Slashdot Mirror

Free newspapers have been around since the birth of the republic. People have been free to give away their writing for all that time, in spite of the rise of Big Media. Give me one example of Big Media stopping someone from writing their own material and giving it away for free.

Open Source has not been defeated even though Microsoft has attacked it relentlessly. Plus, at this point there are plenty of big players who want Open Source to stick around. In any event, Open Source is still alive and doing very well. The SCO case will likely only solidify the legal underpinnings of Open Source.

P2P networks lost in court because they not only allowed people to infringe on copyrighted material, but because they actively enouraged it. Had they been smarter in their marketing, they may have won their court case on a fair use defense, the way Sony won the Betamax case. It's not about being attacked for "giving away music," it's about profiting from the giving away of pirated music. Nobody is trying to get Magnatune or TMBG to shut down, right?

I won't touch the assertion that everybody who voted for Bush has seen the light and repented their warmongering and bought "Farenheit 911" DVDs and started pooling their resources to save whales.

I wouldn't either. But that's not what I said. I did say: "judging by the opinion polls, even the voters who brought Bush into office are starting to realize that his fear-based policies don't make any sense." There are people on the fringe Right and the fringe Left, but most Americans are in the middle politically. Historically the American voting public do change their minds in the face of evidence, and the evidence against the Bush approach is mounting to a degree that can't be ignored.

I HATE CLEAR CHANNEL!!!

Talking about not hearing the other sides argument. The point is that small artists don't *need* a record label any more. So we don't care how they invest their money - except that suing grandmothers doesn't seem like the best use.

We also have the classic "free" vs. "free" equivocation. I don't want to get music for free. I want to support the artist. But I much prefer to buy albums directly from the artists. And I hate stupid restrictions. "Liberian Acapella" is one of my favorites. They sing at churches and sell their self produced albums. I have many albums from Magnatune (a "record label" that does distribution only). Another favorite is David Bellugi from Italy.

That said, I am a copyright Nazi. I confiscate and destroy illegally copied RIAA music whenever I find it, give my teenage daughters a lecture on "playing by their rules if your going to listen to their music", and threaten to take the $3000 out of their bank account if they get caught distributing copies (I realize the lawsuits are for online distribution, but the principal is the same). Of course, the fact that I can't stand most of the music has *nothing* to do with this...

What I really need is some official RIAA materials on copyright violation, so that we can be clear that the copyright Nazi thing is part and parcel of RIAA music, and not something I am making up.

wrong!

http://www.magnatune.com/

=D

Have a look at Magnatune - http://www.magnatune.com/ Doesn't do everything you want (yet) but They Are Not Evil.

worth mentioning again: just one more reason to finally get rid of the music industry as we know it and rebuild it our way.

Ah.. there's too much free (legal!) music on the internet nowadays to warrant shelling out cash for 'pop' music from the big dogs.

http://freealbums.blogsome.com/
http://www.archive.org/audio/netlabels.php
http://www.magnatune.com/

Laters...

it's funny: everytime I read another story about RIAA, Sony and other scoundrels trying to take away our rights and rip us off, I just hop over to http://magnatune.com/ and buy another CD under a Creative Commons license which means I truly OWN what I buy. What's more, I can listen to all the Music in full before buying, I can download the Music again later, I have a choice of formats, and 50% of what I pay goes directly to the artist.

Who needs Sony, BMG, EMI and the other gangsters?

This is true, at least for a number of "big name" musicians who have had lots of media exposure. However, a huge amount is available under other labels: Naxos, for instance, has bought up a heap of good recordings from many of those same artists, and distributes them at very reasonable prices, while a number of very fine musicians such as Jacob Heringman deal exclusively with labels such as Magnatune, which are quite civilised by anybody's standards. Well, mine, at least.

Why should I have to go through the whole process of transcoding TWICE (and using an external medium, no less) in order to have to listen to songs I BOUGHT anywhere I want? iTMS (or any other product-locking music store) isn't getting my money until they offer files directly in DRM-free formats.

