[vorbis] mp3pro and the mp3 streaming license

[Roel VdB]

>> - artist can already distribute mp3's for free and not be subject to
>> royalties. (very clear) 
>> - free radio station can use mp3 to stream and not be subject to 
>> royalties. (debatable, but what else would "not charge royalties for 
>> free distribution" mean?) 
> 
> So what you saying is all artists should distribute their music for
> free, or at least without making any related incoming to the 
> distribution? 

This "related to distribution" is pulled open too widely.  As long as
the artist/radio station does not charge for the mp3 there needn't to
be paid license fees.

> I thought the whole idea here, was to empower artists to leave the
> current distirubtion shackles and give them a world where distribution 
> shackles don't exist. 

but I completely agree. of course I find OGG a fine alternative and I
also think an artist should be able to sell his music, and that
$15.000 or 1% of income for music may be too harsh and using OGG would
save them that.

> MP3 has shackles. For tools, very harsh ones, for selling mp3's, fairly
> harsh ones.

Indeed, mp3 technology comes at a cost.  Anyways, free is better, but
the current cost is far from dramatic.  An artist distributing music
via the web has traffic and hosting costs, must pay for the "e-retail"
service and for the payment conversions and insurance against fraud.

If, as an artist, you'd join a service that has more than 100 clients,
there would be the (little) extra cost of 1% or $150 at the least per
year per artist. 500 Clients would make this 1% as I assume you sell
for more than $30/year if you're into selling music.

> For streaming radio, very harsh ones.

as long as you don't sell the stream it's no problem.

What do you think is meant by "If MP3 is used for free distribution on
the Internet, we will not charge royalties" then?  At Thomson they
know a free radio station has costs and they get funded.  So as long
as you are not asking $ to hear the stream they can't charge you.

It is _not_ their business how you raise funds.  Can be
+ donations
+ advertising on the site via banners or
+ advertising or thank sponsor messages in the programs sent out via mp3
which, in the end are all related to the broadcast directly or
indirectly and all raise funds.

So when they say "If MP3 is used for free distribution on the
Internet, we will not charge royalties" this means: we only ask
royalties if you charge to listen.

analogy.  Some techie inventing a transistor that is in
all tv's can't claim 2% of global TV-station-income of their TV
commercials.

> While it's all fair and good the free users may not have to pay
> (remember, that streaming and distributing are differentiated between in 
> most documents and licenses I've seen, which is why I've been saying 
> 'may'), the artists still have some corporation that makes money off 
> their work, by controlling the distribution channel. 

You will always have that (hosting, site, insurance, money transfer,
...), but it's the extra costs, and if you can do it free why not,
indeed.

> There are plenty of reasons to switch to Ogg without this extra
> licensing, but I'm glad they added it, because now a lot more people 
> will understand what we're doing here. Changing the patent license on 
> the fly any time you think there might be a new revenue stream is not a 
> good thing. 
>
> jack.
  
uhm, this was announced a few years back by FhG and Thomson and was
normally for 2000 and got delayed to 2001 beacause of the release of
mp3PRO.

So allow me to say that "Changing the patent license on the fly any
time" is more a vision that fits the OGG perspective and would not be
the way I'd tell it since this was announced a very long time ago.

Actually, I think now many people are relieved (the low cost, could've
been much worse) and a significant group, the free radio stations, are
very happy.

Being the advocate of the devil, as always, I honestly don't know if
Vorbis is able to change their current "free and open" statute on any
random day.

I'm quite sure you won't but what is my guarantee that one day, with
the help of the "excellent team of legal representatives of Vorbis",
you'd try to to raise license fees once OGG is mainstream or maybe come with
"OGG 2.0" or "OGG PLUS" which do try to recover some developing costs
using license fees?

I know, that's the last thing on your mind and against the whole
spirit of the project, but I'm just mentioning this as a
counter-weight to the claims that Thomson is changing patent license
agreements on-the-fly.

ok, I'll be gone now :)

thanks for Vorbis!


-- 
Best regards,
 Roel                          mailto:vdbj at yucom.be

--- >8 ----
List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request at xiph.org'
containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is needed.
Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.