Slashdot Mirror

Amazon.com was awarded a patent recently for "affiliate programs." The text of the patent is here: http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US06029141__ . This patent is, to say the least, a very bad thing. This seems to be exactly what CDNOW does with its Cosmic Credit system. So my question is, what are you going to do about this? I am a member of Cosmic Credit, am I somehow violating a patent? Or is it just CDNOW? Are you guys going to sue them, or bring them to court to show how stupid and *wrong* this patent is? Patents like this should be illegal, but that apparently doesn't mean anything to the USPTO. Affiliate Programs, just like One-Click Shopping, are obvious uses of internet technology, and should not be patentable. Please tell me you guys are doing something about this.

_________________

Amazon.com was awarded a patent recently for "affiliate programs." The text of the patent is here: http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US06029141__ . This patent is, to say the least, a very bad thing. This seems to be exactly what CDNOW does with its Cosmic Credit system. So my question is, what are you going to do about this? I am a member of Cosmic Credit, am I somehow violating a patent? Or is it just CDNOW? Are you guys going to sue them, or bring them to court to show how stupid and *wrong* this patent is? Patents like this should be illegal, but that apparently doesn't mean anything to the USPTO. Affiliate Programs, just like One-Click Shopping, are obvious uses of internet technology, and should not be patentable. Please tell me you guys are doing something about this.

_________________

_________________

This is a slightly hinky URL, but it seems to work:

http://www.cdnow.com/cgi-bin/mserver/SID=197066231 2/page name=/RP/CDN/FIND/popsearch.html?index=t&string=ch inese+burn

If you can locate a copy of their Pink Girl With The Blues EP, "Recovery" is about my favorite song ever. Frankly, I'm just glad to see them getting what must be a fat royalty.

bumppo

>So you get Spam -- now what? It's usually
>difficult to trace
All you have to do is visit www.spamcop.net

I know that this sounds silly, but I don't know them, and I don't trust them. Remember the service -- can anybody back this up with facts? -- that popped up about a year ago? Report spam, get a $10 gift certificate at CDNow? As it turned out, the company running this program was a huge marketer and spammer.

So now I'm wary of sites like SpamCop. Anybody know anthing about the history of it, or the person that runs it, Julian Haight?

To be honest, from what I've seen, it looks trustworthy. But you know: once bitten, twice shy.

actually, you can make music by "scratching" CDs.. just not the way you meant. Try to find something by Oval to listen to-- most of their music is really cool ambient created by engineering CD player errors (skipping, scratches in the cd created by hand.. i read something somewhere that said they've actually used _painted_ CDs at times)..

God is a DJ.

hold on a sec here. i've never posted on /. before, but this made me do it. Weird Al did get permission from Coolio at a party, but when he noticed the song's success, he decided it would be "cooler" if he went against the song and said that "[he's] not down with that." at the AMA's. Coolio did get his share of the royalties, though. He seemed to be happy with that much. Check this out, though. Al's Album is doing better than Coolio's. HA! Lay off Al, man. He owns you, and he's got a nice car, too. And Coolio never wrote the song himself, either, does anyone else remember "Pasttime Paradise" (MPEG Sample) by Stevie Wonder? Well, I sure do. The rap bastard.

just maybe I could enjoy it if...

I got really wasted and watched it while playing Meco's Star Wars & Other Galactic Funk as the soundtrack.

There are plenty of places to get hosted besides mp3.com. I almost started a service myself, but didn't have the bandwidth to do so, or the resources to ship band CDs. However, there are lots of places like mp3.com which will host your music and some will sell cds.

CD Now is starting a program much like mp3.com set to open shortly.
CDuctive hosts indie artists.
eMusic may be able to help you, but they're pretty big.
Live365 will host 365mb worth of mp3s (in 56kbps encoding) and stream them 24/7 for you. Who says it can't be your own stuff..
Cruch Music is for British dance/techno musicians
Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) will definetly sign you, for a slight fee, but they can sell your music per track.
MusicMatch might sign you
WorldWideBands for those musicians around the globe.

