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)
Thanks Xiph.org Foundation for Ogg! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:3, Informative)
mpg123 -s file.mp3 | oggenc -o file.ogg -
Of course, make sure to tailor the oggenc command-lind as necessary (quality levels, etc).
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:5, Funny)
you want to cough up the $0.75?
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone could conceivably come up with a converter that goes directly from mp3 to ogg without ever decoding mp3 to raw audio first... I think such a program would not be covered by the mp3 patents.
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:5, Informative)
Re-rip your CD collection from scratch, and encode directly to
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:4, Informative)
Take for example making a photocopy of a passage from a book. You then take this photocopy and fax it to me. The quality degradation is that same that will happen when you transcode from MP3 to Ogg.
So if you have MP3s currently, either leave them as MP3, or re-rip them directly from the CD(You did pay for these songs, right?
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:4, Interesting)
Whether this happens in reality, I don't know, but I am sure some smart people could figure out a way to do it.
Re:MP3 to OGG Converters (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:3, Interesting)
It should work fine for you until that EULA you agreed to initiates an automatic OS upgrade will turn it back on and invalidate all of your files.
Re:Thank god for ogg! (Score:5, Informative)
You have been tricked. WMA is inferior quality but the encoder boosts the volume by 3 db which is known to make people think it sounds better.
Now I think that WMA does a better job for very low bitrate compared to mp3 (but of course ogg rules here) but WMA, overall, is inferior quality.
Fair use (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fair use (Score:5, Funny)
Or, more specifically, if you give away turnip twaddlers. Or, possibly, if you use unlicensed turnip twaddlers in your commercial kitchen, and
have used them in the preparation of the twaddled turnips you have for sale.
Re:Fair use (Score:5, Funny)
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
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.
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.
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: They've got a good racket going... (Score:5, Informative)
I think you're missing a very important fact here: Algorithms as employed in the MP3 format were NOT patentable in many countries when MP3 first showed up and Fraunhofer's reference implementation was published.
I'm really glad that not that many countries have jumped that US "you can patent everything, including algorithms and IP" train even yet.
Re: They've got a good racket going... (Score:4, Interesting)
So if I needed several hours to figure something out I should be able to patent it? Just figured out a new mouseclick combination to navigate faster through Slashdot...
And, regarding E=mc^2: Don't you think it took several hours as well to come to this conclusion? So why don't you think one should be able to patent this formula as well?
This is the problem with algorithm patents. They're not a "product". It's very dangerous to make mathematical formulas patentable, because most of them are just observations like "hey, this and this has happened if I combine numbers A and B like this", not inventions.
Just imagine someone would own a patent on Fast-Fourier-Transformation (FFT). What would happen? This is very close to JPEG and MP3 techniques, btw.
Want to play your mp3 CDs in a few years? (Score:5, Informative)
MP3 only came up because it was available at low-to-no-cost. Regarding some of the patents, of course. Nobody would've had used it if they had charged this decoder fee from the very beginning, and they know!
Do what I am going to do: Write a letter (paper!) to Fraunhofer and Thomson and explain your concerns.
Yes, I know about Ogg Vorbis and stuff, but there's no reason not to protest against changed mp3 licenses.
I don't want to re-compress all my mp3s to Ogg because this will reduce quality. So I will still have mp3s around in several years (don't mention all those CDs I burned). So this is an issue, since I will need a player/decoder to access them.
Contact Fraunhofer:
Fraunhofer Institut für Integrierte SchaltungenAm Wolfsmantel 33
91058 Erlangen
Germany
Phone +49 (0) 91 31/7 76-0
Fax +49 (0) 91 31/7 76-9 99
Email: info@iis.fhg.de [mailto]
(Interesting: On the English homepage, their postal address doesn't show up - only eMail addresses. On the German homepage, it does.)
Contact Thomson:
Thomson multimedia16935 W. Bernardo Drive # 103
San Diego, CA 92127
USA
Fax: +1.858.451.6916
Email: info@mp3licensing.com [mailto]
What can MP3 do for me that Ogg Vorbis can't? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What can MP3 do for me that Ogg Vorbis can't? (Score:5, Informative)
Show your support for this petition then. (Score:3, Interesting)
"Our goal is it to convince hardware manufacturers to include ogg vorbis support in their products. Ogg Vorbis is a high quality audio codec which is patent free!"
Sign here [petitiononline.com]
Will you be signee 2102?
