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Thomson Announces Royalties For MP3 Streaming 150

Posted by timothy from the pay-up-now dept.
Michael Smith points to an article at techreview.com in which "we read about Thomson Multimedia announcing royalties for mp3 streaming, finally. 2% of ALL revenues related to streaming, with a $2000 minimum. A compelling reason to move to Ogg Vorbis for those who have been holding out?" RMS has been pointing out that MP3 is hampered by patents for a long time now; the proof-bearing pudding is on the way. Same Thomson that wants smart cards everywhere; the pay-for-play view of the world is at least consistent there.
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Thomson Announces Royalties For MP3 Streaming More

Thomson Announces Royalties For MP3 Streaming

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  • Re:Other MP3 Streams (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am not moving until they come up with a better extension. What the hell is an ogg?

    In truth, the biggest drawback is that my DVD player and my MP3 player doesn't play OGGs. So why bother converting over?

  • Re:Ogg Vorbis? More like WMA... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Unfortunately, apart from in some OSS circles, *nobody* knows about OGG. Apart from the fact that the name (whilst cool to us geeks) is confusing and bizarre to most people, it gets no publicity in the eyes of the people we should be encouraging to use it, and there is next to no audio available in OGG form

    /me thinks back to when Justin was still in college and winamp was still (though Justin will deny it to keep AOL from being sued) a wrapper for AMP. Back then everything you said could have been applied to MP3. I mean come on MPEG 2 Layer 3 Audio WTF is that if not geeky sounding!

  • Re:One thing to keep in mind.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's simply not true. Ogg isn't a music format.
    OTOH, it *is* a bitstream format, and one of the bitstreams it can contain is the Vorbis format, which is a music format.

    Oh boo hoo. Stop being so damn PC.

  • Re:Dumb Ideas Hall of Fame? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah, this already exists. It's called "The United States Patent Office."

  • Or, since there are a number of music players that can play both Ogg and MP3, you could (gasp) not convert all that old music (heathen!), but rip to Ogg whenever you rip new music. Why exactly do they all have to be the same?

    If you're streaming, you're probably re-encoding to a lower, streamable bitrate anyways (at least, I do, my on-disk MP3s are usually 192kbit VBR or higher, but my radio streams [scenespot.org] are 24kbit and 56kbit), so it doesn't matter what the source is.

  • One thing that really made me happy is to see that Sonic Foundry's two biggest products (Sound Forge and Acid) now support Ogg Vorbis natively in their newest incarnations. Lowers the bar for getting content creators to use it substantially; Sound Forge is the defacto standard in sound editing.
  • Basically, any little guy you just wants to stream a few of his garage band's songs out to a limited audience and has a few banner ads to pay for beer money is supposed (in theory) to pay $2000 bucks.

    Yabbut a guy in that situation is much better served by just making the songs downloadable, not streaming them.

  • Oh come on (Score:3)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @02:56PM (#163648)
    Oh come on. We're into bizarro world here. They've priced this thing just right, but it's outta whack because one particular set of people isn't getting exactly the low price they want?

    Who are these people that could pay for the bandwidth needed for streaming audio of any quality -- with banner ads? 24 concurrent connections at 64k would choke a T1 to start. These must be awesome banners! Pop-ups, that's fer sure!

    And $2000 is $167 a month. I'll tell you what, there are these two guys in Brooklyn that have been streaming audio to the world for ages, cheaper than that. It's They Might Be Giants, and they've had a "dial-a-song" answering machine up for over a decade.

    Now the POTS is a little noisy and a little lossy, but if your audio is SO compelling that you absolutely must STREAM it, that's the cheap way to do it. (And hey, the bandwidth is even paid for - with aggregated micropayments!)

  • This is a sensible licensing scheme (Score:5)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @12:25PM (#163649)
    What if I described the scheme thusly:

    Thomson developed a licensing scheme that would only charge for companies that "monetize" the codec. Users can now stream mp3 for free as long as they don't charge, and small-time users only pay $2000. Larger streaming companies, such as broadcasters, pay 2% of their revenue from streaming. Therefore, if you don't charge, you don't pay; if you make money on it, you give some back to the developers.

    OK: I can now stream mp3 at will, for FREE -- unless I charge for it! But if I'm a big broadcaster, and I make $1Million from streaming, I have to pay them $20,000. Well that sounds like a damn sensible approach!

    Now, the bulk of the Tech Review story is not about their licensing scheme, but Thomson's announcement that MP3Pro is going to debut next week. This codec will lead to file sizes half that of mp3 while remaining backwardly compatible - as in, MP3Pro can be played with any current mp3 player, albeit with a predictable loss in quality. In return they are asking for 50% more (free for non-monetized, $3000 minimum or 3% of revenue) to stream MP3Pro.

