Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
Temlakos wrote:
If I might be so bold: the problem might be that he is /acquiring/ MP3
files from servers that won't release them as Ogg/Vorbis. It's all
very well for us to decide to rip our audio CD's to Ogg/Vorbis instead
of MP3. But that doesn't help the user who acquires MP3's that are
distributed by certain multimedia Webmasters who, AFAIK, are the
original owners or have themselves acquired full distribution rights.
An example would be the excellent recording of the Soviet Army Chorus
singing the Hymn to the Soviet Union, available on the Web site
dedicated to that song's history.
Or he bought them from one of the online stores. $1 per song.
That said, I solved the problem by downloading the RealOne Player for
Linux. It will play MP3's without a problem, and Real Media charges
nothing. Evidently they have a long-standing MP3 license, and their
business model allows them to distribute, free-of-charge, a player
that supports MP3, even on an open-source platform like Linux.
More likely they simply paid flat fee of $50,000 - $60,000 for
unlimited decoder license for the base (free) version of Real player,
and are paying $2.50 - $5.00 for each copy of pro (or gold, or
whatever they call it now) version they sell. While commercial
company can probably afford spending $50-60k for license for something
they are giving for free, most open source developers can't. Wich
puts them in inferior position. Something legislators hasn't
envisioned would happen.
Pretty sure they envisioned it all right ;)
If they was, they probably wouldn't allow for software patents, or
there would be some limitations on their applicability (believe it or
not, patent law is about giving inscentive for research and
development of any kind, so that society as hole can benefit from it,
not about companies making big money).
And what is the lobbies for? ;))
That's where the big fuss in Europe is about right know. While
Americans had allowed software patents before it was clear that it was
mistake, Europeans are now in position to see that not having software
patents actually returns greater value to the society at the end
(well, except for pattent office, that probably only thinks about all
the money they can make on patent applications which are rather
expensive over there).
Basically, who cares about "the society"?