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Wednesday, September 26, 2007 12:00 AM

Amazon's MP3 store: Better than iTunes

For the first time, there's real competition to Apple's online music shop.
By Farhad Manjoo

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  • Wednesday, September 26, 2007 01:23 PM

    MP3 isn't a "free" format

    MP3 may be free of DRM, but it isn't really "free". MP3 is patented by the Fraunhofer Institute, and they charge licensing fees. Open source projects like Fedora and Audacity don't come bundled with MP3 capability for that very reason. Ogg Vorbis is to MP3 as PNG is to GIF.

    That said, I'm glad Amazon is selling MP3s and not Ogg files, as there are five MP3-capable pieces of hardware in my collection that can't decode Vorbis.

    —Scott Ventura Read Scott Ventura's other letters

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