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On Friday 04 October 2002 14:28, you wrote:
> Honestly I don't quite get it.
> How can they break such a behaviour or supported feature of the system ??
>
> RH at previous versions could play mp3 easily, now you can't use XMMS
> ?????????? This makes me think twice about this release..
>
> Eli
>
What is so strange ? MP3 is a COPYRIGHTED format. A german research
institution holds the copy right and has started to sue companies who
distribute mp3 players without paying them royalties (since they can't sue
the users themselves since there aren't enough lawyers for that. Maybe if we
all sue ourselves in a civilian court and pay ourself the representation
fees...).
Move to Ogg Vorbis and be happy and patent free...
MP3 is the GIF of audio... It will be remmembered as a small distraction on
the high road to enlightenment...:)
I admit that RH took the conservative road here but since most of their
systems get copied they could potentially be sued for a sum of money that
reflects the huge amount of RH systems out there (which they didn't even
SELL!!!). Think about it. They could wind up paying a huge sum of money
disproportionate to the number of systems that they actually sold!!! What
would you do if you were the head honcho at RH ?
Ogg Vorbis is the answer. Convert your MP3s today... Configure your p2p
software to do the conversion automatically upon download and be happy...:).
This only goes to prove once again: NEVER get addicated to a proprietary
format. It may be free today and gone tommorow...:)
>they did it because of piracy issues. you can always get the plugin's and
add
>them manually.
They did NOT do it because of piracy. The ACTUAL MP3 FORMAT is copyrighted.
The format itself with disregard of what you're encoding with it. Even if all
the users in the world were holier than Jesus(Moses in our case) and never
copied ANYTHING they would still do it. From a legal standpoint this is much
more problematic since from a legal standpoint RH is now selling technology
which is hot theirs and which they did not license (this is up to RH 7.3).
You can see the trickery that research companies use to get money. They first
distribute a format which they claim is free (albeit copyrighted) and after
the format takes hold and millions of mp3 files are on millions of hard
drives around the world the sue the companies who distribute tools that work
with the format. Oh if I could land those buggers in Jail I would do it in a
second... The only problem is that their methods will now be tought as
"clever business tactics" in business schools. Am I the only one who sees the
ugly side of this picture ?
Regards,
Mark.
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