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The MP3 Format is now Patent Free

posted by martyb on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the lets-party-like-its-1999 dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

MP3 decoding was already free and got recently included in Fedora. But now, encoding is also free according to Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS: "On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated." The Wikipedia MP3 article confirms that.

So, do you still use an MP3 library or have you switched to another format or means of listening to music such as (spying built-in) streaming services?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:12AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:12AM (#504247)

    Another good news, the last patents of Dolby AC3 have also expired in March. See ac3freedomday on archive.org [archive.org].

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:32AM (1 child)

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:32AM (#504257) Journal
    These are both strong evidence that patent terms are too long. The AC-3 FAQ is amusing in the 'Should I use AC-3?' answer: No, of course not, it's 25 years old, there are much better formats available now! A term of 3-5 years for a patent covering something like AC-3 or MP3 would give the inventor a big first-mover advantage, but still allow others to benefit from the work. Now, techniques are not coming out of patent until they're painfully obsolete. MP3 was superseded by AAC 20 years ago and then by HE-AAC in 2003.
    --
    sudo mod me up

    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:19PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:19PM (#504491) Homepage Journal

      Imagine how technical innovation would suffer if patents lasted as long as copyrights? Like science and technology, the arts are suffering far worse from copyright than tech is from patents. So don't talk too loud about patent length, the bastards might just triple it.

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      "Nobody knows everything about anything." — Dr Jerry Morton, Journey to Madness