Microsoft dinged for $1.5 billion for MP3

[johnnymegabyte]

Check out this article ---
Microsoft ordered to pay $1.52 billion in mp3 patent lawsuit http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/23/business/web-0223microsoft.php

Based on the content, what does that mean in general to "Us" who convert our song to MP3 and our recording software.
I don't think they can touch existing versions, but once you upgrade, could MP3 features be reduced or eliminated.
Will this also drive up the price of recording software ?

Any comments ?

 

[MickB]

It'll be alright. Even in the unlikely event that MP3 is discontinued (it's just the Fraunhofer variant in dispute) on your sequencers, there are always third party codecs such as the Steinberg set. And there's the nice LAME codec, downloadable from www.goldwave.com.

Anyway, MP3 is nothing to get upset about. Other than to have a nice small copy to send down the email or put to an Ipod, nobody in their right mind would master to it.

 

[danny.guitar]

Wow, $1.52 billion is a lot to pay, even for Microsoft.

 

[MickB]

Don't you believe it! They set that kind of money aside just for things like this!

They've got plenty enough left just to carry on as usual. The real threat to them was the idea to split them up into seperate pieces. That was the brown-pants scare for them, not this.