(Yeah, yeah, petitions don't work. Whatever)
Re:Show your support for this petition then. (Score:5, Interesting)
As soon as an iPod with Ogg Vorbis is released, you can bet the rest of the mp3 player manufacturers will be scrambling to get it on their products.
Such is the power of Apple.
"Godzilla and Jaguar: Punch! Punch! Punch! Hit! Hit! Hit!
We die if they stop fighting for us."
Jet Jaguar Song, "Godzilla vs. Megalon"
Portable Ogg-based players? (Score:5, Interesting)
If anyone knows of any portable players that support Ogg Vorbis, please post below! Thank You!
Re:Portable Ogg-based players? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
MiniDisc? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:There outta be a law... (Score:3, Funny)
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:There outta be a law... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There outta be a law... (Score:3, Interesting)
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:There outta be a law... (Score:3, Insightful)
What about overseas distributions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Winamp download still available free (Score:3, Informative)
i'm lazy, spell it out please. (Score:3, Interesting)
here's where slashdot can really shine. I, like many of you out there, have scanned my album collection into mp3 format. Why? Because this was the most popular, ubiquitous format when I did it. I'd love to go to ogg. To do so, i need a simple way to recurse through about 36 gigs of mp3s and reencode them into ogg, and delete the originals. I know there's no reason why one shell command shouldn't suffice. I know if I were to do a decent search through freshmeat, i'd be able to find a command-line program to do it, and the proper args, etc. But i know someone here already knows it. ***PLEASE*** post instructions, and whatever software i need to get, and yours is the karma and everything in it.
Re:i'm lazy, spell it out please. (Score:5, Informative)
/Janne
Re:i'm lazy, spell it out please. (Score:5, Informative)
Almost certainly, yes. An encoder would use a different strategy to encode a 128 kbit MP3 and a 192 kbit MP3. If certain frequency ranges are discarded when encoding 128 kbit, and other frequency ranges when encoding 192kbit, if you encode to 128kbit, and decode/recode to 192kbit, you will lose both ranges of frequencies.
why wouldn't you be able to produce an ogg from an mp3 that is no worse than the mp3?
See above.
I just don't buy the blanket argument that lossy -> lossy has to produce even more lossy.
Depends on the nature of the lossiness, grasshopper.
Re:i'm lazy, spell it out please. (Score:5, Informative)
I've just gotten into this (ignored the MP3 bandwagon), but my plan is to use flac, a lossless encoder, then re-enc to the lossy format de jour as needed.
-Peter
Re:i'm lazy, spell it out please. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i'm lazy, spell it out please. (Score:3, Informative)
vorbis faq entry on the topic [vorbis.com]
Re:i'm lazy, spell it out please. (Score:5, Informative)
Pass it on (Score:4, Interesting)
What? You don't agree? Well, my time's worth the $3. If they charged $10 per decoder, I'd still probably pay it - and in fact, that's the only mistake I think they're making, not charging enough. Because while I'd gladly pay $3 today, they should realize that going forward, I won't rip a single song in MP3 format. They'll make short-term revenues by screwing guys like me, but they're digging a hole in the long run.
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: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:Not charging end users (Score:4, Interesting)
Who this kills is the free (as in speech) players - Zinf [zinf.org], XMMS [xmms.org], etc. They can't afford $50k OR $0.75/copy. They can either hope Fraunhofer doesn't notice them, or try to relocate to a place with either no software patents or no Fraunhofer patent, or they can leave MP3. In fact, Linux users in general may be left out in the cold, because I'm not aware of any commercial MP3 decoders for Linux, at all.
Unfortunately, this probably won't be enough to move the world from MP3s. WinAmp will still be downloadable for free, which is all 98% of users care about.
I remember when I was at EMusic [emusic.com], I met with the Thompson guys, who were trying to figure out how to make money on this (circa 1999). I explained to them that nobody was going to pay for a decoder, and that their choice was either to give the decoder away or have people switch to something else. I also suggested the encoder should be free for non-commercial use, in order to cement their current dominance against (then soon-to-be-released) Windows Media.
One of them replied (imagine a German accent), "I see! Vee give avay evrysing for free, and you make more money selling music!"
So, you could say we had a meeting of the minds.
Re:Not charging end users (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm wondering if the RIAA didn't pressure the owners of the patent into doing this, but that's beside the point. The point is, just because something that was free now costs money doesn't mean it's going to vanish overnight. Most people will download a single MP3 player and use that, and 75 cents is a negligible amount in the scheme of iPod pricing.
