h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

one positive thing of DVD region code hacking is that more and more movie releases are world wide at same time. no more 3 to 6 months waiting.

Exactly - Once the *actual* benefits of the new format are available (through hacking or whatever), the user benefits (as does the studio - worldwide releases *must* cut down on piracy by cutting out one of the reasons people pirate stuff).

now we need lower prices and less will copied, I hope!

Full DRM as envisaged by Hollywood would be a disaster. One of the toughest parts of potential incoming USA law for me is that because of the requirements they might impose for DRM compatibility etc. etc., Linux would immediately become illegal, as would other Open Source operating systems and products - even if they did implement DRM compatibility (which the developers wouldn't in most cases, I think - they don't agree with it), it would still be illegal because they'd be distributing the source code for it, and of course end users could modify their copies of it to remove the restrictions, then redistribute the changed versions under the terms of the GPL or BSD licence or whatever is appropriate. Nobody would be able to stop it without invalidating the licences and replacing them with something else.

Which, thinking about it, they'd try and do. And might even succeed.

The DMCA is bad enough, but what's coming will be worse. Because of the DMCA, software I have to play DVDs on Linux (rather than on Windows), is illegal in the USA because it contains a 'circumvention device' for the ludicrously simple CSS scrambling method. Without that, though, I can only play one of my DVDs (Chicken Run, surprisingly enough, isn't scrambled). That's where I'm glad I'm living in Europe, but it won't be much better here before too long. Maybe.

Although some hope is there, some European governments (especially Germany) are using Linux in their own computer systems, recognising the useful savings they can make, and also appreciating being able to do what they want with the software, rather than being tied to Microsoft or Apple. I doubt any law so wide-reaching as to make Open Source operating systems illegal due to failure to comply with and then conceal DRM would pass their approval.

One day, people will realise what's going on and how stupid it is, but things may get a lot worse before then. I do not want to have to cart my entire CD collection between home and Uni every term - it's far simpler for me to just put it all in Ogg Vorbis format on my computer and play it like that. I don't let other people copy the music (well, not very often...) and I don't tend to copy music off other people all that much either. Mind you, that might also have something to do with my rather less-than-mainstream musical taste. However, DRM would, I believe, make this process impossible.

Oh, and MP3 encoding is covered by hideous patents and licensing terms. Ogg Vorbis is better anyway, and it's Free. And yes, Winamp does come with support for it built in. What more can you ask for?

A firmware upgrade to allow my Rio to play Ogg files, and a lossless conversion of my current 6Gb MP3 collection...

I wish I could switch, but, currently, I can't

Good point about DVD region encoding, Jim... that has to be one of the most infuriating uses of DRM. It could actually be the most well-known, too...

Of course DRM is based upon the ludicrous assumption that anyone possessing a copy of music that they didn't buy would have bought it anyway, and that their playing it won't encourage anyone else to buy it.

which taken to it's logical conclusion means that those companies supporting it would like to cease to be played on radio.

Worse than that though, is the upcomming palladium software at the heart of the latest version of the microsoft operating system (currently in beta).

By extending their driver signing technology, you would only be allowed to run palladium signed software when you had it turned on, and would not be able to run palladium software when you had it turned off.

this would mean that you almost certainly would not be able to run open source alternatives for for your browser, firewall, antivirus, etc and you would also be forced to use them when you had palladium switched off.

worse than that though is that every document would have a policy associated with it, and if you didn't fit the policy, it would delete it from your machine. imagine the problems with this when your os or hardware fails, and you plug your drive into a new motherboard.and it wipes out 3 months work for you.

well, it's not touching my machine.

That's really scary!

It's worse than that. They're making deals with chip manufacturers to have the hardware itself check for the Microsoft signature. And Moore's Law, along with Gates's Corollary, will likely push current Windows users onto Palladium-corrupted PCs... making it impossible for Open Source to gain a foothold there.
Things are not looking good for us.

So, fellow s, let us prepare for the impending War On FUD (Hey, everything's a War these days, right?), and take a stand for the Preservation of Digital Freedom! Crank out some cuspy code, open your source, grab the caffeinated beverage of your choice, and know where your is!! Who's with me?

Er, right. Sorry about that. I get that way sometimes. *puts soapbox away*

Twinkle.. we are not s we are H2G2 sapiens

news iin march 2002:
a new kind of human was discovered on the web. the anthropologist who discovered it called them H2G2 sapiens, after the website they are on!

I'm a . Also proud of it

Any further comments about Ogg, MaW?... most importantly, d'you think there's any chance of it being adopted by mobile devices? (or know of any that support it?)

everheard of rmf files?

Er... no... what are they?

they are a high qualitity music format for internet.
they make midi files a lot smaller!

it is made by http://www.beatnik.com/ a company founded by musician Thomas Dolby.

to play them you need beatnik plug in.

Yes, Ogg Vorbis (not Ogg, that encompasses several formats including an under-development video codec), is wonderful. It's natively VBR so encodes with lots of data where necessary (although you can of course specify an average bitrate to target). Listening tests by various people have suggested that it's got a better bitrate/quality ratio than MP3. Encoders and players are all Free, sample implementations are available from http://www.xiph.org and these are what most people on GNU/Linux are using. It's also the sound format used in Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal II, because they like it and didn't want to pay for the MP3 licensing. Makes it easier for mod makers to add sounds too, and to do it with legal software, which is of course a plus.

I seem to remember hearing something about mobile device support for it, but can't remember exactly. There may be some devices planned which support it, or which can be made to support it via firmware changes. xiph.org linked above may have information, you should check it.

It's certainly getting quite a lot of attention now though. Especially since Red Hat 9 has all MP3-capable software excised from it to avoid any problems with licensing.

Hmm, according to the FAQ:

'Ogg Vorbis is not supported by any publicly-available hardware yet, but portable playback is possible for Sharp Zaurus owners by purchasing tkcPlayer software from TheKompany.'

I hope it does get hardware support, though... if a new MP3 player comes out that supports it, I'll certainly switch...

Hmm. If something was Ogg-Vorbis-only... I dunno. That darn conversion problem again.

Cool that UT uses it, though...

Hmm - do rmf files have any interesting position on the DRM side, pheloxi*?

I'm not a geek, and all this stuff sounds quite frightening to me. I've got windows 2000 and XP, am i already screwed? What can the lay user do?

Well, Windows Media Player already has provisions for DRM... best not to use it to rip CDs. Hmm. Or at all, winamp is much better

The situation isn't *too* bad with Windows 2000/XP, as far as I'm aware...

About the best thing you can do is vote with your wallet ... make sure you consider DRM when buying some new PC or multimedia hardware, and if it seems unreasonable, look for alternatives...

The problem comes if there aren't any

Since Fraunhofer, the owner of the patents on MP3, have been tightening up on licensing fees, I wouldn't be surprised if a few Ogg Vorbis portable players turn up before too long. There are arguments for it to be a superior format after all, so why shouldn't it?

Although that's never really been a reason for the modern industry to switch over. I'm sure I saw something about someone designing a hardware Vorbis decompression chip though.