Episode: 590
Title: HPR0590: QSK Episode 2: MP3 v. OGG
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0590/hpr0590.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:38:27

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Welcome to the Black Sparrow Media, the Internet Broadcast Network.
All right, everybody. Thank you once again for stopping by the QSK Netcast and taking a listen
to what I have to offer. Thankfully, I'm not going to have to talk entirely by myself this episode.
We have the current world record holder for the most podcast attended in a one-year period,
not claw to from the IRC. Thank you very much for stopping by.
Thank you for having me.
Not a problem. I know this is an issue you and I have discussed in the IRC chat several times.
I know I said that when I set this up, there's going to be a point counterpoint kind of thing,
but my intent here is not to try and convert you or to convert anyone else or anything like that,
but sort of just to get the information out there. The particular topic we're speaking of tonight
is the war that involves software patents and particularly about podcasting in general,
where some podcasts will release in a variety of different formats and some
podcasts like Clotus only come out in open source formats like Og or Speaks or something else.
The basic title of this QSK Netcast is MP3 V-OG to put it in the kind of legal light.
Before I start talking about all the notes that I've taken here,
let me go ahead and get your impression of the battle itself and why you only release your
podcasts and I guess I'll call it an August in non proprietary formats. Our patent free formats
will go with for this topic of discussion. One of the big reasons that I release
only in Og is because I really want to promote that as a format and I don't think that Og is going
to become a viable format if no one uses it, so I like to use it. The other reason I do it
is because I've just had, I'm a multi-media artist or whatever, so I've gone through way too many
day-long headaches over different codecs that other proprietary systems don't want to
deal away or you have some problem. I want there to be open formats and since MP3 and the
impact in general isn't going in that direction at all, I like to support the ones that are
going in that direction or are already there. That is a well-made point and I understand
perfectly there's certainly something to be said for that but the implication there in
is that Og is an unused format and I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. I see it out there
in many different forms and when I listen to podcasts, particularly those dealing with open
source which kind of makes sense. They talk about Og Vorbis and they talk about especially lately
Og Fiora which is the video codec that uses the Og container quite a bit, so it's not like it's
unheard of at this point but you think it still needs promotion beyond a small level, I take it.
Yeah, I think that the more people adopting it, the more viable a format it is. The only reason
MP3 is so popular is because it is ubiquitous. Well, it's true. It is a rather ubiquitous format
and what is your impression of MP3 as a format and what do you know of the patent issues that surround
it? My impression is that it's really, it's fine. It's great. I mean, I don't have a problem with
MP3. I mean, I do notice sometimes the compression is a little bit drastic but I mean, that's not the,
I don't think that's the codex fault. I think that's the compressor's fault. So,
what do I know about the patent issues? I'm not a lawyer. I don't understand this stuff.
I do know that, technically speaking, if you're going to make money off of it, I think you
are supposed to pay a license and that's about all I really need to go for sure, I think.
Okay, that's fair. And I think when it comes to legal use, it's pretty safe bet to say that
almost nobody knows anything about the issues unless you are, in fact, a lawyer.
And a patent lawyer at that. I mean, you have to be very specialized, I think, to understand
this stuff. Very true. So, let me go ahead and run down what I have come across as far as software
patents in general and then we'll get into the meat of the matter as regards AGV MP3.
From what I understand in doing some quick research before the podcast, software patents are
only valid in countries where patenting of software is enforceable and those countries are not
that many as it turns out. The unfortunate thing is that the United States happens to be one of those
countries. Other major players in the software patents are Japan, China, and India, all of which
have had lawsuits which prove that patents on software can be enforced. There are software patents
in places like the European Union and the United Kingdom, however, because of the way the laws
on patents are written and because of the way the jurisdiction has come down on some of the
legislation on software patents, they have pretty much proven that software patents in those places
are unenforceable. Therefore, even though patents exist, they're really irrelevant. And of course,
everywhere else patent issues are not issues. There simply just aren't patents. I mean, there are
patents just not on software. As far as software patents are concerned, MP3 is a patent-encumbered
format. Now, the reason it's patent-encumbered is because it was developed quite a while ago
back in 1991 originally. It was released as a specification in 1993. It was developed by a group
called the Moving Picture Experts Group, which is what MP3 stands for MPG. MP3 specifically
refers to MP1, Audio Layer 3, or MP2, Audio Layer 3. And some of the people involved in developing
MP2, Audio Layer 3 are folks from the Fraunhofer Society, the University of Hanover in Germany,
AT&T Bell Labs, which should send up red flags to anybody at this point.
