Thank 'This American Life' and ask them to set an example

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/tal-when-patents-attack

by tjr • 15 years ago

57 24 15 years ago

mustpax• 15 years ago

I don't think the proper way to thank This American Life is to pester them about a data format that less than 1% of their audience can use. Idealism needs to be tempered with practicality and radicals like RMS make all patent reformists lose credibility.

trotsky• 15 years ago

How sure are you about the less than 1% thing?

https://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.h...

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/VLC_media_pla...

And asking someone to use an un-patent-encumbered format is radicalism? Isn't that what google is doing?

meatsock• 15 years ago

rephrased, the proper way to ask a favor of a public radio show is on a note attached to your listener pledge, not an online petition that has little to do with the making of good radio, a task i imagine consumes the majority of TAL's energy.

dfxm122• 15 years ago

FSF is not demanding anything crazy here, and they'd be remiss to not bring this up.

Revolution begins at home, but it is sad that for most of us it ends there too. TAL is in a unique position to actually do something about this, and you'd think they would when you consider the tone of their program.

Ira Glass has the ears of more people than RMS or Brett Smith...

lukeschlather• 15 years ago

Android devices support Vorbis. While I will agree that it may be hard to use, I think you're underestimating its reach.

And in any case, I don't see why this makes patent reformists lose credibility. They didn't stay stop offering mp3s, they said offer free formats. You're putting words in their mouths.

podperson• 15 years ago

Indeed. Given a choice between a patent-free file I can't listen to, and a patented-up-the-wazoo format I can listen to, I'll pick the latter.

And, in case FSF hasn't been paying attention, WebM isn't looking too unencumbered right now. If Ogg ever becomes economically significant, it will probably end up in the same boat.

As others have said, we need to balance idealism and practicality. E.g. providing real audio feeds (which many NPR shows and the BBC used to) is Just Plain Stupid. But while MP3 may not be perfect it (a) works (b) everywhere and (c) doesn't cost the end-user anything.

tibbon• 15 years ago

Silly question, but aren't the patents on MP3 almost due to expire?

Will the FSF no longer be against the MP3 format once all the patents expire?

bdhe• 15 years ago

Silly question, but aren't the patents on MP3 almost due to expire?

Isn't one of the biggest problems with the mp3 format the fact that there are multiple patents owned by multiple corporations in different markets? According to [1] some have expired but there are tons more that haven't. It is also not surprising that the East Texas District mentioned in TAL has been used to settle a lawsuit involving the use of the mp3 format[2].

[1]http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues

chc• 15 years ago

As far as I can recall, MP3 has remained virtually unchanged since the mid-90s, so any patents for which MP3 itself is not prior art should have four more years at most.

dasil0032• 15 years ago

God bless the FSF, but seriously, the patent situation is getting far too onerous to be combatted by playing shell games with media formats. Regardless of what you're doing, if you so much as have a WordPress site you can probably be sued by dozens of companies on a whim. If everyone switches to Ogg tomorrow, and assuming that no one brings a patent suit against it (a big if) then what will using an unencumbered file format do for the future of software development? Absofuckinglutely nothing.

dfxm122• 15 years ago

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

The FSF has the time and people to advocate many things, including this, while still focusing on other goals.

dasil0032• 15 years ago

Yes, but what TAL has done for the cause is millions of times more effective than what FSF is asking for them to do. Furthermore, what they've done is uniquely beyond the capability of the FSF and all its resources. Overall it just seems silly.

mcfunley• 15 years ago

By make more of an impact, you mean make far less of an impact by making sure nobody can listen to their show. Good idea.

redfiche• 15 years ago

I read them as asking the show also be offered in another format, not exclusively.

eli• 15 years ago

Sure, I guess that would be nice. But I'm confused.

The story was mostly about how new software--like Ogg--inadvertently infringes on overly broad patents even if was developed in isolation. In what way does promoting Ogg solve that?

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

I actually think the FSF completely misses the point here.

We shouldn't be using patent-free file formats, that have made compromises to be patent-free. We should be fighting to end patents (except for medicine). The best thing we can ask This American Life, or ProPublica, or Planet Money, or Marketplace to do, is to air more shows about the problems patents cause.

This type of act by the FSF is the type of thing that gets some guy at the office to say, "I told you. These people just want you to use Ogg on your Linux computer running on some patent unecumbered CPU (couldn't think of one). They're just not realistic."

blackguardx• 15 years ago

End all patents except for medicine? Why does medicine get a free pass? There are just as many people gunning for pharmaceutical patent reform as there are gunning for software patent reform. The whole system needs to be revisited.

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

Because I actually think innovation would dry up in medicine without patents.

The reason being that it takes a lot of time and money to bring a new drug to market. Hundreds of millions in many cases. And the cost to create a generic version is very low. Think tens of thousands. And the time even lower (think weeks).

So you have a situation where you can spend $300M over 5 years to create a new drug (due to various regulations in bringing a drug to market), which will have generic competition in two months after release. That makes doing that type of drug research a non-starter. It's not like the drug maker can just keep improving the drug.

That doesn't happen in most other industries, where your 1 year of research and development largely gives you a 3-6 month advantage (you can release whatever you want, whenever you want). And you can then continue to improve the product at a brisk rate, building on what you've done. Google today is not the Google from a decade ago. They've taken their technology and improved it at a rapid rate, such that the current product is magnitudes better. You can't do that for most drugs.

sorbus• 15 years ago

Or, you know, you could donate money to them[1]. Which I'm sure they would find much more useful than people "thanking" them by pestering them to do more work.

[1] I find it really odd, based on the headline, that the article doesn't even mention this possibility.

jeffreymcmanus• 15 years ago

Easiest way to get public radio to do anything is to donate money to get them to do it. If you're serious about this, put your money where your mouth is.

skue• 15 years ago

I sometimes wonder if the FSF believes everything they say, or if they've spent too much time at free trade coffeeshops reading Hegel and figuring the only way they'll move the center is by screaming from the wacko fringe.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic)

tomelders• 15 years ago

This doesn't seem like a proper way to thank anyone. It seems like an attempt to drag someone into a debate they really don't belong in. This American Life is a world beating example of great journalism. Is that not enough?

This is a really nasty way to make a point.

syedkarim• 15 years ago

I work at the public radio station that "owns" This American Life (WBEZ in Chicago). There have been a few comments regarding the best way to thank TAL for their outstanding investigative journalism, so I'd like to clarify a misconception regarding the best way to thank Ira and friends. If you donate to TAL, that donation goes to Chicago Public Media; donations are not earmarked for any particular program or project; it is not possible to make a donation directly to This American Life. TAL's budget is set every June and it's not impacted by donations to the mothership. I don't think there is anything wrong with donating to Chicago Public Media, but please be aware that only a small fraction of your donation will go to support the work being done by This American Life. I would say somewhere around 10% of your donation will hit the TAL operating budget. My opinion is that the best way to support TAL's work directly is by telling as many people as you can about their work and sharing their content as often and widely as possible.

Thank 'This American Life' and ask them to set an example

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