The way around this, of course, is for a company to write the update to their software, and release it as a program that will patch the executable file, rather than release a whole new file. The fee applies to decoders, not software that modifies the decoders.
Ogg Vorbis is great, it's free, and I hope they add support for it into the iPod and iTunes, but it's still going to be a long time before a format as deeply-entrenched as MP3 disappears.
(Reversing your logic would mean that MS Windoze would cease to be the standard simply because Linux is free.)
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: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...
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:The far side of patents (Score:4, Insightful)
The world didn't end; it was merely set back 20 years.
My check is in the mail ! (Score:3, Funny)
Well, not exactly a check, more like 75 pennies.
In an envelope
Postage due
(In college once I paid a $2 [total BS] parking ticket in change, in one of those "postage will be paid by addressee" envelopes.)
This reminds me of another tax... (Score:3, Interesting)
There has been a tax on recordable magnetic music media for more than a year now, with the proceeds supposedly going to battered musicians, or perhaps just to deter audio tape pirating, I'm not sure which...
Last year there was brief fuss when a Liberal cabinet minister in charge of Canadian Heritage, Shiela Copps, thought that a $400 surcharge on MP3 players, would be a good way to curb music piracy. I don't think the details of how to destinguish an portable MP3 player, from just another computer were able to be worked out, so this was just one reason that ill formed idea died on the table.
So much to tax, so little time. Isn't it bad enough that governments tax our purchases, now we are letting companies write taxes into their licences? Sheesh.
Like the (updated) saying goes (Score:4, Funny)
Where's the facts? (Score:5, Interesting)
The definition of irony... (Score:5, Funny)
The minimum's the kicker for me... (Score:4, Informative)
US$ 15 000.00 per calendar year.
Now that's a pain. I emailed them to see if I could get a "hobbyist license" for more per app, but without the $15k minimum (wanted to make "iTunes 3 for Classic Mac OS"). They allow you to release up to 5000 units of a game that uses mp3s royalty free, so I was hopeful. The reply? No dice. (I was impressed they sent a reply!)
Fwiw, here's a list of the licensees [mp3licensing.com].
What packages were removed? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Be Afraid (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Be Afraid (Score:3, Informative)
Could be worse. (Score:5, Informative)
1. This is an open standard. It's just patented. Patents expire. Nobody is trying to prevent you from writing decoders - they just want to get paid for (I hope) work that they did in developing the technology, which is pretty cool, and which I don't think I could have invented on my own. I am not fond of software patents, but a patent on MP3 is not the same as a patent on one-click or xor cursors.
Compare this to, for example, Real Media player, where the file format isn't *patented* - it's a trade secret. So if Real doesn't support your platform, you can't play real media. This is really awful - much worse than the patent situation with mp3.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
Hold the phone. (Score:5, Interesting)
So let's buy a license! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be willing to pay $100 towards the cause.
To save you some time... (Score:3, Informative)
Oggasm [freshmeat.net]
mp32ogg [freshmeat.net]
Mp3 to Vorbis [freshmeat.net]
Now that I've finally gotten a chance to comment.. (Score:5, Informative)
First off, like somebody said, this has always been the case, but there was no enforcement. So it's really not new.. As far as hardware players, a LOT of them use chips made by other companies (like TI or whatever). Now, I would think that TI would have to pay, not the company selling the MP3 players made with the device.. so then they charge the company making the player with their device an extra $0.75 and so on until you pay when you get the player. And being such a big company like TI or the others that make MP3 decoding chips, I would think they would have worked out patent stuff before, and since they were charging (just not enforcing) I bet that this is already happening.
The real bind is when it comes to software, and they've been doing this with encoding, and stuff like BLADE and LAME are still around and kicking, so I don't see why things like XMMS and mpeg123 would be effected.. I think RedHat's move is silly, but that's just me.
Xiph's reply (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do they not realize the effect of this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do they not realize the effect of this? (Score:5, Informative)
What's new is that the longstanding royalty exception for free software / freeware programs has been removed. I can't find any historical info on the exception from the mp3 licensing site (probably because Fraunhofer isn't eager to publicize the fact that there once was an exception), but if you look in other places like the Debian mailing lists [debian.org], you can read what the old policy was.