Thomas Brandt, the CCETT, and others. And right now, there are only two entities who are claiming
patent on MP3 and by claiming patent, I mean that there are two entities who are requesting
payment royalties for use of the patents. And those two entities are the Fraunhofer Society
and Thompson Multimedia. If you go to, there's a website out there called MP3licensing.com
and they talk about all of the royalties that are associated with encoding in the MP3 format,
and they list all of the patents that they claim on the MP3s. And I'm going to take a quick look
at the list of patents here, and they are extensive. I'm not sure exactly how many patents
there are here, but if you look at the list, it's a long one. Now, there's some interesting
things about the way these patents work, specifically about MP3. One of the ways they work is that
as far as a free and open source product decoding patent or decoding content in MP3,
there is no royalty associated with that. And I was curious if you were aware of that.
I assumed that that's the case because you can encode two MP3 using a lot of different software,
so I'm not surprised to hear that. Well, depending on the software that you encode
in MP3 in, the royalties may or may not have been paid to Thompson or Fraunhofer,
depending on whether those pieces of software abide by the patent law.
I was going to say like lame. Although lame, I guess it's an MP3 encoder, so that doesn't count.
Well, I think there may be some debate about that.
Yeah, and I didn't bring up lame because that was a can of worms. I didn't really want to get
into on a short cast like this one. Sorry. No, that's not a problem. But you've brought it up,
so great. But here's the interesting thing. If you look at MP3 licensing.com,
and I'm going to have this link in the show notes, but there's a link. And it talks about
what you and I do, which is network broadcasting, basically. It also involves streaming audio,
regular music distribution, CDs, DVDs, things like that, and traditional broadcasting,
on air, on demand, so on, so forth. And then at the bottom, there is some legalese that says
no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities, not generating revenue, or other
consideration of any kind, or for entities with associated annual gross revenue,
less than $100,000 to US. Now, the way I read that, and I admit that my legalese is not that good,
is that unless you make more than $100,000 doing something that involves a commercial
transaction involving MP1 and MP2 audio layer 3, or you generate revenue in some other way
that uses MPG, you are not required to pay royalties for doing that. So a free podcast,
like this one, or yours, is not required to pay royalties on the patentable MP3 format.
Very nice, then I still won't use it. And as I said originally, my point is not to get you to use it.
I have no problem with taking a moral stand about an issue that you believe in.
I just want to make it clear to people who use MP3, or who release a podcast in MP3,
that unless they're doing it commercially for profit, you don't have to worry about the patent,
you don't have to worry about patent infringement. It doesn't apply.
Let me ask you really far out questions that I almost don't even want to ask, but I think it's worth
those things. What if for some reason I started releasing an MP3, and then I got really,
really famous, and I turn this around and turn it into a million dollar business. Then I'd have
to start paying Addons. Is that how it works? My understanding, if that, the revenue is directly
related to your release of information encoded as MP3, then yes, you would be required to pay
the broadcast licensing royalty associated with the patents. Okay. Now, as I said, I'm not a lawyer.
My legalese is bad to horrible at best, and that's just the way I read it.
Okay. But it's pretty clear to me that if you're doing it for free, if you're doing anything for
free and use MP3, you don't have to worry about it. And one of the things they specifically
reference in here is ripping DVDs. If you rip your DVDs to MP3, that is perfectly acceptable.
Wow. Yep, it's pretty neat, huh? That is really cool. That's very interesting.
I will read that little bit just so people can make their own determination of that.
But let's see, where did I see that exactly? It was in the thing I read before I skipped over the
little parenthetical bit, which says, no licenses needed for private, non-commercial activities.
For example, home entertainment, receiving broadcasts, and creating a personal music library.
