'MP3' Celebrates its Tenth Anniversary

Sachin Garg writes "The Data Compression News Blog reports that on July 14th 2005, the name "MP3" celebrates its tenth anniversary. On this day back in 1995, the researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS decided to use ".mp3" as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. Development on this technology started in 1987, in 1992 it was considered far ahead of its times, then MP3 became the generally accepted acronym for the ISO standard IS 11172-3 "MPEG Audio Layer 3" and no other coding method so far (2005) could uncrown MP3 as the popular standard for digital music on the computer and on the Internet."

Comments

Patent Issues?

[gbulmash]

Recently, a friend got a spam about MP3's patent issues and a software package backed by some lawyer and programmer to convert your MP3s into a non-patented format. Stupid, because Microsoft has claimed WMA is free (and just about every portable player and PC jukebox supports it), and if you don't trust Microsoft, you can always go with OGG. Why buy anything from these spammers?

They make some vague claims, such as "we believe [the patent owners] are serving papers right now." Note the fact that they have no concrete examples of this happening. They just believe it is. Then: "it's believed that one Website Owner has recently settled out of court for several millions." Once again, no concrete example. Just a belief that this has happened.

But great scams always include a grain of truth, this one being that MP3's patent is owned by Thomson, and they have set licensing terms.

So my question is, does anyone KNOW of Thomson actually suing anyone or gearing up for a rash of suits as the spammers claim? And this is not "I believe they are" or "a friend knows a guy whose sister's boyfriend's cousin's hairdresser's uncle got sued by Thomson while removing a gerbil from Richard Gere's butt." Does anyone have any concrete info on Thomson enforcing their patents?

- Greg

Re:Patent Issues?

[donutz]

Microsoft has claimed WMA is free (and just about every portable player and PC jukebox supports it)

Well except that every iPod does not support it...and that's a significant number of portable players...

Evil Bit set by 1998

[RobertB-DC]

The article is only about the dawn of .mp3, but within less than three years, the RIAA & co. had configured themselves to set the Evil Bit whenever they saw the .mp3 extension. Or at least, that was my experience.

In 1998, I started a little fan site detailing the history of a country group -- I won't name them, but they became famous and then infamous within the span of 5 years. As part of the site, I included some low-quality .mp3's of the group's orignal sound, from some out-of-print indie albums. But before you could say "infringement", I got a Cease And Desist letter from the group's lawyers. I capitulated, but the affair proved the perfect grist for a story in the local alternative newsweekly -- they saw the group as having sold out to Nashville, with the C&D just further proof.

But check out what the group's manager said about the nascent format:

Senior Management's Simon Renshaw, the band's manager, insists the only reason the band went after Brooks was that the sound bites were in MP3 form. "I will just say one thing: His site with MP3 files...is a huge red flag," Renshaw says. "And that's all I really want to say about that, quite honestly."

And the lawyer, on the broader issue of copyrights:

"The bottom line to me is very simple," says Beiter, whose firm was hired by Senior Management, the band's Nashville-based management company. "To me, it's just not fair. It's not fair for him to take their copyright and decide that he's unilaterally going to give it away out on the Internet. It's not fair for him to do that. He may try to cast it as David versus Goliath or Robin Hood or whatever, but it's just not fair for him to do that. He never even asked."

In the end, I got more free publicity for my little fan site than if I'd scattered flyers all over Dallas. I'll avoid whoring for hits in this post, though... I think you can figure out where to click if you're really interested.