Florian Cramer on Mon, 27 Aug 2001 13:58:36 +0200 (CEST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Why artists should be using Ogg Vorbis (instead of mp3) |
Am Sat, 25.Aug.2001 um 19:09:37 +0200 schrieb Heiko Recktenwald: > On Fri, 24 Aug 2001, Florian Cramer forwarded: > > > As an artist, the royalties on MP3 mean that you'll have to pay a > > flat fee on every single track of your own music that's downloaded. > > I would doubt that very much. They dont "own" every mp3 sofar. > > Wishfull thinking.. ...partly: yes. In 1998, Fraunhofer Institute - the owner of the mp3 patents - sent out a letter I attach below. While this letter mainly speaks about encoders, please note the sentence "Pay-audio licenses against a royalty of $ 0,01 per song or 1 % of the selling price". Fraunhofer/Thomson operate a web site on mp3 licensing under the URL http://www.mp3licensing.com. In the FAQ, it lists the following license fees for distributing and streaming mp3 files: Electronic Music Distribution / Broadcasting / Streaming mp3 · 2.0 % of related revenue mp3PRO · 3.0 % of related revenue On another page (http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html), it is clarified that "No license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with an annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00." While this seems to put independent artists and entities who distribute mp3 files on the safe side, the whole construction could become questionable as soon as, say, a work becomes part of a commercially distributed CD-ROM by a museum or media institution or a CD-ROM-add-on to book like the Nettime reader or if an independent net radio is hosted within a larger art institution or sponsoring company whose "revenue" is above $100 000. It is precisely because of such cases that Free Software/Open Source does not even restrict commercial distribution of code licensed under its terms. Neither mp3 encoders, nor mp3 files proper therefore is - or could be - a part of a Free Software operating system (such as Debian GNU/Linux or RedHat Linux GPL edition). Florian Quoted from http://www.mp3.com/news/095.html : > Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, > > As you may know, both the Fraunhofer Institute and THOMSON have done > important work to develop MPEG Layer-3 audio compression (before and > after it became part of the MPEG standards). This work has resulted > in many inventions and several patents, covering the MPEG Layer-3 > standard. > > From your publications and your web-site we learn that you > distribute and/or sell decoders and/or encoders that use the MPEG > Layer-3 standard. > > Our files do not show that you have a valid license agreement with > us. This means that the products infringe the patent rights of > Fraunhofer and THOMSON. > > To make, sell and/or distribute products using the standard and thus > our patents, you need to obtain a license under these patents from > us. > > In the past, we have licensed several companies under different > models for different products, e.g.: - Software encoder licenses > against a per unit royalty starting at $ 25,00 and decreasing for > high volumes; and - Pay-audio licenses against a royalty of $ 0,01 > per song or 1 % of the selling price. > > At least the Software encoder license seems to apply to your > products and we would appreciate if you could send us some more > details about your activities, in order to discuss what would be the > right royalty structure for your company. > > In view of the above, we urge you to contact Henri > Linde (mailto:lindeh@thmulti.com) and Martin Sieler > (mailto:sir@iis.fhg.de) in order to start the discussion of the > license or licenses needed. > > We look forward to hearing from you soon. > > Best regards, > - Martin > > --- > Martin Sieler > Fraunhofer IIS-A, Audio & Multimedia > email: sir@iis.fhg.de > phone: +49 9131 776-610 > fax: +49 9131 776-699 > www: http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/ >-- http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/ http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA "c u in he][l][avan" (mez, _Viro.Logic Condition][ing][ 1.1_) _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold