Slashdot Mirror

The engineers here are very sharp. Are you the lone Linux, Perl, Apache monger at your shop? How would you like to work with a group of fifty engineers who love all the same things you do?

The author of Grip works with us as does a recent speaker at Apachecon 2000 and we've got one of the creators of Geko (mozilla rendering engine) as well. We've got some really good Linux Kernel hackers and our systems administration team is first class.

Is hardware or bandwidth a scarce commodity at your place? Not at MP3.com, we keep at least 50 dual 500Mhz, 36GB, 1GB ram systems inventoried at all times. We've also got several gb outbound links from our data centers. Without giving away the whole store, between 10am and 2pm we serve upwards of 550 mb/sec (megabits per second) If you recognize that as a lot of traffic, consider sending your resume :-)

Sorry for the anonymous posting, I've just never made an account :-(

Check out Jobs/lifestyle

A few months ago I was inspired to write a GPL style license for my own music. It can be found at http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~s.rob ertson/music/license. Since I've edited it myself, and since I'm not a lawyer, I can't guarantee that it's 100% watertight, so I'd really appreciate a few more pairs of eyes going over it to see if there's anything I've missed.

Self-promotion: If you're interested in the music it was written for, that can be found at http://mp3.com/czr.

- colin

A few months ago I was inspired to write a kind of GPL for my music. Since I edited it myself and since I'm not a lawyer I don't really know how safe it is, and I'd really appreciate a few more eyes going over it to see if I've missed anything.

It's at http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~s.robertson/music/licens e

Self-promotion: If you're interested in the music that inspired it, that can be found at http://mp3.com/czr

-- colin

I will start with two statements that most everyone should agree with.

1) There is nothing wrong, legally or morally, with music encoded into MP3s, or the distribution of music encoded in the MP3 format.

2) Artists (and their agents, the record labels) have the legal and moral right to demand payment in exchange for their product, like any other legal business.

Everyone is all up in arms over the MP3 format because it seems that the two points above are in conflict, as MP3 files are quickly and readily shared, often illegally. But there is a simple solution that requires no new laws to be formed.

The goverments of the world need to combine forces to create a clearinghouse organization that would have the power to force an ISP to remove digtal media content (software, music, video, etc) that is illegally copied. Call them the ICE (International Copyright Enforcers).

If an artist came across their materials that were illegally available on the web, they could report it to ICE and shut the site down. This means that if an artist (say Mariah Carey) really wants to protect against her music being copied, she or her record label could hunt down MP3 music (via web searches and napster, etc) and report violating sites to ICE. But if another artist (say Skippy Martens) didn't care about his music, there would be no reporting to ICE, and thus no problem.

This puts the ball in the artist's court: if they want to stop illegal copying -- go find it and tell us about it. But don't blame the media format (MP3) or the distribution channel (Napster) because those are legally neutral.

Now, this would work because if I can find illegal MP3s, so could the artists. And the labels (not to mention software companies) would be more than happy to have a small staff of people devoted to hunting illegal files. And if you want to rip MP3s, make several copies -- that's fine as long as no one can find it (and why would the artists care about it if no one can find it?).

Please cite examples of "cracking" copy-protected software to release it under the "GPL"

Although your post has the ring of flaimbait, I will assume you are just woefully misinformed about both the mp3 community (where both legal and, unfortunately, a great deal of illegal copying does occur) and open source software, and are lashing out at offenses you perceive which in fact are either not as pervasive as you think, or completely non-existent (to my knowledge no program has been "cracked" and subsequently distribued under the GPL as open source software).

As a counter example, I will use myself. My situation is by no means unique to slashdot or the net as a whole, indeed, if you search prior archives for mp3 related discussions, you will hear many others voicing the exact same scenerio.

All of my mp3's are legal. Yes, that's right, every last one of them.

90% of them are ripped from my own CD collection.

Another 5% are authorized downlaods from mp3.com and elsewhere, by artists who are trying to get exposure. On occasion I buy the CD, either to support the artist or to have available in places I can't listen to mp3's (e.g. my airplane, or a friend's car), although I am by no means obligated to do so.

