Re: question about commercial use of LAME

Dear Konstantin,

Since this is a message of general interest to the LAME developers, I am
including the other developers in CC, so that the experience of others can
be shared.

On Apr 23 2015, Konstantin Smirnov wrote:
> I'm a musician from Russia. Can I use LAME encoder for free for commercial
> use to convert my tracks to MP3 (for example, in Cockos Reaper v4.76) and
> later earn on my music?

That's a perfectly fine use of LAME.

> Must I put anything on my Youtube page about LAME if it's inside Reaper
> Cockos?

Regarding LAME, you only have to worry about two things:

1 - If you distribute a binary copy of it, you must also provide the
    corresponding source code that was used to build that binary copy of the
    program. This is a very important point that we, the LAME developers,
    care about.

    If you are only distributing the *output* of LAME (that is, the encoded
    MP3 files), then everything is completely fine and you don't have to
    provide nothing extra. Profit from your work as much as you want.

    In summary: if you providing binaries of LAME, you also have to provide
    the sources. If you don't distribute binaries of LAME, then you have
    nothing to worry about.

2 - The *use* of LAME to encode files as MP3 *may* need licensing, as you
    read on that page.  We, the LAME team, don't really know much about if
    that's needed in your jurisdiction (or other jurisdictions). It may be.

> And concerning commercial use of MP3 - must I have a license from
> mp3licensing.com (http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html) if I want to
> earn on Youtube video - both for using LAME and MP3 earning? In case of
> earning on Youtube the broadcaster is Youtube, so it seems that I don't
> have to pay and get any license. So for authors nowadays is MP3 free for
> commercial use on Youtube and they mustn't do anything concerning
> MP3licensing.com?

This is a personal view and others may have different experience (their
input is highly welcome here): as long as the files ended up on Youtube,
Youtube will transcode the files to other formats (like AAC and/or Vorbis)
and it shouldn't matter what format you originally used to create your own
music.

If you have any potential doubts about if you have to pay for the licence
(we also have), then, for the case of Youtube, you can simply use Vorbis as
the audio encoder and let Youtube take the trouble with the licensing side
of things.


Hope this helps,

-- 
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 4096R/BCFCAAAA
http://cynic.cc/blog/ : github.com/rbrito : profiles.google.com/rbrito
DebianQA: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=rbrito%40ime.usp.br

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