It seems that podcasting is set to take off, but I was recently enlightened on MP3 licensing issues. Apparently, MP3 is not a free to use technology and the patent is owned by a wealthy French company who likes to enforce its licensing/royalty regulations.

Since podcasts are generally distributed in MP3 format, I wonder how it will affect the many podcasters and soon to be podcasters. Their licensing affects those who use MP3 for commercial purposes and earn over $100,000 gross annually and ‘commercial’ can be as simple as earning a nice chunk of change from running AdSense or an Amazon affiliate program on the website distributing the MP3 files.

I don’t know how they would be able to truly enforce the licensing/royalty fee, but frankly, I would not want to be on the business end of a cease/desist followed by a bill for past due royalties.