It was not and has not yet been decided afaik. This is just another recommendation that we do so. Last I heard on these lists, was legal was looking into as a prerequisite to inform any decision. Someone from the foundation can probably make a more official comment.
--michael
On 2/2/13 2:31 PM, David Gerard wrote:
So when and who authorised non-free formats?
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michael Dale mdale@wikimedia.org Date: 2 February 2013 16:25 Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Audio derivatives, turning on MP3/AAC & mobile app feature request. To: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Jan Gerber j@thing.net
+correct content-type this time ;) Note this has already been merged, but still worth mention for visibility.
On 2/1/13 12:10 PM, Michael Dale wrote:
We are about to merge in support for audio derivatives to Timed Media Handler (TMH). The big value here, I think is encoding to AAC or MP3 and adding a /listen to this article/ feature to the mobile app. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/39363/
This can really help with improving accessibility of Wiktionary pronunciation media files as well.
Also AAC / m4v ingestion, could make audio recordings a lot easier to import into the site, i.e a "record a reading of this article" mobile app feature #2 ;)
There are already thousands of spoken articles, with some promotion their could probably be a lot be more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_articles
The software patent situation for mp3 is sad, considering how long the mp3 format has been around: http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
I think AAC is a similar situation, encoder wise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding#Licensing_and_patents
But fundamentally Wikimedia is not "distributing" these encoders and there are no royalties for media distribution. Likewise we are not shipping decoders ( the decoders are in browser or the mobile OS )
I don't know why Wikimedia's commitment to being accessible in royalty free formats, somehow also precludes making content accessible for folks on platforms that ~don't~ decode royalty free formats. But hopefully we can change that over time.
Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but I hope we could come out of this thread with rough consensus to enable these formats to help increase the reach of audio works.
peace, --michael
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