Slashdot Mirror

There are updated versions of gramofile with new and improved filters available here.
my own project, xmcd2make abuses the make program to automate gramofile and the mundane and redundant file naming and encoding tasks using xmcd files from freedb.org.
There is a HOWTO as well

Agreed.
A service like FreeDB (or CDDB) for books would be really interesting.

A barcode scanner, and a search application, and *smuck* you have your own library.

So what rights do I have with this data? I was kinda burned when FireFly sold all my record reviews (along with those by hundreds of other users). CDDB being sold to (and locked up by) Escient is a better example of this phenomenon. (For those who arrived late, freedb is an open source fork of CDDB, which is now called GraceNote).

No more submissions from me until someone tells me what happens to my work. I don't mind someone like Jon Katz quoting my /. posts, but I'm not willing to have my work turned into proprietary data.

Good project tho; I'm surprised it took this long to happen.

Of course, FreeDB works great, and Gracenote can go pack fudge.

I know that OpenOffice has had problems running with glibc 2.3.1 (see this bug) so I find it interesting that it will be included. I haven't been able to get it to work, but RedHat must have worked around it somehow.

Check out Musicbrainz for an official description, but it's basically a music metadatabase like freedb or cddb.

It seems that they are either using freedb or something similar. Here's a clip about what the freedb.org's database is:

What is CDDB? The original CDDB is a database to look up CD information using the internet. This is done by a client which calulates a (nearly) unique disc ID and then queries the database. As a result, the client displays the artist, CD-title, tracklist and some additional infos.

Take a look at this DVD artist/title programmer submitted to Openchallenge to see how else you can utilize freedb.org.

it matches the signal from the music at certain points

Clarification: Gracenote's CDDB 2 may do this. CDDB 1 (used by FreeDB) was based solely on track lengths.

large archive, and if there's something i want and they don't have, they try to get it

i get to choose the quality: 64kpbs mono for a quick preview to cd-quality, with some bitrates in between

nice and/or usable (+quick) interface with working search function (ever tried searching for A on cddb or freedb?)

since they'll generate a user profile based on my downloads anyway, they could suggest other artists (like amazon)

pricing could (loosely) depend on traffic, so previews would be cheap or free and high-quality would still cost less than the cd

lyrics, links, booklets, etc.

i'm sure you can think of more...

I also loved the first player option of quake. Although I got into TCP/IP and rarely played afterwards it was fun.

My favorite part was playing with the CD going in the background. My favorite soundtrack had to be Bone's "E. 1999 Eternal" ( Track List )

Very creepy on a few maps.

There is an application called NeoAudio, which is a straight CDex rip off. They changed some string (i.e. replace CDex with NeoAudio), changed the logo and added some nice SpyWare and Adware. I contacted Richard M. Stallman about this issue, but unfortunately I can not do much about it, except for the fact that they are removing/changing copyright strings which they should not. So please do not download and install NeoAudio (they probably make quite a few dollars by shipping the adware) and also advice other people NOT to download NeoAudio either, and warn innocent users not to download this application but download CDex instead.

In addition there is a small but worthwhile discussion over at Freedb. Some Slashdotters have missed the fact that Mr. Faber does not claim NeoAudio violates the license, he is merely suggesting potential users make informed decisions on whether to use CDex or NeoAudio. Logically, there is no reason to use NeoAudio -- it offers no improvements over CDex.

Of course, there's always Exact Audio Copy, which has proved itself in the mp3 scene as the de-facto standard for ripping.

http://freedb.org/modules.php?name=News&file=artic le&sid=151

How about clicking on the 'About' link?

It's really not tough. It's almost, dare I say, intuitive. Slashdot's homepage doesn't have a description about how it works, but even you managed to figure it out. So why are you complaining?

How about clicking on the 'About' link?

It's really not tough. It's almost, dare I say, intuitive. Slashdot's homepage doesn't have a description about how it works, but even you managed to figure it out. So why are you complaining?

How about clicking on the 'About' link?

It's really not tough. It's almost, dare I say, intuitive. Slashdot's homepage doesn't have a description about how it works, but even you managed to figure it out. So why are you complaining?

How about clicking on the 'About' link?

It's really not tough. It's almost, dare I say, intuitive. Slashdot's homepage doesn't have a description about how it works, but even you managed to figure it out. So why are you complaining?