  • My question is, do they intend to allow people to maintain commercial sites and make the _mp3s_ available free, or do they intend to only let you stream if you do nothing whatsoever else to make money?

    This matters. If it's the first case, it will prop up OMDs that allow free indie music downloading and streaming to consumers, and will punish those that want to change to pay-per-download or micropayments. I actually like that. If it's the second sense, they will only let you stream if you're _not_ the artist, and if you're the artist and sell your own CDs, they'll nail you! That's messed up.

    Worse yet- they may not have decided which one they mean- or they may refuse to specify except on a case-by-case basis. That's a recipe for massive abuses.

  • That's really the question. Does it have to be direct income for streaming, or is simply operating a business enough to permanently disqualify you from the exemption?

    For instance, if you run a lumber company and wish to have a mp3 of your president talking about things, freely downloadable by prospective customers, does that not count as free because you're trying to sell them lumber and using the mp3 as a tool to do that?

    I'm not even going to get into the 'musician selling CDs' angle, that's even more ominous...

  • That depends entirely on their notion of profiting 'from'. They could claim _anything_ is 'profiting from'. If you make a site with your resume and a spoken version in mp3 format, it is possible they would claim _that_ is profiting from, and legally demand $2000 from you on the spot.

    I think they will refuse to define what they mean- and that's dangerous. Very dangerous.

    It means they can chill speech and discussion about formats by holding the threat of legal action above _anyone_ involved with mp3 streaming. Very bad.

  • .OGG personal players (Score:3)

    by Craig Maloney ( 1104 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @04:51PM (#163653) Homepage
    Does anybody know of a personal player (Like the Rio 300) that will play .ogg files?
  • I think you mean it uses "cheap lossy" compression, not "cheap lossless".
  • TCP is more overhead than you care about for streaming a lossy compressed audio stream. So what if you drop a few packets, the audio will skip, and you'll pick up where the packets start returning again. Not adequate for mission critical data, but streaming audio hardly qualifies.
  • Er... Ogg works pretty well already. I'm listening to VBR ogg-encoded ~128k audio at the moment. It sounds better than MP3, even with my shoddy equipment.

    --
  • Actually, it sounds pretty generous, if I'm reading it right. Assuming the only licensing charges for the MP3 codec will apply to people profiting from MP3 streaming, I imagine most of the slashdot community will be free to use it as they wish without paying a dime.
  • TCP is actually *less* overhead as the IP stack will take care of lost packets, retransmissions and let the application receive the data in the same order as it was sent.

    UDP will do none of those things for you.
    --
    echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D7272 C3AF4F2snlbxq'|dc

  • I'm sure I'm not the only person who's done

    wget http://server.com/somefile.mp3 &
    dd if=somefile.mp3 | mpg123 -

    Instant streaming, and downloading at the same time, and assuming the connection is fast enough, you can start playing the file as soon as you start downloading it, and play the whole thing.

    (Yes, I'm sure there's some way to get wget to pipe to tee and mpg123, and whatnot, but this is actually easy to type. ;) )

    -David T. C.

  • At some point, we really need (-1: Wrong) moderation added. Although we'd have to make it clear it's not for opinions you disagree with, but with posts that just have all their facts 100% wrong. Like this post.

    -David T. C.
  • I work for a College station. We make nothing.

    Hey Thompson, see if you can get your superior wavelet mathematicians and marketting statisticians to tell you what 2% of ZERO is!

    Thomson may get the last laugh on you, though.

    From the article you apparently didn't read:
    This week, Linde revealed Thomson's licensing policy for streaming or broadcasting "pure MP3." The royalty rate is two percent of revenues related to streaming, with a minimum fee of $2,000 per year.


    That's right, it doesn't matter how little you rake in, they want $2000 a year for streaming MP3. Better hope you stay under their radar, or start making plans to move to Ogg-Vorbis sometime soon...

    Jay (=
  • "If MP3 is used for free distribution on the Internet, we will not charge royalties," he says

    Do we have that in writing? ;-)
    --

  • So you are saying the fact that the people who put lots of time and money into developing mp3 shouldn't get any compensation for their efforts?

  • But Philips spent money developing the technology. The band didn't spend a single penny, but they're going to use it to make money. How is it unfair for the band to have to pay something, too? They don't have to if they don't want to. They could use a free format — will having a lot of people unable to listen to this other format be worth saving $2000? — or they could invent their own streaming technology — think they could do this for under $2000?