BTW, if anyone hasn't seen them, I suggest taking a look at Magnatune. They aren't a music store (they're a record label) but they allow you to download copies of all their songs in decent-quality MP3 format. If you like the music, you can then buy the album and name your own price between a certain reasonable range; the artist gets a full 50% of each sale (more than ten times the amount most major recording contracts allow).

I buy from Magnatune, Audio Lunchbox or one of the many other sites that sell open, non-DRM music in MP3, OGG Vorbis and FLAC formats.

Why should I buy things from people who don't have respect for me and my wishes as a customer?

No major label will ever again get a single penny from me until they say "screw DRM" and mean it too. If they don't, that's just fine with me. They can just wither and die for all I care.

Solution provided.

How do you then ensure that the music and player you buy today will not be incompatible with your player, online store or the OS?"

Easy, only buy music from people willing to let you listen to it. Places like emusic and magnatune sell completely unrestricted music files. And shit, archive.org gives away thousands of hours of music for free.

Vote with your wallet. If DRM is unacceptable, don't buy from people who would push it on you. There's plenty of music out there that's not DRM'd, and it's mostly better than the RIAA crap. Good musicians can afford to give music away, there's plenty more where that came from.

If you were treated the same way in a physical store that Apple or Napster treats you online, you'd storm out angrily and never shop there again. Why should online stores be any different?

"... right now any innovation only belongs to a half a dozen companies."

What a moron. If he considers a corpse of patent lawyers innovation, he might have a point. If he wants features and convenience, he has no clue.

KDE and other have it all gpl'd and ready for anyone. Playing, ripping and portability, it's all there.

For ripping, there's the easy "abcde" program and KDE's Konqueror. It just works, no further effort required. If you don't want to buy your music in a box, you can go get it for free at Magnitune and other Creative Commons sites that save you the trouble of ripping.

For play KDE alone have three excellent programs, Juk, Amork and Noatun. Noatun, while older, is my current favorite. It's network aware, as most KDE applications are, supports all sorts of playback including video, does shuffle and more. Can your music player sftp into your homebox? Outside of KDE, there are reliable standards like xmms, which also does network playlists, videos and all that.

My laptop coupled with a fm transmitter and a cheap fm equipped digital music player runs rings around a DRM'd ipod. I get a real keyboard, full screen to drag and drop my music around and have to be at my desk anyway. Why limit yourself to 40 or 60 gigs when you can see your biggest, fattest network box? When I want to go portable, I can drag a few hours of random music onto the player and walk off.

Music is the past, others are already living in the video future. Open Zaurus has been doing video streaming through the network for years.

So, the work is already done and Neuros is not so dumb to ask for help doing it. For the price of a few devices, they can have the best music / video player in the world. I imagine the experiment will be educational for more than the CEO.

If they are smart, they'll ship it with a Mepis CD to fix the end user's computer too. It's not like you can support a decent device on Windoze these days. Plugging cool portable devices to Windoze has like trying to put coal into your Ferrari for years now because Microsoft breaks what's not Microsoft.

And if you haven't already, check out magnatune . Their motto: "We're a record label. But we're not evil." Too bad Sony can't say the same.

What I don't like doing is handing over 25.99 for a cd, and having 23.99 go to a label, .50 to a another schmuck, and then .50 to the musician.

Take a look at http://magnatune.com/ - lots of good artists there. And if you buy a cd, half of the cash goes directly to the artist.

http://magnatune.com/info/why is also an interesting read.

My personal favorites there are AntiGuru and Cargo Cult (And, IMHO, Dufay Collective also have a few good tunes, but that's a bit more special)

What I don't like doing is handing over 25.99 for a cd, and having 23.99 go to a label, .50 to a another schmuck, and then .50 to the musician.

Take a look at http://magnatune.com/ - lots of good artists there. And if you buy a cd, half of the cash goes directly to the artist.

http://magnatune.com/info/why is also an interesting read.