That is considered royalty free. And that's on front hoppers and Thompson's own website,
MP3licencing.com. They're the ones who put this page out. So if you have an issue with that,
I suggest you point them to their own literature. So like I said, I have no intention of
trying to convert you to using an MP3 format. And I myself, even though I could, with a reasonable
expectation of guilt freedom, I could release this podcast using MP3 since I'm not getting money
forward. I'm not doing it commercially and understand that I could use that codec royalty free. However,
I feel the same obligation that you do to try and release in the AUG format or the AUG Vorbus
audio format specifically in order to promote the open source way of doing things.
Well, I think especially for your intended audience and certainly for my little audience,
I think a lot of people actually are fine with the AUG format because you can just,
I mean like literally I'll have a system sometimes that I've installed
GNU Linux onto. And by default, it will play AUG and it will not play in MP3.
So it's just kind of almost, I think my audience is fine with that, really.
Yeah, I think what you brought up originally is the real problem with the AUG Vorbus audio format.
And that's that it has a lack of ubiquity. The problem is, you know, the MP3 format was
perfected sometime in 1992. It's not that there isn't development, there still is, but the original
concept and the original outlay of MP3 happened back in 1992. It was standardized in 1993.
And it gained a very deep foothold. So now lots of companies use it. It's a well-known format.
It's out there everywhere. And the royalties, well, you know, I think any royalty is kind of
ridiculous when it comes to this kind of thing. They're not terribly steep for somebody who's
putting out a game or creating software or something like that. Somebody who has some decent
revenue paying the MP3 royalties is not going to break them. So they probably are not
blocking too bad at it. The problem seems to me that when you have a format like AUG Vorbus,
which you can release side by side with it, or create your devices or royalty and patent-free to
play these formats also. Why don't they? I'm not sure I understand why, you know, it's sort of left
by the wayside when it doesn't cost a thing. I imagine it's just because they don't know,
or they don't think about it. There's not a big demand for AUG Vorbus yet. And so it's just
that they don't consider doing that. I mean, no one would have done it before. I mean, like MP3
is not the format that Apple use now. They, I mean, they support it, but I mean, they release
in an impact for audio format. And I don't know that a lot of players were playing
impact for until they started doing that. You know, it's just what people expect to have
their players play. Well, that's true. And if you're talking about, are you talking about AAC or
H.264? No, it's the AAC one that they use. Right, yeah. See the AAC format and see Microsoft
did the same thing that Apple did. They both wanted to avoid the problems, if you will, with MP3.
So Apple went ahead and developed AAC, which is a patent-free format that they could use. And
Microsoft developed WMV or WMA. Again, a royalty and patent-free codec that they could use,
so they could avoid problems with MP3. Now, those get into other problems with DRM,
which we're definitely not going to touch on here. But they are patent-free. Again, H.264,
which is another compression audio compression technique is patent-encumbered. And another thing
we're not going to talk about. But I would like to get out a little information about the
AAC format a little bit. The AAC format was started by Chris Montgomery back in 1994,
and not actually all that long after MP3 came out, probably because of MP3. He probably said,
well, look at all these patents surrounding MP3. I'm going to come out with something that is patent-free.
So he got together the company originally ZIF offers, and which has now
modified into ZIF.org, which does a lot of stuff involving the AAC format, and Vorbis and
and a lot of other things, which can be encapsulated inside of AAC, including stuff like Speaks,
which is a highly compressible speech codec. They also do FLAQ. A lot of people, I think,
are becoming familiar with the FLAQ format because it's an AUG container, but it's a lossless format,
which means it has the full dynamic range. Of course, it means larger files, but you have much
better audio quality. And then, of course, there's AUG PCM out there as well, which is the equivalent
of a WAVE file, but it's encapsulated inside of AUG instead of the WAVE container. And interestingly,
one of the things I found out about PCM, or the WAVE format, is that it was originally created in
1937. Yeah, totally predates computers and all that stuff, but it's basically the standard audio
format that most computers use. It's called Pulse Code Modulation. It's what all audio CDs are
encoded in. Standard WAVE playback, standard linear audio playback on your computers and everything,
all done in Pulse Code Modulation, forms the basis for WAVE, and now can be encapsulated in AUG.
So that's pretty cool. It's amazing what you can find out when you look on the internet for stuff.
