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The RIAA doesn't have the knowledge or the skill to do it themselves so they hire companies who do this sort of thing for a living. They pay a certain amonut per song as a base, so many cents (usually about 1.5 cents) per scan, per protocol, then pay the same amount again when they find the files, then so much to send a Cease and Desist Letter. They scan about every 15 minute, or determined by the label. They can run up huge numbers in just a couple of days for popular acts. Who pays? The artist of course, as it goes into their recoupable account, that never shrinks.

DMusic.com has an article with audio of the California Senate Hearings if you want the lowdown on the labels accounting. (Streaming MP3)it can be found Here especially enlightning is Don Engel's and Fred Wolinski's testimony.

This was already posted at AtomicPop under the Dmusic section the exact URLs are here an here I think GameSpot has also posted it a while ago. Try searching at AtomicPop for more info.

This was already posted at AtomicPop under the Dmusic section the exact URLs are here an here I think GameSpot has also posted it a while ago. Try searching at AtomicPop for more info.

The truth of the matter is that musicians have been struggling for years before file sharing came along.(Pause to let that sink in)

If she's not getting airplay on radio (which is unlikely)the file sharing and the net is the great field leveler. Since the majors pay to put their music on the radio, unless daddy is filthy rich, she'll never get on. I know it's been cliched to death but "Think outside the box".

The chances of making a living were small to begin with. Tell your friend to put together a website, put the cd on CDBABY put a song or two and a sampler of the CD on a Music Community website such as DMusic.Com Get her CD in Amazon.Com's Advantage program.

Put the website on everything, have email list signup sheets every where she plays, and use the things. Promote, promote, promote. Create a small steady market for her work. Contrary to what the major labels would have you beleive, you don't need to sell millions of CDs to make a living. (well, you do if you work for them). If your friend wants to be a "rock star" tell her to hang up the music and concentrate on something that pays, like fry cook at McDonalds, but if she plays for the love of playing, has some talent, and promotes her work, prices her CD reasonably, and treats it like a business (put together a business plan), she'll see progress. The fact that her stuff is being traded on file sharing networks tells you that there is a demand, and that people like her music.

How accessable to those fans to purchase? Can they buy it easily? Can they buy it online? Does she have distribution? Check out Redeye for distribution (although it looks like their website got hacked) they distribute to record stores nationwide, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, etc....

DMusic.com raised questions about the speed of the downloads and numbers way back on March 1st in this article

They suspected that the test was faked, or done from dedicated servers, as even with broadband connections P2P filesharing is often much much slower. It was obvious from the beginning that the numbers didn't add up....

DMusic.com raised questions about the speed of the downloads and numbers way back on March 1st in this article

They suspected that the test was faked, or done from dedicated servers, as even with broadband connections P2P filesharing is often much much slower. It was obvious from the beginning that the numbers didn't add up....

And the DMCA (Damned Millenium Copyright Act NEEDS to be gutted and SOON, & Copyright terms need to go back to something realistic rather than life plus 70 years. The abuse by the copyright cartel of the DMCA has grown ever more ridiculous as time goes on. Songwriters quit writing songs and file lawsuits because it's more profitible, than taking a chance at what you've done all of you life and grown proficent at. Musicians are threatened with lawsuits for sending out press packs with Xerox copies of newspaper and magazine articles reviewing a show they did or their own cd.

My money is on three days max. before there is software available to convert NAP to MP3. Remember if I can hear it I can copy it, through my Soundblaster Live it's as simple as record what you hear. In Total Recorder I can do an MP3 on the fly. Another proprietary format just adds to the confusion, without doing anything to alleviate the licensing problems that plague the online music arena, and encryption of the music, downright silly...DMusic has an article by Ben Silverman where he quotes some recording industry execs.about what they've done in the past year. Following suit won't make it better only worse. My 2 Euros worth.

And the DMCA (Damned Millenium Copyright Act NEEDS to be gutted and SOON, & Copyright terms need to go back to something realistic rather than life plus 70 years. The abuse by the copyright cartel of the DMCA has grown ever more ridiculous as time goes on. Songwriters quit writing songs and file lawsuits because it's more profitible, than taking a chance at what you've done all of you life and grown proficent at. Musicians are threatened with lawsuits for sending out press packs with Xerox copies of newspaper and magazine articles reviewing a show they did or their own cd.