My personal favorites there are AntiGuru and Cargo Cult (And, IMHO, Dufay Collective also have a few good tunes, but that's a bit more special)

I don't know, the first thing that caught my eye on the Audio Lunchbox site was their banner that proclaimed "100% compatibility with all portable music players, including the iPod". And Magnatune's FAQ states that their MP3-VBR format is perfect for the iPod.

Sounds like PEBKAC to me....

You mean I have to use iTunes to get music on my iPod? Really!?!? News to me...

If you want to legally download it you do.

I agree 100%! Who's with me? Don't buy any more DRM'ed music, movies, or games and soon they will cease to exist. Half-life 2 was enough of a headache to teach me to never buy this junk again. I have never bought DRM'ed music online and never will. Instead I have purchased Magnatunes music (an entire album for $5) and couldn't be happier with it. I don't care for the Hollywood garbage anyway, so I will pay extra for non-pirated foreign movies. Let's not even mention the Microsoft fiasco of Windows XP activation where you have to call up a company to "verify" you have the right to use your own software! Why not just use Linux and never fear that you can still use the same OS ten years from now without paying a single extra cent?

Try using Magnatune. They're a company that focuses on supporting artists, without being evil.

I'd say they're doing pretty well at it. Their stuff is available under a creative commons license... so you have the _right_ to share it. However, you can also support your artists (which I would encourage) without feeling guilty about it.

For something more legally and ethically unambiguous there is also MP3tunes and eMusic, though they both have limited selections of generally independent music. Strangely enough mp3.com doesn't seem to have mp3s on it anymore. There's also some labels like Magnatune that distribute mp3s.

I'm a big fan of Magnatune. There is some excellent music on their site. All of the 128k MP3s are available under a Creative Commons license. They have FLAC/OGG/AAC/WAV/VBR MP3s available for those who pay for the CDs. You can license all of music at very reasonable prices for commercial use. They even *encourage* you to share your downloaded CDs with friends. You can choose how much you want to pay for all of the music, but since 50% of the money goes directly to the artist; it makes it more worthwhile to pay a reasonable amount for the music (I pay what I'd pay for a CD in a store, since it's lossless FLAC files that I download).

http://magnatune.com/info/give/

and I'm still not sure what you're saying. When you buy major-label music on the iTunes Music Store, the artists get very little of your money. You're still giving most of it to the labels.

The independent artists still get a decent chunk from iTunes when you specifically buy their music, since the major labels don't get a cut and Apple wants to give the musicians more. The RIAA Radar can be a big help finding out who's 'clean'.

Support smaller bands, try to discover the other music that's available to you, by checking on Magnatune, and CDBaby, and even MySpace Music. When you buy from the bands on these sites, you know that most of your money is going directly to the artist instead of the middlemen.

Sounds like a good idea for a new website. Music that the RIAA doesn't control.

"There's a very real chance that words like piracy and theft *will* apply to downloading music."

I hope not. Just as much as corporations that "rape the land" aren't rapists, killing the competiton isn't really killing, and stealing someone's heart doesn't make you a thief. I hope people will realize that stealing in "stealing music off the internet" is just a conveinient generalization (for copyright infringment) and not actual theft.

Now I know alot of people who download music off the internet because they're cheap and don't want to pay any price for music, but I wouldn't mind paying a fair price (and I do). Im just fed up of being taken advantage of with friggin CD price fixing and general greed of the RIAA. I used to *work* at a retailer that sold CD's yet just like everone else I had to pay the same $16 a pop as everyone else (got killer discounts in other departments). Rumor was it the store made more money off the bargain bin CD's (yes the $1 ones) than they did off the regular ones. Now I just *buy* my music from magnatune , cdbaby , and half.com ($2 and under cd's :).

Never again in my life will the RIAA see a penny from me. I don't care how much I like an artist of theirs, i'll just wait till they die off (the RIAA not the artist). Greed of that magnitude should be punished. This whole iTunes ordeal is surrealistic how open they can be about their greed. I'm thinking of mailing the RIAA my monthly music expenditures just so they can see how much money I spend *elsewhere* to get my music fix.