    Sounds like a simple free market question to me. Is it worth the money to have everybody and their sisters be able to listen to your broadcast without installing additional software? If it isn't, just use one of the alternatives that you can afford.


    Cheers,

  • The Thompson patent claims are about the (a?) MP3 encoding method. That means that if you don't license from them, you can't encode MP3. Then it doesn't matter whether or not you're streaming or downloading, becuase you are not allowed to create the MP3 file to begin with.

    Yes, I'd say Thompson is pulling a Rambus on us. It should never have made it into the ISO standard.

  • One thing to keep in mind.. (Score:4)

    by sith ( 15384 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @11:37AM (#163666)
    "If MP3 is used for free distribution on the Internet, we will not charge royalties," he says. But "if people monetize, the inventors should have their fair share," he adds.

    So, as I read that, shoutcast servers wouldn't have problems, but if there were a pay-for-play mp3 based radio station, they want a cut. At least they're not being 100% evil...

  • Re:One thing to keep in mind.. (Score:3)

    by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @03:05PM (#163667) Homepage Journal
    It is true that they aren't making any promises, but at the same time if they have learnt from the GIF incident, whereby they inadvertendly forced everyone to use other formats, they won't try shooting themselves in the foot.

    Only time will tell...
  • IANAL, but I fail to see how Thomson (or anyone else) could have any legal basis for charging royalties for streaming MP3 (or MPEG audio of any form).

    Certainly the encoding and decoding of MPEG audio is covered by patents, and is thus licenseable. (And obviously the content of some MPEG audio files is protected by copyright.) But once you already have encoded MPEG audio data, to stream this data requires only unencumbered, open standard protocols (TCP, or RTP (RFC2250 or RFC3119)).

    It's hard to see how any restriction on the streaming of pre-encoded, non-copyrighted audio could have any legal weight. In fact, such a restriction might even be seen as a violation of free speech rights...

  • does streaming have to do with encoding or decoding?

    THey hold patents on the encoder and the decoder, no? So if the data is already encoded..... how can they enforce this?
    Just like.... Unisys charging people for using GIF's.. they can only control making them and displaying them, not using them...
  • Unless you can show otherwise?
  • 'their' vessles, not 'there' vessles.
    'ransom' not 'ransome'

    There is no similarity. These people are enforcing legal patents they were granted, not simply blocking a trade 'because they can'.

    By your logic, the person collecting tickets at the entrance to a concert is a pirate who is preventing you from seeing the concert?

  • They want fees from people who accept money (directly or indirectly) for streaming, not just people who turn a profit. The fee schedule starts at $2,000.

    Or do I have a different definition of "revenue" than the rest of the posters here?

    *sigh*
  • >Thompson sure as fsck can't patent that.

    Be careful with that axe, Eugene. Them's fightin' words.

    I now -expect- to see a patent filed for just such a thing, but generalized away from mp3. I can't think of any prior art, and besides, it wouldn't matter given the present state of the USPTO.

  • A brief and disjointed analysis (Score:5)

    by adolf ( 21054 ) <flodadolf@gmail.com> on Saturday June 09, 2001 @12:24PM (#163674) Journal
    I read it somewhat differently.

    From the anecdotes in the article, the only way to avoid paying Thomson is to eliminate all money from the picture. They want a peice of all stream-related revenue. Which is to say, that if you sell t-shirts to promote the stream, subsidize bandwidth, or equipment, or studio space, they want $2k/year (minimum), and 2% after that. This is from the revenue stream, not profit-after-expenses.

    If you sell advertising, they offer a plan where you pay 3% of advertising revenue, with a $3k annual minimum. This, presumably, would also include income from any banner ads on the stream's web page.

    It doesn't matter if you're making money hand over fist, or if you're just trying to gather support to keep the thing alive while working elsewhere full-time and running at a loss, just for a fun thing to do. They want a cut.

    This will, should it come to pass, probably damage live365's already shaky business model to the point of complete failure.

    It will mean that the low-budget streams will need to move to zero-budget, or find a source of income to cover the $2k annual minimum.

    It, like so many other things, punishes the little guy. Selling a $10 hat with a inkjet-printed logo costs the seller ~$2k. I'll let the reader figure out how many $10 hats it takes annually to cover the licensing cost of the bloody ISO standard codec.

    All conspiracy theories aside, I don't know that they'd be able to introduce this retroactively. I got my licensed-and-legit Fraunhoffer MP3 codec with Microsoft's Netshow. I didn't agree to pay them shit, and I'm never going to. *thumbs nose at Thomson Multimedia*

    It makes sense, then, that it would only apply to the "new" MP3Pro codec.