It is. Another thing that I found out is that, and I actually looked this up before, but I wanted
to confirm it for myself, that depending on which patents you consider when talking about the
MP3 format, and which patents you don't consider, it is expected that the MP3 format will be
unencumbered by patents sometime between the years 2012 and 2017. So it is my understanding that
as early as 2012 or as late as 2017, but no later, MP3 will be completely open and free of patents.
Unless they change something, right? I mean, because in theory, all kinds of stuff was supposed to be,
for instance, copyright free, but it keeps getting pushed back.
It's, yeah, patent law is one of those weird things, and again, not a lawyer throwing my hands up,
making the, you know, waving the white flag. And yeah, there's no saying that they might do something
called like submarine patents, or I slip something in where they make, I guess there's some precedent
for making minor changes to a certain codec, and then reestablishing a patent that while different
is close enough to the original, that you still can't do whatever it is you couldn't do before.
You know, something like that happens, then, you know, who knows what's going to go on.
But honestly, by 2017, if AUG hasn't taken a foothold enough to make MP3 patent free,
then I think there's a different problem. My feeling is that if like people like you and me
are pushing the AUG format, and it's not just you and me, of course, there are lots of people who are
doing it. If that push doesn't do something to the major players in the game, the Microsofts,
the Googles, and those who use audio codecs more than any of the rest of us,
can't see that having a patent-encumbered audio codec is ridiculous at that point because there's
at least one, and probably lots more by the time 2017 rolls around, then why would anyone bother
trying to repatent MP3 at that point? I mean, wouldn't it be time to give up, don't you think?
I would hope so. I don't know. I think that these companies really like to have ownership over
things. They really like that. Well, I guess that's true, but I mean, how do you explain companies
like Microsoft and Apple, then releasing free formats like AAC and WMA? I guess WMA is
technically a free format, but everything that gets released in it is DRM encoded.
Lots of companies and big 800-pound guerrilla-type companies are releasing free things, particularly
Google. There's lots of talk about the VP8 video codec and HTML5 for wiping out flash and all
of these things. I would say the trend is away from patentable things like MP3, but then there's
also scope. I don't know. I have to say to really warm too much of an opinion on these things,
because I know that I live in my little free software bubble, and to me, everything's looking
bright and sunny and everyone's seeing how great free software is, but I don't know if that's
necessarily true all this time. Yeah, and it probably isn't. There's probably way more to the
story that I can even begin to understand and something will happen. And then, you know, by 2015,
all audio codecs will be patent-encumbered and royalty-required, and the whole world will just go
straight down the shitter and, you know, who knows. But anyway, a few more bits of information
about the Aug format. Every site that I looked up and talked about Aug format said it's allegedly
patent-free, which means that ZIF.org and the developers claim that it's patent-free, but who knows,
you know, there are the scotives. You might pop up someday and say, you know, these 36 lines of
code are stolen directly from the Linux kernel or whatever, and, you know, they may be some patent
associated with it. You never can tell how these things are going to go. Right, right. I guess the
codec itself and the applications that use it are under the BSD license. Now, as we talk about
open source a lot, we reference the GPL. But the GPL is only one of literally dozens or more
open source licenses. There's the Apache license. There's, you know, there's all kinds of licenses.
Interestingly, the BSD license, to my mind, is one of the most open licenses there is.
There are a lot of restrictions in the GPL. There are basically no restrictions in the BSD license.
I'm going to publish a copy of the BSD license in the show notes because it's so short, sweet,
and to the point. But it basically says, as long as you include, you know, the source code for
whatever it is you're doing, and you don't modify the copyright notice, like the year and copyright
holder in the associated documentation, you can take the code and do any damn thing you like with it.
Yeah. And you walk away and never talk to the developer again.
Right. Exactly. I mean, this is the most free license that I'm aware of. Basically,
says you can take this code, do anything you like, as long as you say where you got it from.
Yeah. It's almost next to public domain. I mean, it's like, it's back. It's just like here,
have it. Yeah. I mean, I've actually released some scripts that I've written up under the BSD
license just because it's like, okay, I wrote this 37 line script that does this one specific
thing. And you know, if somebody else wants to use this thing, hey, go for it. I mean, I don't see
point of encountering it with a GPL. It's like, just take the code, do whatever the hell you want with it.
Yeah. Well, some of the slack though that I've done and that are done for slackware,
they tell you don't license this as GPL because you have to include the whole GPL.