My money is on three days max. before there is software available to convert NAP to MP3. Remember if I can hear it I can copy it, through my Soundblaster Live it's as simple as record what you hear. In Total Recorder I can do an MP3 on the fly. Another proprietary format just adds to the confusion, without doing anything to alleviate the licensing problems that plague the online music arena, and encryption of the music, downright silly...DMusic has an article by Ben Silverman where he quotes some recording industry execs.about what they've done in the past year. Following suit won't make it better only worse. My 2 Euros worth.

DataPlay wants to be the next one in this chain. On CNNfn, the CMO of the company promotes their product as being a great tool for record companies that want to re-sell their old music in a new format. Universal wants to release everything in secure format, for $2 per song. Just one of the many reasons to stay away from that format. It may sound cool in theory, but it's the RIAA's dream. They go out of their way to make trading files impossible. (Remember CPRM?)

That's of course www.dmusic.com
Sorry...

The Review is available @ Dmusic, the best review site for mp3 hardware I've seen. (If anybody knows of any more please share them with me!)

It'll be interesting to see the next wave of player by more major brands such as RCA. I just wish they could break the $100 price point and include a function to play *.m3u files.

Huh?!? According to dmusic.com it's the worst one. Have you actually looked into any of the others?

http://www.dmusic.com/news/news.php?id=2735

Thanks Google

I'm glad you're happy with your MpTrip, but I don't think that I would consider it the best from what I heard.

Check out Dmusic for reviews of all the hardware mp3 players. For CD/mp3 players I believe that the classic cm415 is the highest rated one that you can go out and buy. (only @ circuit city, less than $100) There are several that should come out in the next couple months (cross your fingers). One is claimed to play mp3s off a cd, and be able to rip cds to its internal harddrive much like the nomad. (or PJB for those who prefer the nicer things)The weird thing is the company claims it will be in the $200 dollar range!!!
To bad it won't probably happen..

My favorite site for mp3 player reviews is dmusic.com
Reviews of just about every hardware mp3 player out there and more.
check it out. (BTW, no I'm not affiliated)

How is their Minidisc crippled? I hadn't heard of that.

Of course, that this is the same company that brought us the Music Clip MP3 player... one of those nifty devices that asks you to convert all of your MP3s to some "secure" format. Their PlayStation uses specially-formatted CDs that can't be copied. Aren't they a member of SDMI too?

For what it's worth, my ears aren't that sensitive. How many people out there are saying, "the audio quality of these CDs is really driving me to insanity, when oh when will someone come up with a better format?"

Why don't they declare mp3 encoding to be a form of encryption, thereby making all mp3 players (like Sonique) an illegal device whose sole purpose is to circumvent that encryption and decode the RIAA's copyrighted works? Since there are no legal definitions of what a legitimate encryption standard must entail, and since we're all aware that mp3s are entirely effective at preventing people with old Linux boxes from decoding them (less so for PCs and Macs, but the principle holds), it just might work. And more importantly, it would give the RIAA a legal leg to stand on in criminalizing all those copyright violations occurring right now, where non-DMCA law has been slow to act.

Cheers,
Froid

The full story is right here! :(

Don't settle for the first generation of MP3 CD Players. So far, all of the entries in the market have been by the small Taiwanese and Korean companies that managed to pull off the biggest rush job in getting their players out to market. As a result, the first generation players are of poor quality and have substandard feature sets.

If you have the patience, hold out until the big boys start hitting the market with their own players.

RCA has recently announced an MP3 CD player that features a multi-line display and ID3 tag support. When you have 650 megabytes of random MP3s on one disc, this sort of information is essential to finding what you want quickly and effectively. Some info can be found on it at here

Phillips is coming out with their own MP3 CD player, the Expanium, which is slated to ship around August. The player seems to have much more comprehensive support than the first generation no-name models, and offers support for a wide range of bitrates (32-320 kbps, while most current ones only go up to 192). More info can be found here

If you do not wish to wait for the next generation of MP3 CD players, but still crave massive storage space in a portable shell, check out the PJB 100. The latest model features a 6 gigabyte hard drive, 10 megs of buffer memory, and a USB connection for around $700. Specs and more can be found here and here

There are quite a few MP3/CD player combinations in development though none have actually shipped to date. Here is a list of a few of them and a link to where a small review about each one can be read. This is just a few prospective MP3 CD players that have been extracted from an article that Dimension Music just recently wrote regarding the portable MP3 CD player race. These players, with the exception of the Kiwi player, have been known about for quite some time now to those of us who closely follow the MP3 scene:

MamboX: shipping delayed from Nov 99 until mid Apr 00. D'Music MP3: shipping delayed from Feb 00 until mid Apr 00. Kiwi MP3 CD Player: quite possibly shipping any moment.