All audio coding is lossy (Score:3, Informative)
I like DAT best. It's pure digital, and doesn't do any compression
DAT is lossy. It loses all frequencies above 24 kHz (48 kHz sample rate + Nyquist-Shannon theorem [wikipedia.com]). It loses all signals below -120 dB due to the effective 20-bit performance of 16-bit dithered PCM. It loses the front-and-back dimension.
The question becomes how much loss a fellow can tolerate. For audio engineers, 24-bit 96 kHz WAV works well (AIFF is limited to 65,535 Hz). (Cool Edit Pro supports 32-bit floating-point, which has incredible dynamic range.) For consumers, even audiophiles with high-quality amps and speakers, 192 kbps Ogg is more than enough for stereo audio.
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:Do they not realize the effect of this? (Score:3)
Neon Spiral Injector has posted 288 comments. Oh, that's too gross.
two gross and it'd be a really good pun.
Re:These prices were up last year. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lawsuit waiting to happen? (Score:5, Funny)
Odd, sueing someone over the IP of something that has caused more IP problems than anything else in history.
this IS a change from before (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. Or, rather, right, but wrong with respect to a very technical point that has escaped notice so far.
Previously decoders which were released for free for personal use were exempt [debian.org] from the licensing fees. This covers winamp, xmms, mpg123, and all the other free software players you love.
That exemption has been removed. Now everything costs 75 cents, no matter whether it's free software or not. And that, my friend, is a big deal.
Re:These prices were up last year. (Score:4, Informative)
This is just another case of
Actually, you are incorrect; the editors did not do anything wrong in this case. While the rates have been around, they were lower previously. Take a look at the previous royalty page courtesy of the Wayback Machine [archive.org].
I also have a feeling that if they are going to increase the rates, they are going to make a point of charging for the royalty fees as well.
Re:Probable consequences? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Probable consequences? (Score:4, Informative)
Winamp already has a license, and they don't pay 75 cents per download either. Winamp draws revenue because their mindshare gets people to winamp.com, AOL also pushes Winamp (they own Nullsoft now).
You can pay the one time fee and continue to develop a freeware player, Thomson and Fraunhofer Gesellschaft want you to continue to use mp3, they don't want to kill it. They simply are letting people know that they want everyone to pay up.
Is it kind of dumb to do this? Maybe, but you must understand this won't kill mp3. Your hardware mp3 player will come with the decoder license (of course) and your freeware player will have paid for it first too.
Simply: just because the player is freeware doesn't mean the developers are poor. Nullsoft has AOL/TW behind them and Windows Media Player? I don't know anyone tighter with Fraunhofer.
But, BTW: Ogg is just as good if not better than mp3. Maybe not as popular, but the fidelity is there.
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:i wonder (Score:4, Funny)
AOL did however get into trouble because they tried to use the fact they owned Nullsoft to get out of buying another, see the license wasn't transferable.
Re:Cost not issue for AOL, perhaps for Kazaa (Score:3, Insightful)
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:MAD, lame and other GPL'd MP3 codecs (Score:3, Informative)
I think you mean a clean-room reimplementation, not reverse engineering.
You can infringe patents even if you independently develop the same idea (which is even more drastic than the clean-room reimplementation situation). That's the way patents are designed. A limited-time monopoly to an idea in exchange for complete, public documentation of the idea.
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:Do you really think that, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:to the rescue (Score:4, Informative)
The Vorbis 1.0 release came with a complete specification [xiph.org]. I'm currently using these specs to implement lossless editing code for Ogg Vorbis files, so I can speak to their accuracy and completeness.
Let me guess: You formed all your opinions based on Rob Leslie's old kuro5hin article [kuro5hin.org], and didn't bother to see if they were still valid. Right?
Re:thank god for LAME (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The ol' switcheroo (Score:3, Insightful)
integer decoders & whatnot (Score:3, Informative)
- A free fixed point decoder [linux.org.uk] has been announced [handhelds.org].
- With version 1.0 out now, Vorbis is pretty solid for decoding. Ongoing development is expected to not break decoding functionality.
- Legal complications [kuro5hin.org] remain embarrassingly unresolved.
(Posting in Mozilla 1.1 from WinXP. Hope this works.)Supposedly the Ogg-on-a-Chip Project [sourceforge.net] has a workable hardware design. I've not heard of anyone planning to build these tho.
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:Big Deal (Score:3)
I have a collection of 7 GB of MP3s.
And for every MP3 I have a matching CD (mostly scratch free) sitting on a rack.
In other words, bite me, and keep your idiotic generalizations to yourself.