I apologize if I should be able to search and find this, but I can’t seem to clear this up. I've tried searching hear and google, but I haven't really come up with anything. How does licensing work for codec’s like mp3 and aac. I’ve been to http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg2...ense.terms.html and http://www.mp3licensing.com/ but they don’t clear up my confusion.

The vialicensing.com site seems to say that anything that decodes or encodes aac should cost money, although not much money. Same thing for mp3licensing.com. How does FAAC and FAAD2 and LAME fit into the equation. What’s the point of licensing aac or mp3 if these free options exist? For commercial use only? Why would their websites talk about consumer licenses then? Didn’t it used to be that the average user couldn’t find an application for free to encode mp3’s above 96k, but now WMP and itunes will do so for free. Obviously the licensing changed, but how? Didn’t it used to be that it was illegal to distribute LAME in binary form in the US, it was only legal to distribute source, or am I totally off my rocker here? Was it that LAME used to be only hosted over sea's? Do I know what I'm talking about at all?

Thanks for any help. I have to give persuasive speech for a class and I thought I might give it on why people should switch to vorbis or other open source things.

Edit: How does wma fit into this too.

Lame is an implementation of the mp3 standard, thus it saves the cost of licensing/developping an implementation.
But it does not change anything regarding the patents licence. Whatever your mp3 implementation, you still have to licence the patents (note: apply the usual patent restrictions here).

Several commercial companies are using Lame in their commercial products, thus saving the cost of implementation, but still paying the patent fees.

note: vorbis and patents is indeed a can of worms...

I guess it's safe to assume that MS and Apple payed for the licenses in advance, so the average user just doesn't have to worry.

So is it technically illegal for me to use LAME to encode mp3's on my computer because I never paid anything for it, I just downloaded it for free? How could I use LAME legally if this is true?

Not if you created it yourself.


Use a product that includes Lame and has the proper licensing.

I assume by created you mean, build my own binary from source code on my computer? If so, I would assume that most folks here do not do that. I could be wrong, I really have no idea. This community seems very good about respecting copyright/license/all those sorts of things with music, i.e. no posting entire song files online, and folks advocating buying music legally. It seems to me that making a binary version of LAME available online is in the same category. Although not wrong in itself, (you can argue it's the downloaders responsibility to make sure they have the license/rights to play that song or encode an mp3) but can aid folks who do not respect license/copyrights. If it is not acceptable to post a song in its entirety, why are there easily obtainable binary copies of LAME. Am I opening up a can of worms here?

I'm no lawyer, but the distinction may lie in the difference between copyrights (songs) and patents (mp3).