Re: Playing MP3s

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On Tuesday 11 July 2006 13:32, Temlakos <temlakos@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The issue with MP3 files is not technical at all, but legal.
>
> MP3 is a patented algorithm, and therefore, closed-source.
>
> Fedora /will not/ distribute anything that plays closed-source stuff. In
> some jurisdictions where Fedora is accessible, that would be illegal.
>
> So what many of us end up doing is either (a) installing a third-party
> module to enable XMMS to play MP3 files anyway, or (b) do what you did:
> build XMMS yourself, with the MP3 capabilities preserved.
>
> Now anyone else here will likely tell you to search the archives of the
> Fedora Users' list for the full context of the discussion of MP3 files.
> And I will say that perhaps the MP3 issue has been "talked to death."
>
> But before I send you to the archives, I'd like to say a few words about
> something that's simply missing from the MP3 debate, and that is: /where
> do MP3 files come from/.
>
> Some contributors to this list impress me as having the opinion that
> most, if not all, MP3 content comes from individual users who convert,
> or "rip," Audio CD content into this closed-source format, "just because
> all the players out there play MP3." I wouldn't know about the reality
> of that situation. I have never played /any/ music on any device other
> than my computer or an Audio CD or DVD player. (Am I the last remaining
> non-adopter of iPod or iTunes? Maybe. I don't really care.) My musical
> tastes are somewhat more limited than those of most people here, so that
> I am more likely to tune in a radio station that plays "my kind" of
> music than to try to record single tracks from CD albums to another
> medium. So this "format war" doesn't really affect me.
>
> My advice to anyone who /does/ have Audio CD content that they would
> like to play "on the road" is to /abandon/ MP3 as a format and instead
> look for devices that use the /OGG Vorbis/ format. Now /that/ format is
> another "lossy compression format," and a lot of software I have seen
> that will read MP3 will also read OGG Vorbis. The difference is that OGG
> Vorbis is open-source, while MP3 is closed. OGG Vorbis is just as good
> as is MP3 for the purpose of copying Audio CD content to a more
> "portable" format. So if /you/ have the original, uncompressed (or
> compressed by lossless compression only) sound content and want to know
> where to rip it to, rip to OGG Vorbis. You'll save yourself a lot of
> headaches.
>
> The problem is that a lot of /original multimedia content/ is in the MP3
> format. Users who want access to /this/ kind of file have a problem:
> they often can't access the content in any other format. MP3 is all they
> have access to. And if they /could/ convert MP3 back to WAV (which is
> the uncompressed format) and then to OGG Vorbis, they're going to lose
> some parts of the file that they can't afford to lose--because MP3 and
> OGG Vorbis differ /significantly/ in those parts of the original sound
> that they discard. (I'll give you an example: some years ago I acquired
> an excellent recording of the Red Army Chorus singing the State Hymn to
> the USSR. That's an MP3 file. Now if I choose not to get an MP3-friendly
> routine for my copy of XMMS, then what do I do with that file? Play it
> only on a Windows box? Somehow I don't think that's exactly in the
> spirit of Linux.)
>
> That problem isn't going away any time soon. The resolution, if it
> happens at all, will come /only/ when open-source devotees become a big
> enough "market share" that multimedia Webmasters will at least make
> their content available in open-source formats--say, "Click here for the
> MP3 and there for the OGG Vorbis file." And of course it illustrates one
> of the last hurdles that the open-source movement now faces: the
> overwhelming prevalence of closed-source multimedia formats on the
> Internet today.
>

This is among the best answers I've seen to the MP3 question.  :-)

For more on Fedora's stance, there are some new pages up on the wiki:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia

-- 
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
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