[Fwd: [advocacy] Fwd: Ogg Vorbis/Interview request/French press]

[Moritz Grimm]

Dear Letitia,

Daniel James forwarded your email correspondence to the mailing list
"advocacy at xiph.org", whose topic is about advocating OGG Vorbis.

I feel like being able to contribute a bit, since I am one of those
artists that release their music as .OGG files, for free. At the age of
seven I started to learn several instruments, and played each for about
2 to 4 years. This gave me a feeling for music, but no real skills to be
creative with the instruments. This changed more than 6.5 years ago when
I started to compose with electronic equipment.

I'm releasing my music together with a friend since 1997/98, either in
the original module format (which goes even further than OGG, since it's
like releasing the source code of a song) or MP3, depending on size
and/or sound of the resulting song. When OGG Vorbis v1.0beta4 came out,
we stopped releasing MP3s and released all old MP3s as .OGG after
remastering them. This had a couple of reasons: First, OGG just sounds
better - it needs less space (good for Internet distribution) while
still offering a higher fidelity than MP3 (good for me, as I am sure
that my mastering efforts can be heard on the other end). Second, and
just as important, OGG is free. At the time we switched to OGG,
Thomson/Fhg started their gold rush and I felt pretty fooled that I
should live in uncertainty about what Thomson/Fhg might demand from me
some day for a technology that is inferior to something completely free.
MP3 is an Internet standard, and I wouldn't want to pay for it just like
I wouldn't pay for TCP/IP or HTTP. Monty's article on
http://www.xiph.org/about.html pretty much reflects my own opinion about
the music industry and Internet standards. It's worth reading, if you
haven't already.

I'd love to offer you some of my music now, but unfortunately my host
shut down its free hosting and now I have to look elsewhere to find free
webspace. As soon as I find something, the kolabore.com redirection will
lead you there. Meanwhile, you could have a look at www.tokyodawn.org, a
group of musicians that release their music the way I did until
recently, for free, as .OGGs. I know their chief personally and he's a
nice guy, so it's fine with me to advertise for them. :) (Oops, they
still link to my OGG info page that now doesn't exist any more :P)

> Daniel,
>
> I am a San Francisco-based correspondent for Les Echos, the French
> sister-newspaper of The Financial Times.
>
> I'm working on a story about Ogg Vorbis and I am looking for comments
>  from people who know the format and understand online music.
>
> Would you allow me to use some quotes form your article "Why artists
>  shoud use Ogg Vorbis"? Of course, they would be credited to you. If
>  so, how shall I describe you (title? claim to fame?)
>
> Also, I have a question: two arguments against Ogg Vorbis are:
> 1/ people will be very reluctant to switch to the new format when
>  they have all their music collection in MP3
> 2/ Ogg Vorbis makes it difficult today to produce copyright-protected
> material
>
> I'd very much like to hear your comments.
>
> I thank you for your consideration and I am looking forward to
>  hearing from you.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Laetitia Mailhes

1. Nobody forces anyone to delete their MP3 collection in order to
switch to .OGG. Transcoding (reencoding an MP3 as OGG) is a bad thing
anyways, because OGG wastes space to reproduce MP3 artifacts and
additionally degrades the sound (at least a little), too. OGG is not a
god that accepts no other gods besides him, so people can live happily
ever after with their MP3 collection and enjoy the freedom and quality
offered by OGG Vorbis with the music they're encoding in the future.

Then, Daniel's answer is also a good point - people don't have to change
their favorite player ... it's just like clicking on a file with another
ending, everything else stays the way it is. The most popular MP3
player, Winamp, was supposed to natively support OGG in its current
release. This didn't happen, unfortunately, but it's scheduled for the
next release, IIRC.

2. Back to my music at this point ... I am very concerned about my
copyrights. Actually, I love them, because they protect me from the
music industry and those lame rippers within it. It all happened before,
and I need to get my security from somewhere else. I have friends that
always get my music first, I have the material I made the tune from,
etc. Well, this is my main concern, since I release my music for free
and don't want anyone else to make money with it. My terms and condition
for using my music are similar to those of the music industry ... I
don't make big distinctions between commercial rippers or private music
sharing people. I know that the latter do it anways, so I don't need to
explicitly allow this. My music is free, so why not get it directly from
me ...

