$0.75 per decoder ain't bad actually. However, it's $60K for a distribution license.

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

requisite slashdot thread:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/27/1626241

The big question:

How will this affect the distribution of the MAD, mpg123 and other open-source mp3 decoders? If their distribution is restricted, does that mean that the mp3 decoder must be removed from Dave's and Reza's clients?

--Reed http://jreceiver.sourceforge.net

They are discussing this on the MAD MP3 forum, but nothing definitive has been said. The only thing that seems like it's being violated from the patent is the methodology used to compute some error coefficients.

Personally, I'm not going to remove it unless I get a note from som lawyer asking me to - and then I might just reply with a "i'm on vacation" email or something

With the way the intenet is structured, it shouldn't be too difficult for people to post code in such a way that it's hard to track down the true owner, in which cases, who are they going after?

People actually selling products, then that's a different story as they wouldn't be making money if they were untraceable.

Anyhow, I think it's BS, and I'm kinda pissed that everyone got stuck on MP3s even though there were other free formats. And whatever happened to the whole JPG or was that GIF patent fiasco?

On a side note (regarding other formats), sony finally stopped producing/supporting BetaMax the other day. I heard it on NPR.

Reza

Here's an update:

http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/08/29/1633205&mode=nested&tid=17

Apparently Thomson recently removed the following clause from their license: "No license fee is expected for desktop software mp3 decoders/players that are distributed free-of-charge via the Internet for personal use of end-users."

However, a Thomson spokesman says: "that its policy has always been to allow free use of the company's MP3 patents in "freely distributable software" while charging royalties to all commercial software or hardware makers that use Thomson's MP3 technology."

He is not asked why the clause was removed. That seems to be an obvious question that needs to be answered.

Note also that the GPL may be too restrictive for MP3 decoders. The GPL allows software created with it to be sold, and the Thomson *stated* policy doesn't allow this without paying the distribution fee. Thus you probably won't see it bundled in any Linux distro that is for sale.

So though it's still a bit murky for my tastes, it looks like MAD et al are safe for now.

--Reed http://jreceiver.sourceforge.net

I'm not a legal expert (or even a legal novice) but we pay a patent license fee for the receiver box. We also pay (via the chip cost of the cirrus CPU) a separate fee for the ARM decoder engine.

As the 2 payments are separate, I personally don't see the problem with using another decoder - the box still has had a patent fee paid on it. My personal opinion, obviously.

Hugo