[Novalug] about mpeg licenses according to wikipedia

[Bryan J. Smith]

Only some MPEG-2 codecs are still under their temporary, granted
monopoly period, and others are licensed to the public  Several of the
common ones are not, including those that ship under Debian, Fedora
and other distros that are very "anal" on this.


Furthermore, if you did not license under the MPEG-LA and you are
not subject to royalties as long as you are utilizing MPEG-2 features
that are not currently under the granted period of monopoly of their
patent or otherwise licensed to the public by their holders.

Remember, MPEG-2 has a crapload of features that have nothing to
do with DVD-Video format and playback and are not required.



----- Original Message ----
From: Bonnie Dalzell <bdalzell at qis.net>
To: novalug mailing list <NOVALUG at calypso2.tux.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 5:52:26 PM
Subject: [Novalug] about mpeg licenses according to wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-2

Approximately 640 patents worldwide make up the "essential" patents 
surrounding MPEG-2.[7][8] These are held by over 20 corporations and one 
university. Where software patentability is upheld, the use of MPEG-2 
requires the payment of licensing fees to the patent holders. The patent 
pool is managed and administered by MPEG Licensing Authority, a private 
organization. Other patents are licensed by Audio MPEG, Inc.[9] The 
development of the standard itself took less time than the patent 
negotiations.[10][11]

.....

According to the MPEG-LA Licensing Agreement MPEG-LA, any use of MPEG-2 
technology is subject to royalties.

     * Encoders are subject to a royalty of $2.50 per unit.
     * Decoders are subject to a royalty of $2.50 per unit.[12]
     * Royalty-based sales of encoders and decoders are subject to 
different rules and $2.50 per unit.[12]
     * Also, any packaged medium (DVDs/Data Streams) is subject to licence 
fees according to length of recording/broadcast.

In the case of free software such as VLC media player (which uses the 
ffmpeg library) and in which the software is not sold, the end-user bears 
the royalty.




This could be one reason why the most complete DVD generating software 
is on MACs and Windows and is not freeware.

How many of us have paid our mpeg royalty? :-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                        Bonnie Dalzell, MA
mail:5100 Hydes Rd PO Box 60, Hydes,MD,USA 21082-0060|EMAIL:bdalzell at qis.net
Freelance anatomist, vertebrate paleontologist, writer, illustrator, dog
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