The first tyme it was tried was through the FCC. The FCC issued rules requiring it, however the courts found the FCC had exceded it's authority. It didn't say congress can't do it though. So the MPAA/RIAA pay some congress critters to add it to a reconciliation bill. If it makes to a bill that Dubya signs then more than likely it'd end in court again.

When the MPAA/RIAA isn't able to get it's one way then it buldozes way another way. Because they're trying to be so heavy handed I've decided when I can I'll support groups like Creative Commons, Opsound, and Magnatune amoung others.

You can buy Dream Theater, its "RIAA Safe" that radar says.

  While on it, Magnatunes are so great that they even suggest sharing your paid music with your friends (they suggest up to 3)

http://magnatune.com/info/give

"consumers should be able to download music to have a listen before they buy; perhaps someone needs to form an association similar to the RIAA, but that embraces the concept of worthwhile content that can be used without restriction. Maybe just a recording studio that does it?"

Did you mean something like magnatune?

They have no isue with people downloading their full albums in *high* quality mp3 format so you can make up your mind wether or not its worth buying. Then to boot you get to choose how much you want to pay ($5 minimum). The artist gets HALF of that!

Then there's always allofmp3.com , but you gotta wonder how legitimate they are...

Well, check out RIAA Radar to see if the artist's label is part of the RIAA. If it's not, go right ahead and purchase. If it is, well... I've chosen to do without (which is a royal pain). I also support labels like Magnatune, Positron Records, and Metropolis Records. It's a little disheartening to not be able to pick up the latest Sepultura, Fear Factory, or Dream Theater albums, but I'll manage. It's all about discipline.

should make a clear voice againts these kind of practices. Ripping off your fans with your art sold this way is not going to do you any good in the future when people start to understand they haven been fucked over. We as a small /. crowd can bitch all we want, and even vote with our euros/dollars/yens, but we will not particularly impress these kind of a## holes. On the other hand, if the public in general or the artists in general start to reply to these kind of idiots with a collective "Fuck off" and start supporting labels as Magnatune http://www.magnatune.com/, things will change. Things will change rappidly.

--
No I dont own a spelling tjecker!

I was also going to point out http://www.magnatune.com/. It's one of the best sites I've seen for music purchase. 50% of the money goes to the artists, they get to keep their rights to their creations, and the music distributed through their site is chosen for its quality. It's everything I could want in a music store.

I think the record company would do well to mimic these guys... but then of course, they'd have to play nice.

We call it "try before you buy." It's the shareware model applied to music. Listen to 418 complete MP3 albums we've picked (not 30 second snippets). We let the music sell itself, because we think that's the best way to get you excited by it. Our selection is intentionally small: we never waste your time with mediocre music. If you like what you hear, download an album for as little as $5 (you pick the price), or buy a real CD, or license our music for commercial use. Artists keep half of every purchase. And unlike most record labels, our artists keep all the rights to their music. No major label connections and no venture capital. We are not evil.

You don't have to self publish, but yes your statement generally summarizes my thoughts. I bought music off of http://magnatune.com/ 2 days ago. This was the first music I've bought in at least 2 years. I was able to download my music in FLAC, OGG and MP3 formats. I paid $5 and $2.50 went to the band which is more than if I bought a CD from Sony and the band got less than a dollar. You could roll your own distribution site, or go with other distribution methods such as those linked on the left of this page:
http://creativecommons.org/audio/

or you could sign with a major record label and I will post about how that is a bad idea and get modded as a troll. Switchfoot chose the last one.

They've already got that - it's called Magnatune. And no, I don't work for them; I'm simply a satisfied customer who knows that fully half the money I spend on a Magnatune CD goes directly to the artist.

