source
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2019691,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=24

Our lives could still go on, even without music being digitalized.

.ogg perhaps? Too bad most portable players don't support it. :/

"The damages award seems particularly outrageous when you consider we paid Fraunhofer only $16m to license this technology," kinda like getting sued for $150,000 for something you can buy for $1 ...?

Hell, if they would have called me, I would have licensed them for fifty bucks!

.hippie?

More MP3 patent suits due?
RULING AGAINST MICROSOFT MIGHT SPUR ALCATEL-LUCENT TO PURSUE OTHER FIRMS
By Jessica Mintz
Associated Press

SEATTLE - A federal jury's ruling that Microsoft infringed on two MP3 patents and must pay $1.52 billion in damages could turn into a major sour note for other technology companies in the digital music business.

The victory for France's Alcatel-Lucent could embolden the telecommunications equipment maker to pursue claims -- or seek royalties -- from other companies it believes infringe on the technology, experts said Friday.

The two patents in question in Thursday's decision cover the encoding and decoding of audio into the digital MP3 format -- a popular way to convert music from a CD into a lightweight file on a personal computer and vice versa.

Microsoft said it paid for the technology from Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute, which licenses it to hundreds of companies, including Apple and RealNetworks.

``The whole industry understood that that was where you went,'' said Tom Burt, a deputy general counsel for Microsoft.

When the software maker decided to add MP3 decoding and encoding capabilities to its Windows Media Player, it paid Fraunhofer $16 million for the relevant intellectual property licenses and source code.

Burt said the size of the damages imposed by the jury Thursday is ``absurd.''

Other companies that license the Fraunhofer MP3 technology should be very concerned by the outcome, he said.

Apple and RealNetworks declined to comment on the verdict, but some intellectual property lawyers think the trouble could extend well beyond Microsoft.

Other companies ``have been relying on the fact that they thought they had critical licenses necessary to practice the technology,'' said Michael Dever, a chair of the intellectual property group at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, a Pittsburgh law firm.

Alcatel-Lucent declined to comment on future litigation, but said it would continue to take measures to protect its intellectual property. The company also declined to identify companies that license the patents disputed in the Microsoft case.

The massive award may also draw other patent holders out of the woodwork, said Tom Engellenner, co-chair of the intellectual property group at Nutter McClennen & Fish, a Boston law firm.

Microsoft said it plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington -- a process that could take several years.

Thursday's jury decision was the first of six cases that will be heard in U.S. District Court in San Diego. All stem from claims made in 2003 by Lucent Technologies against PC makers Gateway and Dell for technology developed by Bell Labs, its research arm.

In April 2003, Microsoft added itself to the list of defendants, saying the patents were closely tied to its Windows operating system. The PC makers are still defendants. France's Alcatel bought Lucent last year.

The next case, which relates to speech coding, is set to go to trial in March or April. Other areas in dispute include video coding on Microsoft's Xbox game console and Windows' user interface.
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Incidentally who's minding the machine, so to speak?
Rokatie is a bot or otherwise useless user. Delete it.
Check out its profile; you'll find "rokatie" as a collection of NOTHING BUT unintelligible posts going back several years.

LOL! Whatever......

Okay, then DON'T delete "roakatie"; let it continue to drop crap posts for no good reason whenever it does.

See, I'm easy to please.

But isn't it interesting how you don't see many dumb shit posts at slashdot or arsetechnica. I wonder why?
(rhetorical question)

.ogg seems great to me for low bitrate spoken word material. From what I've heard. I have not heard a wide selection of ogg music tracks, but they all have a particularly weird sonic character to them. Subjectively, they are lacking in bass solidity, and also the soundstage seems artificially wide, and reverberation in the original recording seems strangely enhanced. In short, I don't think it is a viable alternative to MP3, at least for me.

MP3 has its own distortions. I guess I prefer them -- they seem more subtractive than additive. The .ogg files I've listened to had a definite coloration.

Another thought. If they couldn't license MP3 anymore, maybe we could get music tracks in WAV format. Now wouldn't that be something? I know, I'm dreaming -- the music industry actually offering QUALITY downloads, w/o DRM. What am I smoking?

Rather than WAV format, FLAC would be a better choice. With FLAC there is no information loss in the files and the added benifit of a relatively smaller file than a WAV. The files are much larger than lossy formats like mp3 though.

FLAC is fine. I'd probably just convert to WAV though, for the sake of consistency, because not all folks know about it or have the ability to decode it.