Slashdot Mirror

I not only want access to a high quality MP3 I also want access to an uncompressed wave file so I can encode it to any bitrate and format I want. It's not like it's going to be a huge bandwidth hit because only a very small amount of people care for the wave file, but those who want their Ogg Vorbis or lossless compression can now do it themselves without the quality loss of the MP3 format.

It may sound like a lot but think of it. If you're forking over cash for the right to download music don't you want something that's the same as the music you'd find on a physical CD? But let's be realistic, this is never going to happen and that's why I'm never going to buy music this way.

I recommend downloading talk shows that feature interesting guests and conversation. Two such shows are on my local community radio station, News from Neptune and Mediageek. Episodes of both are available are available online in a variety of formats including Ogg Vorbis format (no patent restrictions, no DRM, it's just a regular file) and they licensed to share. When I get a domain name, I will add episodes of my show Digital Citizen to that list.

...like play Ogg files?

Your argument pretty much justifies the things that I have been saying for years. Most bands don't make hardly any money off CD sales in the first place, they make their money through live shows and merch. So, I never understood why all these big bands/performers complained so much about us downloading their songs...

But, then you also have to take into consideration musicians who only produce studio work and never play live. There are quite a few people, especially in electronica, who only record music and never set foot on a stage.

I say a mixture is in order. Release all your songs online in a lossy format, with a slightly sub par bitrate, and allow them to be distributed freely (96k mp3 or even better, a Q0(~64k) Ogg). Then charge people for the "full quality" CDs or Lossless (FLAC,etc) files. I wouldn't mind paying $1 for each song if I got to download a "decent", full length version of it for free and try it out for a while first. And of course, no DRM encumbered formats would be used ;) I always "try before I buy" with my music these days. If you make good music, you have nothing to lose. If you are a no talent, one hit wonder pop star, then you don't deserve to be in the music industry in the first place. My current favorite band, Celldweller, has no record label and distributes the majority of their music from the web.

First of all, the article is about global warming, not Ogg Vorbis.

Second, some people in your amateur listening party not being able to tell the difference between 64k Vorbis and 256k MP3 doesn't prove "that Ogg Vorbis is FAR superior to any other codec." A)Some people in the party COULD tell the difference between 64k Vorbis and 256k MP3. B)You did not compare Vorbis to any other codec out there. For instance FLAC is completely lossless, while Vorbis is lossy. FLAC will therefore present a truer representation of the original audio, but will likely take up a little more disk space.

Third, Vorbis' audio quality is not best measured in kilobits per second, but on a scale from -1 to 10 called "quality". You may have meant quality level of 0, which is approximately equal to 64kbps.

Fourth, what kind of audiophile would listen to Missy Elliot for a true test?

Fifth... oops. I just saw the "Laugh it's funny! ;P" at the bottom of the post, meaning IHBT. IHL. Oh well, I'm gonna post this anyways, checking the grand "Post Anonymously" box which I planned on doing anyways as I sensed troll but didn't really care as there is a "Post Anonymously" box and so looking dumb won't matter.

From the Vorbis website:
Can I bundle Vorbis and another media type (like text lyrics or pictures) in the same file?

Yes. The Ogg container format was designed to allow different media types to be multiplexed together; Theora will be mixed with Vorbis audio in an Ogg container to encode movies.
--http://vorbis.com/faq.psp#container/

Does that mean Ogg too can do what you're suggesting? Probably needs some work still, though.

What's ICQ? What's Ogg Vorbis

When did you get Internet access? ICQ is one of the oldest instant messaging services. Dating back to 1998. Ogg Vorbis is "a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source." http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp

They have UI Guidelines and have conducted usability studies.

While that may be true, there is no evidence of it.

When have you used GNU/Linux with any graphical UI? And what was the distribution? I think you haven't seen any modern desktops. In past 15 years I have used all kinds of operating systems Windows, OS/2, GNU/Linux distributions, Solaris, Irix, Mac Os classic and Mac Os X. They all habe usable GUI's but on my humble opinion Os X is one of the strangest of them all. Integrating software totally into operatings systems own GUI messes things up I think. Why can't programs have their own menu's? And how usable it is that you don't close the program by closing all it's windows, but by going trough active programs and killing the application?

The point is that something that's possible but difficult might as well be impossible for all practical purposes. Because long before figuring out how to do it on Linux, a reasonable person will give up and go do it easily on Mac OS X.