How about clicking on the 'About' link?

It's really not tough. It's almost, dare I say, intuitive. Slashdot's homepage doesn't have a description about how it works, but even you managed to figure it out. So why are you complaining?

How about clicking on the 'About' link?

It's really not tough. It's almost, dare I say, intuitive. Slashdot's homepage doesn't have a description about how it works, but even you managed to figure it out. So why are you complaining?

How about clicking on the 'About' link?

It's really not tough. It's almost, dare I say, intuitive. Slashdot's homepage doesn't have a description about how it works, but even you managed to figure it out. So why are you complaining?

Wrong. Freedb.org was started as a replacement for CDDB not the other way around. Maybe you should read up on why this project exists in the first place.

With regard to completely untagged MP3s. The technologies sort of here (www.shazam.com) for identifying music, but the delivery mechanism's all wrong for you, and the price isn't good either. I can see this sort of thing branching out in a short while though. You send a fifteen second MP3 snippet, and an email comes back to you with the song details.

How I'd do it. If you can get the CDDB into a MYSQL database, it'd be easy enough to strip out the id tag info and do some sort of an index match.

The Feedb CD Data can be found here

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past two years you'd know that CDDB has been hijacked by Gracenote who've turned what was a nice, cooperative development, steadily built up by thousands of unpaid users into a private, commercial venture.

Nowadays, if you're developing commercial software that accesses the CDDB database you have to pony up licensing fees or look elsewhere.

That elsewhere is freedb. Check it out and use it instead of using CDDB.

About a year before we cratered, Be, Incorporated, had developed a prototype of a product very similar to what Sony's come out with.

It was called HARP (Home Audio Reference Platform). Built on top of BeOS (naturally), the HARP prototype looked like an ordinary stereo component (principally because we bought an actual stereo component, hollowed it out, and shoved an Intel 810-based mobo in there). When you inserted a CD, HARP would begin ripping it immediately, convert it to MP3, and store it on the internal disk. But all that happened in the background; you could still play the disc immediately.

We used the built-in database features of the BeOS filesystem to index all internally stored MP3s. And we'd send off to FreeDB.org for the tracklist. But the really cool bit was that HARP had a built-in Web server. Just fire up your PC -- or your wireless Web tablet, of which we had plenty laying around -- connect to the HARP server, and you'd get a browsable list of all the songs on the machine, viewable in any Web browser. Pick one, and it would start playing.

We never got to finish the prototype; Be died before that could happen.

Funny, though; I seem to remember that we had showed HARP to the Sony people when we were developing the e-Villa Web appliance for them...

Schwab

Yahoo! is reporting that Gracenote (previously CDDB, an open source project) is planning to sell aggregate usage data to advertisers and such like. Makes me glad I use a freedb-based CD player (CD Max, for the curious).

I have not followed freedb much, but I suspect the software that runs it could be modified to work with books. The Freedb software is under the GPL and uses a MySQL database backend. Someone looking to procrastinate for a few days could probably have a working book database within a few days.

--Ben

Now I just need to find a way to buy a personal data feed from Tribune Media Services, and there's a networkable, build-your-own TiVo! I wonder if they'd be willing to sell feeds to individuals...

In a former life I worked for a company that worked closely with TMS using their data feeds. I doubt they'd have the slightest interest in selling feeds to individuals. They don't have the infrastructure to support that kind of program and I can't imagine a model that would make sense for them. They sell the feeds for a great deal on money and its a primary business for them.

I think a better model is an open source database a la freedb where users contribute schedule information. However because of the time sensitive nature of schedules this might not work too well.

My take on each of these required fields, in order....

A) The name of the service, B) The channel of the program (AM/FM stations use station id), C) The type of program (Archived/Looped/Live): These are constants. Easy.

D) Date of Transmission, E) Time of Transmission: Simple timestamping, which most stations already do in their internal logs.

F) Time zone of origination of Transmission: Another constant, for small organizations with a single server. For large broadcasters that use geographically distributed server-side caching networks such as Akamai, this translates to "F) The local streaming server the listener is connected to".

G) Numeric designation of the place of the sound recording within the program: This seems to be worded to apply if the song is part of a predetermined set of songs (e.g. a prerecorded program being rebroadcast). For live stations, whose program is continuous, this will simply equal the timestamp.

