On 2/25/07, Jason Stephenson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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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