But still they would read some tutorial and learn from that how to do it. In Linux you might even learn what happends underneath the pretty surface. I have given Linux cources to unemployed and elderly people. They have learned to use GNOME desktop quickly and have installed Linux on their PC's. All of them used Mandrake or SUSE. Both of them have logical program menus, with best choise of free software. Mandrake has even menu "I wan to.." which has different topics. Clicking somethings like ".. burn music on cd" would start the right program with easy userinterface for you. I just installed latest SUSE and I was really impressed of the installation programs usability. Other Linux distributions should learn from it.

To the contrary, the example you pointed to of a killer app appears to be an atrocity, worse by a million miles than the very worst Mac OS X application ever written.

On what ground can you say that? Lets see Firefox, Evolution and OpenOffice are more feature rich and easier to use than their counter parts on MAC OS X. You got Internet Explorer, your fancy Mail.app and Microsoft Office! Into how many different kind of mail and groupware can your Mail.app connect? In 21st century it's not practical to have isolated programs that can talk to other programs on the same computer. But not with the corporate mainframe that has GroupWare and user management. Can you just drag and drop those into your system?

and still don't care what you think about the CDDL.

So you don't think there's a problem with offering patents under a license meant for copyrighted works?

Clearly, the GPL isn't for everyone... try to remember that.

Here's a hint: if you actually had cared enough read the article, you might have been surprised to note that RMS does not mention the GPL at all. Which, y'know, is fitting since we're talking about patents, not copyrights.

Instead, you had to run to /. to proclaim to everyone how one person's opinion doesn't matter you at all.

Which is ironic, since I don't care if RMS's opinion matters to you, yet I took the time to read what you said before commenting.

Jay (=

P.S. Can you point me to a reference where RMS says "now all code should be free without exceptions"? I find it odd, since on at least one occasion he agreed with the use of the BSD license over the LGPL.

Real stepping onto the turf is an unequivocal sign that I should stop using MP3's entirely.

Helixplayer, Shmeelixplayer. I'll support the other guys on this one.

I hate to like, interrupt the "Up Vorbis, Down Real!" vibe we have going here, but if you look on the Vorbis homepage You'll notice that the Xiph.org foundation has recieved a big chunk of money from Real to keep doing their excellent work.

I don't really love the Real player either, but unlike many a software company, they are trying to support open formats. I think that should be the cause of praise, not derision

"Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source." w00t for plagiarism.

It doesn't matter how 'good' DivX encoding is, Mpeg-2 is a lossy format. Since mpeg-2 is a lossy format, conversion to any other lossy format (including mpeg-2) will result in 'further' degredation of the video quality. in the case of DivX since DivX and mpeg-2 throw away different bits of data, the lossy conversion will be worse, than encoding from a lossless codec like HuffYUV.
So to anwser your question, converting to DivX will result in both a generational loss, and some mpeg-4 specific loss of quality. Would DivX be smaller? in the same resolution the space saving is marginal*, you actually need to down scale resolution to achieve 'impressive' down scaling of files. Also, to make the 'best' mpeg-4s you'd need access to a lossless master of the video. Converting mpeg-2 to mpeg-4 is like taking an mp3 and 'converting' it into an ogg vorbis. And Granny Ogg Doesn't approve** of transcoding mp3's to .OGG.

*= Properly compressed MPEG-2 streams are only 10% larger than comperable (read same resolution) MPEG-4 stream, however DVDs don't usually compress the audio at all, and generally don't compress the video as much as it 'could' be. Also, DivX 'scales' better than mpeg-2 making a 200% magnification mpeg-4 'appear' better than a 200% magnification mpeg-2...
**= If you wouldn't like being turned into a toad, you'd better listen to Granny Ogg.

...It's because ogg was designed from the get-go to run on PCs and not embedded systems.

So I guess iRiver missed the memo huh? They have support for OGG on almost all of their flash players, and all of their HDD players.

Click here if you doubt.

The MP3 codec was not, in fact designed to run on portable systems, indeed it was never intended to be used separately from the MPEG-1 Video codec at all! Fraunhofer IIs simply came up with an audio codec that would pair well with MPEG's high-level video compression, someone figured out how to separate the stream into its own file, WinAmp came along, and presto, new music format.

In fact, because of its kludgy origin, the MP3 spec lacks many features that would make life easier, including (exemplia gratis) a proper indexing system--hence the seeking weirdness and sometimes fugly playback that plagues VBR-MP3 files.

The OGG container-file format and Vorbis encoder were designed to address these issues, as well as to provide a Free (speech & beer) and Open alternative to MP3, which is after all, property of Fraunhofer IIs.