For more info, check out a backissue of WIRED magazine, entitled "I Want My MP3". Right now it's a musicians market on the net.

i am suprised that nobody mentioned Victorinox'es Cybertool yet!! I want one of those! its about $75, but i have no idea where to get it.
books would be a good idea aswell, eventhough i'd like to stock up my cd collection a bit. so CDNOW.com is a place to go for sure. lenny kravitz and eric clapton especially!
i cant forget to mention some new hardware of course. i need a new 'puter!!! dual-pentium 3's, 1/2 gig of ram and lots of scsi!
i would be happy with just a scsi burner right now though.

cheers
tom

• I could definitely do with some new knives.
• and I've added a bunch of music to my wish list at CDNow
• my Spanish classes are going well, and I wouldn't mind a trip to Guadalajara
• but what I really want this year is a Ural motorcycle...with a sidecar!

This is slightly offtopic, but I'm sure very helpful for some of the geeks/geek's families out there.. these are some good coupon codes for different online stores.

office max.com has a $20 off a purchaseo f$20 deal, click Here and use the code YES1CFNH2H

Barnes and Nobel (bn.com) has these $10 off $10 codes: CZVRCH7, CBN2222, COSHARE, and CTREATS.
Amazon.com has these $10 off $25: FIRSTGIFT and AMZNPRESENT2

CDNow has these $10 off $14.99 codes: here and here

Last but not lease (see links below for more) Buy.com has $20 off for first time customers. Click Here to get it.

If you're looking for other coupon sites visit these places:
My Coupons.com Message board

Funtasia's Coupons

Another coupon message board

This is slightly offtopic, but I'm sure very helpful for some of the geeks/geek's families out there.. these are some good coupon codes for different online stores.

office max.com has a $20 off a purchaseo f$20 deal, click Here and use the code YES1CFNH2H

Barnes and Nobel (bn.com) has these $10 off $10 codes: CZVRCH7, CBN2222, COSHARE, and CTREATS.
Amazon.com has these $10 off $25: FIRSTGIFT and AMZNPRESENT2

CDNow has these $10 off $14.99 codes: here and here

Last but not lease (see links below for more) Buy.com has $20 off for first time customers. Click Here to get it.

If you're looking for other coupon sites visit these places:
My Coupons.com Message board

Funtasia's Coupons

Another coupon message board

How much of the purchase price of a new CD do you think the artist gets? And how much goes to the record company and the various middle-men?

Not nearly enough. Something like 40-50 cents... I am acutely aware of this because nearly all of my favorite bands have been royally screwed by their record companies in the past few years. If you get bored, look up what EMI records did to Marillion just in time for their 1997 US tour...

But realize I am not defending the middlemen. I am defending my ability to have the kind of music I like, made and produced by the few people who can do it. I have demanding musical tastes; perhaps a hundred virtuoso musicians in the entire world meet my rigorous standards. But since I take music so seriously, since my musical collection makes such a significant contribution to my happiness, a lot would be missing from my life if John Petrucci had not bothered to learn to play the guitar. Even if he had, I would never have heard him if 'Pull Me Under' wasn't played on KSHE-95; and I am sure that KSHE would not have played them if they hadn't recieved a free cd from the record company.

Still, I realize that the RIAA is an evil organization. My fiance' was a radio DJ for (several) Colorado rock stations, and tells stories about being forced to play only songs on the official playlists; simply an example of the RIAA misusing its powers to crush non-member recording groups by not allowing them airtime. I remember one particular instance she was literally forced to recite a list of good things about the new Green Day single, even though she hated it, so that it would sell well. If she didn't, the record company would have refused to pay "maintenance fees" to the station, and she would have lost her job. Any organization that would cause Green Day and the Spice Girls to become cultural icons obviously has serious issues.

Because I enjoy music that is not exactly popular in this country, I usually have to order CD's directly from bands I find in obscure clubs by word of mouth. If I get really lucky, CDNOW will help me. I hate this! I hate walking down the aisles at Best Buy and finding nothing of enough merit to pay for. But killing copyright laws won't solve that; instead of being filled with crap, the shelves would become empty. Or, more likely, RIAA would find starving musicians of mediocre talent and use their music anyway, thereby achieving the same dominance as today except royalty-free.

In a perfect world, every penny I spend to get my latest fix would go straight to the musicians. People who made good music would be rich then whether they sold 50,000 copies or 6 million copies... but the solution articulated in the article is comparable to industrial murder, regardless of what 'philosophical' viewpoint you take. You have to be very naive to believe that people who are forced to work day jobs because they give away their music, will make the same quality music as people who are allowed to concentrate on their art by copyrighting it, selling it and becoming as wealthy as possible.

Scudder

PS. good web page Greg- you might want to check out The Gathering, a Dutch prog metal band. Their female lead vocalist is tremendous, with strong, ethereal vocals, and the band itself is reminiscent of Rush/Yes... very powerful and deft guitar work. Start with Nighttime Birds or Mandylion.