    MP3Pro, by the way, is absolutely fucking worthless - it compensates for high-frequency loss by introducing harmonic distortion and high-frequency noise. So, low-bitrate stuff sounds just as "bright" as it did before encoding. This "brightness" is entirely artificial, and entirely inaccurate with respect to the original recording.

    Its only honest claim to fame, is that really-low-bitrate stuff might become tolerable (think 8-16Kbps) for voice work, and that it is backward-compatible with existing mp3 players (for the naysayers who will pop up claiming that mp3pro is god's gift to all mankind: it is this backward compatibility which requires its broken hack of a design.)

    Incidentally, this works right now: Make a low-bitrate mp3 (the article says 80Kbps is good, so start there), and a high-bitrate (>224Kbps) mp3 of the same material. Grab a plugin for xmms, winamp, wmp, or whatever, that claims to boost (or "recreate" or "reproduce" or "restore") high-frequency sound. Play your low-bitrate mp3 through the plugin, for a demonstration of what MP3Pro can do. Play your high-bitrate mp3 without it, for enlightenment.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • That's amusing, but it's not what we were talking about. You start downloading a full-length radio program. A second or two later, you point your mp3 player at it. It starts playing, and it will continue playing unless the download isn't fast enough to keep pace.

    Voila, you now have most of the benefits of streaming without, technically, streaming.

  • Until... (Score:5)

    by schon ( 31600 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @02:32PM (#163677)
    the only licensing charges for the MP3 codec will apply to people profiting from MP3 streaming, I imagine most of the slashdot community will be free to use it as they wish without paying a dime

    Until you realize that what Thompson considers "profit" and what you consider "profit" are two entirely separate things.

    When Thompson tried enforcing the patent licenses on encoding software, they went after quite a few free (as in beer) programmers - their logic was "You are making money from your software because you have banner ads on the download site." (this is how LAME came about.)

    So I wouldn't put it past them to say "Hey, you're streaming MP3's, and you have a banner ad there - so therefore you're making a profit."

    This will come to pass.. just watch and see.
  • What hardware manufacturers are dedicated to making Vorbis players?

    Interactive Objects [iobjects.com], for one. They're the ones who designed the OS for the Hip Zip, among other things.

  • I think the MP3 patents are widely understood to be so broad that it'd be impossible to implement the standard in ANY way that didn't infringe.

    I can't remember the specifcs, but I remember reading on the xiph.com site that Ogg is already suported in a number of commercial products - they seem to be doing a good job of gathering support, and Thompson starting to enforce as predicted can only help their cause.
  • have you *tried* it? i think they are just being conservative about quality, not saying its a stable release version until they are satisfied. it already sounds better at 128k than any mp3 codec ive tried (recent lame and all flavors of fraunhofer included).

  • Re:Shoutcast (Score:3)

    by akb ( 39826 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @11:55AM (#163681)
    So what does this mean for shoutcast?

    Nothing. They don't charge any money.

    ... should make their own napster like program that doesn't have a central server

    Of course, distributed live broadcasting would be best accomplished through the deployment of multicast on the Internet. Any application level solutions would be hacks comparitively.
  • Is there a dumb ideas hall of fame anywhere? - sort of like fuckedcompany.com but just dumb ideas such as CPRM, DVD, SDMI, Thompson's smart cards in pc's, 3G etc...
  • err... no. i ment dvd. its only a few gigs in size (cd replaced floppy at 600 times more capacity and dvd has only about 10 times more than cd...) the new multi-layer thingys coming out look much more promising (starting at 50gb>)

    it uses cheap lossless compression. im f*ing pissed of seeing poorly compressed material with artifacts showing.

    Its low res... not enough for hdtv - what happens when everyone switches?.. oh yeah, the mpaa will make shit loads...

    don't even get me started on macrovision, region encoding and css.

    oh yes. and for the dumb ideas list, add that chip the electronics companies wanted to put indevices to disable them if they were taken out of the country.
  • convert? why would you convert one lossy format to another and loose more signal? unless you mean convert from cd...

    i find it amazing that the record companies are still making cds.. all that free uncompressed quality with no copy-protection? i wonder how that managed to get out.

