Read my pixels: AAC is not proprietary!

I mumble a curse whenever another [crap tech writer](http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/28/technology/techinvestor/hellweg/)  gets a basic fact wrong. This particular one has happened far too often: tech writers calling AAC “proprietary”. It’s not.

To create Harmony, Real reverse-engineered Apple’s proprietary AAC format, and created a way for Real’s downloads to appear in AAC format when loaded onto an iPod. Industrious hackers have attempted such a feat but have been spooked by legal threats.

The AAC audio file format is a compression standard that’s part of the MPEG-4 specification. Anyone can make AAC files, and anyone can listen to them. Apple, while they had a hand in the creation of the standard, has nothing to do with licensing the code to AAC files. I like AAC-compressed files. For their size, they sound better than MP3 or OGG. I create AAC files whenever I rip a CD into iTunes.

The chunk that Apple does have something to do with, however, is FairPlay, their own proprietary addition to a standard AAC file. No one is allowed to make FairPlay files except for Apple. No one (except for Motorola) is officially allowed to play FairPlay files except for Apple and Motorola. This is the part that Real figured out, not AAC.

Get it right, people! Okay, lesson over.