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Topic: Is AAC free to use for non-commercial use? (Read 4104 times) previous topic - next topic
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Is AAC free to use for non-commercial use?

I always thought mpeg 4 was free for non-commercial use, till I read the licensing agreement from dolby's site in which they charge money even for non-commercial use. WTF?

Link to Dolby's licensing agreement: http://www.aac-audio.com/press/aac_pr_0203_MPEG4.html

Is AAC free to use for non-commercial use?

Reply #1 –
why do you think there are not any popular freeware iso aac encoders out there???, seems i might switch to vorbis after all

Is AAC free to use for non-commercial use?

Reply #2 –
From what I understand of the license is that people can freely create an 'implementation' of AAC and distribute that but that won't be directly usable to the end user. You could probably think of that as an encoder/decoder plugin or library, but then as soon as it's used in the context of usable software e.g. command line tool then the software is violating the AAC licensing if you haven't paid for it.

In terms of using free AAC software I believe technically it's not allowed under the AAC licensing terms but I'm not aware of Dolby enforcing the license against free software developers. Can anyone confirm this or know otherwise?

AAC support is software is quite hard to provide currently because as far as I'm aware there isn't much source code or free implementations around to use. FAAC and FAAD are the best GPL offerings. There is always the ISO sources but if they are anything like the ISO MP3 sources then it'll be very painful to use them. I expect software support would pick up for AAC if there was more clarity on the licensing and more developer resources.

Doug

Is AAC free to use for non-commercial use?

Reply #3 –
Quote
Originally posted by Doug
In terms of using free AAC software I believe technically it's not allowed under the AAC licensing terms but I'm not aware of Dolby enforcing the license against free software developers. Can anyone confirm this or know otherwise?


Menno can't host AAC binaries at Sourceforge (although it seems he can host mpeg4 ones - the WinAmp in_mp4 plugin)

AFAIK, he never got problems for hosting the sources.
 

Is AAC free to use for non-commercial use?

Reply #4 –
Hosting the sources would be fine as that would count as an "implementation" (can't use it straight out of the box) rather than a product I would think.

I'm not sure if there is much distinction between AAC and MPEG4 as I would assume the same licensing terms govern both. This is definately a big grey legal area that needs to be resolved. I know my plans to support AAC in my SUB-SONIC software are on hold currently despite a working implementation, I would be more prepared to support it if I knew I could give away a compiled plugin without risk of being slapped with some legal action.

Doug