[FYI] "MS sabotages MP3 quality under Win-XP"

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/18276.html

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MS sabotages MP3 quality under Win-XP  

By: Thomas C Greene in Washington  

Posted: 12/04/2001 at 16:25 GMT  

Being an OS monopolist has its privileges, and making the competition 
look bad on your ubiquitous desktop has to be one of the sweetest. So 
it comes as no surprise that the Redmond Beast has apparently decided 
to equip Windows XP with second-rate MP3 software, thereby limiting 
the recording and playback quality of MP3 files which compete with 
its Windows Media Audio.  

According to a superb story in today's Wall Street Journal, MS "plans 
to severely limit the quality of music that can be recorded as an MP3 
file using software built into the next version of its [PC] operating 
system, Windows XP. But music recorded in the Redmond software 
company's own format, called Windows Media Audio, will sound clearer 
and require far less storage space on a computer."  

Microsoft's cover story for this diabolical bit of market extortion 
is that it merely wishes to protect copyright holders by pushing an 
audio format with superior digital rights management capability, and 
spare itself the onerous burden of a $2.50 license fee for a deluxe, 
high-fidelity version of MP3 recording software.  

But Journal clearly isn't buying that line. "The industry doesn't 
want [MP3] pushed, and Microsoft and RealNetworks don't want it 
pushed. The consumer is going to eat what he's given," the paper 
quotes former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chief 
technologist David Farber as saying.  

[...]

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