MPEG LA has announced that the MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License is now available. (The world says, “Great!”. And then, under its breath, “It’s about f#$%!@g time.”)

The terms of the license are the same as those announced in July — no royalty payments up to 50,000 subscribers, $0.25/subscriber or $0.02/hour above that, with an annual royalty cap of $1 million. The royalties for makers of software encoders/decoders are similar — no royalties for up to 50,000 encoders/decoders, $0.25 for each above that, with an annual royalty cap of $1 million.

It’s wonderful that MPEG-4 has hit a major milestone, but let’s be honest — the tax on content developers with lots of subscribers puts mainstream MPEG-4 adoption back by several years. Because of it, content developers who have (or believe they will have) over 50,000 subscribers will (of course!) stick with proprietary platforms, and that impedes everybody’s abilility to make money within the MPEG-4 ecosystem. Duh. | MPEG LA press release | News.com story | InfoWorld story | atNewYork story