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MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain

Posted by kdawson on from the chicken-or-the-ogg dept.

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."

4 of 331 comments (clear)

  1. Everyone's thinking this ... by iknowcss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If mp3 gets fazed out, doesn't any one else get the sick feeling that the next "de facto" may be an inherently DRM encumbered format? This could be terrible. Hopefully ogg will take off more.

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    Life is rarely fair. Cherish the moments when there is a right answer.
  2. Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because lossy and lossless formats fill different niches.

  3. i'm not a fan of microsoft but... by someone1234 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't believe they did any wrong. They even paid Fraunhofer, who were widely known as the owners of the mp3 patent. Not telling anyone that they own any mp3 patent and then jumping at the biggest user is simply evil. This kind of abuse should be punished, even if it was not a pure software patent. M$'s WMP is pure software, so if the patent isn't one, then they wouldn't infringe it! The only good thing was in this that an american company was beaten american style. This might lead to some patent reform.

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    Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
  4. AAC is the most likely winner by TedTodorov · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As much as we may wish for Ogg Vorbis to succeed, the most likely beneficiary is AAC, simply because of iTunes' default settings. I strongly suspect AAC has already caught up to MP3 in popularity.

    Most people just rip their CDs using the defaults, and thanks to the iPod, iTunes is surely the most popular digital audio program out there. I haven't heard with any patent threats to AAC, so I would suspect that more companies and people will move in that direction.

    Bonus: AAC sounds better than MP3 at the same bit rate.