    Its true that mp3 is standard. Ogg Vorbis will never rule unless they re-name it... - you can always tell if somethings going to be sucessful by the name.
  • good point... i never proof read.. lol
  • "Although not all artists realize it, MP3 is what is known as a "lossy" format. Thus, much of the sound data is removed when MP3 files are created. This results in a file with inferior sound quality to a CD. Vorbis is also a "lossy" format..."

    who has a head made of bone? huh, huh!?
    lol
  • Sounds like a simple free market question to me. Is it worth the money to have everybody and their sisters be able to listen to your broadcast without installing additional software?
    I'm not sure why you associate this with free markets. MP3 has this advantage purely because it is bigger than equally good alternatives (like Ogg Vorbis). The reason this works as an advantage is because of the market-distorting effects of the patent system.
  • They did look at how MP3 works and took "ideas" out of it. Ogg Vorbis uses a lot of concept pioneered by the MPEG audio codecs (MPEG Layer 3 and the ancestors Layer 1 & 2).
  • That's simply not true. Ogg isn't a music format.

    OTOH, it *is* a bitstream format, and one of the bitstreams it can contain is the Vorbis [vorbis.com] format, which is a music format.

    Ogg != Vorbis.
    ------

  • > Does this sig annoy you?

    YES!!
    ------

  • <grin> Whaat?
    ------
  • Vorbis is already in WinAmp, AFAIK.
    ------
  • The man who invented copyright didn't expect it to last for 150 years. It was just so publishers couldn't rip off authors.
    ------
  • That's like the MPAA saying "we think software is never speech." Paying a patent lawyer to look into it would be more reliable than Thompson's biased opinion.
    ------
  • I tried Gnutella a little while ago, and it's absolutely brutal for sucking up my cable modem bandwidth, simply communicating with other hosts. Hell, I didn't even download any songs!

    Gnutella is just barely practical, and I would say impossible for the dialup user.
    ------

  • Vorbis will succeed, because it's already supported in tons of apps. AFAIK, even WinAmp supports it, or will soon.
    ------
  • Ogg Tarkin is a barely-started video codec. The only thing available is a mailing list, but I encourage anyone with the time and knowledge to join the list [xiph.org]
    ------

  • Re:This is complete BS. (Score:3)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @01:22PM (#163699)
    > How about during downloads? You can point ANY application that plays MP3 files (Winamp, mplayer2.exe, XMMS, etc.) to an MP3 file that has been partially downloaded by a download utility (specifically, one that puts the file in the final destination even while it's still downloading), and it'll play perfectly, up until the current end of the file, at which point you can play again, and it'll be further down because of the download.

    Good point.

    If I run a streaming radio station, it looks like I owe Thompson $BIGNUM bucks. Clearly, I need to stop running a streaming radio station.

    So I'll say "Click here to download the first segment. Please wait 5 minutes", and it spends 5 minutes downloading in full the first 10 minutes of my show, and then calls WinAMP to play back the complete file, stored locally on my hard drive called "1200-1209h.mp3"...

    ...and in the background, my application starts downloading the next file, "1210-1219h.mp3", which takes another 5 minutes to download, and 10 minutes to play...

    ...well, I'm not really "streaming", am I? I mean, you're listening to an MP3 stored on your hard drive, and you happen to be downloading another one while you listen to the first one. Thompson sure as fsck can't patent that.

  • They don't mention "profiting from", just "all revenues related to".
  • MP3 is just a shorthand way of saying MPEG-1 Layer 3, so it's not a trademark. Why not call Ogg Vorbis MP5? This makes it sound like an obvious upgrade.

    Phillip.
  • If you're a debian user, you can apt-get the Ogg Vorbis encoder and Libraries. You can also get an Ogg Vorbis plugin for XMMS. Grip can use oggenc just as easily as it can use any of the MP3 encoders. So far as I know, the Ogg Vorbis codec isn't geared toward streaming, though. I don't know if you could stream with it or what it'd take to adapt it to do that.

    Oggenc is significantly slower than gogo, but gogo probably represents a HUGE investment in time to tweak it to its levels of performance.

  • Why must Ogg Vorbis be used by the popular group?

    Because that's what the people running these streams are trying to support. They're not going to stream in OGG if less than 5% of the population can actually hear it. It's a waste of their resources. That's why I'm saying this is bad, because when content providers have to choose between OGG and WMA (since MP3 is encumbered), they won't give OGG a thought at all.
  • A compelling reason to move to Ogg Vorbis for those who have been holding out?

    Unfortunately, apart from in some OSS circles, *nobody* knows about OGG. Apart from the fact that the name (whilst cool to us geeks) is confusing and bizarre to most people, it gets no publicity in the eyes of the people we should be encouraging to use it, and there is next to no audio available in OGG format.

    All the companies who have been streaming MP3 (which has been relatively friendly to *nix) will just switch to WMA (Windows Media Audio) since AFAIK, Microsoft gives away the encoding tools for free (beer), and most people actually know about it and can play it with no fuss. This is *bad news* for free audio, not good.