Even those that I have downloaded which are "unauthorized copies", as defined by the RIAA, are not illegal! How can I make this bold claim? Because I already own the vinyl record, or the cassette tape, or some other medium (8 track in one particulary archaic case, CDs in others). I have already paid for the right to store the music in whatever medium I wish, including mp3 format on my hard drive. This has been decided in court decision after court decision. Whether I hook up my friend's turn table and arduously rip the record to cd or mp3 format (I have done this for some rare Hungarian pop music form the mid 1980s), or download the exact same song from someone who has already done the work using napstre, makes no difference. Indeed, I can even pay a third party, commercial enterprise, to convert the data from one medium and format to another, perfectly legally. This right, as well, has been sustained in numerious court rulings, the recording industries protestations notwithstanding. I own a right to the music, as evidenced by the physical record in my possession, and am entitled to be able to listen to it with the tools at my disposal and to store it in whatever form I wish, be it mp3 or binary code tatooed on my left bicep. This, too, has been decided more than once in a court of law.

In other words:

I. Do. Have. Every. Right. To. My. Property. Which. I. Have. Paid. Good. Hard. Cash. For.

Now, beyond that. There are a lot of legitimate MP3's out on the market. Is it right to block those just because there is also pirating going on. I mean, that's like the police trying to shut down your local mall to prevent more shoplifting.

You say: "You don't have a "right" to view mp3s, especially ripped off mp3s". That's only half right. The law doesn't give you the right to view (listen) to ripped off MP3s. I have every right in the world to listen to the interview with some celebrity that CNN just put on there site for download that I want to hear. I have every right to go to MP3.com and download the latest songs from these new artists. I have every right to go to an established artists page and download the MP3 that they are giving away in the months before they release their CD. And you can not take that right away (or make sure that I only do the things within my rights) with software.

kwsNI

The old-guard recording industry, for all its rhetoric to the contrary, is far more concerned with crushing the emerging competition they are feeling from sites such as mp3.com, than they are with preventing unauthorized copying of music.

The RIAA, and its foreign equivelents, are confronted with the unpleasant situation in which artists are refusing to sign contracts giving the recording companies 99.9% of the profits from CD sales and instead are selling (or giving away) their music on-line in exchange for 50% (!!!) of the CD sales proceeds, or simply greater exposure of their work.

Worse still, artists are actually defecting from the recording industry, discovering that they can make better money selling 1000 CDs and taking home $5/CD, than they do by selling 90,000 CDs and only keeping $0.05 per CD.

This, the old-guard recording companies simply can't abide. Their strategy is, of course, under the guise of fighting unauthorized copying, to use the clout of a dysfunctional legal system and the long arm of government law enforcement to destroy the emerging paradigm shift in its infancy and protect their defacto monopoly.

Germany has for a long time been actively censoring right wing and neo-nazi hate groups, with obvious and very, very good reason. The unfortuante side effect of this is that they are in some respects much further down the slippery slope of censorship than many other countries, so much os that such draconian measures as these are not only thinkable, but remarkably reasonable sounding to the powers-that-be. Other examples include the indictment of compuserve execs for their customers use of the internet to access foreign porn sites, the xs4all political web censorship fiasco, and so on.

Of course, warez kiddies will still be swapping their musing using ssh tunneled ftp, new protocols, or even old protocols encapsulated or stealthed to get around the packet blocking. The only thing that will be killed will be legitimate, competing businesses such as mp3.com, not children swapping warez and illegally copied music.

This, as far as the old-guard recording industry is concerned, is a perfectly acceptable solution.

Well in my completely biased subjective opinion, yes, I've found good bands on mp3.com:

• Funzig
• Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
• and of course... CARDIACS!

You're entirely right though - there's an awful lot of crap. But then, that's subjective too...

Well in my completely biased subjective opinion, yes, I've found good bands on mp3.com:

• Funzig
• Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
• and of course... CARDIACS!

You're entirely right though - there's an awful lot of crap. But then, that's subjective too...

Well in my completely biased subjective opinion, yes, I've found good bands on mp3.com:

• Funzig
• Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
• and of course... CARDIACS!

You're entirely right though - there's an awful lot of crap. But then, that's subjective too...

• http://www.georgebush.com/
  
• http://www.georgewbush.com/
  
• http://www.bushsucks.com/
  
• http://www.bush2000.com
  
• Click for more
  

_________________

j(geek and hip hopper--and on mp3.com).

You forget that the Internet allows people to publish their works without having to go through a corporation to do it. MP3.com is the classic example, though the various online comics (User Friendly, Penny Arcade, etc.) should be considered as well. Not to mention the existence of MSTs of works of fan fiction that happen to be bad, IRCRPGs and their logs, and so-called "role-playing stories" such as NuRPG, all of which are unique to the Net.

