general mpeg4-license question

[((( atom )))]

hi all,

my boss wants to use any kind of mpeg4 for a commercial project, so he comes and asks me about legal issues..

i followed that discussion back then, but could not give him a definitely sure answer. what we are now looking for is an encoding solution, that is 100% legal and we would be willing to pay licensingfor using mpeg4.

personally, i'd go for linux-encoding, so i just want to figure, if there are _any_ legality-issues on using mpeg4 in general.

who knows?

[Infophreak]

There are TONS of legality issues with MPEG-4 if you want to charge for people viewing it. If you don't want to charge for the content, then I don't think you have to pay MPEGLA (the group holding the patents on MPEG-4).

DivXNetworks and Dobly Labs are totally different however. IIRC, DivXNetworks once demanded 15000$ from a company that wanted to make stuff available for free. Read their licensing terms here: http://www.divx.com/divx/licensing/. Dolby Labs are holding the patents for AAC, the MPEG-4 audio codec. I can't remember the URL for the licensing terms, but expect them to be harsh.

In case you are wondering... I think patents suck, but they are here, and we have to deal with the as best as we can (that is: violate them at every chance we get, as long as we can get away with it!).

[MfA]

The licensing terms for MPEG-4 visual and system are here (http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_02-07-15_m4v.html).

If you used AVI you wouldnt have to worry about the system part, but audio might still be a problem ... if you want to charge for streaming and use MP3 for instance you would probably have to pay Thomson 2% of your revenue. AAC is better in this respect, since it has no use fees ... but not everyone will have an AAC codec on his computer, let alone a legal one. You cant point customers to an illegal one, and to provide one yourself would force you again to pay licensing fees. Vorbis would be ideal, if not for the problems with using it in AVI files ... and I dont think you would want to use Ogm in a commercial product (although you could always put up the funds to get it production ready of course :).

Using a build of XviD or FFMPEG for the encoding probably wont be illegal IMO, so take that into account when considering wether to pay for DivX licensing. Distributing the decoder would be for XviD though, a GPL issue, for ffmpeg you could do it if you build your own dshow filter around it but you would have to pay licensing fees if you distributed more than 50K decoders. Easiest would be to just encode with the divx fourcc and tell your customers to get the DivX decoder :) (I dont think they can use copyright to protect "their" fourcc.) If you go this way consult a lawyer first though ...

[((( atom )))]

ok, thankx for bringing some light into this.

we don't want to offer content for money. one of our client wants us to set up a streaming-encoder in his lan, so that his offices will be able to watch some self-produced channels.

what about that? that could be free of the licensing-fee then, am i right?

[MfA]

I just realized that I assumed MPEG-4 has no up front licensing fee, I know that was true for MPEG-2 ... but no idea if that is still true, MPEG-LA doesnt say one way or the other (request their prospectus to find out).

Regardless you would still have to solve the sound problem, AAC&MP3 have their own (not so nice) licensing terms.

To be truethfull I think avoiding buying an existing solution for that customer would be more trouble than its worth. Unless you want to roll your own protocol for real-time streaming with multicast you would have to use MPEG4IP, then the licensing costs for AAC would be the problem.