There are quite a few MP3/CD player combinations in development though none have actually shipped to date. Here is a list of a few of them and a link to where a small review about each one can be read. This is just a few prospective MP3 CD players that have been extracted from an article that Dimension Music just recently wrote regarding the portable MP3 CD player race. These players, with the exception of the Kiwi player, have been known about for quite some time now to those of us who closely follow the MP3 scene:

MamboX: shipping delayed from Nov 99 until mid Apr 00. D'Music MP3: shipping delayed from Feb 00 until mid Apr 00. Kiwi MP3 CD Player: quite possibly shipping any moment.

There are quite a few MP3/CD player combinations in development though none have actually shipped to date. Here is a list of a few of them and a link to where a small review about each one can be read. This is just a few prospective MP3 CD players that have been extracted from an article that Dimension Music just recently wrote regarding the portable MP3 CD player race. These players, with the exception of the Kiwi player, have been known about for quite some time now to those of us who closely follow the MP3 scene:

MamboX: shipping delayed from Nov 99 until mid Apr 00. D'Music MP3: shipping delayed from Feb 00 until mid Apr 00. Kiwi MP3 CD Player: quite possibly shipping any moment.

There are quite a few MP3/CD player combinations in development though none have actually shipped to date. Here is a list of a few of them and a link to where a small review about each one can be read. This is just a few prospective MP3 CD players that have been extracted from an article that Dimension Music just recently wrote regarding the portable MP3 CD player race. These players, with the exception of the Kiwi player, have been known about for quite some time now to those of us who closely follow the MP3 scene:

MamboX: shipping delayed from Nov 99 until mid Apr 00. D'Music MP3: shipping delayed from Feb 00 until mid Apr 00. Kiwi MP3 CD Player: quite possibly shipping any moment.

There's already one in production, as it would appear you could buy one on eBay. The mp3 site dimension music just recently did a feature on this sort of thing.

There's already one in production, as it would appear you could buy one on eBay. The mp3 site dimension music just recently did a feature on this sort of thing.

News review DMusic

Have a look and order here Kiwi-computers

Some more information here from Dimension Music. Apparently Robertson simply refuses and ignores requests to have the rightful domain name handed back to their right owners. The programmer behind Audiograbber is getting pretty upset, since mp3.com wholeheartedly endorses MusicMatch, audiograbber's competitor, and audiograbber.com redirects people to mp3.com.

Unfuck.exe takes an already registered WMA file and outputs it as a WAV, at which point it re-encodes it into an unprotected WMA file.

I checked mp3.com but I see no reference on this.

I'll wait for the "rogue" SDMI player to come out. It will be shot down by lawsuits. Hasdi

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Slashdot Load Testing (Continues) Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 02:13 PM EDT
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Fixed so far:

• Dropped http MaxClients down to 75
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Help Test Our New Server! Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 12:51 PM EDT
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So here it is: A mirror of Slashdot (as of a week or so ago). It exists now for testing: So feel free to post comments and help test the new load balancer. For the curious, the new system has 3 http machines (P2s) and one mysql box (a dual P2) with a load balancer trying to keep everyone all equally busy. And its about time: the old setup has been really stressed out trying to keep up with everyone. Anyway, don't get to attached to any of your comments here, when we're satisfied that the new setup is stable, I'm gonna mirror over Slashdot and make the final switcheroo.

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Interview: Mandrake Answers Posted by Roblimo on Fri August 20, 12:00 PM EDT
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Monday a whole bunch of people had questions for Mandrake, one of the heavies behind Enlightenment. Slashdot Moderators picked the best ones. We forwarded them, unedited, to Mandrake on Tuesday. His (excellent) answers appear below.

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Geeks in the Space: The Attack of 5 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 04:10 AM EDT
from the more-stuff-to-listen-to dept.
Well, we've done it again. Yes, Geeks in Space, Episode 5 has been released. In it, we lament the lack of good news, talk about anti-matter, and the hiring of hacks by companies. You can also become...educated in my long-term plan for the hostile takeover of a certain Redmond-based company.

