Domain: audiogalaxy.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to audiogalaxy.com.
Comments · 108
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Re:Apple?
You have access to the Google service already? Kind of odd that they don't support Ogg Vorbis as that's what format all of the Android sounds are in.
By the way, Audiogalaxy does support streaming Ogg Vorbis to Android/iOS. Not browsers though, as far as I know. -
Audiogalaxy
I can't remember which MP3 I downloaded first, but I do remember having a great time with Audiogalaxy. It was the best MP3 download system ever, since it let me queue up MP3s (many legal ones too!) via a Web interface, and the application would fetch this list and get it for me. In simple words, choose at home and have it done in the morning at work. At those times I only had V90 at home, but Fiber at work...
:-)
My band is an official contributor to Audiogalaxy, you can still get 3 songs for free! Sorry for the shameless plug (do I smell karma burning? =) -
Audiogalaxy
I can't remember which MP3 I downloaded first, but I do remember having a great time with Audiogalaxy. It was the best MP3 download system ever, since it let me queue up MP3s (many legal ones too!) via a Web interface, and the application would fetch this list and get it for me. In simple words, choose at home and have it done in the morning at work. At those times I only had V90 at home, but Fiber at work...
:-)
My band is an official contributor to Audiogalaxy, you can still get 3 songs for free! Sorry for the shameless plug (do I smell karma burning? =) -
Just Business
I've had material on MP3.com for several years now. Never paid for the service, so I had less to lose than those that took the Gold Membership, etc. But I still don't understand the griping.
The era of free multimedia serving is over. There's just too much overhead to justify providing that much free bandwidth.
For those of you who bitching about MP3.com, just accept this unfortunate reality.
Who's been screwed? OK, maybe the folks that signed up for Gold Membership. But it seems like it's pointless to bitch about what's happened - it's all just business.
It's not the same as being ripped off by your producer [Beach Boys and countless others], or cheated out of payment by a venue after a performance [an ever-present risk in a business rife with unscrupulous people].
There's always an element of risk, whatever endeavour you undertake. There's no guarantee that a party with whom you have entered into a contract and paid money for future services will not go out of business, or sell out to another party. That's just a fact of life.
Fortunately, there are still plenty of free and low-cost music-hosting alternatives [sorry, I haven't checked ALL these links recently, but most should still be good. I am a lazy sod.]:
AMP3.com
AmpCast
Audiogalaxy
efolk
etree.org (SHN)
Listen.com
Lycos Music Search
MP3.com
nzmp3
peoplesound
SoundClick
stationMP3
gdlive.com
FurtherNet
CD Baby
IUMA
BeSonic
My Local Bands
SoundClick
VITAMINIC
archive.org etree listing (SHN's)
emusic
listensmart
My music (if you're curious, totally bored, and looking for something to listen to).
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Re:I liked it better...
I loved it when it was AudioGalaxy Groups. I used to burn a CD's worth of the lastest breaking club tracks every week.
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Lobbying against themselves?disclaimer: this argument has already been presented many, many times on Slashdot, I'm sure.
When I moved out to go to university last year and got my (off-campus, non-university) broadband internet connection up, I signed up for a little service called Audiogalaxy. Anyone remember Audiogalaxy? It was a community-oriented p2p music-trading service. The community-oriented bit, I found fantastic. Yes, you could just use it to download songs. You could also, however, join groups of people with similar musical tastes, who would forward you songs from artists you may never have heard before. Had it not been for Audiogalaxy, I might never have been introduced to artists like Pedro the Lion, Onelinedrawing, and The Weakerthans.
In the last year, I bought two CDs by The Weakerthans, one by Onelinedrawing, I have an order form filled out for a pair of Pedro the Lion CDs, some Pedro the Lion and Onelinedrawing merchandise, and I have tickets to see The Weakerthans in Calgary this weekend.