OGG's non-popularity as a music format is attributable to two things:

1. obscurity, and
2. the "good enough" factor.

As a FOSS-developed format, OGG hasn't got the corporate backing (and advertising) that MP3 and WMA/ASF have. Therefore, not many have heard of it, outside of techie circles.

Even beside that, many who do hear of OGG Vorbis will often casually dismiss it, saying "MP3 is good enough for me". A heresy for the /. set, to be sure, but many people simply don't have the time/energy/interest to pursue a better alternative when a functional alternative is staring them in the face.

OGG support is nowhere near as hard to do as you make out, it's simply not done as often. Please do at least a little checking before you post such flamebait. (hint: try looking here or possibly here

I find EAC to be fantastic for ripping CDs. Also, it works nicely out of the box with oggenc.

Purists would say that it is not exactly free because the guy who wrote it asks for a postcard if you use it. As good as free as far as I am concerned.

virtualdub
xvid
ogg vorbis

The 2 streams was the approach Real used with SureStream.

Vorbis can be "peeled" - in theory you can take a single Vorbis file and produce a stream with an arbitrarily lower bitrate. This opens up cool ideas such a a streaming server that will adjust the stream to fit your connection speed.

This has more information

As another poster pointed out I think, there isn't a usable implementation of this yet.

Not true. See http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp#com for more on the vorbis license.

MythTV plays my OGG's just fine, as does my wife's Rio Karma. Given the openness and Freedom of OGG (not to mention quality) versus MP3 and AAC, any new device I am going to use must be able to play OGG. I regret that I got my Aiwa MP3 car stereo before I knew about OGG, but at least it has a line in for things like the Karma. Or, I might just replace it with a Linux based deck.

There are tons of MacOS Ogg Vorbis players, here are some:

Sourceforge Quicktime Components
Play Ogg Vorbis file on QuickTime (including QT-based players, like iTunes). Note that this is still under development and may have bugs.
http://qtcomponents.sourceforge.net/

A Better QuickTime Ogg Vorbis Plugin
Try this one if the Sourceforge one above dosen't work for your configuration.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article .php?story=20021 103065300430

MacAMP
Like WinAMP or XMMS.
http://www.macamp.com/

Whamb
Whamb player, haven't tried it.
http://www.whamb.com/

More Ogg Vorbis Software for MacOS X
Here's a list from the Vorbis folks.
http://www.vorbis.com/software.psp/

Basically, you need .m3u (audio/x-mpegurl) mapped to a player that can handle Ogg, most often Winamp.

The main problem with Ogg as a "general public" format (as opposed to a "private collection" format) is that the general public still isn't ogg'ed -- but that matters less with a private collection.

...I use Ogg Vorbis and it works just fine. All my music is in one place and, it's all legal (ripped from CDs I purchased) and I can listen to it anywhere thanks to icecast+OpenVPN. Power to the people baby! ;)

What about OGG?

How did this get modded up as informative? Is Slashdot giving out mod points to completely clueless noobs now? Ogg Vorbis has had a fixed-point, interger-only decoder for a while now. It's called Tremor, is under the BSD license, and actually takes up slightly less CPU time playing .ogg files on my Zaurus than .mp3 files take to play.

Currently, one of the two main criteria for me in choosing my next music player is Ogg Vorbis support. I have a good number of CDs ripped in Vorbis format (VBR, quality 5), and they sound fantastic. The only thing I still need is the whole stack of them in my backpack or the dashboard of the car.

The story links to version 1.1.1 of libOgg, and tarballs for libOgg 1.1.2 and libVorbis 1.1.0 are nowhere to be found, not even on vorbis.com.

Yet another proprietary mp3 file. Are the BBC going to include a Fraunhofer Institute MP3 licence for every listener? I somehow doubt it. With Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora why is the BBC still clinging to these legacy formats? The beeb also promote Macromedia Shockwave Flash over SVG animations.

Proprietary "Apple QuickTime" clandestine format. Whats wrong with supporting modern formats like Ogg Theora BBC?

The BBC used to run BBC ogg vorbis streams. Sadly they have canceled these now. You can contact the BBC through their BBC GNU/Linux help page, and also the BBC Radio 4 Feedback Programme which is broadcast at 13:00 each Friday, if you too would like the BBC Ogg Vorbis radio services to restart.

