6 ms·

> How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM. The

> How do you "support a format"? AFAIK nothing will convince Apple to release music in a better (patent-free) codec, much less convince others to dump DRM. Then you start by not giving them your money. It's a uphill battle, but someone has to fight the good fight instead of just throwing their hands-up.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> someone has to fight the good fight That's a noble, if politically naïve, attitude. Societies, like Congress, have a limited bandwidth for problem solving. The way we prioritize what gets solved and what doesn't, as well as how to solve it, is "politics". (This is more a matter of definition than quibbling.) There are various political institutions, and individuals have varying degrees of influence over them, depending on how one's society is structured. But unvaryingly, attracting people with political capital to your cause is paramount. This is often done by showing such people an agglomeration of individuals supporting your cause, individually with less political value than them but collectively something interesting. Even the people at the bottom of the chain have limited bandwidth. This is why most systems default to delegation, particularly at scale. Single-handedly refusing to support something you think is important without patching that into a political system is fine from a personal or moral perspective, but it shouldn't be expected to actually do anything. As such, it's less a good fight than good fussing about.
- sbov 9y ago
  There's a wide range here. Complaining on a message board where most people agree with you is basically zero effort. Devoting your life's work to it is a ton of effort. There is a middle ground here. My general thought is: you should, on a regular basis, feel at least a little bit of pain due to your opinions. If you don't then your opinion is probably worthless to society.
  - arximboldi 9y ago
    > My general thought is: you should, on a regular basis, feel at least a little bit of pain due to your opinions. If you don't then your opinion is probably worthless to society. I've reread this sentence a few times... and it is actually quite deeper that it first seemed on a more superficial read. Thanks a lot for your comment.
    - rustynails 9y ago
      I would be very careful of that advice. There are many ideologies that use that exact thought process as a justification for divisiveness and intolerance, especially in an echo chamber like Facebook. Is there another side to the argument? Have you investigated it? Is the constraint or division unjustifiable? Who/what is being excluded in that argument? Many patents and anything politically correct fail that test. Eg, do we need a "women in engineering"* or should that be "people in engineering"? If you have "women in engineering" (because of percentages), do you have "men in veterinary science" because of percentages too? You see? Feelings may tell you one thing, but considering divisiveness, exclusion and an opposite view tell you something entirely different. If people asked that last question more often, the world would be a much better place. Leaving the criteria as a logical reasoning rather than a feeling would eliminate a lot of prejudice, intolerance, division and constraint. * I'm married to a qualified and practising engineer. We discussed this topic when she went to a "women in engineering" meeting. When I asked if we should hold a "black people in engineering" meeting, she said "of course not, why would we?". Now we agree on the divisiveness/exclusion test as well as the inclusiveness test. Be warned, my views are not popular.
- thisrod 9y ago
  Here's a reform to the copyright law that just occurred to me. If you buy a copy of a published work, then you're allowed to copy and distribute it as you see fit, provided that you pay the creator the same royalty that they were paid for the copy you bought. Other restrictions such as moral rights would still be in force. That seems to get a lot of incentives right. Publishers have to pay artists decent royalties, and proprietary file formats can't be used to suppress competition. What would go wrong? Apart from the fact that this would have to be enacted over the cold, dead bodies of a lot of music company executives: that's a feature, not a bug.
  - URSpider94 9y ago
    I think you are confusing the issues. TFA is about the license fees paid to Fraunhofer for the MP3 codec, for which they owned the underlying and now-expired patents. MP3 is not an encrypted codec, the format itself is quite open and doesn't place any real restrictions on redistributing music -- in fact, most of the original music sharing sites like Napster traded exclusively in MP3. The use of MP3 has no bearing on copyright or music piracy. The real issue is that software developers had to pay a royalty to Fraunhofer to distribute copies of MP3 players or encoders. That made it impossible to incorporate MP3 into a free (as in speech) OS like GNU/Linux.
    - thisrod 9y ago
      > The real issue There's real a higher-order issue, too. Why did anyone want GNU to incorporate an MP3 player in the first place? There is no law of physics that requires songs to be encoded as MP3.
      - la_oveja 9y ago
        > Why did anyone want GNU to incorporate an MP3 player in the first place? There is no law of physics that requires songs to be encoded as MP3. Dude, in 2006 ALL MUSIC was mp3.
- semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  > Societies, like Congress, have a limited bandwidth for problem solving And as we know, due to Nyquist, N Congressmembers can at most be solving N/2 things at any given point in time.
throwaway91111 9y ago
Do you suggest I don't listen to music, or are you prepared with an alternative to apple?
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  Amazon sells music and lets you download DRM-free mp3s.
  - 0xffff2 9y ago
    So does Apple... the call here is to use something other than MP3.
    - comex 9y ago
      Apple doesn't use MP3, they use AAC (.m4a), which is technically superior to MP3 but also patent encumbered.
  - throwaway91111 9y ago
    They are not patent free, which is the point at hand. Do they allow ogg/vorbis or other unencumbered formats?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  Why do you need Apple to listen to music? There is radio (online and in the ether), there are alternative platforms (e.g., Bandcamp), concerts and other live venues, (second hand) physical media (e.g., CDs or vinyl), open access music, etcetera. On top of all that there is the big middle finger of 'piracy' if you are so inclined. For many this is a morally acceptable alternative to a rotten system, for others it may remain an imponderable transgression of law and or ethics — either way, it is a viable alternative in addition to the above.
  - 9y ago
microwavecamera 9y ago
Your right and it works. People used to say the same thing about Linux and open source software.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- virmundi 9y ago
  I wish that worked here. You'd have to establish an open source media group with direct hooks into the i* platform. Then you'd have to get major acts on that platform.
  - NoGravitas 9y ago
    No one is making you use that platform?
EpicEng 9y ago
That approach is a complete loser. 99.999% of people couldn't care less, your voice will be nothing but noise.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> someone has to fight the good fight That's a noble, if politically naïve, attitude. Societies, like Congress, have a limited bandwidth for problem solving. The way we prioritize what gets solved and what doesn't, as well as how to solve it, is "politics". (This is more a matter of definition than quibbling.) There are various political institutions, and individuals have varying degrees of influence over them, depending on how one's society is structured. But unvaryingly, attracting people with political capital to your cause is paramount. This is often done by showing such people an agglomeration of individuals supporting your cause, individually with less political value than them but collectively something interesting. Even the people at the bottom of the chain have limited bandwidth. This is why most systems default to delegation, particularly at scale. Single-handedly refusing to support something you think is important without patching that into a political system is fine from a personal or moral perspective, but it shouldn't be expected to actually do anything. As such, it's less a good fight than good fussing about.

