MP3 Licensing Issues

[Wesley Miaw <wesley@bmrc.berkeley.edu>]

Hi all,

Looks like this might be the correct answer to our MP3 licensing issue,
as of Jan 19, 1998:

http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/mp3-licensing.html

In short, there is a licensing requirement for both software or hardware
encoders and decoders. MPEG-LA doesn't deal with audio licensing. They
are not enforcing the licensing issue on freeware software decoders, but
that doesn't mean there isn't a requirement for freeware software
decoders.

I found the royalty rates, but the original page is gone (thank you
google cache):

MP3 Decoder
            · US$ 0.75 per unit; or
            · US$ 50,000.00 - US$ 100,000.00 one-time paid-up 
MP3 Encoder / Codec 
            · US$ 2.50 - US$ 5.00 per unit


mp3PRO Decoder 
            · US$ 1.25 per unit; or
            · US$ 90,000.00 - US$ 150,000.00 one-time paid-up 
mp3PRO Encoder / Codec 
            · US$ 7.50 per unit

There's nothing at MPEG-LA, and I can't find the official licensing web
sites (no response from their servers). So, since LAME is both an
encoder and decoder, we would have to distribute it separately. Unless
the reason all these web sites are gone is because something is
changing...

Later,
Wes