s.
So basically, loopholes are being closed. I doubt very seriously that there will be a witch hunt for free player developers. If sell some service, appliance, or other software that includes some free implementation of an MP3 decoder (think a hardware MP3 player that uses a GPLed or BSD library for decoding) I'm sure you can expect a letter in the mail. The unfortunate side effect of this is that the likes of Red Hat have to remove all decoders since the new licensing scheme affects them as well.
Re:They've got a good racket going... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:thank god for LAME (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There outta be a law... (Score:3, Insightful)
Submarine patents have not been made illegal. The PTO did make some changes to their procedures so that patent filings will become public sooner, making it tougher to keep them hidden for a long time while the technology takes off.
Re:The ol' switcheroo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Portable Ogg-based players? (Score:5, Insightful)
The user won't notice, most likely. However, if you notice, the minimum annual licensing is $15,000 US per year. So even if a manufacturer's product flops, they have to shell out 15 grand anyway. And if the product does well, say it ships 2 million units, that's $1.5 Million dollars in royalties.
When presented with those options, which one would you pick? Some people, especially much smaller companies, will go with the royalty-free solution.
Re:i'm lazy, spell it out please. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The far side of patents (Score:5, Insightful)
First, patents were orginally keyed to the length of your working life. You would spend decades becoming a master of your field, then a patent would protect you during the remainder of your working life. Meanwhile your apprentices would learn this new skill, then extend the art as they became masters.
That worked fine until Britain changed the length of patents to 100 years, to protect some key industries. The net result was that the British industry stalled while Germany (a nation of scofflaws that ignored British IP rights) went from an agarian society to an industrial one.
In this field, your working life is closer to 15 years, with maybe 5 years from your first paying job to when you're (usually) considered to be a fully competent journeyman capable of being "the master" at most reasonably complex shops. The high end is softer, but there's definitely a bias against older programmers. You start to notice it at 35, and it's a real problem at 40.
By this measure, a patent should last maybe 7-10 years, max. Long enough to drive a generation or two of your product, but not so long that a person who just started out when you got your patent can't build on it during their working lifetime.
But this brings up the second point - copyrights used to have a reasonable limit, but for all practical purposes they're now essentially eternal. Maybe the law won't extend the term of copyrights yet again, but I probably won't live long enough for anything written during my lifetime - or even substantially before it - to enter the public domain.
If this stands, I expect to see patent law soon follow. This might be tolerable if patents covered legitimate innovations, but not with the current Patent Office of approving virtually every patent that crosses their desk and letting the courts decide which ones are valid.
Re:Hmm. Not bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:There outta be a law... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There outta be a law... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is dirty pool, and I hope it doesn't last.
I agree with you completely. Unfortunately, I think it will last. We, as techies and as citizens, will need to more vigilant determining what we will adopt as 'standard'.
JPG, GIF, MP3, etc. We have to learn the lesson eventually.
More evidence to oppose the W3C RAND lisencing proposal.
Re:Winamp has been ready for this for a while... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Could be worse. (Score:4, Insightful)
Couple of points here: 1a. Patents expire in 20 years with an option to renew; in practical terms they don't expire especially when it comes to software. 1b. Patent on MP3 is the same as a patent on one-click in that they are both patents on software. They both claim patents on logic, algorithm, functions, whatever you want to call it.
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?
This is purely subjective. I'm sure if the patent license is enforced winamp will come up with a free version that's ad-bloated (plays an ad mp3 after each of your selected mp3s, popups, unders, etc), or paid subscription model like Real did awhile ago. Now, this may be completely reasonable to you, but others who have been playing their mp3s without having to pay for patent royalties or get annoyed by advertizers will not appreciate the change. So they will switch to Windows Media Player which will include the patent payment in the OS price (antitrust?), which will also force them to listen to and encode in WMA.
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.
I don't think it's going to be MP3 vs OGG, it's going to be MP3 vs WMA and good luck beating MS in this game. Just like I said above. Also, consider MS requiring you to use their DRM with WMAs when or as they get a hold of some market share. This will bring up so many issues it's a topic of several separate discussions.
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.
At least help advertize Ogg. Can't hurt. BTW what is wrong with the xiph.org's ogg encoder?
Re:Probable consequences? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Re:Heh (Score:1, Insightful)
You guys amaze me. You are as bad as the zealots who say "Whoooo! ogg rules!" It now costs quite a bit to write and distribute an mp3 decoder. It costs nothing to use ogg however you like.
And you can't see how this can only help ogg? It's a simple rule... economics. It's not going to shift overnight, but this can only help.
Free means free (Score:2, Insightful)
Redhat 7.2 has 1,144 packages. If they were to charge $0.75 for each package, you would be charged $858.00 to use Redhat.
Thanks Xiph.org Foundation for Ogg! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Think before posting (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, mostly. The FgH patents were issued in Germany in 1989, one year after ISO-11172 (mpeg1 standard) was published. In the USA, the patent was issued sometime in the mid-90's, 1996 I seem to recall.
MiniDisc? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is aimed at OGG (Score:3, Insightful)
Since no one will want a player that can't handle OGG, the only remaining players with significant market share will be those that have paid the fees. The organizations that can afford the fees mostly have a vested interest in restricting distribution.
Re:i wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM
SUN
Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE
Imation
Maybe IBM could do the Linux community a favor and put 50K of their "X Billion dollars for Linux" into a perpetual MP3 license.
Although probably it's best for MP3 to die its death now. Long live OGG. If Imation's "RipGo!" Mini-CDR player had OGG, it would be in my possession right now.
heh! (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying the panic scramble of all the mp3 twerps on slashdot who, when urged to use ogg, replied something to the effect of
"I like MP3, its what all the p2p filesharers use, I'm not going to listen to some free software weenie tell me to use ogg just because it isn't free of patents and ogg is!"
What goes around, comes around. Those of us with our music already ripped in ogg format can sit back and enjoy watching the natural consiquences of such short sightedness run their course.
Perhaps next time people will learn, but, given that they didn't learn from the GIF history everyone already knew, I doubt people will have their heads stuck any less deeply into their ass the next time around.
Re:Not charging end users (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because other encoders (meaninng other than wma) are written by organizations with ethics.
This will kill all litte-guy developers. (Score:3, Insightful)
To all of you who have said "no big deal" "$.75 is not a lot of money" - you are mad.
I ran the numbers - and they are staggering.
The list of licensees guarantees them $2,295,000 PER YEAR for the MINIMUM licenseing fees. I notice that i DIDN'T notice a lot of the super-simple little Mac OS 9 mp3 players that were out there on the licensee list - so i guess that their days are now over.
And that is just the tip of the "ability to buy small governments and a few senators" pile of money.
As a Mac bigot, i see that Apple has had 100,000,000 [apple.com] downloads of Quicktime. If they had supported the MP3 format from the beginning (they haven't) that would be $75,000,000 from Apple, and $75,000,000 to Thompson Multimedia. But you get my point.
Fine - what about RealPlayer?
Their site claims that they have 285 million players out there! [realnetworks.com] So much for Apple.. if these rules were in place, that would be a cool $213,750,000 from Real to Thompson. Their software has been shit up until recently, so i can't tell you how long they've supported mp3's. but if it was the beginning, then that's what it woulda cost them.
That's just crap. And that's just two of the licensees. I can't imagine how many bazillions they plan on making here in the near future.
This will and SHOULD kill mp3. I grow weary of saying it, but if I come up with a good idea, i shouldn't be able to live a thousand lifetimes off of it. There's just no justification. Hell, i don't plan on making money off the work i did today tomorrow - so why the hell do so many other people believe that just because they worked yesterday that they should be paid into perpituity?
IP is a bullshit idea.
For all of you dumbasses on
This is NOT cheap - and this WILL stifle creativity and future MP3 deployment. If you come up with a great piece of software that decodes mp3s, pray to God it doesn't become popular (if you're a little-guy developer).
What kills me is that instead of providing SOMETHING of value TODAY - they are going to kill off all the little guys who make mp3 players or force them to 123.
Whatever.. i'm so sick of
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's 3 or 4 weekends I can't play Warcraft III in.
That'll learn me for not doing it right the first time.
Re:The far side of patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Too many things can change in twenty years. The patented drug could be obsoleted by a new, cheaper, more effective drug. The entire social climate could change resulting in price controls on medicine. A new medical procedure could make the drug completely worthless. The foreign nations the pharmaceuticals were counting on for revenue could be overthrown and drug patents outlawed.
The only industry I can think of that looks more than twenty years into the future is real estate. Real estate holds solid predictable, generally increasing value. It comes with cost effective insurance. And in the U.S., the government is required to compensate you if they take it away. Even with real estate, mortgages rarely exceed 30 years, and long leases always come with an exit clause.
The cold harsh reality is, pharmaceutical companies really just want to retroactively extend their current patents. Let's hope the Supreme Court does the right thing in Eldred v. Reno this fall.
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Alternate Title: OGG Becomes New Standard (Score:2, Insightful)
This was easy to see coming for several years. There was even historical precedent with the LZW/GIF thing. And unlike the situation in early 1995 where there was a couple of months between GIF LZW enforcement and PNG scrambling to get invented and become viable, Vorbis has been usable a couple of years before this happened. Fraunhofer has been easy on us.
Anyone who got caught with their pants down this time, deserved to lose. Pity?! Fuck 'em!
Re:Probable consequences? (Score:3, Insightful)
An extra 700 megs of storage for my Rio is less than $1.00. Thanks for playing, though...
Move along (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All audio coding is lossy (Score:2, Insightful)
That's great and all, but I doubt you can hear all that dynamic response with the s/n on most consumer amps.Also, who can hear above 22KHz? I know I can't. I might hear an overtone or an intermod product from a tone being generated above 22KHz, but not the fundamental tone.
All my stupid accretions aside, the more information you can capture, the better. You may not be able to hear all of it on your $500 living room system.
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:2, Insightful)
Correction They want the government to go after +/ a few million people, using technology such as Carnivore to track file transfers, and spending citizen's tax dollars going after their own family members.
I don't know about you, but my dad tells me to try stuff before I buy it, and buy it I do.
Re:The far side of patents (Score:4, Insightful)
The world didn't end; it was merely set back 20 years.
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:1, Insightful)
If you don't believe me, I challenge you to show a link to anyone with any kind of serious study of wma saying that the 3dB boost is true. You won't find it unless you are looking in my butt because that's exactly where it came from.