Is this a bad thing for the artists and labels? Do they just not want my money? I wouldn't have spent that money on Eminem and Britney Spears, sorry. If I hadn't been introduced to these other bands I wouldn't have spent that money on music at all. Peer-to-peer could be an absolute goldmine for the recording industry. It's free advertising. Do you know how much the recording industry spend on advertising last year? I don't even want to look it up. I'm afraid the incredible size of the number would cause this library computer to crash. It's probably written with scientific notation.
The funny thing is, the people who have the most lobbying power within the RIAA aren't the small record labels like Jade Tree or G7 or Vagrant or Deep Elm, the little guys who are attempting to run an honest business, support good artists, and bring good art out so that the public can enjoy it. They're the giant conglomerates, the ones who are responsible for Toni Braxton going broke despite selling $188 million dollars worth of CDs. These people don't care if I want to listen to good music. These people hate that I spend my money on bands I like, rather than no-talent pop-sensations. These people do not represent legitimate artists and recording companies - these people represent parasites, who take advantage of artists in able to fill their own pockets.
I can't use Audiogalaxy now. It got turned into a pay-service, and copyright restrictions wrecked the entire service. I buy far fewer records now, because I have less exposure to new artists. My friends still recommend bands to me; I'll read about a show someone went to in their livejournal, and I'll download an mp3, and if I like the band, I may end up buying a CD or some concert tickets. I'm a pirate, a felon, and a thief for that. This is insane.
Yes, there will be people out there who will never buy music, ever. They'll steal mp3s and burn hundreds of CDs. Whatever. There are people out there that pirate dvds, too. Yes, it does hurt the industry. What will hurt the industry more, though, is clinging to outdated business models and preying upon the artists that provide the foundation for the entire industry. These mega-corps could be capitalising upon free advertising, diversifying their portfolios. They could have a Spears for every genre going platinum, and without having to spend millions on full-page ads in Vanity Fair and putting giant billboards up in Times Square.
It won't happen. The big-wigs will continue to bleed their artists dry and fight all calls for change. And I'll continue to steal mp3s, listen to who I like, and buy CDs from talented artists who can't whore themselves out on Coca-Cola commercials, people whose success is based on actual artistic merit. So it goes.
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Re:The solution is an iron fist
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Re:The solution is an iron fist
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The biggest losers of all...
The honest internet-using public, when Audiogalaxy went down. It's been a while, now, since the RIAA sued AudioGalaxy and shut down their service.
It's not like they were the only ones to go last year. The reason it pissed off a lot of people was that it it was the best popular audio sharing client to date, and everyone loved it. It was so easy to use and it was absolutely brilliant at finding anything, even really obscure stuff.
Best of all, it did an excellent job of blocking pirate downloads. You tried looking for a single by any popular artist in the past fifty years, odds were you couldn't find it. Probably seemes like an unwanted daft feature of file sharing client, but it made the system that much less illegal. That's why it was such a shame to see it go - the RIAA charged our beloved AudioGalaxy with piracy and gave it the death sentence, all the while letting Kazaa, WinMX and the other 'real criminals' roam free.
To this date, there are kids on the Kazaa and WinMX still actually costing the recording industry money in CDs some of them actually would be buying originally, and pedophiles sharing entire collections of unsavoury child porn. Yet looking for harmless TV themes today on the service that never hurt anybody, I can't find shit. -
The biggest losers of all...
The honest internet-using public, when Audiogalaxy went down. It's been a while, now, since the RIAA sued AudioGalaxy and shut down their service.
It's not like they were the only ones to go last year. The reason it pissed off a lot of people was that it it was the best popular audio sharing client to date, and everyone loved it. It was so easy to use and it was absolutely brilliant at finding anything, even really obscure stuff.
Best of all, it did an excellent job of blocking pirate downloads. You tried looking for a single by any popular artist in the past fifty years, odds were you couldn't find it. Probably seemes like an unwanted daft feature of file sharing client, but it made the system that much less illegal. That's why it was such a shame to see it go - the RIAA charged our beloved AudioGalaxy with piracy and gave it the death sentence, all the while letting Kazaa, WinMX and the other 'real criminals' roam free.
