Patent Fights Are a Legacy of MP3âs Tangled Origins
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The $1.5 billion settlement against Microsoft is only one result of the music formatâs tangled history.
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The battle over digital copyrights and illegal file sharing is often portrayed as a struggle between Internet scofflaws and greedy corporations.
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SAN FRANCISCO -  Few entrepreneurs have truly disrupted a single industry. Niklas Zennstrom has done it to two - and he has his sights on a third. Zennstrom and business partner Janus Friis founded file-sharing service Kazaa, which by 2001 became the world's favorite way to steal copyrighted music. Entertainment companies all over the world lined up to sue. Next came Skype, the first globally popular free Internet calling service, which crumbled international telecom company business models. EBay bought Skype last October for $2.6 billion, and Zennstrom is Skype's CEO.
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The tune seems to be changing ever so slowly at some record labels when it comes to DRM. Both out of consumer demand and to some extent necessity, some have begun to offer digital downloads in the unprotected MP3 format.
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I saw an ad in yesterday's NY Times that offered the complete New Yorker magazine archive, including all the cartoons and ads, going back to 1920-something for a bit more than the hard disk would cost. The ad was from J&R, the company that makes the product is Pexagon. $149. Sounds like there might be DRM. I asked for something like this from the music business. A hundred gigs of popular music for $500, all pre-installed on the disk without DRM.  Someone at the New Yorker had this idea too? It's a good one. Bulk content for collector types. Another source of revenue. I want to run my own personal radio station, so having every song of a certain genre or from a certain period makes the diff.
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Car stereo makers are getting antsy to join the MP3 revolution.
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Ten thousand songs in your pocket. Millions of tunes on the Internet at your fingertips. And books on tape &#151; they're going down the path of vinyl records. Welcome to the new world of digital audio.
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The arrival of software that lets you search for and record digital music off the airwaves could raise legal issues that will make the P2P skirmishes look quaint by comparison.
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After years as the unrivalled king of the digital-media world, the venerable MP3 music format is losing ground to rival technologies from Microsoft and Apple.
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Rival technologies that baffle consumers will run more companies out of business in the nascent music download market than will head-to-head competition, one of the lead creators of MP3 playback technology warned on Wednesday.
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A jury's $1.52 billion judgment against Microsoft hangs a sudden, unexpected cloud over MP3. This could be the opening open-source advocates have been waiting for. By Eliot Van Buskirk and Evan Hansen.
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A software company and its parent are claiming they hold patent rights to widely used Internet song-swapping technology, and they are demanding that several file-sharing networks obtain licenses in order to continue operating.-The Washington Post
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The Motley Fool - War has been declared. Not the conventional type with the troops, tanks, and smart bombs, but an entertainment war for the &#36;3 billion global music player business. Creative Technology (Nasdaq: CREAF - News) has decided to move in against the giant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL - News) in an attempt to capture a 40% market share for MP3 music players. In the three years since the iPod's launch, it has become the worldwide player of choice, claiming about 85% of the market, so to call this an uphill fight is something of an understatement.
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While MP3&#39;s have taken quite a bashing lately, it&#39;s good to know you can still download free and legal MP3&#39;s, albeit for independent artists.
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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
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Technologies that let people record satellite and Internet radio broadcasts digitally are opening a new front in the recording industry's war on music piracy. This has given the music industry a new problem to worry about.
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Inventors patent disc that can hold versions of films in two rival high-definition formats.