Formats and Freedom

My friend Visnu-maya has been searching for a good portable digital music player. The latest model to come under her consideration is the Sandisk e260. It's Sandisk's take on an iPod Nano-killer.

I recently came across this player in a BBC article that explains that Sandisk are fighting a lawsuit with the patent holders of mp3 over this player. Apparently Sandisk are refusing to pay licensing fees for their implementation of mp3 codec on it, claiming that they have implemented it in a way that does not infringe on any existing patent. They had their entire stock impounded by the German police at an electronics tradeshow

From this review of the e260 it looks like a good player, but it doesn't support ogg, which would be a significant negative for me.

Ogg Vorbis is technically superior to mp3 (better sound quality at lower file sizes), and is also unencumbered by patents.

At the recent Open Source Symposium in Melbourne, where I was speaking about Fedora, Harish Pillay mentioned that there may not be significant momentum around switching from mp3 to ogg as the patent is due to expire in 2010. Since I've started using ogg as a matter of principle, however, I've definitely appreciated it's superior quality, as well as the feeling of freedom that using it brings. ;-)

It's a similar situation to the Graphics Interchange Format (gif), which was owned by Compuserve until the patent expired. Gif is now freely usable. However, while it was patented the Portable Network Graphics format (png) was developed as a patent-free format, and it is technically superior to gif.

MP3 is now being touted as a "legacy standard" by the main industrial players because( a) the patent expires in 2010, only three years away, and (b) it doesn't support DRM (Digital Restrictions Management).

Apple, Microsoft, and other industry heavyweights are pushing DRM-wrapped mp4, atrac3, wma and other formats that support restrictions. As mentioned in the e260 review, the end user is the loser, with digitally restricted file transfers taking exponentially longer with this device.

Check out this article about Microsoft's Zune player - they are going to DRM everything that you put through their player's wireless transfer capability, even if you own the copyright and don't want any DRM. That's exactly why I moved away from Sony's minidisc format - you couldn't even digitally copy a kirtan or lecture that you had recorded live with a mic.

Now with the Zune it's the same deal. Beam kirtans, lectures, a live or home studio recording of your music, or your podcast to a friend's Zune and Microsoft's player will refuse to play those files after three days or three playbacks, whichever comes first. How cool is that - not! :-)

Let's hope they see sense, and that end-users help them to do that by waking up enough to their collective self-interest to vote with their feet and their wallets.

In order to have free content we need to have free formats. Rewarding companies that have a commitment to consumer freedom by buying their digitally unrestricted players that use free formats is doing the grassroots work.

Those who give up their liberty for temporary convenience will find themselves ultimately with neither.