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The internet was built as a highly decentralised, noncontrolled network, so that, in the event of a nuclear war, military leaders would have unrivalled access to pornography. (3DTIAB)

The crap on MP3.com is hardly what I'd call "music," but I guess to be fair we should at least respect independent artists and their rights to create art.

For example, BIG POO GENERATOR will soon be destroyed courtesy of this terrible and massive "rm -rf" campaign against freedom of music, art, and love.

Please indicate, in a replied comment, your favorite MP3.com artists so as to show Vivendi and the Big Media companies that we love these people. It will take a grassroots effort, but by replying right now to this sllort, you can seriously help the Cause.

Ah, that post made me laugh. You used to be able to load a lot of songs to mp3.com, and as they were downloaded mp3 was supposed to pay the artist. Later, they cut everyone down to 3 free songs. That's also when they changed how the CDs look. It used to be they'd use the cover you supplied, but now you need to give them money so they'll use your cover. They've never paid my band royalties for the songs. They've never paid us for the cds that have been bought.

They also started changing how much they owed you. The number would fluctuate. I'd ask "Uh, where's our money and why does the amount keep changing" they'd respond "Your question will be answered in 4-6 business days". But they never were. I sent in a question once a month for a year until they started saying you had to pay them so they'd answer your questions. So I'm supposed to pay them to answer my question about where my money is? And you can't trade the money they owe you to buy other products they sell.

I put the songs up on another site for free, and changed the description on the first song on mp3 saying "Hey, go here and download all our songs for free". Dumb mp3 site.

mp3 has always been a crappy company as far as I'm concerned. It seemed like a neat idea at first, but they suck.

It's a shame though. I got great music recommended mostly by the artists' themselves and the quality (to my tastes) was all but crappy. And that's where the controversy was: it showed that great music abunds. It is not scarce at all.

And there you have the commonly held myth that we somehow need the music industry to "bring" or "make" that great new band. It's bollocks. All they do is leach and play gatekeeper (as in "mob").

Check out Prototype. (Hmm, mp3 S .com... interesting.) They're a "progressive metal" band from LA that I wandered across a few years back. "Trinity" is (IMO) one of their cooler songs (and it's got nothing to do with the Matrix, you geek).

Why should Joe Schmoe, who is sharing a bunch of Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit MP3s, spend time in PRISON for doing so?

This linkin park?

This is the entire way a lot of artists even get exposure... by giving their mustic for free. And some of them are quite good: Justin Durban AKA Edgen (here), Scott Buckley (here), and Heather Dale (here), to name a few. Of course they still sell CDs, but it's not a matter of buying their CDs to listen to the music, it's a matter of buying the CDs to support the artist. And that's something I have no problem doing.

FWIW, the copyright "conundrum" posed by the conversion of ordinary files into sound files isn't much of a conundrum at all. (The mp3-ified version of the file is simply a derivative work of the original file and you can work out the rest of the details from there.)

The real conundrum is why everyone thinks of P2P networks as being for stealing MP3 music and not for anything else.

P2P could be a sort of everyman's easy to set-up FTP server. But from day 1, the companies involved have pushed them as MP3 sharing tools and nothing else (as I mentioned before, Napster was for MP3s only--they didn't even try to PRETEND it was for non-copyrighted music until very late in the game.).

So the P2P companies have blown it from just about day 1. They could have been selling P2P as a useful general-purpose tool. They could have been making some real effort to promote legal, valid uses. But they didn't.

Meanwhile, if the music companies had publicly made a case against "music stealing" and sued 100 Napster users right in Napster's infancy, they could have nipped this right in the bud. Instead, they muddle along, suing the wrong people, letting everybody get used to the idea of MP3 sharing as a perfectly normal activity, missing every possible opportunity to turn the situation to their advantage, and generally acting like the over-capitalized, over-fed, calcified, ossified, petrified, walnut-brained dinosaurs they actually are.

So it's very hard to feel sorry for EITHER group of companies involved here--P2P companies or record companies.

Listening to the congressional hearings, one can scarcely avoid wiping away a tear shed in sympathy for the poor, starving musicians whose music is being stolen without compensation. But are the musicians going to get any portion of the compulsory license? Certainly not musicians whose music is owned by the big record companies . . .

Whatever happens, you can bet that some P2P companies might prosper, and the big record companies will prosper. But I don't see much in this for the musician or the consumer . . .

