Recently, Erik Moeller proposed that the Commons should allow Flash playback of Wikimedia Commons content. This proposal, which appears to have come out of a meeting Erik had with some Mozilla and archive.org bigwigs, is typical of Erik's proposals: it compromises the foundational principles of Wikimedia in exchange for increasing the number of organizations with which Erik has influence. In this case, it would create a relationship between Erik and archive.org (because Wikimedia would discontinue hosting video media on Commons in favor of hosting it at archive.org) that would tend to increase Erik's apparent importance in the free content universe. However, the proposal also completely ignores that Flash is not a free content medium: Flash is encumbered by multiple patents (at least one of which, the MP3 patent, makes it simply illegal for the Commons to distribute the content without acquiring an expensive license).
Greg Maxwell has already written a very good response to Erik's proposal. There has been in place, for quite some time now, a Java-based, fully free Ogg Theora player for Wikimedia content, which has been used quite a lot by Wikipedia readers. This mechanism was implemented by Greg using the toolserver and is well-accepted with a successful penetration level approaching, if not exceeding, that of the Flash solution that Erik is backing, while at the same time not relying on any patent-encumbered technologies. Greg also points out that moving Wikimedia content to archive.org and depending on them breaks Wikimedia as a standalone solution. Collaboration is one thing; dependency is quite another.
The main problem here is that Erik is once again pursuing his personal interests instead of the Foundation's interests. The Foundation's interest is in gathering free content. In order to be free, the content must not be encumbered by copyright, but it must also not be encumbered by restrictive encoding patents. MP3s are not permitted on Wikimedia because the MP3 format is not free (and also because the Wikimedia Foundation does not have the required license to distribute MP3s). The same situation exists with Flash (in fact, entirely, because Flash 8 only supports MP3 audio, which means distributing Flash 8 content requires an MP3 distributor's license). However, Erik's interest here has nothing to do with free content. It has to do with building Erik's power network. If Erik is successful in this proposal, he will have established a connection between himself, and at the very least, Brewster Kahle's archive.org, which is widely regarded as an important player in the free content universe. And that's what Erik wants here: to be more important in the free content universe. I don't think Erik really cares that much about free content by itself; he is just using it as a vehicle to make himself important.
Don't get me wrong: I like Brewster and I like what he's doing with archive.org, but they're not about free content. They're simply about content. Archive.org basically ignores copyright and patent law entirely, following them only when forced to by lawyers. That's fine, that's how they work, and I'm not bothered by that. But what they do doesn't support free content; in some ways it actually diminishes it (why create free content when equivalent nonfree content is available from archive.org?). Their interests are not Wikimedia's interests, although there are certainly common areas. The possibility for synergies may well exist, but this particular issue isn't one of them.
It's interesting that when Greg presented Erik with actual data regarding the use of the existing solution, Erik rejects it and demands a pointless and intrusive survey instead, and furthermore declares that the existing solution is worthless if a majority of Africans are unable to view the video with the current solution. It's quite clear that Erik is grasping at straws to save his idea, instead of accepting that his proposal lacks merit. If he was a sensible person, he would simply admit that his idea doesn't stand up after examination of the facts. But he doesn't, and he won't, because that doesn't suit his real purpose here, which is to advance his own importance, at whatever cost.
In short, Erik is once again proposing to compromise Wikimedia's principles for his own personal glory, to solve a problem that does not exist. How predictably Erik.
Update: See Erik mercilessly attack Greg here.
Greg Maxwell has already written a very good response to Erik's proposal. There has been in place, for quite some time now, a Java-based, fully free Ogg Theora player for Wikimedia content, which has been used quite a lot by Wikipedia readers. This mechanism was implemented by Greg using the toolserver and is well-accepted with a successful penetration level approaching, if not exceeding, that of the Flash solution that Erik is backing, while at the same time not relying on any patent-encumbered technologies. Greg also points out that moving Wikimedia content to archive.org and depending on them breaks Wikimedia as a standalone solution. Collaboration is one thing; dependency is quite another.
The main problem here is that Erik is once again pursuing his personal interests instead of the Foundation's interests. The Foundation's interest is in gathering free content. In order to be free, the content must not be encumbered by copyright, but it must also not be encumbered by restrictive encoding patents. MP3s are not permitted on Wikimedia because the MP3 format is not free (and also because the Wikimedia Foundation does not have the required license to distribute MP3s). The same situation exists with Flash (in fact, entirely, because Flash 8 only supports MP3 audio, which means distributing Flash 8 content requires an MP3 distributor's license). However, Erik's interest here has nothing to do with free content. It has to do with building Erik's power network. If Erik is successful in this proposal, he will have established a connection between himself, and at the very least, Brewster Kahle's archive.org, which is widely regarded as an important player in the free content universe. And that's what Erik wants here: to be more important in the free content universe. I don't think Erik really cares that much about free content by itself; he is just using it as a vehicle to make himself important.
