Selling DVDs and the MPEG-LA patent licensing

[TwistedLincoln]

For those of you who sell copies of your films, instructional DVDs, etc that you duplicate yourself (or have duplicated rather than replicated), how do you go about paying the MPEG-2 patent royalties to the MPEG-LA?

I looked around on the website (http://www.mpegla.com/), and while there is a copy of the license agreement, I don't see anyplace to actually sign up for a license, nor any address to specifically send the royalties...

I know that when you have DVDs professionally replicated, they pay the fees for you, but there are times when burning DVD-R's is more than sufficient (especially when the quantity needed is small).

Anyone have any idea how to go about doing this the right way?

 

[Barry_Green]

All our stuff is replicated...

 

[moonlitnite]

Hi Tony,

You should be able to EMAIL these folks - I'm sure they'll be more than happy to receive your dollar$.

http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-faq.cfm

Regards, Michael

 

[TwistedLincoln]

Ah-ha! Perfect! They really need to make that email address more prominent. Thanks a bunch for finding that!

 

[moonlitnite]

Ah-ha! Perfect! They really need to make that email address more prominent. Thanks a bunch for finding that!

Rehi Tony,

Great - good luck and keep us posted. From my quick scan, their T&Cs seemed very reasonable.

Regards, Michael

 

[JohnMC]

I was under the impression when you burnt a disc using a program like DVD Studio Pro you did not have to pay any royalties because the program you used paid the fees already. Am I completely wrong or did I miss understand the question?

John

 

[MichaelP]

I believe the DVD authoring company has paid for it already.