SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the You-must-buy-everything-you-listen-to...-Again dept.
MP3, the digital audio coding format, changed the way we listen to music and drove the adoption of countless new devices over the last couple of decades. And now, it's dead. The developer of the format announced this week that it has officially terminated its licensing program.
The actual ownership history of the various patent rights involved in MP3 technology is complicated and messy. But the Fraunhofer Institute has claimed the right to license certain MP3 patents to software developers who want to "distribute and/or sell decoders and/or encoders" for it. The announcement that the company will end its licensing program was accompanied by a statement that reads in part:
"Although there are more efficient audio codecs with advanced features available today, mp3 is still very popular amongst consumers. However, most state-of-the-art media services such as streaming or TV and radio broadcasting use modern ISO-MPEG codecs such as the AAC family or in the future MPEG-H. Those can deliver more features and a higher audio quality at much lower bitrates compared to mp3."
Source: Gizmodo
See also: NPR's coverage which has additional background and details.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 15 2017, @05:56PM (1 child)
The problem is not checking facts, it's actually thinking. Not to implying any journalist is incapable to do so ;-)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday May 15 2017, @08:02PM
Mainstream media and their journalists are still firm believers in copyright and intellectual property. They've been moaning for years now that their business is dying and it's all the fault of technology and those naughty pirates for wrecking their monopoly on the ability to mass copy information. You won't get unbiased reporting from them on any topic related to that.
One might think that being publicly funded, NPR at least would be a bit more open minded, but no, they are near as badly infected. Note that their article mentions AAC by name, though it wasn't necessary, and does not mention Ogg Vorbis, Opus, or even FLAC. The tone of the whole article is that mp3 was a huge disruption of the music business. There's no acknowledgement of the many ways technology has helped art flourish, helped bring more art to the public. Just a mention that it helped a corporate citizen, Apple. Guess we should be glad they didn't mention WMA.
I only wonder how much longer they can go on with their propaganda that "copying is theft" and their wailing that artists and writers will starve without copyright.