I'm sure others here could name other examples of entertainment found only on the Net, including ones as obscure as the last two genres I mentioned, as well. That's the great thing about it; it allows the world to see ideas and products that corporations would never consider publishing. It has the potential to free the artist, provided the corporations don't manipulate things such that it's illegal to publish something without the possibility of a corporation making a profit from it... (Of course, if they do, it would serve them right if a "creativity drain" into countries with more favorable Net laws took place as a result...)

Your point about the purpose of copyright and patents and the corporations' desire to distort these in order to have complete control of and maximum profit from the content they sell is well-made, however. Would someone please moderate that post up to 2?

So, you've conceded the point, then?
/.

Not only is it $749, but it's $749 for a limited time only, the normal price is $799. Initially this nifty piece of hardware was supplied to mp3.com for auction -- my guess is that they wanted to know exactly how much they could get away with selling it for. Unfortunately for us in the cash-deprived range, people were buying them up at $1000-$2000 each!
I think that's where they came up with the ridiculous price... Anyway, I think you're right -- a laptop is a much better and more useful toy at this price.

Is that if you have the CD, and you're too lazy to rip it to your hard drive and would rather drag it across the net at some arbitrary speed, with errors, and without knowing if the song is actually there, you've got issues.

You don't drag CD data "across the Net" with Beam-It ... you drag a code on the CD that identifies what it is. MP3.COM looks for that code in its database of ripped CDs, and if it exists, the CD is added to your private listening area on http://my.mp3.com. The process requires no uploading or downloading -- I beamed a dozen CDs in 10 minutes on a 28.8 connection.

You agree to bound by and subject to such terms and conditions, including but not limited to the (i) Instant Listening Service Terms and Conditions of Use and (ii) Beam-it End User Web Site And Software Terms And Conditions Of Use, each of which are incorporated herein by reference.

Does anyone with an mp3.com account have a copy of these or a link to them? I'm curious if any of these agreements (which you can't read before saying 'I Do') prohibits reverse engineering of the software, and/or attempts to circumvent it.

-Red

Again, the NT boxes and Unix boxes are used by almost everyone at the Univ. The stabilty of the NT boxes would be higher if there was no application that leaked memory perhaps.

Also, keep in mind that constant login and logout and clearing of temporary drive space makes NT performance lower over time. Tuning NT means getting it set up one way then leaving it alone and monitoring it. There is a vastly huge difference between a server and a workstation environment. Workstations take constant uncotrollable patterns of use/abuse. Servers run services that are known, constant, and are affected by load and have to manage resource availability.

Proper NT installation only accounts for initial use after bringing the machine on the network. Why? Because there are upgrades to applications... there are changes to profiles... modifications to security models... gosh forbid service packs... logging to non ideal locations like c:\winnt\system32 by default with no easy work around for many ill written applications that of course provide no source code to allow for conformity to a sysadmin's standards...

The only proper way I have ever seen NT run in a high churn environment is a stable build that is maintained and kiosk like features enabled only... i.e. you can only access a browser.

I am the first to say there are people that talk trash about NT installations without merit... however, in this case -- a high churn user environment -- there is simply no way to keep NT boxes stable. They will be taken offline eventually and reinstalled. Also, how many uni's do you know that can afford things like TME10 or CA unicenter to take a totalitarian control over the desktop? Isn't it easier to hire $4.50 an hour ops that can recognize NT at a distance of 30 yards?

In short... NT workstation is better than Win95/98 by a long shot... however, don't make it appear as though some "knowledgeable NT people" will ever provide the stability and avaliablility of a Linux environment in a high churn university setting.

If someone can post numbers or papers that are relevant I will retract my comments.

Latra,
Jay
http://www.mp3.com/fudge/

From your publications and your web-site we learn that you distribute and/or sell decoders and/or encoders that use the MPEG Layer-3 standard.

Our files do not show that you have a valid license agreement with us. This means that the products infringe the patent rights of Fraunhofer and THOMSON.

Okay, everyone take a deep breath.

The RIAA does not own MP3. MP3.com does not own MP3. "No one" does not own MP3.

"Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V." owns MP3. The patent is here.

Okay, that's an oversimplification. The patent only covers an encoding algorithm, not the format itself, and Fraunhofer may have some obligations to license it under certain terms. But for practical purposes, any MP3 encoder that is not distributed with Fraunhofer's blessing is probably illegal.

Here's some background:
http://www.mp3.com/news/095.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/98 /10/19/1543219.shtml

Having said all that, I still don't understand what you mean when you say that the RIAA and MP3 are both going to drive themselves out of the market. What market? Are we going to go back to clockwork music boxes instead?

