MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain

nadamsieee refers us to a piece up at Wired on the fallout from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win."

Comments

Re:There's a worry here

[imbaczek]

Are linux distros about to get hit with a torrent of C&D letters? Nah, nobody will seed.

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I should buy better hardware so I can hear the noise in my MP3s?

Re:Portable turntable

[kbielefe]

I can really hear the difference between crappy digital and the analog

That's why I got one of those new-fangled mp3 players that converts the digital music to analog when outputting it to the speakers.