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MP3 and AAC are "proprietary"
If we accept the dictionary meaning of proprietary, then it essentially means "owned by someone". According to this article at MP3.ord, the MP3 format is mostly owned by Fraunhofer and Thomson Multimedia as they have "a portfolio of 18 patents related to MP3". Other companies also hold patents over MP3, so it is certainly "proprietary" by the definition given above. The licence for both MP3 (MPEG Layer 3) and AAC (MPEG-2/4) products is listed on the Via Licencing site as USD0.25 per product.

As for ACC, also known as MPEG-2 (I guess companies use AAC so as to not make it look like an earlier version of MP3, which it isn't), it is also owned by MPEG and must be licenced as noted here on the Fraunhofer Institute site.

If you wish to research this topic, I can recommend Webopedia as an excellent resource.

PS. I must appologise for any scrambled links, this new ZDNet forum seems to break them if they go over one line. Nor do ZDNet provide a preview as they used to so I can't check them, so look at the source and put them back together if they are broken.
Posted by: Fred Fredrickson   Posted on: 10/19/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use
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