I acquired one or two files in Microsoft’s insidious Windows Media Audio format over the weekend. I pondered briefly over whether WMA is actually worse than MP3; they are both patent-encumbered formats, after all. But this O’Reilly article makes a good point:

Aside: OK, this being O’Reilly, someone will surely stop me here and insist that everything be in Ogg Vorbis, because it’s unpatented. I suspect that in the eyes of the media industry, that’s a bug, not a feature. If Vorbis took off, it might be as much a bullshit patent target as all the other popular codecs (e.g., AT&T’s presumably bogus claim against MPEG-4). Do I think Vorbis infringes on any patents? I doubt it. Given the common patterns and similarities in media codecs, do I think a sleazy lawyer could convince a non-technical jury that Vorbis infringes? Hell yes. And is Vorbis backed up with money and lawyers? No. That’s why I prefer the MPEG-related patent-encumbered codecs: they’re good, they’re generally used by good companies who put some money behind them, they’re backed by grown-up standards bodies and licensing organizations, and as ESR wrote in World Domination 201, “MP3 and H.264 may be the only major codecs whose controlling entities don’t have obvious interests beyond maximizing their patent royalties” (ESR is contrasting this to the example of, say, Microsoft using WM* as a means of locking users into Microsoft technologies).

Better to be in thrall to those who merely want your money, rather than your money and your freedom. But Ogg is still the clear winner: it might have patent problems, while MP3 definitely does have patent problems.