I'd like to download Spoken Wikipedia articles to my MP3 player so I can learn stuff without being stuck at a computer. At present I cannot, because my MP3 player doesn't play Ogg Vorbis, and cannot be made to support it. Further, MP3's are not permitted on Wikipedia because of the lack of legal free players:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-July/011514.html
Our policy is motivated correctly: Wikipedia needs to be free, and that includes the technology which is required to access it.
However, is there any problem with having a rule along the lines of: "MP3 format can be used by Wikipedia only in those cases where the same material is also available in Ogg in equal or better quality"? That way, Wikipedia audio content can always be read by legal free players AND by devices which do not, and maybe cannot, support Ogg.
(As usual, feel free to point me to wherever this has been beaten to death already, if that's the case)
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
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