(no subject)

[David Liguori]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> On 08/18/2009 09:24 AM, gilpel at altern.org wrote:
>
>   
>> Unfortunately, the legal approach of Mr Sundaram still doesn't answer this
>> enigma: if proprietary document formatting is just defining an awfully
>> more complex and secret way of producing bold than <B></B>, then what are
>> media codecs exactly?
>>     
>
> Already answered in the FAQ. Read it carefully.
>
> Rahul
>
>   
Media formats almost always involve lossy compression  There are reasons 
for selecting one lossy compression scheme over another that are very 
different from considerations of document formatting, which do seem to 
be primarily a way of keeping things proprietary.  Lossy compression is 
still very much a topic of ongoing research.  If someone comes up with a 
clever scheme for lowering the bit count while minimizing the subjective 
loss, that person could reasonably claim it as intellectual property.  
I'm not plugging the proprietary software distribution paradigm, just 
saying.

Of course, media formats are also entangled with "digital rights 
management",  which has everything to do with the issues addressed in 
your FAQ.  Generally these work against usability, data efficiency and 
quality. 

I won't touch here the debate over music wanting to be free vs. 
musicians wanting to be paid and the extent to which DRM accomplishes 
the latter, other than to point out that it is frequently and plausibly 
argued that musicians are pretty much the last people DRM protects, if 
at all.