Audacity Forum

Hi,

I have tried to find an answer to this on the web today and thought there might be a knowledgeable member on this board.

I use Audacity on a school network and have been asked to allow students to use the Lame encoder to output work as mp3 files.
I remember from my days of CD ripping that Lame had some "grey" legal issues and we have to comply to licensing etc within school I tried to find out
if there was any legal issues with using the Lame?

It does not seem clear to me if Lame is totally legit (if complying with its own licence) for use?

Does anyone have any info on this...

Thanks.

I think I know, but let's see if anybody jumps in who knows for sure.

I know there is a licensing issue if Audacity were to produce MP3 files. It doesn't. That's why you have to go looking for an Open Source MP3 generator like "lame" and attach it manually.

MPEG1, Layer III (shortened to MP3) is licensed from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. In spite of MP3s being seemingly free all over the internet, they are all as a result of that Fraunhofer license.

lame is a programming recursive joke. "Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder." Programmers don't get out much. It was designed as a multiple standard media translation tool, but once everybody figured out it would produce MP3s, that was the end of the story. lame exists as a stand-alone program on Linux machines and there it really spreads its wings--if you speak UNIX command line.

Y'all are also covered by the education stipulations about which I know even less.

Koz