  • Re:One thing to keep in mind.. (Score:3)

    by Trepalium ( 109107 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @11:48AM (#163714)
    Yet somehow that reminds me of Unisys's stance on their LZW compression patent up until very recently when they discovered they could extort more money from people by not having such a lax restriction. "You want GIFs on your site produced by a non-licensed generator? Pay us $5,000 now or face legal action!". They're not making any promises that they won't go after royalties from free distribution places at a later date, so I still wouldn't trust them.
  • They state that they want to collect money from people profiting by mp3 streaming! Does this mean any commercial site which embeds an mp3 into its site that plays before fully downloaded? Sound like fun!
  • Ever since I first saw this name I have always had the same disturbing vision of the offsping of Nanny Ogg and Inquisitor Vorbis. It really doesn't bear thinking about. Where did these guys come up with it (can it be a coincidence or is Terry Pratchett going to get them to change their name!).
  • Then write a quick script to rip and encode your CDs.

    Done [lly.org]. Abcde 1.9.x defaults to Ogg.

  • They want fees from people who accept money (directly or indirectly) for streaming

    If you stream, you must pay royalties to RIAA, ASCAP, and BMI. If you pay royalties, you must recoup those expenses somehow. If you recoup expenses, you are collecting money and must pay Thomson. (Did my logic miss a step?)

    Or you could stream Ogg Vorbis instead.

  • Re:Sounds pretty fair to me. (Score:5)

    by big.ears ( 136789 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @12:39PM (#163722) Homepage
    I don't agree that this was a non-obvious invention. The 'non-obvious' part was done in the 50s and before, with research on information theory, the fast fourier transform, psychoacoustics, and so on---all of which is out there for anyone to use. Pretty much everyone who knows about these things and saw how the Music and Telco industries are multi-billion-dollar sectors in an environment where bandwidth is limited but computing power is excessive has thought of this. Not to say its a trivial task, but its one of engineering.

    MP3s real success is its placement in the market i.e. its widespread adoption--they were there with the right tools at the right time, and allowed people to use it gratis. They probably aren't the best format out there, but they were good enough and fraunhoffer played the right cards at the right time. Plus they secured their dominant position when Napster chose to use mp3 as its sole file-trading format. (not that there was much of a choice at the time.)

    That being said, its dominance may even come to an end when Windows XP gets adopted widely and Napster and Thomson start charging--I already know people who have switched all of their music over to the wmf format. But for now, the market has made it the standard--last time I searched for .ogg files on gnutella there were about 3 hits.

    Apparently, this is the hidden hurdle that open alternatives face. The only entities that can invest enough money into something to make it a market-place standard are those who hope to make a ton of money off of wide-spread adoption.

  • The official site for MP3 licensing details is here [mp3licensing.com]. As the article said, they're not actually going to release details until the 14th.
  • If a band encodes their music into MP3 format, they have already paid for a patent license; it was included in the MP3 encoder (assuming they are using a legal one). Why should they pay once to encode their music, and then pay again to stream it?
  • Please make sure you mention rip [freshmeat.net]. I recently worked with the author of this project to make sure it has the capability to encode to ogg vorbis format.

  • Don't forget the Clipper Chip.

    "Marry had a private key. She kept it in escrow. And everything that Marry read, the feds were sure to know."

    --
  • But mp3 is a monopoly format. I cannot think of any other music format that is supported on pretty much every platform.

    *ahem* OGG

    ---
    DOOR!!
  • I don't know of any standalone apps, but there's a plugin for Winamp [blorp.com] that can do that. This particular plugin is being developed for Nullsoft by the same guy who does their MIDI plugin. He's also done a Vorbis encoder plugin for Winamp.
  • The Iomega HipZip will get support eventually. Monty and Jack, the main guys doing Vorbis development, mentioned on BinaryFreedom back in February that they had test-version HipZips with Vorbis support.

  • OggVorbis & MP3 Howto (Score:5)

    by philkerr ( 180450 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @11:46AM (#163736) Homepage

    I've an almost updated MP3 HOWTO and even though I've an OggVorbis section in it I'm going to rewrite it with as much coverage.

    Boy's and Girls..... if you are using any OggVorbis apps, or know of any tools being developed, let me know.

    I'll change the HOWTO's name to MP3 & OggVorbis HOWTO.

    Thanks

    Phil

  • Who needs the right of way when you have a 500 pound gorilla behind you?

    Really, if Thomson says you owe them money, and the other option is a costly lawsuit, you're screwed either way. Might as well pay up, unless you're bigger than they are.

