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COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for August 13, 2001
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
INVENTORS RELEASE FREE ALTERNATIVE TO MP3 MUSIC, BUT COST IS HIGH
Issue: Open Source
Christopher Montgomery may do for music what Linus Torvald (Linux) has
done for operating systems. Montgomery is the creator of a piece of free
software that potentially has major societal implications. But whatever
fame he achieves through this software, is balanced by three-years of
work that has cost him his marriage, job and savings. Montgomery has
developed a program called Ogg Vorbis at great personal expense. Why?
Ogg Vorbis was created as a free alternative to the MP3 software used
to make music files out of CD disks. Why? First, Christopher Montgomery
believes in the hacker ethic that software should be free. Secondly,
Montgomery was became disturbed by the licensing practices of the current
digital music giant. While home users don't typically pay for their use of
MP3 encoding software, makers of the encoding programs must pay royalties
starting at $15,000 to the Fraunhofer Institute of Germany and Thomson
Multimedia, which invented the MP3 system. And musicians who sell their
songs in MP3 format are supposed to pay royalties as well. Further Mont-
gomery sees companies working in online music, such as Fraunhofer and
Microsoft, abandoning current-generation MP3 software in favor of newer
systems that stress copyright protection at the expense of users. Ogg
Vorbis will emerge as a user-friendly alternative, he believes. Today
the completed version is being made available for free downloading at
www.vorbis.com. Ogg Vorbis can be used MP3-like files from a music CD,
and also to play them back. Many MP3 playing programs, like WinAmp, offer
special "plug-ins" to allow them to also play Ogg Vorbis files along with
traditional MP3s. Mr. Montgomery says his software is not only free, it
also produces better-sounding music and takes up less space on computers.
An average Ogg Vorbis music file uses about 38% less hard-drive space than
an average MP3 file. 100,000 people downloaded test versions of the software
last month alone.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Mei Fong]
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB99766044910000000.htm
