Fw: [Audacity-devel] [Audacity-help] Fedora Core Audacity w/o MP3 "support"

[Dan O'Brien]

Send email regarding Audacity vsv libmad

Rgds,
 
Dan O'Brien, dmobrien_2001 at yahoo.com
Phone: 614-783-4859

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Richard Ash <richard at audacityteam.org>
To: David Avery <daa at rm.incc.net>; Dan O'Brien <dmobrien_2001 at yahoo.com>
Cc: audacity-help at lists.sourceforge.net; audacity-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
Sent: Sunday, July 2, 2006 2:17:59 PM
Subject: Re: [Audacity-devel] [Audacity-help] Fedora Core Audacity w/o MP3      "support"

David Avery wrote:
> see: http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html
>
> MP3 requires minimum payment of US$ 15000.00 / year for software
> encoders or decoders. decoders are US$0.75 / unit  or US$50,000.00
> onetime. encoders are US$2.50 per unit. and they will not allow
> redistribution.
> fedora is therefore unable to ship _any_ MP3 encoding or decoding software

The decoder licensing is not enforecable in most parts of the world, and I
don't know of a single program paying it. The original patents granted
were for encoders, and those are the only ones that have been actively
enforced.

No-one actually knows what patent number (presumably US patent) the
decoder license is for, as none of the ones usally cited cover any
decoding of ISO compliant material.

The last debate of this on the libmad development list came to no
conclusion in 2002, as far as I can see from the archives.

Richard Ash