To this date, there are kids on the Kazaa and WinMX still actually costing the recording industry money in CDs some of them actually would be buying originally, and pedophiles sharing entire collections of unsavoury child porn. Yet looking for harmless TV themes today on the service that never hurt anybody, I can't find shit. -
Audio Galaxy
Actually, before AudioGalaxy got sued into ashes, they had a great feature in their search mechanism that when you searched for an artist or title, it would show what other people who searched for that title had also search for.
I really like the drum n bass duo Lamb and thanks to this feature at audio galaxy I was introduced to the Sneaker Pimps and Hooverphonic.
Err, I mean I rushed right out to my local national chain music store and purchased the CDs.
You kind of get this when you browse through Amazon.com's "other people purchased" links. -
On a Quasi-Related Note...
Why are there so few functional file sharing apps for Linux? AudioGalaxy blows chunks, Kazaa-Lite works only with Wine IF you have saintly patience and the spare dll's handy, and Limewire isn't a walk in the park either unless you have Java installed and the $PATH enviroment variable right - not to mention any needed dependencies. I'm not adverse to commandline (I prefer it for most administrative tasks) but I'm not going to run some bare bones text-based Gnutella client in a friggin terminal. I'm too spoiled for that.
I'm just surprised the Linux community hasn't made more noise about this... or is everyone dual booting? -
FUD Alert
We're all glad HP backed down, but what scares me is that the "Responsible Disclosure" FUD continues. On Bugtraq people write that CERT and SecurtyFocus are "established parties" and everyone who does not give them their so-called "0days" is irresponsible (at least CERT is known to sell 0days). I personally won't give them my 0days early.
The "Responsible Disclosure" draft continues to get advertised, though it was not approved by the IETF .
Why do people think about giving away the right of free speech just because of some FUD?
Even in the unlikely case if this bad RFC passes, does it mean that that people are safer when they disclose problems - I definitely don't think so personally.
So the facts are: some companies can't write secure code, and it is more expensive to write code securely.
Just check "Help -> About" on Windows before using the word "responsibility".
The easiest solution is to shoot the messenger and to outlaw saying the emperor has no clothes. But this won't fix the problem in the real world. Such regulations will only alienate a lot of people and will make things worse.
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MP3 CDs Through Snail Mail
I've started using the postal service for my music swapping.
I can't tell if you're joking, but for the moderators: on Audiogalaxy there is in fact a very active group, CD'S THROUGH THE MAIL. In case they take their group description down, here it is for reference:
A group for trading data cds full of MP3 albums (NOT audio cds!) through snail- mail! Well, it looks like the time has come, AG has settled out of court with the RIAA & has disabled file-sharing here for now. Please bookmark our group website (listed on CDMail's profile) & check in there if AG closes down completely. I am looking into other forums for this group & will make any announcements there. *IF* we have to change to a different forum, only members in good standing (lists turned in, good trading record, knows how to follow directions, etc.) will be invited to rejoin the group. I hope you all understand why I need to do this, it will be for the benefit of all of us.
:-) -
No more "try-before-you-buy"
This has been my shopping habit until now:
1. AMG Music Guide for finding out bands that I might like.
2. AudioGalaxy to see if I actually do like them.
3. HMV online to buy it.
4. Repeat, lather, rinse.
Now that these blood-suckers have taken out no.2 I have no way of actually test driving music before I buy it. Using this method I've bought over 100 CDs in the last 6 months alone. And they dare accuse me of being a pirate.
Until they offer a similar service, for free, I guess I'll just have to stop buying music.
I hope that other people will now also vote with their dollars. -
Notice this is an RIAA PR
The link is the RIAA site PR.
Audiogalaxysite shows:
"Message board : General Discussion
06/17/02 ape2man71 - AG is completely over!
All the songs on AG are now blocked. It means
the most fast,stable and reliable file share
program finally came to an end. What shall we do from now on?"