And to the fifty people who replied to tell me that eternal copyright laws were bad: notice I never said that. My post was simply directed at the particular section of the article that discussed "giving back to society". Directed at what looked to me like a blatant appeal to get something for nothing...

How much of the purchase price of a new CD do you think the artist gets? And how much goes to the record company and the various middle-men?

Not nearly enough. Something like 40-50 cents... I am acutely aware of this because nearly all of my favorite bands have been royally screwed by their record companies in the past few years. If you get bored, look up what EMI records did to Marillion just in time for their 1997 US tour...

But realize I am not defending the middlemen. I am defending my ability to have the kind of music I like, made and produced by the few people who can do it. I have demanding musical tastes; perhaps a hundred virtuoso musicians in the entire world meet my rigorous standards. But since I take music so seriously, since my musical collection makes such a significant contribution to my happiness, a lot would be missing from my life if John Petrucci had not bothered to learn to play the guitar. Even if he had, I would never have heard him if 'Pull Me Under' wasn't played on KSHE-95; and I am sure that KSHE would not have played them if they hadn't recieved a free cd from the record company.

Still, I realize that the RIAA is an evil organization. My fiance' was a radio DJ for (several) Colorado rock stations, and tells stories about being forced to play only songs on the official playlists; simply an example of the RIAA misusing its powers to crush non-member recording groups by not allowing them airtime. I remember one particular instance she was literally forced to recite a list of good things about the new Green Day single, even though she hated it, so that it would sell well. If she didn't, the record company would have refused to pay "maintenance fees" to the station, and she would have lost her job. Any organization that would cause Green Day and the Spice Girls to become cultural icons obviously has serious issues.

Because I enjoy music that is not exactly popular in this country, I usually have to order CD's directly from bands I find in obscure clubs by word of mouth. If I get really lucky, CDNOW will help me. I hate this! I hate walking down the aisles at Best Buy and finding nothing of enough merit to pay for. But killing copyright laws won't solve that; instead of being filled with crap, the shelves would become empty. Or, more likely, RIAA would find starving musicians of mediocre talent and use their music anyway, thereby achieving the same dominance as today except royalty-free.

In a perfect world, every penny I spend to get my latest fix would go straight to the musicians. People who made good music would be rich then whether they sold 50,000 copies or 6 million copies... but the solution articulated in the article is comparable to industrial murder, regardless of what 'philosophical' viewpoint you take. You have to be very naive to believe that people who are forced to work day jobs because they give away their music, will make the same quality music as people who are allowed to concentrate on their art by copyrighting it, selling it and becoming as wealthy as possible.

Scudder

PS. good web page Greg- you might want to check out The Gathering, a Dutch prog metal band. Their female lead vocalist is tremendous, with strong, ethereal vocals, and the band itself is reminiscent of Rush/Yes... very powerful and deft guitar work. Start with Nighttime Birds or Mandylion.

And to the fifty people who replied to tell me that eternal copyright laws were bad: notice I never said that. My post was simply directed at the particular section of the article that discussed "giving back to society". Directed at what looked to me like a blatant appeal to get something for nothing...

I've heard that the performance of the SunPCi card is questionable. Even if it was great, bear in mind that it takes up two PCI slots. In a three-slot Ultra 5, you have one PCI slot to put the SCSI back in or get a decent video card. Your choice, since you can't get both.

I think it's a nice idea to sell these for cheap, but $2000 isn't cheap anymore, and you certainly must make sure you Don't Believe The Hype.

It's called Coconut by Harry Nilsson, available on the Reservior Dogs soundtrack.

Amazons music store isn't that great, and the prices are just pathetic I'd rather go to Duffelbag.com or even CDNow any day. Besides, Amazon is all hype anyway. They were the first, they're doing a good job. But for chrissake, they're losing money and don't expect to be in the black for years! That's insane with the volume of sales they are doing.

Click on the slashdot link to CDNOW. Add the CD to your shopping cart. Then click on this link. It will take you to CDnow, but with a $10 off coupon for any purchase over $15. The good thing is that they way CDNow works, you should still be counting as having linked from Slashdot. (the cookie should still say Slashdot and won't expire for 2 hours) Unfortunately (well, just for this; not for most people, they've lowered the price of the PM soundtrack to $13.28, which means this won't work unless you buy something else. Anybody know anything that costs $2 at CDNow?