Who owns MP3? (updated)

We all remember that Fraunhofer required license fees for MP3 a few years ago. Today it is reported in news that Microsoft has lost a law suite about MP3 licensing against Alcatel-Lucent. MS thought they already had paid to Fraunhofer, but the jury found that it is Alcatel-Lucent that owns the technology behind MP3. Microsoft has to pay $1.52billion to Alcatel-Lucent.

Here is my advice to Microsoft; Do like Ubuntu does, skip MP3 and only provide the free Ogg/Vorbis-format.

If I can dream a bit more I want them to skip WMV (not VMW) too in favor for ogg. All MP3-player manufacturers start to support ogg, and that iTunes converts to ogg.

Comments

Anonymous said…
What is VMW? Do you mean WMV?
February 23, 2007 at 10:55 AM
Hans Persson said…
Too many people have too much time invested in creating mp3 files for it to be plausible for that format to go away anytime soon. There are enough free players out there to make it survive.

I wouldn't mind ripping my music to ogg instead, but I don't like the idea of re-ripping lots of old stuff. Also, we currently have hardware players that don't support ogg, so ripping to that effectively limits music choice.
February 23, 2007 at 11:32 AM
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