That is a question only the folks at AG can answer.
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And in other news...
Popular download networks such as Audiogalaxy and Limewire announce that they will offer totally free downloads of singles with absolutely no charge or restrictions. w00t w00t!
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"Peer-to-peer": zero branding = zero qualityI realize most of the MP3 kiddies use mediocre peer-to-peer networks like FastTrack; this kind of "spoofing" is made possible by the lack of name brands on such P2P programs. Name branding is just as important in the realm of content trading of movies and music as it is in corporate America.
FastTrack (Grokster, Kazaa, iMesh) relies on trusting it's users to provide authentic content. Anyone can share anything they want, mislabelled as they wish. Multi-sourcing exists on FastTrack, but only with up to around 10 users at most due to it's centralized structure.
Audiogalaxy, on the other hand, is centralized and can multisource from thousands of users, and group them together based on sharing of identical files (determined by a modified MD5 hash). Britney Sphere's latest single I'm A Slave For You, 128kbps, 3:36 is currently shared by 2627 users. That's way more than you'll get on any FastTrack or WinMX network. And since Audiogalaxy downloads the most popular version, it is very difficult to inject bogus crap -- in fact, you'll need to have more users sharing the fake files than legit. As a whole, users often remove fake files leaving the legit shining brightly through.
Regardless, it's all irrelevant once one enters the real MP3 scene on IRC and FTPs. Not just anyone can share files on most channels, only approved xdcc bots can. In addition, they only share specific "releases". Groups base their reputation solely on the quality of their releases. New groups on the scene often put out re-encodes and other junk which is nuked on a global scale. No site worth it's salt carries it. Well-established teams, on the other hand, are respected and sites carry their content, where sites are either +m IRC channels or ratioed FTP sites.
In conclusion, there is no need for peer-to-peer. Multisource downloads are a fad. We have enough bandwidth already. The protocols to distribute and disseminate content has been here for years: FTP and IRC. And they both work better and resist spoofing more effectively than whatever new protocol an inspirating programmer puts out this decade.
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Re:saving bandwidth?Audiogalaxy claims locate nearest peers:
Bandwidth Reductions: Audiogalaxy servers automatically choose the closest person who has the file you want. This makes life easier for network admins at corporations, colleges, and ISPs by reducing external bandwidth usage
Sadly, RIAA's muscle may force Audiogalaxy's amazing technology (made possible by it's 430 central servers) into oblivion.
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ask them to open-source it
something i just did and i encourage everybody else to do is ask Audiogalaxy to make their master server open source. direct your request to help@audiogalaxy.com and ask them to help keep Audiogalaxy alive forever. No matter what happens legally, ideas live on.
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Re:source code
Me again with a P.S.
I quick clicked through Audiogalaxy's site, and found a link to the UI source code, but not the actual program. This might be all I remembered from before. -
Sue Proof?After seeing what happened to Napster
...Now knowing what is going to happen with Audiogalaxy
... (the tea leaves haven't been wrong yet) ...Is there ANY software that cannot be sued into oblivion? I know that GNUtella is open source
... but couldn't that be sued as well?The main reason that Napster got it so bad, was that the directory listings were centrallized. Audiogalaxy, KaZaA, and others changed this, so that there is no centrallized database, but the people who write the software are being sued
...About the only way to be "judgement proof" in this day and age would to release software (with or without source) anonymously.
Would this be possible
... ??? -
Oh well...
Back to AudioGalaxy's FTP Search. It doesn't even need Satellite. However, it might be RIAA's next target, right after other FTP search sites.
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Re:For everyone saying "I don't like Celine Dion"
Note that this is an article from a British website...and copy-protected CDs are a lot bigger in Europe than they are on this side of the Atlantic. Do we know for certain whether the American editions of these CDs are thusly protected?
I do know that the Star Wars Episode 2 soundtrack is already circulating on AudioGalaxy... -
Re:more than....