    I encourage everyone to go to http://www.xiph.org RIGHT NOW and pick up a Vorbis player plugin. It's available for UNIX or Windows. Then write a quick script to rip and encode your CDs. And enjoy life without MP3, or Thomson.

    -John

  • I just had a real scary thought (Score:3)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @12:16PM (#163742) Journal
    What if the RIAA buys the patent off Thomas Multimedia and then uses it to kill of any mp3 file sharing illegal or not.

    Something like this is too good for the RIAA to just ignore. I am sure some media company if not the RIAA will snatch it.

    Oh, also Microsoft is for a way to have its own proprietary format to compete agaisn't mp3's. Look here for more information on some of Microsofts tactics [theregister.co.uk].

    If Microsoft bought the patent or the company they can also sue everyone company in existance who offers mp3 file streaming. But, if you use WMA under a MS platform, you can stream it for free. Just only use NT as the server and the client because its illegal to reverse engineer it and port it to other platforms under the DMCA act. I guess we can get all those product activation cards ready or pay $25 for a cd.

  • A patent on this type of thing is ludicrous, and I hope there are plenty of people around to challenge it. Apathy is the enemy of freedom.

    They have not patented the idea of MP3 streaming. They do hold a bunch of patents [mp3licensing.com] for the algorithms used in MP3 encoders and decoders, however, and, thus, can dictate the license conditions at which they are gonna let you use it.

    A little bit of history:
    MP3 (Audio MPEG Layer 3) was originally developed back in the early 90s (I believe it was 1992, but I'm not sure) by the Fraunhoeffer Institute [iis.fhg.de] in Germany, which they patented. At first, I believe they allowed everyone to write encoders/decoders based on the codec for free, but later decided to charge 50 cents per each unit sold (if you don't sell your end product, you don't pay anything)with a minimum fee of $15000 per year.
    At some point, Fraunhoeffer let Thomson Multimedia [thomson-multimedia.com] handle the licensing of mp3 [mp3licensing.com] and that's where we are at today.

  • They _did_ or they _do_ continue to? Since all the web sites switched to png (hehe) I haven't heard much about that story. I remember hearing that Atari used to to the same thing, claiming they had a patent for bitmapped graphics.

    Actually, I'm kind of amused by this story. The best tools for making and playing mp3s are all freeware, and I've never been to keen on these "fence" outfits that make money off people who trade in stolen goods. People, I think, will manage to trade stolen music in any format just fine without the help of moneyed interests. Let them have their cut of Napster. Then they can take on The 3l33t MP3z Crue and see where that gets them. "Aww go pass another law, ya bum...". So let Big Money slug it out amongst themselves. Technologies like mp3 make them less and less relevant every day. I guess that's hanging them with the rope they weave.

  • Why does someone always think that just because something is popular, everybody is willing to pay for it?
    A margin of 2% of all revenues sure would make one choose another format.
    Maybe the wizards of the IT industry thinks that everyone makes huge profits from their products. They should try running a local radiostation and work at finding the money to keep it on the air and then the money to stream it on the net.
    Even if they broadcast ads, when they get to the "2% of all revenues" part, the whole deal will end with a "oh, never mind then". :-)
    --------

  • This is complete BS. (Score:4)

    by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @12:34PM (#163752)
    Winamp already does MP3 streaming; just hit Ctrl+L, feed it a URL, and it streams it. How about during downloads? You can point ANY application that plays MP3 files (Winamp, mplayer2.exe, XMMS, etc.) to an MP3 file that has been partially downloaded by a download utility (specifically, one that puts the file in the final destination even while it's still downloading), and it'll play perfectly, up until the current end of the file, at which point you can play again, and it'll be further down because of the download.

    A patent on this type of thing is ludicrous, and I hope there are plenty of people around to challenge it. Apathy is the enemy of freedom.

  • I've said this before, but it bears repeating:
    Vorbis needs a new name.

    Ogg Vorbis is not catchy.

    I recommend xph. It's a TLA, it's roughly
    a derivitave of the people who make vorbis, it has the trendy "X" in it, and sounds cool.

    --
  • So what does this mean for shoutcast? The guys at nullsoft who did winamp and shoutcast should make their own napster like program that doesn't have a central server. That would totally screw over those music industries guys.
    oh yea, Gnutella [gnutella.co.uk] :)

  • Comment removed (Score:5)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @05:39PM (#163759)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I remember a while back that Monty said he was going to try to get Ogg Vorbis 1.0 out towards the end of this year. Features are still being added, by the way. Vorbis won't be 1.0 until bitrate peeling and channel coupling are done. Once 1.0 comes out (which it will, fairly soon) expect to see a plethora of software and devices with Ogg Vorbis capabilities (The next version of Winamp will have a Vorbis player, various hardware manufacturers are already dedicated to making Vorbis-playing hardware, etc.)