I found on the MP3.com site this open letter to Hillary over at RIAA. I must say that I could not have said it better myself.

I really think it is time for us consumers to step up to the plate and let folks know that we are not going to put up with being bullied any more. We have had to endure taxes on recordable media because "we might make a copy of that N*sync album for our friends". What were the actual numbers for people who recorded stuff and gave it away? Something around 10%. So, instead of trying to get people to realize that piracy is wrong, let's just make everybody pay so that The Rolling Stones can make even more money! (And trust me folks, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, etc. are the ones raking in the money over this. Folks like the late Muddy Waters, etc. are getting a paltry sum since the tax is distributed based on record sales.)

Remember also the other things the RIAA wanted to do - wonderful things like making used record stores pay them a tax each time a used CD/LP/tape was sold. Why? To get even more money, of course!

Good. Finally someone's sueing the RIAA. It's about time.

Meanwhile, why not check out this page at MP3.com? It's got some stuff you may like.

Take a look at the MPEG-4 Structured Audio: Developer Tools for info on MP-4.

RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix

(There is an Open Source MP4 encoder/decoder for Linux, now. The sooner people start taking that seriously, the better.)

As much as /.ers hate to hear it, Linux is still a small piece of the pie. All the frat kids that go to mp3.com are on Windows. (Oh and mp4.com points to mp3.com.)

I tend to agree with Mr. Hemos here that by the time this battle is over, the war will have been fought and won around them. Mp3 is here, it's popular and it works for me.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

miniCDRW

like I said, with all the new neat things out there, MD is dead, dead, dead.

--

The office is located near University Town Center in mid-San Diego and we've got just about every geek toy known to man and woman.

Every engineer has access to at least one (some have two) 500 Mhz systems on their desktop and a room full of dual and quad processor development systems. All running Linux (actually the beam-it client was developed under BeOS and ported to Linux and Windows).

We've really got a sharp bunch of engineers and if you're smart, know Perl, Unix, some sql, enjoy reading /., playing UT and working hard, get off your duff and send in your resume. You're missing a great opportunity. Think about working with 40 smart engineers who know perl inside and out; write apache content-handler modules because its cool, and match up 40 year old programmers with 18 year old network wizards in two hour UT games.

You would have enjoyed the cheer that went through the engineering department when the reverse engineering posting came up. Whoohoo! People get it.

Seriously, MP3.com is a great place to work and is far from a stodgy corporate environment - heck, our cafeteria has been decorated to be a blues club lounge and we have bands play at least once a month in the office.

We'd like you to come work with us and continue to change the face of music on the planet.

Oh, one more thing, if you're going to ApacheCon, check out the presentation on dynamic content delivery using templates and XML components.It's our home-grown dynamic content delivery system in Apache.

C'ya

If musicians stopped feeling like they need to be on MTV, and started committing to a DIY set-up, then the big labels really would be in trouble.

I can't speak for Brittany Spears, but I don't WANT to be on MTV. Have you looked at it lately? Where the hell is Downtown Julie Brown?!
I have a site up at mp3.com, and am fully aware that people may download my music and do whatever they want with it. That excites me, though - it means they liked it. For 3 minutes they listened to me instead of Ricky Martin. I am of the opinion that the mp3 'revolution' is helping musicians to network and connect, share ideas and recording tips, etc. Most of the musicians I know aren't out to become mega-billionaires. They just want to be able to make a living off their music. (Some of us don't even have that much ambition - I have a pretty sweet day job, and do music on the weekends.) That's not to say that if, oh, Grand Royal dug my sound and wanted to sign me up for a 3 album deal I wouldn't think long and hard about it.

Ultimately I don't see this as being an issue of how musicians are wanting to get airplay and TV time. It's about artists signing away their rights to big recording companies, who in turn market them, squeeze their popularity dry and then move on to the next big cash cow.

And let's not forget the unwashed millions who buy the drek they play on FM top 40, people whose favorite song changes every week, who are supporting the MTV culture instead of searching out unique and unsigned artists.


The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

A short article I wrote for MP3.com about a year ago on why SDMI can't work.

I wrote a long column for MP3.com about the dysfunctions of SDMI; you can read it here. The head of SDMI, Leonardo Chiariglione (who is also the head of MPEG), responded in his inimitable manner here.

I wrote a long column for MP3.com about the dysfunctions of SDMI; you can read it here. The head of SDMI, Leonardo Chiariglione (who is also the head of MPEG), responded in his inimitable manner here.