AudioGalaxy lets you browse bands by genre (here). I've discovered *many* bands that way.
Also, if you're looking up a song, you may find similarly named songs and/or covers of that song. I just discovered Life of Agony (not that great, I'll admit) while looking for covers of Descendents - Hope (great).
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Re:more than....
AudioGalaxy lets you browse bands by genre (here). I've discovered *many* bands that way.
Also, if you're looking up a song, you may find similarly named songs and/or covers of that song. I just discovered Life of Agony (not that great, I'll admit) while looking for covers of Descendents - Hope (great).
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Re:more than....
AudioGalaxy lets you browse bands by genre (here). I've discovered *many* bands that way.
Also, if you're looking up a song, you may find similarly named songs and/or covers of that song. I just discovered Life of Agony (not that great, I'll admit) while looking for covers of Descendents - Hope (great).
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Don't transfer at school, queue at school
At my school we have Deep Freeze and installing any software is fruitless or only of temporary use. Therefore, we have resorted to web-based peer-to-peer sites for queueing downloads. Of course you need your servent to be online elsewhere, but that is the least of the problem.
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Re:What about...
Also, its next to impossible to find a 74 minute techno cd that is complete without pops in it =)
Is 61:18 close enough for you? What about 79:38 minutes of DJ Dalien? If you bother to search, it's quite easy to find full CDs of any sort.
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Re:What about...
Also, its next to impossible to find a 74 minute techno cd that is complete without pops in it =)
Is 61:18 close enough for you? What about 79:38 minutes of DJ Dalien? If you bother to search, it's quite easy to find full CDs of any sort.
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Re:What about...
Also, its next to impossible to find a 74 minute techno cd that is complete without pops in it =)
Is 61:18 close enough for you? What about 79:38 minutes of DJ Dalien? If you bother to search, it's quite easy to find full CDs of any sort.
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Damaged Reputations
If they put Scumware onto my system, then they lose any and all potential respect. I'm using Audiogalaxy as my example here, which is a shame because its actually a damn good program. I specifically went carefully through each and every page of the installation procedure to avoid spyware. I then had to manually remove a very stubborn app called "whagent", a.k.a WebHancer Customer Companion. I thought I was clean until the above story appeared on /., although it's not a new subject.As it is, I'd be happy to pay a reasonable fee for AG without spyware, since it is a very useful and easy program. I don't mind supplying a little non-personal info such as basic system specs, rough location (UK), maybe some simple program logs for development purposes and the like. I'm happy to reveal info to assist the development of better products that people are happy to pay for, but what sorta whacked-out crackhead-run company makes money like that?
;-)Ali
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Audiogalaxy!!
I don't understand why someone would use a large general-file-sharing app when all they want is music. If you download the audiogalaxy client, you get access to a far superior collection, and with creative searches, find anything for download.
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Audiogalaxy
Ironically enough though, file trading services are turning into corporate radio little by little. The trendy, unwashed masses type songs are the ones that are readily available online. Just like they're the only songs you hear on the radio. So it's difficult to get an idea of how a whole albumn sounds.
One file sharing service that seems to have maintained a low profile (aside from the spyware issues) is Audiogalaxy. It has the widest range of music I've ever seen in p2p. The most obscure bands that have ever released a CD are all there. Bands from non-english speaking countries too. Most of it is sorted into genres. Each artist/band has it's own page with links to pages of other similar bands.
Popular songs that get radio airplay are restricted so you can't download them. That's their concession with the RIAA to prevent from being shut down. In a way, that's a good thing. Because mostly only non-RIAA music is available for download, independant bands will get more exposure. I'm largely unaffected by the blocks on copyrighted RIAA files since I don't want to download those anyway.