  • Re:I use 'em almost exclusively (Score:3)

    by 3.1415926535 ( 243140 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @05:08PM (#163769)

    So far as I know, the Ogg Vorbis codec isn't geared toward streaming, though. I don't know if you could stream with it or what it'd take to adapt it to do that.

    Icecast2 is designed to stream Vorbis and is nearing release quality.

  • Actually Unisys got a pretty tidy sum from software authors with programs that supported GIF and large corporate web sites that used GIF images and didn't want to deal with the potential patent liability.

    Just because Joe Average didn't pay (directly) out of his pocket doesn't mean they didn't rake in some serious money.

  • Sounds pretty fair to me. (Score:3)

    by geomcbay ( 263540 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @11:45AM (#163774)
    As mentioned in the article, they aren't collecting from people streaming for fun...They just want a small percentage from people who actually make money from streaming MP3s.

    I've never had a problem with the MP3 patent..Sure, its nice to have freely available alternatives like Vorbis, but MP3 isn't exactly like One-click-shopping. There's a real basis of years-long research and development behind it, and it was certainly a non-obvious invention.

  • I work for a COllege station. We make nothing.

    Hey Thompson, see if you can get your superior wavelet mathematicians and marketting statisticians to tell you what 2% of ZERO is!

    dM
  • There is, but MP3 is accepted as a de-facto standard.
    It would take time (and money) to switch formats.


    --

    Two witches watch two watches.
  • It's not the 2% that matters, if you are making enough money to pay the 2%, you wouldn't care much about it.
    It's the 2K$ that bites you in the ass, since you are unlikely to make that in revenues.

    Of course, if MS has some MP3 talking about their products, they *could* potentially try to take 2% of MS' revenue. ;-D

    --

    Two witches watch two watches.

  • Re:What legal basis could they possibly have?? (Score:3)

    by Ayende Rahien ( 309542 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @01:31PM (#163780)
    You wouldn't use TCP for streaming, too much overhead.
    For streaming stuff, you usually use UDP.

    --

    Two witches watch two watches.
  • OK, say I said this:

    If you've got a little mp3 streaming site with a few banner ads to help pay for bandwidth

    Who said anything about quality? Who said anything about 24 concurrent connections? I'm just talking little dinky hobbiest sites. Basically, any little guy you just wants to stream a few of his garage band's songs out to a limited audience and has a few banner ads to pay for beer money is supposed (in theory) to pay $2000 bucks.

    It doesn't really matter, since (a) Thomson isn't going to bother with little dinky sites, and (b) there are tons of streaming alternatives anyway, but it's just that $2000 could be considered a significant barrier to entry for such things. A more reasonable move on Thomson's part might be to set minimum revenue levels before the payments kick in.
    --
    Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

  • Re:This is a sensible licensing scheme (Score:5)

    by mech9t8 ( 310197 ) on Saturday June 09, 2001 @01:05PM (#163782)
    It's the $2000 fee that's the main problem. If you've got a little mp3 streaming site with a few banner ads to pay for bandwidth, your revenue isn't even going to add up to $2000 - but you're still supposed to pay the fee.
    --
    Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
  • I think nobody has ever gone to the site for mp3 licensing. [mp3licensing.com]
    You would be amazed that Thomson claims that Sonys Atrac-3, lucent's epac, also use their "patented" technology. The only reason why they havent sued these people is probably because these companies are equally big or even bigger than them. Do you really think that Thomson will close its eyes if and when vorbis comes out into the mainstream?
  • This actually sounds like a great way to poke one bat in the RIAA's eye.

    They're going on screaming about how it's not fair to use someone's work without paying them for it. If that's true, then they shouldn't have any problem paying people for the use of the MP3 format.
  • Now the RIAA is going to go after each and every web site streaming ogg or any other non-MP3 files, on the grounds that they are obviously trying to avoid the royalties for distributing copywritten works. A pox on the man who invented the copyright, and may Richard Stallman's death be delayed a thousand years!

  • So, if a rock and roll band is streaming MP3s from their web site, and they're also attempting to sell CDs of their music, that means they've got to put up 2,000 dollars to start with.

    Sounds to me like another way to raise the bar for the little guys in the music biz so the big guys can continue to monopolize the business. All they have to do now is announce a minimum fee for making downloads of MP3s available from a band's sales site and they'll really put a lid on that pesky competition.

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