H) Duration of transmission (to nearest second), I) Sound Recording Title: FreeDB, anyone? Regardless, these should already be represented in the music files that are broadcast, as song length and filename.

J) The ISRC code of the recording: Tricky. There are some CD drives out there that can read barcode and ISRC numbers, but this is rare. A paid subscription to a large commercial database might be necessary (another fee!), as has been pointed out. No doubt this is the intention of the RIAA, as they already know this information and simply want to make it a burden to collect.

K) The release year of the album per copyright notice and in the case of compilation albums, the release year of the album and copyright date of the track, L) Featured recording artist, M) Retail album title, N) The recording Label, : More information that should already be in a fully populated FreeDB entry. If it isn't, the gaps will have to be filled in, either by database subscription or manual retyping from the CD liner notes.

O) The UPC code of the retail album: Another standard tracking number. See ISRC above. How much would you like to bet that the few record companies that put barcode and ISRC numbers on their CD's will stop doing this, just to make it harder for independent online radio stations to learn these numbers?

P) The catalog number, Q) The copyright owner information, : More database information. I assume by "catalog number" that they mean the catalog of a record company (the number they assign for each release).

At least almost all of these statistics are constants for a given recording. Enter the data once, and that's it. There is no extra recurring cost to use the information after it has been obtained, which is good. Besides, most radio stations don't have a very large playlist! A few nights of data entry should be all it takes to comply with these requirements.

R) The musical genre of the channel or program (station format): The list is closed off by another easy constant.

For online stations, though, they start tightening the screws:

1) The name of the service or entity, 2) The channel or program, : Some simple constants, to lull you into thinking that compliance will be easy.

3) the date and time that the user logged in, 4) the date and time that the user logged out: With existing unicast stations, this is easy: connection start and stop times are already logged by almost all online radio stations. With multicast, it would be hard, though. The server might not even be notified if a distant client joins the stream, if a downstream router performs the multiplexing! In this case, it would be impossible to gather this information.

The RIAA might have a hidden agenda here, to kill multicasting before it can get off the ground. This ensures that only the well-funded huge corporate stations, friends of the RIAA, can broadcast online.

5) The time zone where the signal was received (user): This is the biggie. Subscriptions to a geolocation service, such as Quova, are now mandatory! Another large fee. (This time zone requirement also applies to the user timestamping requirements above.)

6) Unique User identifier: This is very vague. At the least, it could simply be a cookie that is sent to the user's browser. Privacy-disregarding corporate media players such as RA and WMP already upload user tracking information, as we have seen. Still, there is no way to track users that is 100% certain. And this is another category that will be impossible to determine if multicasting is used!

7) The country in which the user received the transmissions: Confirmation that a geolocation subscription is now required.

Well, these are lame, but they seem to have their intended effect: scaring off all competitors to RIAA-approved prolefeed. Online radio stations, rather than pay for two database services (geolocation and CD identification), would find it easier just to give up.

Furthermore, many people submitted the information without charging anybody and they thought their help would remain free, because the initital license was GPL

So if I am in error, so are the folks at the freedb. But if both of us are in error, what does that tell us? That Ti Kan is apparently a sellout bastard who took the work of others and locked it up for his own gain. If there's a tenth circle of Hell, I hope there's room for him near Hitler, Stalin, and Ellison.

The thing you might learn from the CDDB history and the creation of the free version of CDDB - freedb - is that licenses do matter - even if the project is a volountary and open one to begin with.

Mikael

So we have a "sealed agreement", under which Gracenote backs down from their utterly contemptible and indefensible suit. This should not be the end of the matter, folks.
If we users allow corporate parasites like Gracenote to operate this kind of hit-and-run prospecting on OUR data, we will all lose in the end. With deep enough pockets, one of them is bound to succeed eventually.

The financial pressure against this kind of opportunistic horseshit must not end with a quiet "sealed agreement", and the lawyers all shaking hands and walking away. Don't use Gracenote's products, via Roxio products, sub-licensed technology on Windows, or any other vendor. Vote with your wallet. Use and help build free alternatives like freedb. The business case for Gracenote to try it again will be much tougher to build, next time they're tempted.

