I could be missing some small print, but as far as I can recall, the MP3 licensing rates have been like that for a while. They're not clear whether you have to pay if your software is free, but
IF they are now charging for freeware decoding, I can't see what they're going to gain by it. The big player developers (Microsoft/AOL/etc...) are already licensees, and the independant free player developers aren't going to be able to afford $15000-$60000, so Thomson/Fraunhofer are unlikely to gain much new revenue from it. Then again, the published list of licensees does not state the type of license they have, so maybe they are just trying to get a bit more money from the likes of Microsoft and AOL. Who knows.
If the worst did come to the worst, and they demanded that you "pay up or remove MP3 decoding", then we could always fall back to the Windows MP3 codec for free
Whatever the case on decoders, I don't see it affecting
MP3-encoded MO3 files as that would come under "music distribution/broadcasting", which is free for non-commercial use. So, as long as you're not selling the MO3 files (and making atleast $100000), they can't ask for anything.
