Real Pays For Legal MP3 Playback On Linux

kforeman (aka Kevin Foreman, GM of Helix RealNetworks, Inc.) writes "As part of the free RealPlayer 10 for Linux, Real has paid Thomson for a legal MP3 playback license and then includes it at no cost as part of the newly released RealPlayer 10. As I speak to people, many are under the false impression that MP3 playback patent and royalty rights are free, since there are open source implementations of MP3 playback available. Not true. Nonetheless, we are glad to do our part of making the Linux desktop a first class citizen by legally providing MP3 playback to users via our new RealPlayer."

no surprise

[l3v1]

Well, reading the standard, then implementing one's own decoder would be legal - naah, quite a dreamworld. Would be good if it were so, it even would be logical to quite an extent, unless you like waking up by smelling patent litigation papers.

Real

[DenDave]

Noble of them.. however we prefer to use non-proprietary stuff though.. So, ogg-vorbis is the way.. Now if Real were to use ogg in their commercial products so (and maybe challenge the ipod with ogg player hooked up to their online music store???) we wouldn't need proprietary licenses then we would all bow down and hail the penguin lova!

How many times do I have to license it?

[pedestrian crossing]

I have a SB Live! card that has hardware mp3 decoding built-in, but the linux drivers support it. I assume I paid for a license as part of the purchase price of the card. I feel no qualms about using LAME, etc. and in fact they are doing a great service to those of us who already paid but are unable to use that capablility on our OS of choice...

player not free, but ...

[scharkalvin]

The patent holder for the mp3 codic has never gone after distributors of "free" mp3 players, so long as they were not being used in a for profit product. So download the source and build it for yourself..no worries. (Not true with mp3 ENCODERS, however you can still download bladeenc or lame sources). However because this limits your freedom you won't find an MP3 player in Debain main. Since Real won't give you the source, it isn't 'free' either, again Debain won't distribute it, even if Real says they can.

Re:Real

[BJH]

Well, I agree that proprietary software is not preferable, but if you'd bothered to RTFA, you would have seen that RealPlayer can (apparently) play back Ogg Vorbis files.

Re:MP3 Playback IS Free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Say it: Software patents. These are not trivial patents and they're not on algorithms which existed before the patents either. They are the kind of software patents that politicians and many people in the industry really want. You can come up with your very own compression scheme, but if you happen to have the same ideas that somebody has patented, you're screwed anyway.

Sorry folks...

[gandy909]

...but there's nary a software package I despise nore than Real. Those clowns continually teeter so close the edge of being ad/spy/malware it isn't even funny. They don't play nice with others, and they definately qualify as bloatware as far as I am concerned...

Re:Question

[j.blechert]

Well, actually no. I installed the real player gold to be able to watch tagesschau.de streams and it works like a charm. Installation is a breeze and aside from the obligatory trouble with sound servers it works good aswell, it features a nice gtk+2 interface which is perfectly responsible in any means. If I would figure out how to play avi files etc. (it says that this is possible via plugins, however I didn't find any) it would be my favorite player.
Of course there are some features missing, for example choosing between different audio channels (multiple languages) in one file but for most users it would be perfectly suited.

Re:no surprise

[fireboy1919]

How did it become a standard, though? It became a standard because free mp3 players or advertising revenue based mp3 players didn't have to pay a fee. Then the company changed that policy.

In other words, because they weren't enforcing their IP rights, people figured they were up for grabs. Otherwise, nobody would have used mp3 at all. It's not like its the only encoding technique of its kind; every step in mp3 was actually invented by someone else, and each step is freely available.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but if you give away an intellectual property right, isn't taking it back legally questionable?

Yo, Apple!

[Cow007]

I think that its high time for Apple to release a version of iTunes in binary form for linux. They did it on Windows and they are making money from ITMS they could do the same on linux for sure.

Re:no surprise

[mabinogi]

>Actually the whole point of a patent is that you invent something that takes time and effort and you tell everyone about it instead of keeping it a trade secret. As a reward for not keeping it to yourself, you are given a monopoly on it for a few years (stopping others from using your idea).

Yup, with you so far.

> Of course, this patent is not really a valid patent as it is not on an invention
Well, that's a point of contention. Obviously the Patent Office thought it was, and there's certainly plenty of other things that have been patented that are far less "invention" than this.

> and didn't take time and effort
But here you've completely lost me.

Are you saying it just manifest itself spontaneously in the lap of someone at Thomson and they thought "Bonus! Lets go patent it! Free Money!" right?

