Re: XMMS and the new MP3 patent terms

[Isaac To <kkto@csis.hku.hk>]

>>>>> "MKolb" == MKolb  <MKolb@haitec.de> writes:

    MKolb> To clarify, since the beginning of our mp3 licensing program in
    MKolb> 1995, Thomson has never charged a per unit royalty for freely
    MKolb> distributed software decoders. For commercially sold decoders --
    MKolb> primarily hardware mp3 players -- the per-unit royalty has always
    MKolb> been in place since the beginning of the program. Therefore,
    MKolb> there is no change in our licensing policy and we continue to
    MKolb> believe that the royalty fees of .75 cents per mp3 player (on
    MKolb> average selling over $200 dollars) has no measurable impact on
    MKolb> the consumer experience."

    MKolb> So there are no license fees for free software and the whole
    MKolb> discussion has no base.

This is plain incorrect.  That they allow "free" (as free beer) software to
be distributed has nothing to do with whether Debian can put them in the
main archive.  The picture is quite clear to me now:

  * MP3 is not a (patent-) free format, and Thomson has requested fee to be
    paid for every for-fee distribution of any software or hardware that
    perform (encoding and) decoding of the format based on the process as
    described in the patent.

  * All current mp3 players use the process as described in the patent, so
    we can pretty much ignore that part of the sentence.

  * All mp3 players that are GPL licensed must be relicensed to something
    else before it can be legally distributed.

  * No mp3 players can be distributed in a for-fee distribution, unless a
    license fee is paid for each distribution.  "For-fee" means for a fee,
    not for a profit.  Whether the distribution just collect fund for the
    media, or it collect a huge pie of profit, does not count in the
    equation.

  * MP3 decoding software can reside on Debian's non-free section (whether
    in non-US doesn't matter).

  * People can continue to use mp3 decoding software if they download them
    from some "free" (as free beer) site.

  * All commercial distribution of Debian must choose either to take away
    all MP3 decoding programs from their non-US distribution (or not
    shipping non-US at all), or to pay Thomson accordingly.  Alternatively,
    Debian can simply drop MP3 players from its non-US archive, which I
    think is a more sane solution.

My situation is quite simple.  I've for long recorded in OGG-VORBIS, and I
don't have a hardware MP3 player, so that doesn't affect me that much
really.  So for me, I ditched all MP3 software players and all my CDRs that
record any MP3 the day I know they start collecting fee.  YMMV, obviously.

Regards,
Isaac.