( Read More... | 14 of 17 comments )

Apple announces Darwin 0.3 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 12:24 AM EDT
from the more-to-download dept.
J. FoxGlov writes "Macintouch reports that v0.3 of Darwin, the open-source foundation for Mac OS X Server is available on Apple's Public Source site. Apple Developer Connection members can get it on CD for $29. Check Public Source for more about the Darwin SDK and the new Darwin. "

( Read More... | 67 of 68 comments )

Microsoft's New Audio Format Cracked Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:23 PM EDT
from the secure-this-buddy dept.
Barcode (JPB) was one of the first to send us the word from Wired that the new audio format Microsoft introduced (Two days ago), supposed to be a secure format (resricting playback) has already been cracked. Dimension Music first carried the news-and what a name the crack has *grin*.

( Read More... | 238 of 240 comments )

Find your Star Wars Twin Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:16 PM EDT
from the what-freud-really-wanted-to-do dept.
The_Monk writes "Ever wanted to know your Star Wars twin? Now this incredibly important information can be verified. It placed me the likes of Astro Mech Droids, 'Tarkin, and R2-D2. " Ahem-as the lost twin of Lando (extraversion), I have a Cloud City I'd like to sell someone. But I'm about as agreeable as Boba, always a bonus.

( Read More... | 94 of 94 comments )

Now Police Can 'See' Through Walls Posted by Roblimo on Wed August 18, 12:40 PM EDT
from the move-along-there's-nothing-to-see-here dept.
Bram writes "Just found an article about another way to invade privacy." He's talking about hand-held radar systems police can use to detect breathing, beating hearts or other motion through walls and other obstacles. Sounds like a declassified version of the Ground Support Radar [GSR] units we used years ago in the Army. I can see why police would want them, and I can also see why Bram considers them a privacy threat. Depends on how they're used, I suppose.

( Read More... | 205 of 205 comments )

FreeType posts patent warning Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 11:53 AM EDT
from the i-want-my-verdonna dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "According to the the FreeType web page, there have been some new concerns raised about Apple's patents on TrueType. I hope this doesn't affect the planned TrueType support in XF86 4. " It appears that they are still checking into the issue, but I'd really like TrueType support. A lot. Let's hope Apple responds nicely.

( Read More... | 202 of 206 comments )

Microsoft to "publish code" to Instant Messenger Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 09:49 AM EDT
from the want-more-market-share dept.
VFVTHUNTER writes "According to this article at cnet, MS, in an attempt to gain a share of AOL's Instant Messenger Service Market, announced today it is going to publish the protocol to its own messenger service. " It's important to note it's NOT the source code, just the protocol.

( Read More... | 192 of 192 comments )

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unfuck.exe just plays back the registered encoded file, captures the bitstream, and re-encodes it back into an unprotected file.

Therefore, the format has not been cracked, merely circumvented, and a minor quality loss is unavoidable.

This approach DOES NOT require decompressing and recompressing.
It is NOT a tap of the unencrypted stream.

The following is a copy of
a later article on dmusic.com refuting the misconception created by the Wired Article. I'm posting it here to quiet the flames, and because dmusic looks like they've been nearly slashdotted to death.


Microsoft's response to UNFUCK.EXE
by Angelo on August 18, 1999
Microsoft's attempt at an encrypted format has been broken, and that's
truely unfortunate but really not their fault. As explained in our previous
article, the CIA and the NSA put limitations on how encrypted a format may be.

To protect ourselves, and the integrity of our reports, we feel the need to
respond to Microsoft when they say unfuck.exe is no different from a program
named audiojacker or total recorder which takes audio from your sound card
and converts it to a WAV file. This has nothing to do with what UNFUCK.EXE
does! UNFUCK.EXE actaully breaks the protection on any file. There is no
loss in quality, the file isn't re-recorded or captured in some way.

A crack is just that, a crack. It's not manipulating the audio in such a
way that it can be captured, it is actaully destroying the protected [sic] on
an already recorded audio file.

We just wanted to clear that up as to not cause any confusion and sustain
our reputable name.

On one side I'm hearing that unfuck is a crack, on the other side MS says unfuck just samples the soundcard as the locked file is playing.

Can anyone state for sure which one it is?

Dimension has now posted a response to Microsoft saying that unfuck IS a crack.

From Dimension article: "UNFUCK.EXE actaully breaks the protection on any file. There is no loss in quality, the file isn't re-recorded or captured in some way."

So MS says it captures and Dimension says it doesn't.

Which is it??

Jeez, Dimension's site is crawling hard. Perhaps MS is taking out their embarassment on them.