[advocacy] Ogg for commercial purpose ?

[L Victor Marks]

Amit,

Here is my understanding. Others can elaborate and correct me if I am 
in error.

An MP3 song is more than likely copyrighted. Unless you have permission 
from the owner of the copyright, you aren't allowed to do much with it, 
especially not "perform" it in a store.

Similarly an OGG song is also likely copyrighted, and unless it is 
licensed to you under an Open music license, you can't "perform" it by 
playing it back in a store.

International treaties and your country's copyright law may give you or 
take away rights that you may have to use copyrighted material without 
the permission of the copyright owner.

When we talk about the OGG format being free, we mean a few things. The 
OGG format is free for you to use. MP3 is not. For most MP3 encoders, 
the developer of the software has paid a fee to the owners of the MP3 
format, so you are indirectly paying for the ability to use MP3 when 
you buy an encoder. That's the free-price portion of free.

The other portion is, it's a free format. Windows Media, for example, 
is not. Windows Media only allows itself to be played back on devices 
that have paid the fee to MS. Windows Media files only work in software 
either written by MS, or that pay a fee to MS.

Anyone can use OGG in any device or software they choose, as long as 
they follow the terms of the license (GPL.)

So, taking a song and encoding it into OGG format does not make the 
song suddenly "free." It means you have a copyrighted song rendered in 
a free format which still carries the rights and responsibilities 
copyright carries with it.

That's somewhat simplified, but I expect that others will correct any 
mistakes I have made, and elaborate where I have over-simplified.

Victor Marks

On Monday, November 18, 2002, at 04:54 PM, Amit Shukla wrote:

> I heard a long time back that if you find a MP3 song somewhere on the 
> net and download it, then you can listen it for personal use but 
> cannot use it for commercial use. For example, a store can't play MP3 
> songs in the store. Is that true with the new OGG format too ? What 
> does it mean when they say that its free ?
>

<p>--- >8 ----
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