They're now charging $0.75 per software mp3 decoder...Even if you give it away.

http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html

I'm speechless...No, I'm so pissed off that I can't speak.

How's this going to affect the Empeg, and other projects?

Two possibilities:

1) They only persue large corporate entities and leave smaller corporate entities and open-source developers alone. This would be their smart move - the larger corporations would be likely to pay the licensing fees to avoid litigation, and leaving everyone else alone avoids ill-will.

2) They persue eveyone like crazy, and Ogg gets a huge boost and soon becomes the new standard for compressed music.

They're now charging $0.75 per software mp3 decoder...Even if you give it away.

If you aren't using any of their code, the only way they can charge you is for use of their patents. Software patents are explicitly ruled out in the EU by the Munich Convention, which is implemented in the UK by the Copyrights Designs And Patents Act. Software patents are, however, legitimate in the USA. If you are in the USA and feel strongly about this arbitrary imposition upon you, write to your congressman. You may wish to ask (a) for software patents to be declared illegal (b) for their term to be reduced and/or (c) for exemptions for the use of patents for non-profitmaking activities. Or whatever. You are after all We The People.

Peter

You are after all We The People

Yes, but surely the new, classified Constitution (the one they don't let people see, like airline security regulations, because it might be abused), talks about "We The Corporations". So everythings OK...

pca

This only seems to apply to non end users. An enduser still has license free use.
Also, this only seems to apply to a Fraunhofer licensed MP3 encoder and not all the others which have been written to comply with the MP3 standard.
All this means is that if there is a free player out there, the author will need to pull out licensed code and insert something else.

It is thiers, so that can charge for it. We just don't have to buy it!

Notice also that the minimum annual license fee is 15K !!!!!

Nope. They want to charge anyone who can decode mp3s:

This patent-only license is needed in case the mp3 software is developed in-house or licensed from a third party. (as opposed to using the Fraunhofer mp3 libraries or the Coding Technologies mp3PRO libraries)

They've also talked in the past about trying to extract money from the Ogg Vorbis folks because their patents are so generic as to basically cover any form of music compression that involves psychoacoustics.

It seems that Thomson's view on the matter has changed again.
Now they claim that the only targeted products were the commercially sold hardware mp3 decoders, not the free software decoders.

Read it here.

Most likely that open letter from Ogg Vorbis had something to do with this change of heart. (though they want to make it seem that it was us who were wrong from the beginning and who jumped to the wrong conclusions - sjeah right!)