Don't get me wrong: I like Brewster and I like what he's doing with archive.org, but they're not about free content. They're simply about content. Archive.org basically ignores copyright and patent law entirely, following them only when forced to by lawyers. That's fine, that's how they work, and I'm not bothered by that. But what they do doesn't support free content; in some ways it actually diminishes it (why create free content when equivalent nonfree content is available from archive.org?). Their interests are not Wikimedia's interests, although there are certainly common areas. The possibility for synergies may well exist, but this particular issue isn't one of them.
It's interesting that when Greg presented Erik with actual data regarding the use of the existing solution, Erik rejects it and demands a pointless and intrusive survey instead, and furthermore declares that the existing solution is worthless if a majority of Africans are unable to view the video with the current solution. It's quite clear that Erik is grasping at straws to save his idea, instead of accepting that his proposal lacks merit. If he was a sensible person, he would simply admit that his idea doesn't stand up after examination of the facts. But he doesn't, and he won't, because that doesn't suit his real purpose here, which is to advance his own importance, at whatever cost.
In short, Erik is once again proposing to compromise Wikimedia's principles for his own personal glory, to solve a problem that does not exist. How predictably Erik.
Update: See Erik mercilessly attack Greg here.
I think it's important to distinguish between free content and free formats. The former is much more important than the latter, as generally speaking, for any format Wikimedia adopts, if it can go 20 years without getting sued, it's all good. The distribution patents expire much sooner than content copyrights, and for many things patent-wise, gratis formats may be good enough, if it helps the cause of libre content.
ReplyDeleteI should add that I'm still uncomfortable with Wikimedia giving up hosting its own content. Using Flash just shouldn't be an automatic dealbreaker simply because its unfree. There are supposedly potential patent issues even with some of the Ogg formats, after all (though I don't know how to rate the reliability of those rumors).
ReplyDeleteSage: Actually, non-free formats are deal-breakers. Note how we don't use them at all. What's the point of free content if it isn't delivered in a free format? One of the big advantages of free content is that anyone can modify it and redistribute with modifications. That's simple to do with Ogg - just download the free tools and use them. But with Flash? That's a problem.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for potential problems with Ogg, that's just FUD. Pay it the same heed as Bush's proclamation that Iraq had something to do with 9/11.
Ok, I'm not a computer person. So can you please tell me what it would take to add slick video serving to wikipedia?
ReplyDeleteAssume free software and all that ... assume it works as easy as youtube. What would need to be done?
Greg M's toolserver page works, but not that well for me. It skips and stalls and sometimes crashes. It's not embedded in the wikipedia page. It opens some irritating java window every time I use it. The track bar and volume icon don't work. You have to download the giagantornoumous Java from sun
OK, free software crusaders, what would it take to make slick Flash-like video serving that is as simple and easy and works as well as youtube, and can be embedded in the wikipedia page if desired --- and that doesn't rely on unfree software and patents.
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ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous non-computer-guru.
ReplyDeleteIt would take about four or five lines of code to make the pre-existing player appear inline. But by doing so it would insert a lot of airspace into the article and generally bugger the layout. I don't think this is what people want, but I don't care myself.
Since I see some interest I'll code it as an option in the next update to the player.
The player has multiple modes. The least preferred mode is Java, which is used if you have no other way to play the video. As far as I can tell all of the rest of your complaints are specific to the Java. You can be rid of them right now by installing the VLC plugin from www.videolan.org.
Of course, telling people to download yet more software isn't ideal.. so the Java player will improve. (I note you complain about the size of Java.. yet you also had to download the 3mbyte flash player at some point. It is smaller than the 7mbyte JVM, however)
It's also the case that sometime in the next version or two of both Firefox and Opera they will include fully native support for Ogg/Theora (it is part of the HTML5 standard). If you use one of these browsers no more software will ever be required and all will be happy and functional.
The track bar doesn't work with Java because the player does not currently know the length of the file. Because the player was created without the help of the core Wikimedia developers this information is not easily available to it. I have a solution for this, but it'll be a bit before I have a chance to integrate it.