It should be noted that while AAC is "open", it is patent encumbered. If you want to write a software AAC encoder or player, you need to pay Dolby. Although there are open source decoders, their legal status is unclear. Of course, you also need to pay Microsoft for WMA, bit it is a little cheaper.

The same applies to Fraunhofer for MP3 if I believe, although I can't find pricing information right now. Unfortunately, the most free and open format lacks market penetration.

FOSS will reverse-engineer and/or come out with far better codecs.

Oh, you mean like the ogg codec? Yeah ogg is great. I love being able to play ogg file on my iPod..oh wait, no. I mean I love being able to stream them to my Tivo. Wait, no I mean, It's great that I can burn ogg files onto a cd and play them in my car mp3...er ogg...wait, no.

Better technical solutions do not prevail simply because they're better. Mandating a patented codec is a very bad thing because now legal (i.e. DMCA) and licensing issues become much more important than the technical merit of the codec in determining it's success. FOSS can't save you from Microsoft's undead army of lawyers and marketing drones in this case.

I think the article would be a lot more accurate if it replaced all instances of "open source" with "hobbyist", as they're not totally interchangeable terms. Any project being done in the developers' spare time is going to hit this problem of time constraints on content creation (it was *the* major issue that was discussed at the QuakeCon mod roundtable), and although the vast majority of game projects using the open source model are indeed hobbyist, a commercial developer creating a game full-time isn't going to magically see their content creation timeline get longer if they use open source (such as Saga of Ryzom, whose developers open-sourced the game's engine before the game has even shipped). Moreover, a lot of modern commercial game projects use open source projects such as OpenAL or Ogg Vorbis without seeing their dev cycles balloon (id's Robert Duffy even mentioned Ogg as saving them time on DOOM 3).

It's Ogg not OGG!

What if the patent depends on, say, some part of a public spec? Either violate the patent, violate the spec, or go home.

I'd choose violate the spec. CompuServe published the GIF specification based on a Unisys patent; we violated the spec. ISO published the MPEG audio specification based on a Fraunhofer patent; we violated the spec. ISO published the MPEG video specification based on numerous patents; we violated the spec. Bottom line: if a specification is patented, then f___ the spec; let's make our own.

Uh, okay, that'll show em. Hey microsoft! Your license to distribute Linux has just expired! TAKE THAT!

That's not sarcasm. Without Microsoft's license to distribute copies of the GNU operating system, the de facto standard userland layer on top of the Linux kernel, Microsoft won't be able to distribute copies of Services For UNIX, and between the termination of the GNU license and such time as Microsoft develops its own alternative, it will lose government contracts that depend on conformance to the POSIX spec.

And how will "the guy in the basement" enforce this anyway???

By handing over the copyright in a free software package to the Free Software Foundation so that FSF's attorneys can take the case.

The Unreal Tournaments, I believe.

I'm a developer. Why should I be interested?

Epic Games (the makers of Unreal Tournament, et. al.) have used Vorbis in their games ever since releasing Unreal Tournament 2003 to compress game music without having per-game license fees sap profits from every game sold. Vorbis saves developers money by avoiding patent-license fees.

Epic isn't alone; other Vorbis users include:

* Crystal Dynamics (Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2)
* Croteam (Serious Sam: The Second Encounter)
* Pyrogon (Candy Cruncher)
* PopCap Games (Alchemy)
* EA Games (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

And how could Ogg possibly improve the size of their sounds? Ogg is a container format. I think they mean Vorbis, the compression codec.

I know I'm being anal retentive. I don't care.

And how could Ogg possibly improve the size of their sounds? Ogg is a container format. I think they mean Vorbis, the compression codec.

I know I'm being anal retentive. I don't care.

In practice, even Mr. Stallman can recognize when a more permissive license, such as 3-clause BSD, LGPL, or GPL with exceptions, will further freedom more than a standard copyleft license. For instance, he blessed the Ogg project's switch to a 3-clause BSD license.

tell that to all the people that think MP3s are Lame, and re-encoder their files into some other format.

that right there causes generational quality loss, and is a very common thing. people think one format has crappy quality, so, they convert it to another format directly, instead of using the original media, therefor, making the quality even *worse*, reguardless of bitrate and other settings. i cant even count the amount of times ive seen others do this...

I never understood the benefit of OGG either.

hint: it has to do with freedom.

its name is Ogg, not OGG

...wouldn't an automated test that just compared the output of a compressed audio track to the original be more accurate? Or is there more truth than I think to certain frequencies being worthless and inaudible by human ears?

