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The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

iis.fraunhofer.de

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Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#131

Post by EpicEng »

2bluesc wrote: post #70
throwaway91111 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM.

> How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM. Then you start by not giving them your money. It's a uphill battle, but someone has to fight the good fight instead of just throwing their hands-up.

That approach is a complete loser. 99.999% of people couldn't care less, your voice will be nothing but noise.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#132

Post by jordigh »

notaplumber wrote: post #11

Recognizing this adds legitimacy to software patents. Don't. There have been free and open source MP3 decoders for many years now.

You can be free and open source and run afoul of software patents. You can infringe on a patent completely by accident. It's not like copyright where you have to prove an intent to copy. The worst thing about patents is that independent discovery is not a defense against infringement.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#134

Post by inDigiNeous »

illicium wrote: post #124
alexbeloi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer? You can influence design decisions and standards for the products your company makes. Somebody at apple decided AAC was better than MP3 because of it has better licensing for distributors, they could have gone further to consider codecs which had liberal licensing towards codec developers/manufacturers.

AAC is also higher quality than MP3 at medium bitrates[1], but this is largely irrelevant for high-bitrate iTunes downloads. [1] http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm

Aac is higher quality on all bitrates, it's a much more modern codec utilizing techniques not available in mp3. Using MP3 should be discouraged, it kills hihat clarity and low bass for example.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#135

Post by LeoPanthera »

illicium wrote: post #124
alexbeloi wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer? You can influence design decisions and standards for the products your company makes. Somebody at apple decided AAC was better than MP3 because of it has better licensing for distributors, they could have gone further to consider codecs which had liberal licensing towards codec developers/manufacturers.

AAC is also higher quality than MP3 at medium bitrates[1], but this is largely irrelevant for high-bitrate iTunes downloads. [1] http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm

iTunes originally sold files encoded at 128k, where AAC made a big difference over MP3.

They have now switched to 256k, where all lossy codecs are largely equivalent.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#138

Post by Arizhel »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #67
TD-Linux wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not believing in software patents is unlikely to change a court's mind. Instead, support formats that are royalty free from the start - Vorbis, Opus, and Codec2, for example.

How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM.

>How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec,

Simple: don't give any money to Apple for music in patented or DRMed formats, or to anyone else who tries to sell music that way. If you really want, you can write them to tell them why you're not buying their crap.

Companies get away with this behavior because consumers let them, and reward them with their money. You can make the argument that consumers don't have enough power for necessities like internet service (because of local/regional monopolies or oligopolies), but this just isn't true for luxury goods and services, which is exactly what the Apple music store is. You don't need downloaded music, there are other providers out there, and you can always buy it on CD (frequently for less) and rip it yourself into whatever format you prefer, like Vorbis, Opus, or FLAC.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#139

Post by duskwuff »

sjwright wrote: post #130
illicium wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AAC is also higher quality than MP3 at medium bitrates[1], but this is largely irrelevant for high-bitrate iTunes downloads. [1] http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm

You can only say that because of the astonishing improvements to MP3 encoding over the past fifteen years. Back in 2003 when Apple opened the iTunes Store, AAC was substantially better than MP3 at all bitrates, most particularly the 128 kbps rate Apple initially used. In fact the decision would have been made back in 2001 or earlier, given that the original iPod released in 2001 supported AAC decoding. (The music lab…

I don't think the iPod supported AAC at its initial release. Virtually no software supported it at that time -- that didn't really come until 2003, when iTunes 3.0 added support for AAC (including encoding). The Music Store was introduced in the same release, so there would have been a required software update for iPods at the same time, to add support for Fairplay encrypted files.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#140

Post by [deleted] »

microwavecamera wrote: post #113
2bluesc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM. Then you start by not giving them your money. It's a uphill battle, but someone has to fight the good fight instead of just throwing their hands-up.

Your right and it works. People used to say the same thing about Linux and open source software.

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