trans-coord/gnun server/gnun/ChangeLog server/g...

[Yavor Doganov]

CVSROOT:        /cvsroot/trans-coord
Module name:    trans-coord
Changes by:     Yavor Doganov <yavor>   08/06/01 08:01:50

Modified files:
        gnun/server/gnun: ChangeLog gnun.mk 
Added files:
        gnun/philosophy: why-audio-format-matters.html 

Log message:
        (philosophy): Add `why-audio-format-matters'; requested
        by the Italian team.

CVSWeb URLs:
http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/trans-coord/gnun/philosophy/why-audio-format-matters.html?cvsroot=trans-coord&rev=1.1
http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/trans-coord/gnun/server/gnun/ChangeLog?cvsroot=trans-coord&r1=1.74&r2=1.75
http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/trans-coord/gnun/server/gnun/gnun.mk?cvsroot=trans-coord&r1=1.20&r2=1.21

Patches:
Index: server/gnun/ChangeLog
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/trans-coord/trans-coord/gnun/server/gnun/ChangeLog,v
retrieving revision 1.74
retrieving revision 1.75
diff -u -b -r1.74 -r1.75
--- server/gnun/ChangeLog       1 Jun 2008 07:51:59 -0000       1.74
+++ server/gnun/ChangeLog       1 Jun 2008 08:01:50 -0000       1.75
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 2008-06-01  Yavor Doganov  <address@hidden>
 
+       * gnun.mk (philosophy): Add `why-audio-format-matters'; requested
+       by the Italian team.
+
        * GNUmakefile ($(template-dir)/po/whatsnew.%.html): Add
        $(template-dir)/whatsnew.%.include to prerequisites to ensure that
        it is built first and m4 can expand it for the validation.

Index: server/gnun/gnun.mk
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/trans-coord/trans-coord/gnun/server/gnun/gnun.mk,v
retrieving revision 1.20
retrieving revision 1.21
diff -u -b -r1.20 -r1.21
--- server/gnun/gnun.mk 28 May 2008 19:16:57 -0000      1.20
+++ server/gnun/gnun.mk 1 Jun 2008 08:01:50 -0000       1.21
@@ -70,6 +70,7 @@
                schools \
                software-literary-patents \
                sun-in-night-time \
+               why-audio-format-matters \
                why-copyleft \
                why-free \
                words-to-avoid

Index: philosophy/why-audio-format-matters.html
===================================================================
RCS file: philosophy/why-audio-format-matters.html
diff -N philosophy/why-audio-format-matters.html
--- /dev/null   1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ philosophy/why-audio-format-matters.html    1 Jun 2008 08:01:50 -0000       
1.1
@@ -0,0 +1,195 @@
+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<title>Why Audio Format Matters - GNU Project - Free as in Freedom</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<h2>Why Audio Format Matters</h2>
+
+<!-- This document uses XHTML 1.0 Strict, but may be served as -->
+<!-- text/html.  Please ensure that markup style considers -->
+<!-- appendex C of the XHTML 1.0 standard. See validator.w3.org. -->
+
+<!-- Please ensure links are consistent with Apache's MultiView. -->
+<!-- Change include statements to be consistent with the relevant -->
+<!-- language, where necessary. -->
+
+<h3 class="subtitle">An invitation to audio producers to use Ogg
+Vorbis alongside MP3</h3>
+
+<p>by Karl Fogel</p>
+
+<div class="announcement"><p class="footer"><a 
href="http://xiph.org/about/";>More information</a> about Xiph.org (the
+organization that created Ogg Vorbis) and the importance of free
+distribution formats <a href="http://xiph.org/about/";>is available</a>.</p>
+
+<p>The Free Software Foundation have also produced <a 
href="http://playogg.org";>a user-friendly guide to installing Ogg Vorbis 
support in Microsoft
+Windows and Apple Mac OS X</a>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, <em>even with software not written by one of those
+companies</em>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;and
+require our listeners to use.</p>
+
+<h4 class="sec">A way out: Ogg Vorbis format</h4>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The Ogg Vorbis home page, <a href="http://www.vorbis.com/";
+>www.vorbis.com</a>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>And with Ogg Vorbis, you'll even <em>gain</em> some audience.
+Here's how:</p>
+
+<p>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&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;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&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;which has millions of
+users worldwide&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;have been unable to include MP3
+players in their software distributions.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+
+<p>
+Please send FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to 
+<a href="mailto:address@hidden";><em>address@hidden</em></a>.
+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a> 
+the FSF.
+<br />
+Please send broken links and other corrections or suggestions to
+<a href="mailto:address@hidden";><em>address@hidden</em></a>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Please see the 
+<a href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting
+translations of this article.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Copyright &copy; 2007 Karl Fogel
+</p>
+<p>Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are
+permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this
+notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2008/06/01 08:01:50 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div id="translations">
+<h4>Translations of this page</h4>
+
+<!-- Please keep this list alphabetical. -->
+<!-- Comment what the language is for each type, i.e. de is Deutsch.-->
+<!-- If you add a new language here, please -->
+<!-- advise address@hidden and add it to -->
+<!--  - /home/www/bin/nightly-vars either TAGSLANG or WEBLANG -->
+<!--  - /home/www/html/server/standards/README.translations.html -->
+<!--  - one of the lists under the section "Translations Underway" -->
+<!--  - if there is a translation team, you also have to add an alias -->
+<!--  to mail.gnu.org:/com/mailer/aliases -->
+<!-- Please also check you have the 2 letter language code right versus -->
+<!-- <URL:http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/iso639.htm> -->
+<!-- Please use W3C normative character entities -->
+
+<ul class="translations-list">
+<!-- English -->
+<li><a 
href="/philosophy/why-audio-format-matters.html">English</a>&nbsp;[en]</li>
+<!-- French -->
+<li><a 
href="/philosophy/why-audio-format-matters.fr.html">Fran&#x00e7;ais</a>&nbsp;[fr]</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>