Hint. It isn't anyone remotely friendly to the authors and users of Free (as in Liberty) software.

In fact, if you look at the conglomerate structure and trace back most of these magazines you find ... surprise! Member conglomerates of the MPAA, the RIAA, and the DVD Forum. Remember those guys?

Now, compare that to the groups which are promoting the UCITA in its various forms and lobbied for passage of the extremely draconian Millenium Digitial Copyright Act. See any similarities? I thought you might.

We can rely on no one but ourselves to get the word out about this. Tell your family and friends, and anyone else who will listen with any tolerance. If enough people will do this the truth will spread in much the same way Linux has, by word of mouth and sneakernet. Talk yourself horse about these issues -- we all have to make up for the resounding silence the "primetime" media will maintain on a subject this close to their pocketbooks.

Organize internet wide awareness, via logos on web pages a la' the blue ribbon campaign.

Stop subscribing to these magazines, and make sure they know why (their silence on the DVD story, UCITA, and the MDCA, in other words, shoddy reporting and/or editors who have whored themselves out to their own special interest).

Please post other ideas -- currently our efforts on the DVD and mp3 front (I submitted a story days ago about yet another lawsuit against mp3.com from the RIAA which was never posted, knocked out in favor of "Phantom Menace Pre-Orders Available", no doubt -- now promoting a major product of these folks was real helpful to this struggle on slashdot's part, but I digress), as well as the DMCA and UCITA, are fairly fragmented.

We need to bring these efforts under an umbrella concept that lends itself (I shudder to say this, but must) soundbytes, banner ads, and little "click-me" buttons that can be spread around the net and made ubiquitious. It's early here in Chicago and I'm not exactly bursting with clever catchwords and phrases at the moment, but if anyone else has ideas please follow up with them.

This issue is far too critical to our personal freedom and our professional lives to be ignored or passively accepted.

Hint. It isn't anyone remotely friendly to the authors and users of Free (as in Liberty) software.

In fact, if you look at the conglomerate structure and trace back most of these magazines you find ... surprise! Member conglomerates of the MPAA, the RIAA, and the DVD Forum. Remember those guys?

Now, compare that to the groups which are promoting the UCITA in its various forms and lobbied for passage of the extremely draconian Millenium Digitial Copyright Act. See any similarities? I thought you might.

We can rely on no one but ourselves to get the word out about this. Tell your family and friends, and anyone else who will listen with any tolerance. If enough people will do this the truth will spread in much the same way Linux has, by word of mouth and sneakernet. Talk yourself horse about these issues -- we all have to make up for the resounding silence the "primetime" media will maintain on a subject this close to their pocketbooks.

Organize internet wide awareness, via logos on web pages a la' the blue ribbon campaign.

Stop subscribing to these magazines, and make sure they know why (their silence on the DVD story, UCITA, and the MDCA, in other words, shoddy reporting and/or editors who have whored themselves out to their own special interest).

Please post other ideas -- currently our efforts on the DVD and mp3 front (I submitted a story days ago about yet another lawsuit against mp3.com from the RIAA which was never posted, knocked out in favor of "Phantom Menace Pre-Orders Available", no doubt -- now promoting a major product of these folks was real helpful to this struggle on slashdot's part, but I digress), as well as the DMCA and UCITA, are fairly fragmented.

We need to bring these efforts under an umbrella concept that lends itself (I shudder to say this, but must) soundbytes, banner ads, and little "click-me" buttons that can be spread around the net and made ubiquitious. It's early here in Chicago and I'm not exactly bursting with clever catchwords and phrases at the moment, but if anyone else has ideas please follow up with them.

This issue is far too critical to our personal freedom and our professional lives to be ignored or passively accepted.

I'm surprised that there aren't more indie bands putting up web-pages with mp3s. Also surprised that there aren't any centralized distributors for them - but then I'm pretty ignorant on that side of things.

Check out mp3.com.

As for bands putting up their own pages: The artists themselves are mainly good at writing and performing pieces of music. Promotion, distribution, and all that other ancillary stuff isn't usually their strong point. Really, this ancillary stuff is why record companies exist.

That the artists themselves are focused on music rather than promotion and distribution will be every bit as true in a world where we download our music as it is in one where we buy it at Wherehouse. So the coming of net-distributed music doesn't mean the end of record companies - there will still be room for companies that handle the ancillary stuff for artists. But the barrier to entry for this market will be so low (and thus, the threat of competition so much stronger) that they won't be able to hold the sort of power that they do currently.

