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Oyez.Org Releases Supreme Court MP3 Archives

Posted by timothy on from the your-rights-online-the-real-thing dept.

jeblucas writes "The US Supreme Court's multimedia site, Oyez.org, has released numerous archives from seminal cases from the 50's, 60's and 70's. They are available in MP3 format for the first time. Previously you could order cassettes and listen to .smil RealAudio, but who wants to do that? Want to learn more about: The Right to Remain Silent? Roe v Wade? Affirmative Action?"

5 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. "OYEZ" by pompousjerk · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...according to Google and dictionary.reference.com, means hear ye.

  2. Wow... by cjkarr · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm the technical lead on Oyez. I didn't imagine that this would make Slashdot quite so fast... Egads... Though it explains the dead server this morning. :-) It's fine now, though if the heavy traffic volume message comes up again, mail me using the link on that page.

    This release is a bit premature. We are working with Creative Commons to license this audio so that others can download and share and create non-commercial derivative works of the audio. If you would like to do me a huge favor, please download the cases you like and place them on your favorite peer-to-peer network. We're looking to make these audio files as widely available as possible, while showing that there are substantial non-piracy uses for P2P networks. (It'll be harder for the RIAA to argue next time to shut down these networks when they are used to distribute Supreme Court audio to citizens. :-])

    In any case, look for a press release soon. I just posted that URL so that Oyez users would download the audio and start sharing. I didn't imagine that it would get this publicity so quick.

    Anyways, I'll be monitoring this thread, so if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please let us know. We're a very user-centric site. :-)

    -Chris Karr, Oyez Technical Lead

  3. Re:naming convention by cjkarr · · Score: 3, Informative

    The naming convention is partly due to the fact that we are using Cocoon as a content system and it's easier to use the names as they are for any number of reasons that would bore anyone here.

    However, when you click the link, the code responsible for sending the MP3 will attempt to set a Content-disposition field so that while the name is argument.mp3, the "Save As" dialog boxes will suggest something more descriptive.

    Let me know if this doesn't work for you. I know some browsers don't support it, but I thought we had tested on the major ones.

    -Chris

  4. Re:MP3 by cjkarr · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ogg is on our list of things to do. The reason MP3 was chosen was because its much wider public acceptance and digital audio devices overwhelmingly play MP3.

    We used iTunes as the initial encoder, and later downsampled the files using LAME. Since iTunes is licensed, the encoding side is covered. As far as the players, 99% of our audience will be using licensed encoders anyways. This gets back to the issue of MP3 acceptance v. Ogg acceptance.

    -Chris

  5. Loving v. Virginia? Interracial marriage bans end. by ChaosDiscord · · Score: 3, Informative

    One of the lease publicized cases in the history of the Supreme Court cases is Loving v. Virginia.

    If you are truly interested in history and how far we have come I recommend that you listen to: Loving v. Virginia

    In the future, some more context would be good.

    The Loving v. Virginia decision overturned a number of a laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Here is a summary of Loving v. Virginia with the Supreme Court's opinion.

    --
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