The whole idea behind lossy audio codecs is that the human brain and ear aren't that good at what they do :) As was pointed out on the Ogg Vorbis mailing list a looong time ago, technical tests like you're proposing would only tell you what computers would find more pleasant to listen to, not what humans would. So yeah, there's more to certain frequencies being inaudible to human ears :)

its Ogg not OGG

I've been researching MP3 players and found the Neuros. It has an extensive list of different formats, including Ogg as well as the others.

The key features of the Neuros that are motivating me to buy one are the "record stream from FM" (as well as record from any audio input or onbord mic) to MP3 or WAV, and the "broadcast low power FM" (so I can listen through my car stereo on an unused frequency.)

To be balanced, though: there were some user complaints about the power level of the FM broadcast not being sufficient, but these were not universal. The Neuros II, which seems to have come out in the past couple of days, is supposed to help fix some of the version 1 drawbacks.

Frankly, about the only thing the Neuros lacks now are 100bT with on board Apache, 802.11[abg] interfaces (it has USB 2.0), but there don't seem to be many player/recorders out there with those right now.

Especially when the Vorbis download page for Windows doesn't have a link to the damn (unofficial) Directshow codec on it.

Hint to the Vorbis guys: People are more likely to adopt a format when they don't have to change their media player. Start giving people easy links to useful binaries god dammit.

Hell. If I was a webmaster for Vorbis there would be a big "DOWNLOAD FOR WINDOWS" button on the front page which is linked to a Directshow codec.

Actually, I've found that very few "geeks" want freedom, because freedom also brings with it responsibility. I've found that what many geeks really want is really lack of responsibility. Look at the various "geek issues"... it's all about doing whatever they want with no responsibility or cost.

Er, are you really sure? Lets look at your examples more closely:

Downloading music for free.

Er, downloading music for free is not illegal. Downloading copyrighted music for free is not illegal. Here's a short list of free music to download.

As for infringed copyrighted music, there are plenty of Slashdotters (geeks) who said "go after the downloaders" and are content to see them go under.

Downloading software for free.

Er, yes, geeks like to download software for no cost. Almost all of the software I use on my machines was downloaded for free -- Debian, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Abiword, Sodipodi, etc.

For the issues of illegal music downloading and illegal software downloading, I think you confuse geeks getting upset at the high penalties with support for the crimes. Its one thing to support copyright infringement. Its another thing to get upset with copyright infringers getting more severe sentences than violent criminals.

Creating viruses (it's Microsoft's fault, don't you know).

You are confusing the issues. Windows viruses are, in a large part, encouraged by Microsoft's lack of security. When many people "blame" Microsoft for viruses, they mean that Microsoft Windows shows a stunning lack of security by default. We all know that there are a few script-kiddies out there writing viruses, and they are the source of viruses, but if it wasn't for Microsoft lowering the amount of effort needed, we wouldn't see as many viruses.

As for copyright, us geeks are paranoid. I doubt many people here would have problems with a copyright flag for TV or radio broadcasts (other then correctly assuming that (1) they will require new purchases of hardware and (2) they will be cracked rather quickly). But we are paranoid -- if, say, every MP3 was tagged according to if the artist wanted redistribution or not, a lot of indie bands would have a leg up on the mainstream bands. This gives the indie bands an edge that the RIAA does not want. Ergo, we are assuming that any DRM in music will automatically assume that all music is pirated, unless proven otherwise.

As for DRM on the PC, we see that Microsoft is launching an offensive against Open Source. If they can create a huge financial cost for any piece of software to be certified to run on a new PC, and if they can be in control of the certification, they can use that against Open Source.

Finally, I will admit, a lot of us geeks have a slight problem with legality vs morality. The anime fan-subbing community is a perfect example: A lot of the groups will only fan-sub anime not available in the US, and will stop distribution as soon as an official English copy comes out. Is that legal? No. Is it moral? Perhaps.

Call me nuts, but playing MP3's these days is about as basic as being able to copy a file from one place to another.

There are better alternatives to MP3. Of course that is not why MP3 support was removed. It was removed because of patents, and that happened already around RH7.3 IIRC. Since then I got MP3 and DVD playing programs from freshrpms. Looks like there are no FC2 packages there yet, but I believe they will come. Until then you could try the FC1 packages.

But what's with the no xfree86?

License changes. What you get instead is AFAIK a fork from just before the license change, so it is really the same software, just a new name.

I got a Linux distro working, the GUI was *slow as hell*.