'm surprised that there aren't more indie bands putting up web-pages with mp3s. Also surprised that there aren't any centralized distributors for them - but then I'm pretty ignorant on that side of things.

mp3.com is an example of a centralized distributor of MP3s from indie bands. I doubt very much that it's the best that can be done, but it's a start. I know that I HAVE bought a CD from one of the bands (who I had never heard of before) as a result of a download from MP3.com.

On the movie front, it's starting to happen, but has a ways to go. This could be an excellent opportunity for film students to get wide distribution. Computer generated effects are becoming more commonplace and are getting cheaper. When done in Hollywood, they're mostly expensive because of the artist's time and effort. Easier to use and more automated modeling software will help. A sort of GPL model library wouldn't be a bad idea either, it's a lot easier to make customize an existing model than it is to create a new one from nothing. Expanding use of DSL and cable internet will help the independants immensely.

I saw this in meta-moderation. Nobody is likely to see my response, but I'll write it anyway! :-P

Please enlighten me...just HOW is this MP3 craze really helping artists?

Like many other people, you've been misled. You think that "MP3" must always mean "copyright infringement". It does not mean this. Or at least not always.

So how does MP3 benefit the artist today?

• Legally distributed MP3 files on mp3.com give exposure to new artists who aren't played on what passes for radio stations these days. I've bought music from mp3.com artists. I'll continue to do so.

• It's free advertisement. I've downloaded files over Napster for artists who I've heard of but not heard. Sometimes I find that the music does nothing for me. Other times, I find that I really like it. If I like it, I'll probably go buy an album. (I have yet to do so myself, but I've only been using Napster a short time.)

From where I'm sitting, MP3 is just another word for WAREZ, plain and simple.

Is that bad?

I used to be a "software pirate" when I was younger. (The term "warez" wasn't in vogue back then.) I played a "pirated" version of Sid Meier's Civilization on lab PCs. I couldn't have afforded to buy a copy of it, and I didn't have an x86 box to play it on (I was an Atari ST user). But it was a great game.

Later, I graduated from college, got a job, etc. I bought a copy of Civilization. And Civilization II. And Civ:CTP (for Linux). If/when Loki finishes the rumored SMAC port I'll probably buy that.

Sid Meier (and Brian Reynolds, and their companies, and Activision, and Loki) are slightly richer because I played a "pirated" copy of Civilization when I was in college.

What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that warez kids grow up. We become engineers, scientists, techies, lawyers, doctors, and so on. We're generally on the right-hand side of the IQ bell curve, so we have money. (No, I'm not rich, but I make enough money to buy my fill of music and software when I think it's worth buying.)

When the warez and MP3 kids of today (or the DVD kids of tomorrow?) grow up, what do you think they're going to do with all of their discretionary disposable income?

If you have ever used a SGI Indy running Irix paired with that amazingly *ahem* interesting 4DWM desktop windowing environment the dynamic resizing of icons should be familiar to you.

I used to have access to one back in the mid 90's... whoa... that sounds cool.

I know when I took people by the lab to see it they would immediately go "COOL!!!" when they saw the scrolly thingie make the folder icons look bigger then smaller then bigger then... you get the i dea.

It's no wonder SGI's never caught on... it must have been the amazing easy to install no issues approach to software they have always used. I know I am not alone in feeling this way.

http://www.mp3.com/fudge/

Cards on the table.. I'm a musician, too. A pretty crappy one, of course. I don't sell my stuff - I doubt I could - but I give it away for free. It keeps me out of trouble, and it's cheaper than hard drugs :)

However, some of my friends are professional musicians. Some of them are very good.. some are also fairly sucessful. They don't like the RIAA. They don't cheer them on when they bust a load of lazy fratboys. I suppose they focus on the reality that they haven't lost anything anyway- a lot of the biggest mp3 pirates are students, who wouldn't buy the CD, even if they couldn't get the mp3 (due to the RIAA having had all mp3 site owners lobotomised). Speaking personally, if I buy an album I like, I have no compunction about ripping a track or two, and sharing it with friends. Actually, in the grand scheme of things, I've actually acted as unpaid evangelist. The net bridges geographical gaps, and by punting a few squarepusher tracks across the pond (or whatever), you can introduce people to things which they never would have come across. I know that I have shifted units by introducing people to new sounds, and they've done the same for me.

