MP3 officially became a free
Institute of integrated circuits Fraunhofer society officially “said goodbye” with the codec and the file format MP3.
The expiration of key patents related to MP3, expired at the end of April. It is reported by National Public Radio.
MP3 (MPEG-1 Layer III) popular codec and audio file format, is widely supported throughout the world. The vast majority of developers of media players (both programs and standalone devices) includes in its product support MP3.
It should be noted that different patents relating to MP3, belonged to different companies, which generated constant disputes and the courts. As a result, some manufacturers of devices (e.g., MP3 players) are not paying for MP3 license, while others are paid royalties in the amount of several tens of cents per device. And the company Alcatel-Lucent, for example, sued Microsoft for 1.53 billion dollars.
The statement of the Institute of integrated circuits Fraunhofer society says that the licensing program associated with MP3 patents, is officially discontinued.
According to representatives of Institute, the future of codecs, which compress audio more efficiently: for example, developing AAC or MPEG-H.
Despite the fact that National Public Radio reports that the “official death” MP3, actually the expiry of the patents (and the termination of the licensing program) indicates that MP3 support can be built into their products without any deductions to the organizations owning patents.
Recently officially gone another common technology — Adobe Flash Player. The product has been repeatedly criticized for the large number of known vulnerabilities in the code, and Adobe at the end of 2015, acknowledged the victory of HTML5 over Flash.
Nikolai Vorontsov