There was a story back on /. about Magnatune - in fact, I'm listening to it streamed right now. I've got a couple albums I'm going to buy, just want to get a few more to make it worth the shipping cost, but I'd encourage you to take a look at them. Some really fantastic indie music!

why, because blowing $2 on a DRM'd movie rental saves me the hassle of going to a rental store, renting a moving, and having to return it 2 days later?

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but if movie producers can't make a profit selling movies, they won't continue to make movies.

And I as a customer am demanding online content delivery. I don't mind paying a fee competetive to those offered in brick and morter stores.

And I don't like the idea of getting sued. DRMs are the perfect solution.

They give the producers a way to limit their content's distribution, but give customers an easy way to access it.

I save money and watch the movie I want.

The producers get the money to pay of the investment in making the movie, and continue making more movies.

If a movie comes out that I think I will watch more then 10 times, I'll go buy the DVD, but I'm fine with rentals for the most part.

After reading that guide I'm glad I don't download or buy music online with DRM. If and when I ever start downloading music, I'll try to stick with creative commons websites or other websites like:

• Creative Commons
• dmusic.com
• Opsound
• Magnatunes

Thanks for the tip. This has some great classical music, right out of the gate! I'm downloading my first CD right now!

The site is: Magnatune! Even if you don't think their selection is good enough (translation, doesn't have Hilary, Britney, et. al.?), if you like sampling new artists, this is a good place to look, and I love the business model. As the parent posted, read the founder's philosophy and business model.

They missed at least one unrestricted-music site: MagnaTune -- nice people. Don't miss the founder's comments.

What if (once the idea of a Big Mac(TM) had been realized) one could go from a couple pounds of dirt to a Big Mac(TM) in seconds with negligible effort? That is the case with digital arrangements. It is what makes the digital arrangements different from physical ones: they can be duplicated with almost no effort. If someone invented an easy, quick way to rearrange the matter in a few pounds of dirt into a Big Mac(TM), would we grant McDonald's(TM) a monopoly on that particular arrangement of matter to protect them from competition, or would we just let everyone have their (almost) free food?

AFAIK, no one is arguing that the effort and investment in developing the original idea should go unappreciated. However, many people, myself included, are opposed to granting a monopoly on the entire idea to the first one to discover it. Some of use are, instead, attempting to find other ways to compensate artists and inventors for their efforts. Some of these efforts appear to be succeeding (see http://www.magnatune.com/ for a partial example).

You can help them become aware of it by showing evidence that this is true. Do you have a citation? I've never met anybody who's been "angered into sharing more" upon hearing about litigation against pirates. Have you?

Yes, I've met plenty. I doubt they'd appreciate me sharing their identity. However, statistically, P2P use is still on the rise and showing no signs of slowing.

However, requests for sources are always valid:

This story demonstrates the rise.

There are plenty of others. It is well known that Bittorrent, for example, makes up over 30% of Internet traffic, and (while I use it for them myself) that's not accounted for by Blizzard's patches and Linux distros.

It is pointless to try and stop a "crime" that millions of people are willing to permit, and even to commit. At this point, it's not a crime, it's an inevitability. Look at the failures of the various Prohibitions, for example.

Apple just sold its 50 millionth track online. The online music business is growing logarithmically. If you have evidence that their strategy isn't working, then great -- post it. Simple bromides like "the record industry doesn't get it" or "consumers don't want DRM" is great for self-congratulatory karma-whoring, but it looks like the record industry is finally taking hold of the online market.

I never said any of those things, so I feel no need to defend them, and in fact said that they are -not- fools. They are exploiters, they are monopolists, and they are in many ways operating at the edge or outside the edge of the law. But you don't get away with these behaviors for a century by being an idiot.

As I said none of the rest, you did, I'm not in the habit of wasting my time defending straw men.

Very broad statement. Some record companies are doing okay (particularly the conglomerates like Time Warner that have their fingers in a lot of pies and just happen to have a record label arm); some are scrimping by with 5% net margin over the year, and yeah, some of the publicly traded companies are losing money. But the vast majority of record labels -- the indies; the ones with twelve employees -- are not publicly traded.

