The Internet Archive has finished converting all of its video files to the free open video format Ogg/Theora along with Ogg/Vorbis for audio. They are finally moving towards a free Internet, with no DRM’ ed media.

Ogg

We have rebuilt all of our nearly 200,000 videos at the archive!

We will make a new Ogg Theora (with Vorbis audio) opensource/free-based video derivative. This derivative will play natively in Firefox 3.1 release (v3.1 is due around the end of 2008).

http://internetarchive.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/new-strategy-for-internet-archive-movies/

Rederiving our movies to Ogg Theora and more!

The Archive actively supports the free software ecosystem, and is now busy re-deriving copies of all their videos into both Ogg Theora and H.264 (mp4) codecs. So far they have more than 40% of the videos converted, and hope to have the rest done by December 2008. This makes each of these videos easily accessible on the OLPC XO, by looking in the left margin for the download/stream link for the Ogg Video version. As each is converted, it immediately becomes accessible at www.archive.org/details/movies.

http://internetarchive.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/rederiving-our-movies-to-ogg-theora-and-more/

On the other hand, Firefox 3.1 and the OLPC will benifit a lot from this:

Firefox 3.1 to support open video and audio

[...]

The Wikimedia Foundation only hosts videos and audio files that are available in open formats, most notably the open source standards Ogg Vorbis (audio) and Ogg Theora (video) developed by the non-profit Xiph.Org Foundation. These standards are unencumbered by patents and can be used by anyone freely to build any kind of video or audio technology. As such, they provide a secure baseline for innovation.
The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the Firefox web browser, agrees. We’re very happy to share the message below, posted by Wikimedian and long-time free software supporter Greg Maxwell on the Foundation-l mailing list.  Some background about Ogg, Theora, Vorbis, and free software in general can be found on Wikipedia. You can also view some samples of Ogg Theora videos on the Wikimedia Commons.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/07/31/firefox-31-to-support-open-video-and-audio/

Internet Archive Videos Formatted in Ogg Theora for OLPC

I think it’s great that the Internet Archive is making such an outstanding contribution to the free software and content ecosystem. Looking through some of the videos which are already available I realized how valuable these are and I’m sure many children with XOs from around the world will have a great experience enjoying them.

http://www.olpcnews.com/content/reference/internet_archive_ogg_videos.html

This just made my day…