From 1ae0306a3cf2ea27f60b2d205789994d260c2cce Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christian Grothoff Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2020 13:29:45 +0200 Subject: add i18n FSFS --- .../blog/articles/en/why-audio-format-matters.html | 197 +++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 197 insertions(+) create mode 100644 talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/why-audio-format-matters.html (limited to 'talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/why-audio-format-matters.html') diff --git a/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/why-audio-format-matters.html b/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/why-audio-format-matters.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68da7c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/talermerchantdemos/blog/articles/en/why-audio-format-matters.html @@ -0,0 +1,197 @@ + + +Why Audio Format Matters +- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation + + +

Why Audio Format Matters

+ +

An invitation to audio producers to use Ogg +Vorbis alongside MP3

+ +

by Karl Fogel

+ +
+

More information about Xiph.org (the +organization that created Ogg Vorbis) and the importance of free +distribution formats is available.

+ +

The Free Software Foundation have also produced a user-friendly guide to installing Ogg Vorbis support in Microsoft +Windows and Apple Mac OS X.

+ +

The patents covering MP3 will reportedly all have expired by 2018, +but similar problems will continue to arise as long as patents are +permitted to restrict software development.

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+
+ +

If you produce audio for general distribution, you probably spend +99.9% of your time thinking about form, content, and production +quality, and 0.1% thinking about what audio format to distribute your +recordings in.

+ +

And in an ideal world, this would be fine. Audio formats would be +like the conventions of laying out a book, or like pitches +and other building-blocks of music: containers of meaning, available +for anyone to use, free of restrictions. You wouldn't have to worry +about the consequences of distributing your material in MP3 format, +any more than you would worry about putting a page number at the top +of a page, or starting a book with a table of contents.

+ +

Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. MP3 is a patented +format. What this means is that various companies have +government-granted monopolies over certain aspects of the MP3 +standard, such that whenever someone creates or listens to an MP3 +file, even with software not written by one of those +companies, the companies have the right to decide whether or not +to permit that use of MP3. Typically what they do is demand money, of +course. But the terms are entirely up to them: they can forbid you +from using MP3 at all, if they want. If you've been using MP3 files +and didn't know about this situation, then either a) someone else, +usually a software maker, has been paying the royalties for you, or b) +you've been unknowingly infringing on patents, and in theory could be +sued for it.

+ +

The harm here goes deeper than just the danger to you. A software +patent grants one party the exclusive right to use a certain +mathematical fact. This right can then be bought and sold, even +litigated over like a piece of property, and you can never predict +what a new owner might do with it. This is not just an abstract +possibility: MP3 patents have been the subject of multiple lawsuits, +with damages totalling more than a billion dollars.

+ +

The most important issue here is not about the fees, it's about the +freedom to communicate and to develop communications tools. +Distribution formats such as MP3 are the containers of information +exchange on the Internet. Imagine for a moment that someone had a +patent on the modulated vibration of air molecules: you would need a +license just to hold a conversation or play guitar for an audience. +Fortunately, our government has long held that old, familiar methods +of communication, like vibrating air molecules or writing symbols on +pieces of paper, are not patentable: no one can own them, they are +free for everyone to use. But until those same liberties are extended +to newer, less familiar methods (like particular standards for +representing sounds via digital encoding), we who generate audio +works must take care what format we use — and +require our listeners to use.

+ +

A way out: Ogg Vorbis format

+ +

Ogg Vorbis is an alternative to MP3. It gets high sound quality, +can compress down to a smaller size than MP3 while still sounding good +(thus saving you time and bandwidth costs), and best of all, is +designed to be completely free of patents.

+ +

You won't sacrifice any technical quality by encoding your audio in +Ogg Vorbis. The files sound fine, and most players know how to play +them. But you will increase the total number of people who can listen +to your tracks, and at the same time help the push for patent-free +standards in distribution formats.

+ +

The Ogg Vorbis home page, www.vorbis.com, has all the information you need to both listen +to and produce Vorbis-encoded files. The safest thing, for you and +your listeners, would be to offer Ogg Vorbis files exclusively. But +since there are still some players that can only handle MP3, and you +don't want to lose audience, a first step is to offer both Ogg Vorbis +and MP3, while explaining to your downloaders (perhaps by linking to +this article) exactly why you support Ogg Vorbis.

+ +

And with Ogg Vorbis, you'll even gain some audience. +Here's how:

+ +

Up till now, the MP3 patent owners have been clever enough not to +harass individual users with demands for payment. They know that +would stimulate popular awareness of (and eventually opposition to) +the patents. Instead, they go after the makers of products that +implement the MP3 format. The victims of these shakedowns shrug +wearily and pay up, viewing it as just another cost of doing business, +which is then passed on invisibly to users. However, not everyone is +in a position to pay: some of your listeners use free software +programs to play audio files. Because this software is freely copied +and downloaded, there is no practical way for either the authors or +the users to pay a patent fee — that is, to pay for +the right to use the mathematical facts that underly the MP3 format. +As a result, these programs cannot legally implement MP3, even though +the tracks the users want to listen to may themselves be perfectly +free! Because of this situation, some distributors of the GNU/Linux +computer operating system — which has millions of +users worldwide — have been unable to include MP3 +players in their software distributions.

+ +

Luckily, you don't have to require such users to engage in civil +disobedience every time they want to listen to your works. By +offering Ogg Vorbis, you ensure that no listeners have to get involved +with a patented distribution format unless they choose to, and that +your audio works will never be hampered by unforseen licensing +requirements. Eventually, the growing acceptance of Ogg Vorbis as a +standard, coupled with increasingly unpredictable behavior by some of +the MP3 patent holders, may make it impractical to offer MP3 files at +all. But even before that day comes, Ogg Vorbis remains the only +portable, royalty-free audio format on the Internet, and it's worth a +little extra effort to support.

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