And sometimes the GPL text would be longer than your black build script, you know, so it just
doesn't literally doesn't pay in terms of how many bytes you're downloaded to actually license
this GPL. Right. Exactly. So anyway, if you're interested in that, go ahead and check out the show
notes and look at the text of the BSD license for anybody who's interested in legal issues that
might be something, you know, somewhat amusing. There's a couple of their notes I had written
down here about this issue. They're probably a little out of order, but I should get them in
anyway. According to my research, and as far as the United States are concerned, there are over
150,000 applicable software patents. Oh, my God. So how anyone can navigate this
minefield of patents is beyond me at this point. There are a couple of interesting phenomena
that exist regarding patents. The first one is royalty-free patents, which we've already talked
about. There are some software out there like the AAC format and some other stuff that have patents
associated with them, but they are royalty-free. So essentially, it doesn't matter to the end user
that they're patented because it doesn't require any money outlay to use them. They're just the
original creators trying to retain their patent rights, but they're not enforcing monetary gain,
which is, you know, that's an okay thing. I guess you have to take a particular stand on patents
at that point to decide whether you want to use those technologies or not. You know, if a software
is patentable, but it doesn't cost you anything to use it, is that's still okay. So let me ask you,
is that still okay? Oh, man, you're way over my head at this point. I mean patents, I really don't
understand. I don't know anything about them. I would probably... Well, let me put it this way.
I'll bring it down for you. It's obviously not okay for you in terms of MP3. I mean, MP3 for
non-commercial use is patented, but not... It has no royalties associated with it. And for you,
that's not okay. But if it were something else that were similarly patented, but not royalty
and comfort, would that be okay for you? I mean, it doesn't just depend on what it is or what?
No, I think I probably would try to avoid whatever that was. I mean, I know that AAC has certain
restrictions on whether you can develop it and stuff like that. I don't know if that's the patents
that you're talking about or not. But I mean, I certainly don't release my August cast in AAC,
and that's really one of the reasons, because it's not a completely open, free software
codex. So, yeah, I guess it wouldn't be okay with me. Okay, so you're...
Well, I reserve it right, so I completely contradict myself at a later time.
Well, you may be unwittingly contradicting yourself if only because you just don't happen to know
that a particular piece of something that you're using has a patent associated with it. And simply
by virtue of the fact that it doesn't cost you any money to use it, whether or not there's a patent
may be the furthest thing from your mind. And in a lot of cases, that may be something that
trips people up, because those kinds of things can turn around in the future. It's like you're
using something that's got a patent on it, but no one's been trying to enforce anything about it,
but then all of a sudden they decide, ah, well, you know, we've got all these people hooked on
X technology, and now X technology is going to cost everybody a thousand dollars to use.
Well, that's, you know, go ahead. No, I was just agreeing with you. I mean, I think that's one
of the latent fears that I have over all this stuff is that at some point I'm going to have,
you know, all this data amassed in some format or something or dependent upon some technology
and someone's going to come up and say, oh, we own that, by the way.
Yeah, I think your stance is probably the best stance. It's kind of a purist stance,
but it makes the most sense where ultimately if you're going to deal with patents,
ultimately you shouldn't deal with patents, basically, because that that kind of thing can happen,
because somebody has an ownership and explicit ownership of the piece of technology,
if they happen to decide to want to enforce it, they can certainly do so at any time. So
anybody who releases something that is ostensibly patent free, you never have to worry about that.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, well, that makes a lot of sense, and then there's one last thing I wanted to just throw out
there for people who might be interested in the legal ease of all of this.
And that's the concept of the patent trolls. This is a few things. This is something I've heard,
you know, from a few people and at various conferences and so on. The idea of a patent troll
is basically companies that exist to do nothing but buy or create patents on technologies
specifically for financial gain, so that at some point in the future when somebody discovers
some technology that happens to infringe on one of their patents, they can
they exist to basically sue that entity and recover revenue for the patents that they own.
Got an evil. That is just ridiculous.
Yeah, it is ridiculous. And interestingly enough, there's a company called Intellectual Ventures,
which is one of these patent trolls. They do nothing except to, as I understand it, they do nothing
but exist to buy and create patents on software. And they are not owned by, but funded by
companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Now, if I'm wrong about that, someone had best
tell me because that's the way I've seen it written on the on the intertubes, you know.