If you're worried about spyware, just do what I do (I'm using linux) and create a no-privillege user account to run the audiogalaxy client from. That doesn't prevent them from logging your searches, but then even Google does that. -
I'm tired of CD's
They cost too much, especially thinking of how much cd media costs, and all this copy protection talk is pretty tiresome. I always go to Cheap CD's to find the track listing and some sound samples, then go to Audiogalaxy if it sounds interesting, so I can listen to all the songs before I decide if I want to purchase it. I hate paying for filler material. I want songs that were made because the artist wanted to make it and put some heart into it, not something they had to cook up to finish the album. I'm threw with fattening up record execs just by doing(IMHO) the right thing and purchasing cd's.
I think the folks at Fairtunes have the right idea. Check out this link I got from their faq to see how much artists actually get from these cd sales. -
ebert is right... ...sorta
I download MP3's constantly. I have probably 20 gigs of mp3's, all downloaded from audiogalaxy and I have only bought a few CD's since I moved into my apartment and got my cable modem back in August. With few exceptions, almost any MP3 can be found and put into a queue to be downloaded. One of my favorite pastimes is to search on allmusic.com for bands that I like and see who they recommend, and then go to audiogalaxy and get a bunch of their mp3's. I have been exposed to SO MUCH wonderful music this way, and I would certainly miss it if it ceased to be available. But I have bought a few CD's, and they were all of things I had heard first on mp3's and decided that I would value having the actual album of. For one thing, I like having the whole package sometimes -the liner notes, and the lyrics (which used to be really easy to find online for free). But also there's the whole quality issue- there's sadly no consistently applied standard for MP3 encoding, and I get a lot of crappy stuff, and even with the good sounding stuff, you can tell the difference when you hear the actual CD. I also contribute to the artists by going to their shows when they come to town. We all know the record industry rips them off anyway, and that they make most of their money from their tours. And we all know that CD's only cost pennies a piece to manufacture and that even the "low" price of $12/cd is ridiculous. anyway... that's my $.02
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Re:musical recommendations with P2P
Use AudioGalaxy. They have recently added an option to see a user's shared files. However, I'm not sure you can search by user sharing a specific file, but you can look at fans of specific bands.
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Re:This is an excellent case for free softwareSomething you might have missed: the Audiogalaxy Sattelite software IS open source - GPL'ed, in fact. They produce their own compiled binary with an installer avec spyware, but anyone's free to roll their own.
And as all good cooking show viewers will know, here's one prepared earlier... I hope you find this useful.
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VX2 - DeviousI've written about this before, but in the interest of karma whoring, here it is in full:
AudioGalaxy's [audiogalaxy.com] software unfortunately now installs VX2 by default. We didn't know this when we installed AG, and were subject to a pop-up ad so frequently, it was unbelievable. At first, I suspected the sites we were visiting, but they were even coming up on Google!
The big throw was that the ads that were being served up always seemed to come from different places. One day, I decided to look into it, and discovered that all the ads were being downloaded from VX2 [vx2.cc].
VX2 is a very devious piece of sofwtare, logging every one of the sites you visit, and then popping an ad every once in a while. If you surf quickly, throttles itself; surf slowly, and it pops for every site. Quite devious, really.
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No Problem
I'm using the Linux version of the AGSattelite and have no spyware whatsoever. Sheesh. When will people learn?
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Onine Music and the Fall of Napster
AudioGalaxy IMHO is the best free client out there . The others such as MusicCity's Morpheus, Bearshare, Limewire, and KaZaA all have been held accountable for copyright violations. You might remember the slashdot article entitled P2P vs. RIAA: RIAA Wins. Now aren't we glad that our government passed that wonderful law called The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)[pdf]?
Thinking of downloading a free share program, ever wonder how RIAA can attack you? The following was taken from their website outlining how the DMCA can be used against you and I.
"The DMCA law also delineates the responsibilities of Internet service providers (ISPs) in cases of infringement online. For example, the law formalizes a notice and takedown procedure between ISPs and copyright owners. It is now clear that when an ISP is aware it is posting or transmitting infringing content, the ISP must act to remove the infringing works or it may be liable for any resulting damages." snip
So what has RIAA been up to? The following is proof that they have been busy using their precious DMCA.
