Here's a mail I got back from them:
I am the public relations person for Thomson multimedia (mp3 licensing) and
was copied on your email. Please take a look below at the company statement
response from Thmomson multimedia regarding the Slashdot posting - which was
written by someone who completely misunderstood the mp3 licensing program!
Most important, there is no change whatsoever to the mp3 licensing program,
which has pretty much stayed intact since its inception in 1995! Please
stay with mp3 - it has always been Thomson's biggest objective to be totally
accessible and fair to the consumer, and always will be!
Sincerely,
Steve Syatt
SSA Public Relations (for Thomson multimedia, mp3 Licensing)
Statement from Thomson Multimedia, mp3 Licensing
In a posting appearing Tuesday August 27, 2002 on the Web site
‘slashdot.org,’ an individual cited a change in the mp3 license fee
structure of Thomson and Fraunhofer. The writer of the post apparently
misread the mp3 licensing conditions, as Thomson’s mp3 licensing policy has
not experienced any change.
To clarify, since the beginning of our mp3 licensing program in 1995,
Thomson has never charged a per unit royalty for freely distributed software
decoders. For commercially sold decoders – primarily hardware mp3 players –
the per-unit royalty has always been in place since the beginning of the
program.
Therefore, there is no change in our licensing policy and we continue to
believe that the royalty fees of .75 cents per mp3 player (on average
selling over $200 dollars) has no measurable impact on the consumer
experience.
They are not charging anything for freely distributed decoders.
