Re: [Advocate Play Ogg] Two thoughts: automated conversion, and radio4all.net.

[Benj. Mako Hill]

<quote who="Karl Fogel" date="Mon, May 28, 2007 at 11:32:32PM -0700">
> 1. Does anyone have the resources to set up an automated conversion
>    site?

So, I know of someone with a bunch of gstreamer based code to do
real-time re-encoding of files from a variety of formats (at least FLAC,
MP3, and Vorbis) into the same. The problem is that even on a very
fast server, it is essentially impossible for more than a dozen or so
people to use the software. If it's of interest, the group is free
software friendly and I'll bet I could prompt them to release their code
if they have no already.

However, since uploading and loading large numbers of is also slow and
going to be prohibitively hard for folks, I think tend to think that a
very easy to install client-side application should be a good first
priority.

>    When I mentioned this idea to a friend (Seth Schoen), he worried
>    there might be copyright concerns, similarly to how YouTube got hit
>    with infringement suits on the grounds that in order to convert
>    video data to their streaming format, they had to first make a copy
>    of the data, and making that copy was already an infringement. (!)

Well, the more interesting option would be a website that allowed folks
to upload songs in a particular format and get new ones, encoded from
CD-quality sources. This solves the problems with re-encoding (namely,
two sets of artifacts from lossy compression) but it opens the person
who runs such a project to all sort of liability (I would guess) since
it sounds a whole lot like the my.mp3.com plan:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_v._MP3.com

>    By the way, Mark Weaver suggested that when writing radio4all.net,
>    it would be good to mention that "Democracy Now!" makes their audio
>    available in Ogg Vorbis format (in addition to MP3).  Since
>    "Democracy Now!" is a very well-respected program among independent
>    media activists in the U.S., their use of Ogg Vorbis gives the
>    campaign legitimacy.  That's a foot in the door we should use
>    whenever it might help.

Absolutely. If people know tech folks who work on these radio shows,
they're a good group to contact. I happen to know one of tech people at
Democracy Now! and am not at all surprised that the organization uses
OGG. I'll bet that the tech people at politically sympathetic
organizations will be more sympathetic to our cause.

Regards,
Mako

-- 
Benjamin Mako Hill
address@hidden
http://mako.cc/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so
far as society is free to use the results. --RMS