The RIAA Anti-Piracy Unit seized 1,257,796 illegal CD-Rs by midyear 2001, this is up 133% compared to midyear of 2000. Here is a link to a pdf with their mid year statistics for 2001; and then I will end my rant on RIAA because I don't want to get too offtopic
:)On Cnet they keep track of the most popular mp3 search utilities. Morpheus comes in first this week with slightly less than a million and a half downloads; it has an impressive 42 million total downloads. Remember back to the height of Napster's popularity, they had a supposed 200 million users. This number shouldn't be compared to the number of total downloads due to the possibility of users creating multiple accounts.
Also on Cnet, Napster 2.0 beta 10.4 the one that was reviewed in the article has a ghastly approval rating of 0.099. That means that less than one hundredth of the people that downloaded the new pay-for-play Napster actually liked it. Going through the user reviews of the products it appears that they find that Napster falls short of the free clients, it certainly is apparent that it does not yet have the user base that Free Nappyster enjoyed.
For the electronic junkies out there I would recommend a less well known file sharing client known as SoulSeek. You can download it not from Cnet, but from their own website. The latest version is 104 and it includes dedicated techno/electronica service with a great user base; "Private messaging capabilities with both online and off-line users; Folder based file-sharing, which allows for more convenient browsing and downloading; Fine-grained control over file-sharing, with the ability to restrict access to a select list of users, as well as the ability to disallow access to specific users; Fine-grained transfer queue management, with the ability to restrict the number of uploads and downloads per-user and in total; File searching with users in room or in user list; Wishlist that takes search patterns for easy automatic notification when certain files become shared; A generic personalized recommendation system." snip
Now that these Pier to Pier file sharing networks have taken over, they are looking for ways to make money. Maybe to pay their programmers and lawyers. Beware of the adervistements that come bundled along with the install for the more popular sharing clients, such as Audiogalaxy. These bundled programs are known as SpyWare.
-If I metamoderated myself I would care more about karma
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FREE way to find and remove this stuffThere are lots of software programs like Ad-Aware that will clean these up for you, but my goal is to have LESS software on my PC, not MORE.
I found an nice free website that will run a JavaScript in your browser that detects various kinds of spyware and directs you to instructions on how to remove it. He also offers the source up for free so webmasters can help combat this scourge by hosting the script on their own pages. (That way all your site visitors will be warned about they spyware as they visit your site). It doesn't seem to detect this one though.
I dug this up when I discovered a few months back that AudioGalaxy had secretly installed a similar application called VX2 on my PC. The odd thing was that Audio Galaxy wanted to install BonziBuddy too, but it let me choose. But no choice with this other one. Fortunately it was easy to remove and AG runs fine without it.
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AudioGalaxy & VX2AudioGalaxy's software unfortunately now installs VX2 by default. We didn't know this when we installed AG, and were subject to a pop-up ad so frequently, it was unbelievable. At first, I suspected the sites we were visiting, but they were even coming up on Google!
The big throw was that the ads that were being served up always seemed to come from different places. One day, I decided to look into it, and discovered that all the ads were being downloaded from VX2.
VX2 is a very devious piece of sofwtare, logging every one of the sites you visit, and then popping an ad every once in a while. If you surf quickly, throttles itself; surf slowly, and it pops for every site. Quite devious, really.
- VX2's site - fairly informative
- Cexx's site - VERY informative -- tells you everything you need to know about vx2
I recommend downloading some of the software that's already been mentioned (e.g. adaware) -- they do a very good job of getting rid of all sorts of garbage.
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What makes you think they only log downloads?
I wrote an article on Kuro5hin entitled The Spyware Invasion when I found out that there was a piece of Spyware(WebHancer) on my machine that was logging EVERY URL I VISITED. It turns out that this company sells these statistics that they obtain from over 16 million unsuspecting users to businesses for over $12,000 a pop.
