I have to pay for burning a DVD?
 

Apple’s manual notes that if you are making DVDs for sale using iDVD or DVD Studio Pro, there is a licensing fee that you will have to pay- is this true?

I've never heard of anyone paying fees to Apple (after buying the product)
for selling discs made with their products. That would absolutely be insane,
why would you otherwise have bought the product in the first place?

Are you sure they are not talking about that you need to pay licensing fees
for things like CSS encryption or Macrovision protection if you use that?

This gets interesting. The DVD Studio Pro license may be seen here:

http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/dvdstudiopro4.html

I think the issue is that the use of certain CODECs require licensing through their owners, and not through Apple:

There are similar paragraphs (14 and 15) which apply to MPEG-4 and H.264. I wonder how many people actually adhere to the letter of this law?

Yeah, that is interesting. When you replicate DVDs or CDs through a plant, a certain portion of the cost goes to licensing... somewhere between $.05 - $.15 per disc. I guess you are liable for that fee if you are duplicating the discs yourself... that would in no way be specific to iDVD.

Anyone know if there is a fee associated with Blank DVD discs that makes up for this? Didn't they handle it this way for cassette tapes back in the day?

The trouble is that the blanks don't cover it. It may be that if I sell a disc and with only text files on it I owe nothing, but if I sell a disc with MPEG-2, or MP3s, or regular Redbook audio (regular cd audio) I have to pay a license fee to the originators of that technology.

Very interesting... had never considered that. Good CYA move from apple to include that.

fwiw: http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-agreement.cfm

also see:

"An MPEG-2 patent license is required from MPEG LA (MPEG Licensing Adminstrator). Cost is $2.50 for a DVD player or decoder card and 4 cents for each DVD disc, although there seems to be disagreement on whether content producers owe royalties for discs." -http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#6.1