Yes, but even though Bitzi is a general file catalogueing project, taking information from other, more specific sources can help (when their license allows it, of course)

For music files, this would of course be FreeDB. For movies, a good choice would be IMDB etc.

For instance, if I look up one of my Nightwish songs, Bitzi gives me the following information:
http://bitzi.com/lookup/TTGZBRZLZ2HLXDHSQYBTEJD33M Y4OA2X.46IPPFIFT353PXN2BWBZEMYBF3ASZXTCWJN43RY
the data from FreeDB is more accurate, giving the album the song belongs to, the playtime etc.
http://www.freedb.org/freedb_search_fmt.php?cat=ro ck&id=c011130f

One might want to consider that CRC is not the only ethically questionable player in all this. To me it rings slightly hollow to read text like

The parent company of CRC, Information Holdings Inc., appears unashamed to treat information as a commodity to be exploited for short-term, bottom-line cash with no concern for long-term, strategic planning.

without recalling that the maintainer of the website intended to make money from generous input of so many visitors to his website. I'm reminded of the schism that created FreeDB from CDDB (now Gracenote) because Gracenote did something similar with CD index contributions.

Perhaps people should consider not contributing anything without getting something out of it that would be as valuable to you as moneydownloading content in bulk, perhaps? I don't know what that would be for everybody. Please spare me the mediocre wiseacre response of "You obviously didn't consider that before you contributed.".

69 Minutes: Disc 2 of Jimmy Van M's Bedrock (the other is 64)

73 Minutes *each disc* for two discs: Sasha's Global Underground San Francisco

Troll. Try listening to something other than pop-crap.

69 Minutes: Disc 2 of Jimmy Van M's Bedrock (the other is 64)

73 Minutes *each disc* for two discs: Sasha's Global Underground San Francisco

Troll. Try listening to something other than pop-crap.

It depends on what genre you're talking about. Classical CD's are often 60 minutes, and 70 minutes aren't unusual. Note also that the listeners to classical music are the least likely to accept artifical restrictions.

It depends on what genre you're talking about. Classical CD's are often 60 minutes, and 70 minutes aren't unusual. Note also that the listeners to classical music are the least likely to accept artifical restrictions.

The mp3 engineers hire a bean counter who tells them how much money they are losing annually because of the popularity of their format. They begin to enforce royalty and licensing issues with an iron fist.

As providers of mp3s encoders and content providers begin to get hit financially by the Germans they set out for a new alternative to mp3. Something similar, if not better in quality than mp3 which would contain no financial implications. Ogg is discovered in 2002! Marketing and PR dollars by many organizations are spent on promoting Ogg as the next evolution in digital music.

Other forward thinking production companies, music labels begin to release music using EFF's new open audio license therefore by passing all the BS of copyrights for music that will be exchanged by the masses anyway.

Additional companies begin to insert FreeDB tags into their ogg files so that players released in 2003 can pull info off their now completely free and open music system. Early adopters include NPR, IndyMedia and other production companies. By 2004 WMP and QuickTime have codecs for playing ogg files.

The only twist here is if Franhofer never attempts to forcefully collect on the mp3 codec formula. If it doesn't cost anything for developers to use, there will never be reason enough to switch at this point of acceptance.

support freedb
check out freedb.org - submit your entries there, and point your CDDB inquiries to freedb.freedb.org

if you buy a CD or more a week, like i do, and immediately rip them, like i do, make a submission of the information - you'll go a long way to helping the CDDB idea.
zero

C Watson has directions for the Mac, and freedb.org has some instructions for doing the same on other platforms.
http://www.cam.org/~cwatson/freedb/
http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=46

And if you are messing about with your hosts file already, you might want to include redirection for various web advertisers to speed up your web browsing.
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/spam/adblock.s html

Mac OS X seems to use a different mechanism than the hosts files for most setups, preferring the Netinfo tool. There are some details about it at Mac OS X Hints, but I have not figured it out completely myself.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010 328234510985
Here is another new one just posted on May 15th that I have yet to read and understand.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010 515062331512

it's more polite, and gets closer to the point. which is why.

I imagine it must be simply on the bases of "breach of contract". a contract that must say "you may not use our competeters". however, what i bet it says is "you may not use our SDK with competitors" perhapes thats what the problem is.

Even thought the protocol for freedb is simple, i can see Roxio not using the free implementation due to the restricitve GPL license. and opted to just keeping using CDDB's SDK.

