More on MP3 and open formats

Greg Rundlett greg.rundlett at gmail.com
Sun Feb 25 20:31:07 EST 2007


On 2/25/07, Jason Stephenson <jason at sigio.com> wrote:
> Not that anyone really cares what I'm doing, but until this Alcatel
> thing, I never thought that I was infringing on someone's patent
> "rights" by ripping music to MP3. I did it because it pretty much worked
> everywhere without hassle, though I knew that Ogg was supposed to be better.
>
> Now, I'm looking at alternatives such as Ogg and FLAC.

Good.

Nobody cares what I'm doing either, so I'll add .02 dollars. ;-)

I credit RedHat with informing me of the non-free status of the mp3
file format quite a while ago.  I wondered, while installing a RH
system, why mp3 support was not built-in.  When I discovered the
reasons (in part with the aid of an FAQ on their site see
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ), I not only made my systems able to
play mp3 (you have to due to the de-facto standard of the format), but
I decided that ogg was the file format of choice for me.  Ever since
then, I've been ripping my CDs to ogg.  I voted with my wallet
choosing my (iRiver) audio players based on the fact that they had ogg
support.  I also gravitated toward Debian because I want to vote with
my feet in support of freedom in technology.  Looking now at the
Fedora project, they do make a principaled stand on the issue of
freedom and legality.  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems
That page describes what is free and what is encumbered by patents,
copyrights, license restrictions, US law, DMCA, etc.

It's a shame that we can't use technology freely, and a bigger shame
that the general population has no clue about freedom wrt technology -
even when their kids get slammed with lawsuits by the RIAA.  The media
always controls the conversation into one of 'piracy v. starving
artists'.  Anyway, that's probably more than 2 cents worth and I'm
preaching to the choir.

>
> Ogg Vorbis home page:
>
> http://www.vorbis.com/
>
> FLAC page:
>
> http://flac.sourceforge.net/
>
> So, looks like I'll be spending the next couple of weeks re-ripping the
> hundreds of CDs in my collection.
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>


-- 
A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?


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