Comment 2 for bug 528910

"On the music format, it's true that in some jurisdictions there are still patents involved in MP3 playback."

This hurts EVERYONE living in the United States (and probably billions living elsewhere, I'm not going to pretend to know which countries recognize bad patents for over 20 years). It's frustrating that a non-free format was chosen. What happened to "freedom"?

"no other problems."

I suppose this includes "spyware" hiding in the id3 tags that personally identifies the customer? :)

"And MP3 is the de facto standard for digital music."

Thank you for helping to continue the propagation of this nonsense. It's only popular cause it's popular, and you are helping make it more popular! You know, it may be cliche but I still say "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

"We can certainly ask our partners to recode music in Ogg format,"

You mean you've not done this already? ;) That's encouraging.

"Getting lots of people buying music from Ubuntu is the best way to build credibility for the case that EVEN MORE people would buy it in a patent-free format."

So if we welcome our MP3-spewing overlords with flowers, glorious freedom *might* come later? How many billions of dollars worth of non-free crap do we have to buy before this becomes viable?

"If you know a better way to make that case to the music industry, please do invest time and energy on that."

I've invested PLENTY of time and energy on avoiding MP3, looks like I'll continue doing that.

"The music is sold at a price. This does *not* go against the Ubuntu ethos."

I'm not cheap. Please don't assume that, I buy CDs that are more expensive than the Amazon MP3 crap to avoid the horrid, patented, low quality at any bitrate, MP3 format. NOT because I'm cheap. The format is rotten even without DRM or spyware in id3 tags, or patent issues. It's just not technically up to par with Vorbis, not even close. I'm sure this is not news to you.

But while we're on price... Why are LaLa and Amazon and many other MP3 stores consistently less expensive than 7digital?

"We know there are risks in pragmatism"

Pragmatism isn't a bad thing, gratuitously foisting non-free formats, protocols, and software on people is a bad thing.

"Over time, we will create the ability for alternative content uploads, including content under open licenses like Creative Commons."

Jamendo already does this? Magnatune? Why does anyone need an "Ubuntu One" sticker on top of something that already works today? (idle speculation) So it doesn't work with other Linux distributions?

Thanks.