If so this is a true irony for the open source/ information wants to be free croud.

-Jon

it's more polite, and gets closer to the point. which is why.

I imagine it must be simply on the bases of "breach of contract". a contract that must say "you may not use our competeters". however, what i bet it says is "you may not use our SDK with competitors" perhapes thats what the problem is.

Even thought the protocol for freedb is simple, i can see Roxio not using the free implementation due to the restricitve GPL license. and opted to just keeping using CDDB's SDK.

If so this is a true irony for the open source/ information wants to be free croud.

-Jon

This also means that all of your applications that would normaly want to use CDDB will use freedb.org without having to change their settings or hack their resources.

Now does anyone want to let me know how to easily do this with Mac OS X? I can't seem to get the Netinfo utility to do it effectively.

While you are at it, you might want to play similar tricks with advertising banners and the like. Here's more information.

This also means that all of your applications that would normaly want to use CDDB will use freedb.org without having to change their settings or hack their resources.

Now does anyone want to let me know how to easily do this with Mac OS X? I can't seem to get the Netinfo utility to do it effectively.

While you are at it, you might want to play similar tricks with advertising banners and the like. Here's more information.

I don't think the lawsuit is about the CONCEPT of storing a large CD-info database, rather about the technology used to access that info and/or the algorithm for identifying CDs.
Gracenote's press release lists the following objections:
1) Patent infringement "by illegally inducing the use of Gracenote's industry acclaimed patented music recognition inventions"
2) "violations of Federal law", that is, "violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by offering products that circumvent Gracenote's technological measures to obtain access to an unauthorized derivative of the CDDB copyrighted database."

They also list, but don't expand on:
3) "breach of contract"
4) "trademark infringement"

So while your point is certainly an interesting one, it doesn't seem analogous to Gracenote's claim. Gracenote is apparently trying to indirectly target freedb by attacking defectors.

Each point has a fault or two that comes to mind, but of course "I'm an engineer, not a.." lawyer. From what I gathered from freedb.org they use the same protocol. I guess Gracenote believes that is their technology alone. If this is true, it seems they should target freedb, not Roxio. "Breach of contract" seems moot, since their contract had expired; however reading one of the comments above it sounds like they probably own your for life once you sign. (not allowed to switch to a competitor's service? ouch.. would be interesing to read that license agreement).

anyway...

The key difference, though, is that not only do Gracenote and freedb work similarly, but also they rely on the same fundamental algorithm for taking the contents table on the CD and generating the 64-bit unique disc IDs which are used as keys into their respective databases. Granted, the algorithm isn't exactly rocket science, but it looks like it was Gracenote who came up with it first.

(Now, if Gracenote had only patented the algorithm... :) )

According to Gracenote, "It's our valuable intellectual property that's underlying all this." I beg to differ.

It is my (and your) intellectual property that underlies their database. I have inputted a couple of discs into CDDB over the years.

I propose a class action lawsuit to reclaim our IP. I reccomend we sue for five dollars per entry and whatevers left after the sharks get their cut we donate to charity. What do you think.

If we win the database, we could give it to Freedb.org , free and clear.

I think it's pretty clear that unless FreeDB actually copied the data from CDDB, mistakes and all, that Gracenote has no grounds for the data.

Or maybe Gracenote is filing suit because the wire interface for FreeDB is exactly the same as CDDB, so that all Roxio had to do was change a constant somewhere. CDDB was also trying to foist a new advanced DCOM-only interface to replace the http-based one, but nobody seems to use it. Anyway, I am pretty sure than emulating an interface or protocol is not going be enough for Gracenote to claim damages. If mere emulation is enough to let Gracenote win, it will have a chilling effect on the ability for anybody to independently provide the same service as somebody else. And that's not good for the growth and use of web services.

If the use of cddbp is in fact a problem, I would advise the FreeDB people to implement the interface to their service in terms of SOAP instead.

Once CERT starts charging, their volunteer army will dry up very fast.

Heh. Remember CDDB?

I set any CDDBP-aware app I come across to use FreeDB.

Any organization that rapes the enthusiasm of volunteers deserves to die a quick and painful death.

--

Check http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=11 and http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=10

Check http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=11 and http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=10

Better yet, these apps support freedb out of the box: http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=10