Re:no surprise

[mabinogi]

Well off you go then! Come up with "just a mathematical formula" to compress and decompress some audio as well as MP3 can. Apprently you can do it without leaving your armchair!

An invention is an idea put in to practice. There is no need for it to involve someone welding bits of metal together for it to be something new and useful.

There definitely are (quite a lot of) software patents that shouldn't be granted, and the time period should definitely be decreased to better reflect how easy it is to go from idea to implementation to obsolescence compared with a physical invention, but I don't think that you can say that all software patents are automatically invalid just because you want them to be.

Re:no surprise

[northcat]

All software patents, including ones for very ingenious, non-obvious algorithms, are wrong (bad). Software patents are just patents for mathematical truths. A patent, or the right of a person to restrict the use of his invention, has always been for an actualy/physical invention, not for a theory or a mathematical truth. I recommend you to read literature [gnu.org] related to software patents on the GNU website.

Re:player not free, but ...

[giantsfan89]

you won't find an MP3 player in Debain main

You [debian.org] sir [debian.org] are [debian.org] wrong [debian.org].

Debian includes several MP3 players, but no MP3 *encoders*. To rip to MP3 on Debian, you must download the sources and compile the ripper yourself.

I hope that this makes it into the Helix Player [helixcommunity.org], which has RPMs (convertable to debs via alien).

Re:No idea

[anagama]

I'll admit to being a Real skeptic, but ... I use RP10 for one purpose: This American Life [thislife.org]. Despite being a skeptic, I must say that RP10 takes up little screen space, has nice controls, and I've never been subjected to any ads.

Re:Distributions?

[mystik]

Your correct, but you have to remember which freedoms the zealots are fighting for. They're fighting for the right to modify, improve and redistribute software.

Unfortunatly, most of the general public has no use for these freedoms, since they're not software developers.

Software like realplayer can legally be distributed for free because Real, Inc. has done the legal footwork to license other codecs. This makes Helix player "the best choice" by default since no open source alternative can legally exist. (thanks to patents and what not)

What if Real contributed this to our community?

[jbn-o]

If Real paid the US$60,000 one-time MP3 license fee and added the MP3 decoder to HelixPlayer, would HelixPlayer's MP3 decoder constitute a legal free software MP3 player for users in software patent-burdened countries like the US?

As it is, I don't see how this story is any more interesting than running Windows Media Player or WinAMP via WINE on an i386-based GNU/Linux system.

Discover? Do you think that's easy?

[N Monkey]

I'll clarify that. It takes a lot of money to get such an invention into a working state; it is fiddly to get it going. This is why patents were invented. Wheras an algorithm just requires thinking (which may take a long time) until you discover an appropriate one (and an algorithm could even be discovered by a computer).

Why do you think that (non trivial) algorithms are any different to inventing any other system? A lot of patented devices would have been produced by trial and error until a working one is "discovered".

Or are you saying a computer could just test algorithms until it found an appropriate one? Goodness me. Let's say you can code an MP3 decoder in 1KByte. That would mean the computer would only have to try ~10^8000 programs before it "discoverd" it. It might be finished before the heat death of the universe but I doubt it.

Re:Real

[ZephyrXero]

People have been downloading Mp3s since the early 90's though. It wasn't until around 1999 when Napster got really popular that any of the companies even noticed. The change is going to have to happen from the bottom up. Truthfully... Ogg Vorbis will really take off when all the ripping/warez groups start using it instead of Mp3. It's a sad way of things, but those guys are the ones that can really make the difference here :/

Re:buffered stuff..

[kaustik]

Am I the only one who think the XMMS interface sucks? Maybe I'm missing something here, but whatever happened to media players that organized your various songs in different folders into one logical media library, as in Musicmatch? Anyone know of any plugins to make XMMS do this?

Re:buffered stuff..

[joeljkp]

Only if you are in the USA and are encoding/decoding MP3s for certain commercial purposes (as Thomson explicitly let you do it for personal use) does this patent apply to you.

Sure, their site [mp3licensing.com] says that end users don't need a license, but does using an unlicensed decoder expose you as well? Or is there also an exemption for people who develop decoders for their own personal use?

For someone who doesn't want to participate in patent civil disobedience, isn't it just as unethical to use an unlicensed decoder as it is to release your own decoder and ignore the licensing?

I agree about the likelihood of a lawsuit from Thomson, but I think the availability of a legal alternative makes Linux a more attractive solution for those who want to live on the right side of the law.