I go out of my way to track down and snag rare stuff- things what you can't buy in the shops, live bootlegs etc. These are recodings of artists I like, which I would buy if I found them on sale. Hell, recently, I came across a .jp import radiohead CD, containing a lot of rarer tracks which I already had as mp3s. Of course I bought it, since they're one of my favorite bands, and I'd rather have the CD...

People are still culturally insular, even if they have vast anmounts of technology, it doesn't mean that they will ever listen outside of the box built for them by the increasingly faceless media conglomerates.

To cut a long story short, I don't know the answer. However, I do feel that most of the contributions here have been black or white, and it's really shades and nuances of grey.

I don't agree with what happened with SCMS, with DAT, with the Diamond rio etc. RIAA need to be smacked up, and reminded that they aren't the fscking NSA.

On the other hand, mass piracy (I've seen sites with the entire billboard top 40 available for download) can't be morally justified either.

Ah well, end of ramble- food for thought though, for fundamentalists of both camps.

If you care sufficiently, feel free to come listen to my lame mp3s, they live here.

Here's some links to legal mp3 music sites. I've stopped listening to the radio and I don't feel I've missed much :)

MP3.BOX.SK

D E A D A B A S E -free online music

MP3.com - Pedophagia

MP3.com - The MP3 resource on the Internet

Hungry Bands.com - your source for free mp3's by quality, unsigned, independant bands and artists.
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/0/ghost_in_the_m achine.html

These links are at:
http://members.axion.net/~enrique/music.html

Please post or email me at perez_enrique@yahoo.com some more links to legal mp3 sites or your favorite mp3 legal bands.

Here's some links to legal mp3 music sites. I've stopped listening to the radio and I don't feel I've missed much :)

MP3.BOX.SK

D E A D A B A S E -free online music

MP3.com - Pedophagia

MP3.com - The MP3 resource on the Internet

Hungry Bands.com - your source for free mp3's by quality, unsigned, independant bands and artists.
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/0/ghost_in_the_m achine.html

These links are at:
http://members.axion.net/~enrique/music.html

Please post or email me at perez_enrique@yahoo.com some more links to legal mp3 sites or your favorite mp3 legal bands.

Here's some links to legal mp3 music sites. I've stopped listening to the radio and I don't feel I've missed much :)


MP3.BOX.SK
D E A D A B A S E -free online music
MP3.com - Pedophagia
MP3.com - The MP3 resource on the Internet
Hungry Bands.com - your source for free mp3's by quality, unsigned, independant bands and artists.
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/0/ghost_in_the_m achine.html

These links are at:
http://members.axion.net/~enrique/music.html

Please post or email me at perez_enrique@yahoo.com some more links to legal mp3 sites or your favorite mp3 legal bands.

Here's some links to legal mp3 music sites. I've stopped listening to the radio and I don't feel I've missed much :)


MP3.BOX.SK
D E A D A B A S E -free online music
MP3.com - Pedophagia
MP3.com - The MP3 resource on the Internet
Hungry Bands.com - your source for free mp3's by quality, unsigned, independant bands and artists.
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/0/ghost_in_the_m achine.html

These links are at:
http://members.axion.net/~enrique/music.html

Please post or email me at perez_enrique@yahoo.com some more links to legal mp3 sites or your favorite mp3 legal bands.

Is there a higher cost associated with using these products? i.e. now your email client can have RSA built in but the cost of the security is passed on to the consumer.

I wonder who will make the most money on the pre-fab tool kits and libraries for this stuff...

Also, is RSA still considered an acceptable level of safety? Or is it just going to be the latest way to jack up the price on software?
http://www.mp3.com/fudge/

I agree with most of the comments pointing out that mp3.com probably doesn't have the right to transmit *their own* copy of a track to you just because you also own a copy.

Consider this, though:

case 1: "hard drive in the sky"
If mp3.com were essentially providing private storage space to all comers - that is to say if beam-it actually transmitted the bits off your own CD (each and every one of them) to the site, and later allowed you to retrieve them. This case would be hard for the RIAA to win. Obviously, this case is not the case.

Case 2: "Case 1 + sneaky compression"
As per case one, maintaining that they're storing stuff in a private directory (just for the user). Except there's a bunch of redundency here. So they guys at MP3.com compare the bits they got from your CD (again, every single bit from the CD you're "beaming"), and replace your copy of the file with a pointer to an identical file somewhere on their system. I don't know if we've crossed over into illegal land yet or not.