There's another company that's an independent company that does the same thing. They're called
Acacia Technologies. Interestingly, there's another company out there called the Open Innovation
Network. Are you familiar with them? I certainly am. Okay, well, the Open Innovation Network,
as I understand it, is an anti-patent troll troll. Right, yeah. They do exactly what the patent
trolls do. However, they do it with the idea that whatever patents they come across or whatever
patents they obtain, whether they create them or buy them from somebody who owns them,
their purpose is to open source them, open source those patents to basically remove those patent
restrictions once they are in control of them. It's interestingly, it's a white hat way of doing
exactly what the opposition does. Yeah, yeah, I really like that.
I'm not sure how successful they're being, although they're still out there, and I know they're
at just about every conference I've been to lately, and they talk about what they do a lot.
So I kind of gather they're having some success. I don't know what patents they've acquired,
but you're certainly welcome to go out and check out the Open Innovation Network and see what patents
they've acquired. But basically, if they own a patent, it's a patent that you as an end user
need not worry about because that's what their purpose is. They're trying to get the patents away
from the black hat guys and put them out there so that we need not worry about software patents.
Oh, and by the way, regardless of independent patents, if software patent issues come up,
these things come up for a vote in your particular part of the world, whatever it is, vote them down.
That's all I have to say. I mean, just, if in some way you can affect software patenting,
the issue of software patents by saying no to it, please do so.
I don't know what relationship Red Hat has with the Open Innovation Network, but I know that
certainly Red Hat does, anytime they get a patent or create something or whatever,
they do patent it and then they do a similar thing as Open Innovation Network. They hold onto
that patent basically saying we're not going to ever enforce it or anything like that, but
we have it and we're not going to let the bad guys have that patent.
Well, that's a great thing to hear. I appreciate them for that. I know they do a lot of work in
Open Source in general, and if anybody's been listening to podcasts recently and heard about
the GNOME survey, there's been some interesting statistics come out about Red Hat and canonical
and Open Source development. So you might want to check that out. I don't want to give away any
spoilers here, but props to Red Hat for putting out patents or obtaining patents and keeping them
away from the end user. We need more companies like that.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I think I've gone through my whole list here and I think I've done a lot
more talking than you have, so I kind of apologize for that. I probably didn't let you have your
piece, but... No, no, no, not at all. It sounds like you did a lot of research. I found it very,
very educational and very thought-provoking, so I actually liked it. All right, well, I appreciate
as far as the debate goes, or as far as patents, non-patents, MP3, or auger, any of those other
things go, do you have anything you'd like to conclude with? And if not, go ahead and give us,
you know, any information about yourself and your podcast and so on that you'd like to pimp.
Okay, yeah, so I haven't really had anything to say, like closing your marks. Like I said,
I found your research very interesting and the talk very thought-provoking, and I hope a
lot of the listeners did too. And it's funny how when you're not using free software, you really
don't even ever think about this sort of thing. It's not until you delve into like the free stuff
that you suddenly have to start thinking about this weird legal stuff, or you start to do anyway.
So anyway, I can be found at thebadapples.info. That's where my auger cast is, and I release an
aug and speaks, so check it out. All right, well, thank you very much,
Claudio, for being here, and for being the world's most podcasted individual.
And thank you to everybody for listening to the QSK Netcast Volume 2. I do appreciate everyone
who tuned in. Please go ahead and let everyone know about us if you can. Our website is QSK
net, our QSKcast.info. Lots of information over there. We happen to be a member of the augcast
planet site, augcastplanet.org. Remember that network? We're a member of the BlackSparrow Media
Network at blacksparrowmedia.com and also the Fusion Podcast Network. That's fusionpodcastnetwork.com
slash WordPress, and that's fusion with a Z. So we're trying to get the word out there.
Thanks everybody. If you have some commentary that you'd like to send me about the MP3 versus
auger patent issues, go ahead and call our number at 417-200-4811. Leave a message there,
or just send a message to info at qskcast.info. Thanks very much for listening. Thanks very
much, Clotty, for stopping by and we'll catch you all next time.
Thank you for listening to Hack with Public Radio.
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