What bothered me in particular about this approach is that I know a few websites that log users in with their pasword in the URL (Slashdot is one of them) and I wondered exactly how many of my passwords and userIDs had been sent to webHancer over the past weeks I had it unknowingly running on my machine. Of course, I quickly ran Ad-Aware on my machine and changed all my online passwords.
PS: The offending application that installed this spyware was AudioGalaxy. -
Shame u cant get KISS TV
I know exactly what you mean there, I just wont blind-buy records and I'll be blowed if I'm gonna stand at the listening post in a record shop all day long.
Being a DJ at the weekends, I tend to get any tune I may be interested in on MP3 (from some somewhere like here) and then go out and buy it on 12" vinyl (try copyprotecting one of these!).
There are other good places to find out about good new tunes but you have to fight your way past all the kiddie-pop/rock/whinging/defeatist/suicidalist rubbish. KISS TV in the UK is excellent cos the guys that call in and select the tunes mostly live around London and already know there stuff & there is Radio KISS which transmits on 100Mhz in the London /SE area and can also be listened to over the web. Internationally there is a German TV channel on several sats covering wider europe called VIVA. - I first saw the video for Prodigy's "Smack my Bitch up" here.
As for the states - I dont know but there are ways and means :).
Oh, one other thing; most of the pre-release and early copies of tunes on MP3 come from 12" vinyl promos - which dont even provide revenue for the RIAA! And if anyone think that vinyl is dying: its sales are up by 21% in the last year in the UK :)
Long live 12" - The British - a nation of dance DJs -
I have a satellite
...but it belongs to Audiogalaxy.
-
Another solution that open source can use
Note: I do not work for Audiogalaxy; I am just a satisfied customer.
This legal music downloads site has a program that lets you download an unlimited number of songs from fast servers at a cheap fee per month. If you choose the cheapest (per month) option, the charge ($2.95) is automatically billed to your credit card each month until you decide to cancel.
This sounds promising. If the Linux community chooses this model, the software can remain free as in beer/speech, but downloading from the server would be charged, either per (insert period of time), or (insert each piece of software), or (insert how many megabytes downloaded). Hopefully the connections would be faster than the norm to make the additional charge appealing to consumers. -
Another solution that open source can use
Note: I do not work for Audiogalaxy; I am just a satisfied customer.
This legal music downloads site has a program that lets you download an unlimited number of songs from fast servers at a cheap fee per month. If you choose the cheapest (per month) option, the charge ($2.95) is automatically billed to your credit card each month until you decide to cancel.
This sounds promising. If the Linux community chooses this model, the software can remain free as in beer/speech, but downloading from the server would be charged, either per (insert period of time), or (insert each piece of software), or (insert how many megabytes downloaded). Hopefully the connections would be faster than the norm to make the additional charge appealing to consumers. -
Another solution that open source can use
Note: I do not work for Audiogalaxy; I am just a satisfied customer.
This legal music downloads site has a program that lets you download an unlimited number of songs from fast servers at a cheap fee per month. If you choose the cheapest (per month) option, the charge ($2.95) is automatically billed to your credit card each month until you decide to cancel.
This sounds promising. If the Linux community chooses this model, the software can remain free as in beer/speech, but downloading from the server would be charged, either per (insert period of time), or (insert each piece of software), or (insert how many megabytes downloaded). Hopefully the connections would be faster than the norm to make the additional charge appealing to consumers. -
Look at what Audiogalaxy's doing!
Audiogalaxy has a Gold program. This program lets you download an unlimited number of songs from fast servers at a cheap fee per month. If you choose the cheapest (per month) option, the charge ($2.95) is automatically billed to your credit card each month until you decide to cancel.
This sounds promising. If the Linux community chooses this model, the software can remain free as in beer/speech, but downloading from the server would be charged, either per (insert period of time), or (insert each piece of software), or (insert how many megabytes downloaded). Hopefully the connections would be faster than the norm to make the additional charge worth the cost.
Just .02 from a Computer/Business person.