sbov 9y ago
There's a wide range here. Complaining on a message board where most people agree with you is basically zero effort. Devoting your life's work to it is a ton of effort. There is a middle ground here. My general thought is: you should, on a regular basis, feel at least a little bit of pain due to your opinions. If you don't then your opinion is probably worthless to society.
- arximboldi 9y ago
  > My general thought is: you should, on a regular basis, feel at least a little bit of pain due to your opinions. If you don't then your opinion is probably worthless to society. I've reread this sentence a few times... and it is actually quite deeper that it first seemed on a more superficial read. Thanks a lot for your comment.
  - rustynails 9y ago
    I would be very careful of that advice. There are many ideologies that use that exact thought process as a justification for divisiveness and intolerance, especially in an echo chamber like Facebook. Is there another side to the argument? Have you investigated it? Is the constraint or division unjustifiable? Who/what is being excluded in that argument? Many patents and anything politically correct fail that test. Eg, do we need a "women in engineering"* or should that be "people in engineering"? If you have "women in engineering" (because of percentages), do you have "men in veterinary science" because of percentages too? You see? Feelings may tell you one thing, but considering divisiveness, exclusion and an opposite view tell you something entirely different. If people asked that last question more often, the world would be a much better place. Leaving the criteria as a logical reasoning rather than a feeling would eliminate a lot of prejudice, intolerance, division and constraint. * I'm married to a qualified and practising engineer. We discussed this topic when she went to a "women in engineering" meeting. When I asked if we should hold a "black people in engineering" meeting, she said "of course not, why would we?". Now we agree on the divisiveness/exclusion test as well as the inclusiveness test. Be warned, my views are not popular.
thisrod 9y ago
Here's a reform to the copyright law that just occurred to me. If you buy a copy of a published work, then you're allowed to copy and distribute it as you see fit, provided that you pay the creator the same royalty that they were paid for the copy you bought. Other restrictions such as moral rights would still be in force. That seems to get a lot of incentives right. Publishers have to pay artists decent royalties, and proprietary file formats can't be used to suppress competition. What would go wrong? Apart from the fact that this would have to be enacted over the cold, dead bodies of a lot of music company executives: that's a feature, not a bug.
- URSpider94 9y ago
  I think you are confusing the issues. TFA is about the license fees paid to Fraunhofer for the MP3 codec, for which they owned the underlying and now-expired patents. MP3 is not an encrypted codec, the format itself is quite open and doesn't place any real restrictions on redistributing music -- in fact, most of the original music sharing sites like Napster traded exclusively in MP3. The use of MP3 has no bearing on copyright or music piracy. The real issue is that software developers had to pay a royalty to Fraunhofer to distribute copies of MP3 players or encoders. That made it impossible to incorporate MP3 into a free (as in speech) OS like GNU/Linux.
  - thisrod 9y ago
    > The real issue There's real a higher-order issue, too. Why did anyone want GNU to incorporate an MP3 player in the first place? There is no law of physics that requires songs to be encoded as MP3.
    - la_oveja 9y ago
      > Why did anyone want GNU to incorporate an MP3 player in the first place? There is no law of physics that requires songs to be encoded as MP3. Dude, in 2006 ALL MUSIC was mp3.
semi-extrinsic 9y ago
> Societies, like Congress, have a limited bandwidth for problem solving And as we know, due to Nyquist, N Congressmembers can at most be solving N/2 things at any given point in time.

throwaway91111 9y ago

Do you suggest I don't listen to music, or are you prepared with an alternative to apple?

daveFNbuck 9y ago
Amazon sells music and lets you download DRM-free mp3s.
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  So does Apple... the call here is to use something other than MP3.
  - comex 9y ago
    Apple doesn't use MP3, they use AAC (.m4a), which is technically superior to MP3 but also patent encumbered.
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  They are not patent free, which is the point at hand. Do they allow ogg/vorbis or other unencumbered formats?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Freak_NL 9y ago
Why do you need Apple to listen to music? There is radio (online and in the ether), there are alternative platforms (e.g., Bandcamp), concerts and other live venues, (second hand) physical media (e.g., CDs or vinyl), open access music, etcetera. On top of all that there is the big middle finger of 'piracy' if you are so inclined. For many this is a morally acceptable alternative to a rotten system, for others it may remain an imponderable transgression of law and or ethics — either way, it is a viable alternative in addition to the above.
- 9y ago

microwavecamera 9y ago

Your right and it works. People used to say the same thing about Linux and open source software.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
virmundi 9y ago
I wish that worked here. You'd have to establish an open source media group with direct hooks into the i* platform. Then you'd have to get major acts on that platform.
- NoGravitas 9y ago
  No one is making you use that platform?

EpicEng 9y ago

That approach is a complete loser. 99.999% of people couldn't care less, your voice will be nothing but noise.