Really the most important thing required to have slick playback is attention and feedback and support.
When I make a change I have to literally beg people to test it for me. Even with the handful of people who consistently help (Makemi (with Mac) and Lar (with less common JVMs), if he's around) it still takes me several *hours* to run through tests on all platforms and clients which I consider important.
I get the distinct impression that most Wikimedians don't care much at all about video playback. They won't actually follow the links to check stuff for me. I do not know why this is the case. Perhaps it is because so few of them have any buy in to video, having submitted or used none.
I've experience the same lack of interest from the folks inside Wikimedia, at least when it comes to doing something actually productive. Lots of people are eager to speculate.
We had an issue for months (over a year?) where large images and media would randomly get stuck as zero byte files. The problem was easily reproducable, yet it took me months to get it mostly fixed. It just wasn't a priority for anyone.
As far as your volume control comment goes: It doesn't work because their is no volume control.
The speaker icon indicates that audio is enabled. Your comment is the first feedback I've seen indicating confusion on this matter, but now that you mention it... it seems obviously confusing to me.
In the next update I'll either remove it entirely, or I'll turn it into an audio toggle button. I can't quickly add a proper volume control, so I'll leave doing that for later.
Thanks for your feedback. With continued feedback, support, and a smidge of patience we can have the robust support you and I are both dreaming of...
The real hurdles are social and resource related more than technical.
Even if we decided to abandon free formats and use flash issues like that would still exist until we resolved the root causes.
Hi Sage.
ReplyDeleteAt Wikimania, Brewster Kahle from Internet Archive said, regarding copyright issues, something along the lines of "Who sues a library?"
I think this statement highlights a fundamental difference between Wikimedia and IA, and also addresses your first post. Wikimedia's mission isn't just to offer content that is (hopefully) good to the world, at no cost, without being sued. The mission goes far beyond that to include the creation of content which provides people with a large amount of freedom, and to promote a culture of sharing in that free content. So it's not good enough if Wikipedia can simply get away with distributing something, as a library can. We haven't finished our job unless everyone else (including those who are not libraries) can do the same thing that we did.
This aspect of Wikimedia's mission drives a lot of other decisions. Surely Wikimedia could get gratis access to content from National Geographic, Corbis, Getty Images, or a host of other content providers. It would add a lot of content to our site that we otherwise couldn't get access to, or could get only with great difficulty. But we haven't done that, because we've committed to the idea that it is important to encourage libre content, rather than content that is simply no cost.
You say that our focus should be free content, and not other things. I agree. You also get the idea that if that content is in a non-free format at all, the content is not free, because the non-free format can effectively put a tax on the content. But you don't mind non-free formats so long as the content is also offered in a free format.
This is an attractive idea, but it has a flaw. From your posts it seems you understand that non-mainstream formats are far less useful, and that's why you think we shouldn't demand the use of a non-mainstream format.
The issue your position misses, though, is that if a free format is non-mainstream, it might as well not exist at all. The 'tax' on non-free software can still be charged to anyone who wants to communicate effectively with the general public (instead of only free software zealots), because communicating with the general public who only use the mainstream format will still require that you too use that non-free format.
So offering a mainstream non-free format is really socially equivalent to not offering a free format at all.
So long as is it is not easy or mainstream to play video on the internet with complete freedom, no video on the internet is really free content. In a world where free formats aren't mainstream, content in unencumbered formats is still ''more'' free than the other formats, but those who would use an unencumbered format must still carry the unreasonable burden of dealing with a non-mainstream format.
Today there are a lot of heavily-encumbered formats, and the licensors of these formats enforce their rights selectively. The government-granted monopoly licenses on these formats allow the formation of a legally-maintained oligarchy over electronic content distribution. Our middlemen used to be record companies and movie distribution houses, but today they are Fraunhofer and their business partners. Their licensors are free to selectively tax third-party content distributed on the Internet, in addition to taxing editing and playback devices.
And they use this power intelligently: they only demand the most that they can get without asking for so much that switching to a free format would be less costly. They'd probably never bother Wikimedia directly, unless doing so was part of a maneuver to stop us from offering unencumbered formats -- and probably not even that, since offering unencumbered formats as an alternative does little to break the marketplace lock-in.
As you correctly noted, patents have a fairly short lifespan. But that problem isn't just a problem with a single patent or patent-encumbered format. Today, all of the mainstream video and audio formats are encumbered. The patents encumbering MP3 will begin expiring in a few years (though we're quite a bit further off from a fully-liberated state-of-the-art MP3 encoder). Yet already people are being pushed into new encumbered formats which have fresh patents: witness Apple's aggressive advocacy of AAC.
