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Anyone involved in, or contemplating the transmission of digitized audio
between computers over the Internet for such purposes as distance teaching,
virtual reality telepresence, and audio/video conferencing may wish to
become familiar with a March 4th petition by the Americas Carriers
Telecommunication Association (ACTA) to the FCC regarding Internet
telecommunications. This petition appears to broadly define all Internet
real-time audio communications between computer users as telephone calls
and seeks their prohibition. The FCC Common Carrier Bureau responded March
8th with Public Notice Report #2124 requesting comments on the petitioned
Rulemaking No. 8775 with an April 8th deadline. International
communications would appear to be affected only if passing through or
terminating in the US. Excerpted supplemental information follows:
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[ Url: http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/WWW/hottopic.html#. |
| Internet Audio Mix is an intuitive multi-track recorder and Wave/MP3
mixer. Drag and drop Wave or MP3 files. Record from the CD, microphone
or line-in. Make as many tracks as you can or organize your sounds into
groups. Change your session in real time, including clipboard
operations. Use the built in lightning fast editing options or edit
sounds in an external editor. Preview and save in various Real Audio
formats. |
| The software enables users to audibly
talk with one another in real-time. Respondents make a one-time
charge for the software, but users incur no other charges for
making local or long distance telephone calls to any other
Internet Phone user in the world (except for whatever the user
already pays monthly to whomever provides them Internet access).
..
[ Some justifications given for regulation in the publics interest ] |
|
Some of the internet encoding algorithms work very well. But it depends on
how much theyre trying to collapse the data. Consider: your original
signal is a bit over 1.5 megabit per second (you said 48k s/r and stereo).
Youre crunching it through a real-time Zephyr down to 128
kilobits/second, and it probably still sounds great at the receiving
end... even though youre throwing away more than 90% of the audio data to
squeeze it through ISDN. |
| Offering media activists the means to globally distribute and share
programming and content, the internet will continue to play an ever
increasingly important role in the democratization and decentralization
of news and information. Learn: how to use the internet to obtain audio
source material; what file formats and software are used; what audio
streaming and webcasting are, and how to set up an internet radio
station; about uploading content to the web in MP3 format; what
recording, playback, and editing software tools are available and their
application.
Workshop Dates: April 22, May 27 |