To better see it the other way round, I'd have to play a what-if game.
What if I was a successful musician, who releases music commercially on
CDs, has gigs, and so on. The big bosses who pimp my music (and keep
most of the revenue for themselves) decide that it'd be cool to release
a promo tune for free on the Internet. This tune is downloadable, after
a registration and a 10-page-survey, in the all-new hyperprotected
WMP3A+ProUltra format that is almost as cool as the tapes/disks from the
Mission Impossible TV show. You have to pay for every month you want to
be able to listen to the tune, but at least the first month is free. The
WMP3A+PU-Player runs only under Windows XPSP2 or higher, because the
format is so proprietary that it would be too expensive to port to
Macintosh, let alone some Unix. Now that all my Internet-aware fans hate
me and write me dirty letters, I am shocked to hear that my tune was
cracked after only 1 week and is now spread, without limitation and
without registration, as OGG. Too bad that it doesn't sound as good
anymore, because OGG works different than WMP3A+PU and degraded the
sound a litte. Some people claim that my music is badly produced and
they stop buying my CDs. Darn.

Long story, little point ... to sum it up, protection mechanisms make no
sense at all. It WILL be cracked, and no US law in the DMCA will be able
to stop that. People will share music on the Internet - these are things
that cannot/must not be policed. This is one of those things where
constitutional patriotism is appropriate. Our liberties are values that
must not be undermined, nowhere. IMO, the industry should see music
sharing as a friend, not an enemy. No lossy compression algorithm on
earth will ever sound as good as a CD or Vinyl, and the real music
lovers that buy several CDs a month will not be satisfied by the
Internet. All the "free", shared music on the Internet is no more and no
less than a teaser to buy more CDs. I truly believe that the record
sales rise constantly thanks to the Internet's music sharing, and not
due to Web-Ads. The market for advertising on the Internet is dead.

Selling OGG Vorbis files saves insane MP3/MP3pro/WMA/... licensing fees
that could only be afforded by big companies or those who get their main
revenue from somewhere else. The saved money can be used to either
compensate the slightly higher 'losses' due to music sharing or even for
giving the artist more of the well-deserved cake. Besides, every new
listener is a potential new buyer. Be it because of that one track of an
Album that can't be found on the Internet for some reason or just
because of being audiophile or, who knows, because of being honest and
fair to the artist.

The real damage is made by those who steal music and make money from it.
This is money that should have gone to the artist, but instead it went
to the thief. To deal with this, not the 16years old kiddie sharing it's
No. 1 charts hit with his friends is to blame, but pirated CDs in shops
or flea markets etc. should be checked more closely. Revenue going into
the wrong hands is a bad thing, revenue not being there is bad luck, or
something to look for in the marketing department.

Well, that's it ... I hope you can use some of what I wrote here.

Regards,

Moritz

> > Would you allow me to use some quotes form your article "Why
> > artists shoud use Ogg Vorbis"?
>
> Certainly!
>
> > how shall I describe you (title? claim to fame?)
>
> Daniel James of LinuxUser magazine
>
> > 1/ people will be very reluctant to switch to the new format when
> > they have all their music collection in MP3
>
> This is really a non-issue since the popular players (even the
> Windows Media Player) support both formats with the appropriate
> plug-in. The early hardware players can't play the new format, but
> that goes for all new formats, including the so-called 'secure' ones.
> The Iomega HipZip plays Ogg Vorbis files and it's just been reduced
> in price to US $149 at iomega.com - cheap really.
>
> > 2/ Ogg Vorbis makes it difficult today to produce
> > copyright-protected material
>
> All music that's copyrighted is protected by copyright. Technical
> solutions to the file sharing 'problem' don't work, because music
> lovers don't want them to work. Besides, if the record companies
> would only admit it, shared music files actually increase CD sales.
> We're much more likely to buy a CD from an artist we've heard than
> one we haven't.
>
> Due to the open-source nature of Ogg Vorbis, the format calls into
> question the assumptions behind the industry position on the control
> of digital music. We're unlikely to see an SDMI approved version of
> Ogg Vorbis, but it's conceivable that officially released .ogg files
> could be signed with an encryption key. This would prove that the
> artist was happy for the music to be freely shared on the internet.
>
> Cheers
>
> Daniel

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