Probably driver problems. Are you sure you are using the right hardware? I know some of the desktop environments have been bloated. But I think they have started caring about it. It is long time since the last time I felt the GUI had become slower from an update.

Matroska is a A/V container (think AVI MOV ASF) that is aiming to be THE format to which all others will be compaired. HTTP and RTP streaming OK. Network glitch resistant. Totally Open. DVD style menuing and almost at version 1.0. I have been following the A/V open source projects for some time and these two (Martoska and XviD) are the biggest things since sliced bread. We finally have the tools to do online TV like we have had online radio for a few years now.

Be advised... XviD is brutal on the encode. a 720x480 29.970fps video 1 hour takes my celeron 1000 4-6 hours to compress with all the quality settings turned up. But the decode is not that bad in terms of CPU power and at 2kps-4kbs you are looking at some DAMN fine video. Even at 700kbps it is looking good. Best compressor on the planet (at least that I have messed with).

I assume you are familar with Ogg Vorbis which is compairable to AAC in terms of quality/bitrate. It makes a great companion to XviD inside a Matroska container

CDex
Ogg Vorbis Audacity

CD-DA X-Tractor AudioCoding Mp3splt Mp3Wrap

Alba Extractor PeerCast GNUMP3d Mp3 Tag Tools

GramoFile FFmpeg

JAZZ++ Open Sound World

Wow. Slashdot really sucks. If the lameness filter actually prevented ascii art, they might have an excuse.

And out of the 14 that are reviewed ZERO play Ogg Vorbis.

Marketers, manufacturers, and capitalists: LISTEN UP!

* I'm 29, single, and work in the computer industry. Therefore, I like gadgets and have disposable income.

* I'm a hobbiest musician and I have been encoding everything, no exception, in OGG VORBIS since 2003. Like the teenagers say, so last year.

* It is feasible to port the Vorbis decoder/encoder to a platform without floating point support.

There's your demographic. Stop reaching for the teenagers and start making products for people who can afford them and desperately need them.

Your profit margins will thank you.

PS: I'm posting this from an iBook. I won't buy an iPod until it supports OGG!

Now we have Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora is coming so who gives a shit about that MPEG thing?

Soon we'll be able to broadcast audio and video freely with a system that is 100% mpeg free thanx to ogg and icecast

The MPEG Committee is all about making money, they don't care about a free digital/media world. I only trust the non profit xiph.org foundation. (and if it's DRM u want then go for this :)

what the f&*^#$ is ogg? Some stupid linux invention?

From their site: "Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source." In other words, it has better compression than mp3, and since it's open source, you don't have to pay licensing fees on players that decode Ogg like you would with mp3.

But is that going to have the same quality as simply stripping out the DRM on the original ACC file?

If you take an MP3 and reencode it as an OGG, there will be quality loss.

Does the same thing happen when you go from ACC to WAV to MP3?

It seems to me that their real fear is that people will be able to easily share iTunes music files after downloading them, without any quality loss, and without the inconvenience of burning to CD first. That makes it even more convenient than buying a physical CD and ripping the songs to MP3, because you wouldn't even have to leave your house or open your the door on your cd-rom drive.

Even people who normally wouldn't bother to share music they'd bought could do so with ease.

I don't know if they are right to worry so much about this... or whether they can legally stop this project... but that is their or (by proxy) the RIAA's concern.

It pretty much makes lawsuits their only tool to stop the sharing of their music. And with projects like Freenet improving all the time, the lawsuit tool isn't going to remain viable.

I neither rejoice over, nor cry about the demise of our over-marketed pop culture... but I do believe that's what we are witnessing: its demise as a victim of its own success.

Huh, use ogg and be free ;)

Yup, I remember that. I grew up in that. And I, ever the agent for change, was one of the principle students actively working to break the Apple monopoly and get Windows computers installed as well, mainly because at that time Windows tended to piss me off just a little bit less.

Now, of course, I am learning that life has a wicked sense of humour, and have spent the last 5 years or so prying the beasty Microsoft fingers from my family and friends, mostly in the area of moving them off IE/OE and onto Mozilla, or maybe even off Office and onto Abiword or OpenOffice. And of course, I am still personally a bit of a geek - my entire music collection is in Ogg Vorbis, and I usually run some distro of Linux on my home box. But I'm much more even tempered - I keep Windows and Office around for my wife's grad school studies, because that just makes more sense, and try to stick with the battles that win themselves (Mozilla vs IE/OE) rather than those that are uphill (Linux vs. Windows) with others.