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On Sun, 01 Apr 2007 19:48:05 +0100 Simon Williams <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I'm also confused- to me that seems like a totally brain dead thing > to say. Open source and ogg aside, surely there will always be a > converter available, even if you have to pay for it? In the proprietary world, it is quite possible to end up in a situation where a converter or reader for X format is impossible to create (legally) no matter how much money is offered. It is these kind of ludicrous dead-ends that make proprietary codecs such a bad idea in the first place. It doesn't sound logical but who said the law was logical? Technology is all about analysis and logic, methods used to control technology - like DRM, patents, EULA - are not logical in structure and force the redefinition of technical terms in legal weasel words. The conflicts that inevitably result can easily create the situation where any act becomes illegal. This is the legal paralysis that is motivating many opponents of software patents but it applies just as much to DRM. On a side note, a converter is not usually what you want - most of the codecs that would get into this situation are 'lossy' so converting from one lossy format to another lossy format only ever reduces the final quality as each codec loses different parts of the original. The better option is always a reader (either standalone or as a plugin) which can render the data without further losses. The end result of that is that old codecs never die which makes designing a new codec all the more demanding (or it would if the codec writer bothered to actually implement the entire standard and nothing else). We need open standards, the entire open standard and nothing but the open standard. ;-) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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