Fair's fair, let's see YOUR sources. Indie labels overwhelmingly support and encourage filesharing, they're not about to turn down free advertising. Some even offer free downloads and a donation-based payment system right on their own website. This site has been operating for years now.

Correct again. If a company stops making money, it goes out of business. This is one of those universal things that isn't unique to the record industry.

Very true. And if a business doesn't give its consumers what they obviously want, they can't make money. That is also universally accepted in very diverse areas of business.

I should have pondered longer ;-)

Of course it would have to be irrevocable until the expiration of the copyright term otherwise it would be useless, even dangerous to the consumer.

The bigger wonder is just why (besides trolling for hits) are Dvorak & Orlowski so against CC licensing? It's the simplest avenue currently available to let interested parties know what rights you as the copyright holder are granting to them as consumers. Really. *What* is the big deal??

These advocates of keeping everything locked up tight via the ominous and all-powerful notice "ALL RIGHTS RESERVED" make it sound as if you are signing over your copyrights to the CC organization in their articles. They should (you would think) obviously know that this is not correct at all. Therefore, if they *aren't* just trolling for hits, what is their motivation in these attacks?

If I want to license my writing or music or whatever to anyone who is interested, CC certainly gives me easy tools to use to do so without the need for a lawyer, etc...

Orlowski seems to be of the opinion that if you release under a By Attribution - Non-Commercial license that you've already given away the store and can never make any money from that creation again. After all, who's going to buy something that is free?

Magnatune (at least) has clearly shown that this argument is not the case (otherwise they would no longer exist and/or artists would stop returning to them to market their works on the site). Musicians who never would have gotten any exposure otherwise are at least out there. And, I know some are making money from their CC licensed works, at least from me anyway--as I have purchased more then one Magnatune album myself.

I guess I don't really care if they are trolling at this point. The more that copyright issues are discussed, the more consumers are going to become aware of how it all works (and how all the big-media driven congressionally imposed restrictions are becoming a royal pain). And they will learn what they can and cannot do with these materials. Calling CC a fad is fine. But the more it's out there, the more the mainstream is going to take notice of things they may never have considered before. You want to stop piracy? Stop making people criminals with ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

In the long run, the more we understand the issues at hand the better off we are, IMHO...

Their motto is: We are not evil. Check it out.

But I don't, in turn, go out and steal the car just because I think the price is too high. (YES, YES, I know, it's not "stealing" and it's a copy of a car. Go back down to your parent's basement.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah. The real point here is that, A) as you suggest, we need some economic alternatives to creation, production and distribution that work for all involved (artists/consumers). And B) we need to use them, and stop stealing the other stuff. All theft does is justify the **AA's position that tougher laws are needed.

BTW, for an alternative that's cheaper, does what I suggest, and not RIAA, check out MagnaTune.

Would my recordable media count in this study? I notice they don't mention how much of that recordable media represents actual illegal copying. I guess you're supposed to assume that anyone with a CD-R is a criminal.

On similar lines, my dad has been archiving all of our family 8mm movie film to DVD.

So quit whining and act like an adult: if you don't like the RIAA's tactics, put your money behind someone who treats you better. I'm currently having a minor love affair with MagnaTune [1] but suit yourself.

Just quit pretending that it's someone else's job and that you can have it all without any inconvenience. [1] They don't do DRM, they sell you 100% recordable disk images, and they pass 50% of sales to the artists. Isn't that what we've been saying we want?
OK, they don't have your favorite payola-pumped band. That sets a pretty good price for your stated principles. Maybe if you took your money elsewhere that would change, eh?

Magnatune is an open music record label. They have a good selection of artists and you get to choose how much the artist deserves for his work. You can download in many different formats (WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC and AAC) and license the music for commercial work.

Yes

If by "pay" you mean "download for free". http://magnatune.com/info/openmusic

You should try Google for example. I just found this site, too bad it's in french but I guess there are a few sites like this one on the internet. Another good one is Magnatune but you have to pay on this one.