In case we haven't:

Case 3: "Fake 'transmission compression'"
something like this: read bits from user CD until we have only one possible match on the site. Then compare sums of bytes. Here we have the outside chance (however remote) that by some cosmic coincidence they get it wrong, and give you permission to download something you don't own. This would never actually happen, but theoretically... This theoretical possibility would give the RIAA a good case, from both legal and ethical perspectives.


Interesting cases to think about, anyway.

check out my own music in case you care.

Why are you yelling at the yanks? Don't make us Canadians look bad, m'kay?

Your posting doesn't have anything to do with the topic of the RIAA becoming pissy over the "my.mp3.com" stuffenpuffel, unless you count "greed" as relating it (it's weak, at best).
---

The RIAA's letter to MP3.com is here .

The response is here .

The RIAA's letter to MP3.com is here .

The response is here .

If your interested, I've compiled a quick list of links pertaining to this case below

You can find the mp3.com press release here.which includes the full text of the suit that was filed.

Cnet has coverage here.

And last, but not least, if you like zdnet.com, then you can get their story here .

If your interested, I've compiled a quick list of links pertaining to this case below

You can find the mp3.com press release here.which includes the full text of the suit that was filed.

Cnet has coverage here.

And last, but not least, if you like zdnet.com, then you can get their story here .

Do you have any clue how TINY the percentage of profits a musician actually makes off of the sales of his/her album?

I think most musicians, even a lot of the big-name stars who have the most to lose from mp3 piracy (as opposed to freely releasing an mp3 themselves), support the mp3 revolution. Tom Petty and (in a big way) David Bowie come to mind as examples of people who have really embraced the new medium.

For a brief, freakish time, recordings as a medium were intensely profitable for a very few musicians (but never so much for them as for record companies). Those days are over. MP3s represent a brand-new way to use recordings for their original purpose -- a marketing tool to sell either the live performance or the sheet music.

The beauty of it is the beauty of the internet -- I no longer need to grease the palms of radio DJ's, I no longer need to get an "in" with a major label -- many of the barriers that formerly blocked new musicians from "making it" are now gone, and a band can even be from Midland, TX or The Netherlands and a guy like me could stumble across them. Or even Italy. (Just three of my favorite bands that I never would have heard of through the standard radio play / movie soundtrack / local bar circuit methods.)

The recording industry is corrupt. (Duh.) Most of us musicians, even those of us who are in the system, have seen it as a necessary evil. MP3's are a way around them!

(Braveheart mode on)
FREEEEEEDOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!
(Braveheart mode off)

One band I know of is even using mp3's to give fans who are musicians the opportunity to make their own remixes!

All in all, mp3's are pretty cool for those of us who are artists. Most musicians are NOT whores to the music industry (much as they've tried to be) and lose almost nothing; many of those who are tied in with big labels have already embraced the new medium.

MP3's aren't going anywhere, and those who fight against them will only lose their money in the end.

just my 2 zorkmids

Do you have any clue how TINY the percentage of profits a musician actually makes off of the sales of his/her album?

I think most musicians, even a lot of the big-name stars who have the most to lose from mp3 piracy (as opposed to freely releasing an mp3 themselves), support the mp3 revolution. Tom Petty and (in a big way) David Bowie come to mind as examples of people who have really embraced the new medium.

For a brief, freakish time, recordings as a medium were intensely profitable for a very few musicians (but never so much for them as for record companies). Those days are over. MP3s represent a brand-new way to use recordings for their original purpose -- a marketing tool to sell either the live performance or the sheet music.

The beauty of it is the beauty of the internet -- I no longer need to grease the palms of radio DJ's, I no longer need to get an "in" with a major label -- many of the barriers that formerly blocked new musicians from "making it" are now gone, and a band can even be from Midland, TX or The Netherlands and a guy like me could stumble across them. Or even Italy. (Just three of my favorite bands that I never would have heard of through the standard radio play / movie soundtrack / local bar circuit methods.)

The recording industry is corrupt. (Duh.) Most of us musicians, even those of us who are in the system, have seen it as a necessary evil. MP3's are a way around them!

(Braveheart mode on)
FREEEEEEDOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!
(Braveheart mode off)

One band I know of is even using mp3's to give fans who are musicians the opportunity to make their own remixes!

All in all, mp3's are pretty cool for those of us who are artists. Most musicians are NOT whores to the music industry (much as they've tried to be) and lose almost nothing; many of those who are tied in with big labels have already embraced the new medium.

MP3's aren't going anywhere, and those who fight against them will only lose their money in the end.

just my 2 zorkmids