After months of conversations, petitions, and negotiations, the International Digital Media Alliance (IDMA) has announced on their website that licensing costs for Blu-ray Discs are significantly decreasing.
This means it is now much more affordable for independent producers to author and distribute their material on Blu-ray Discs.
Bruce Nazarian, president of the IDMA, sent me the following note:
“As of yesterday, new final AACS agreements are beginning to appear on the AACS website. The first one posted is the Content PARTICIPANT Agreement, aimed at high-volume AACS licensees – typically, Hollywood Studios.
http://www.aacsla.com/license/
I believe these new agreements will all reflect some long-awaited changes (cost reductions and simplifications) in the AACS fee structure, which I will report on in greater depth once the remaining agreements have been posted, and we’ve had time to digest the changes. I don’t want to post any preliminary “layman’s” interpretations of the new language, as it’s quite complex legalese.
The Final Content PARTICIPANT agreement shows reductions in Content Certificate order and fulfillment fees, which is great!
The Content PROVIDER agreement is the one most of interest to Tier 2 producers (where licensing cost $3000, one-time).
It was not online yet (as of this morning) but should appear within a few days. It is in this agreement that I believe a similar fee change will take place.
This is great news for everyone who wants to distribute their materials on optical disc. Much of this is due to the hard work of Bruce Nazarian and the whole IDMA team.
NOTE: The IDMA website had not been updated as of the time of this writing
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