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Comment by johnhattan | Hacker News Reader

What's the practical upshot of this? Are there some apps that are waiting for this bit to expire so they can finally make things work the way they should?

For example, Audacity for Windows doesn't install with MP3 support. You have to download a plugin from Germany before Audacity will read/write MP3. Which I presume is because patents.

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> For example, Audacity for Windows doesn't install with MP3 support. You have to download a plugin from Germany before Audacity will read/write MP3. Which I presume is because patents.

Presumably, yes. Although, coincidentally enough, mp3's patent expired recently as well. So you may not have to anymore.

> Although, coincidentally enough, mp3's patent expired recently as well. So you may not have to anymore.

Are you sure? According to wikipedia it ends at the end of 2017 (in the US) [0] Also, http://www.mp3licensing.com/ is still up and running.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing.2C_ownership_and...

I guess decoding expired a while ago: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fe...

Encoding is still encumbered for a little while.

VLC: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=125032

Apple blocks apps on iOS that have AC-3 support without a license. Even VLC got bit by this and thrown out of the App Store.

Seems you can do AC-3 on iOS now by using the OS to do the decoding.

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