The majority of desktop computers can't play the older MPEG audio layer 2 with their standard software. It's not unreasonable to expect all encumbered formats to be removed from the mainstream before they become free... or at least shortly thereafter.
So the problem is then that if everyone ignores the free format issue and goes along with the mainstream, the mainstream will never be a free format. If a free format isn't maintream is is of reduced usefulness and, acordingly, reduced freedom.
There is a cost to making a switch to free formats, and the cost of the proprietary formats is carefully managed and leveraged to be slightly cheaper than switching and to inflate the cost of the free formats.
Wikimedia's mission of free content isn't complete until there are really free formats for our content. As such it makes perfect sense for us to expend effort, money, and patience to make sure truly free formats exist so that our content can be free.
As far as 'patent issues with some of Ogg': it's FUD, honestly.
Alternatively, it's easy to see that any piece of software could be hit with a submarine patent (for example, Microsoft losing a 1 billion dollar lawsuit for audio coding tech that they had already paid millions in licensing fees for). As such it's not impossible that someone could make a claim against a Xiph codec, but the same is true about any of the proprietary formats: you could be sued for using a format you paid for. Unlike the proprietary formats the Xiph codecs have all been audited for, and created with the intention of, avoiding patents with a remote chance of validity. No such efforts can be perfect, but you are clearly better off in this regard using a Xiph format than most of the alternatives, even if you pay for them. The only way to eliminate this risk entirely is to curtail software patents, but thats a whole other issue.
Blah blah blah... I've said a lot. At the end of the day, the reality is that the free formats we already have are working for a lot of people, and that support is going to just get better and better in the coming year, especially with us behind it. And as such, the use of non-free formats just isn't a compromise we need to make... even if you don't think it's much of one.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteI see the strength of your position, with respect to the idea that "offering a mainstream non-free format is really socially equivalent to not offering a free format at all." In order to established and promote free formats, we need to offer only the free format.
But free content (even delivered in Flash) can be disentangled from its format and converted to another; if the content itself is free, that's better than nothing.
My worry is that Wikimedia will be too far behind the curve, so that some other organization/site that is less committed to freedom will be good enough at what we want do to attract the level of mindshare and community that will impede Wikimedia's growth in the video domain. Unlike with the online encyclopedia market, we are not arriving into a vacuum. (Case in point: Vidipedia; doubtless there will be projects even closer to what we want to do, in the near future.)
There's also the issue that adopting a mainstream encumbered format now will create inertia for the continued support of that format even as it lapses into freedom. You can't push AAC to the exclusion of MP3 if everyone relies on MP3 for all the free music they download from Wikimedia. (That's basically already happended; while it was feasible to abandon MP2 support, it will be much less so to abandon MP3 support, even companies try to push their own additional formats. The vast majority of what's filling iPods is still in MP3, and the music player industry has little interest in that format *except* insofar as it is de facto free (since they don't own the patents), neglecting a few minor lawsuits here and there.
Certainly, it would good to have a format that is mainstream but easier for end users to store and manipulate than Flash (like MPEG-4 Part 2 via Xvid). But I still don't think non-free format should be an automatic deal-breaker.
Two thumbs up! I could not agree more with this post. Bravo Kelly Bravo!
ReplyDeletedragonfire1024, I don't think sucking up to Kelly Martin so that she'll root for you in the next election is going to work.
ReplyDeleteUpdate: See Erik mercilessly attack Greg here.
ReplyDeleteOh Kelly, you silly sausage. That wasn't a "mercilessly attack". It wasn't even mean spirited. It was rational and calm.
Danny's board campaign - now that was a mercilessly attack.
Kelly, when you say things that are that far outside the realm of reality, people will stop listening and start laughing.
It reminds me of Bobby Fischer accusing the Japanese of trying to murder him when he was in jail - by putting him in a prison that was near a nuclear power plant.
"mercilessly attack", come on Kelly.
If you don't see what's wrong with Erik saying Greg your opinion is wrong, you're stupid, and I don't care what you have to say, oh and not to mention, I'm going to keep on having secret meetings with people, without informing the board, no matter how much anyone complains, because I might benefit out of it for Omegawiki (because there's nothing wrong with abusing my position on the board to advance my own personal desires) then you should drink some arsenic because you're obviously too stupid to live.
ReplyDelete