In fact, the clamps put on by the compulsory license schemes I hear bandied about more and more often, are likely to benefit the large record companies and disfavor the independent musicians. Just for example: I used to have several internet radio stations on Live365.com playing my own music. I didn't have millions of listeners, but I certainly had a few every day.

When the compulsory licensing scheme for internet radio came into play, Live365 had to start charging broadcasters hefty rates to cover the compulsory license fees. This priced me right out of my radio stations--even though ALL the music on them was mine and I completely owned the licenses to them.

Same with "licensed" P2P networks--my own MP3s appear on these networks from time to time, a situation of which I heartily approve. But would they appear on a "closed" system with compulsory licenses? Would they even be allowed there?

BTW, one of my pieces was indirectly mentioned in the article (follow the link about DNA music; mine was made by reading off DNA sequences into musical notes, rather than the more usual method of reading them off to make proteins). There's got to be a little karma in that, hasn't there?

See (or should we say, hear?) Music of the Human Genome

--B

Okay, this is something that creeps up every time there's an RIAA story. People seem to think that mp3.com is all indie artists, free from RIAA influence. That may have been the way it used to be, but take a good, long look at what's there. Take The Ataris, for example. These guys used to be on Kung Fu Records (owned by one of the guys from The Vandals), and before that, they had a stint with Big Wreck Chords. But their latest album, So Long Astoria (not their best, IMO), is on Columbia (Sony's bitch). 2 of the 3 tracks mp3.com has for these guys is from that RIAA-produced album. Sure, there's still lots of indie stuff there, but not exclusivley. I support mp3.com because it's free - yet totally on the level - music. To support them because they're 100% indie is a flawed argument.

There are several musical artists who self publish via mp3.com that I'd send a tip to if it was just a matter of CLICK.

For instance, I find it amazing that a label has not signed up the The Birthday Massacre

Writing a check and mailing it makes it prohibitive in terms of real accounting overhead (shipping and handling)

Give me convenince or give me death?

I'm sure there's a bar in your area where they hang out and play.

In my community (Canberra, Australia, pop 300,000) there are 5 or 6 bars where original musicans play regularly and two or three compilation disks a year of their material, plus the individual artists produce their own CD's,

we had 300 artists enter last years compeition by a major national radio station. If we peg the average band size at 3 thats one entry for every 333 people. There are a *LOT* of musicians out there, most of them are very good.

distribution is what the record companies are clinging onto so don't think thats going to be easy until the war is won.

MP3.com is mostly comprised now of musicians who aren't signed and want people to hear their stuff.

One Canberra band who I eprsonally rate highly are Trouser Trouser here or here. for mp3's.

Making it easier for you to listen to their crap than finding the alternatives is what keeps the recording industry in business.

"Check out the list at Fat Chuck's"

Interesting to see how Linkin Park have come so quickly to embrace crippled CDs, so soon after they became profitiable on the back of free downloads at MP3.com

Godzilla 2000 is in fact a traditional Godzilla Movie - Gojira ni-sen mireniamu. Godzilla without any numbers is, in fact, the Ferris Beuller vs. Godzilla movie. It was made in 1998.

During early 90's Purple Motion played keyboards in a band called 'Decoryah', who managed to release two full length albums. Some information can be found here : Unofficial Decoryah page. There seems to be his more recent work at mp3.com too : Jonne Valtonen

Some other FC members are/were working at Remedy Entertainment, creating Max Payne among other things. Some others were involved with Bitboys, a small company designing 3d-hardware, and topic of a couple of articles here in Slashdot too over the past few years :)

Google also helpfully provided a semi-outdated History of Future Crew page.

You can't get there from here in Jersey...great song about driving in NJ.

Featured on NPR's Car Talk radio show and their car tunes CD: "You Can't Get There from Here in Jersey - Jason Didner Though it's about New Jersey, Jason's ode could apply to every overdeveloped highway in every sprawling suburb, everywhere. And, yes, Jason does live in New Jersey (Exit 159)."

This is a commonly made point that doesn't add up. It's already possible for artists to sell their music directly via, say Amazon , MP3.com, or even to get their self-released music on the shelves at major record stores, on the strength of good reviews.

Artists *choose* to sign with major record labels, because only they have the power of promotion to get the music on MTV/Clearchannel, and make the bands into common knowledge. Or, to finance the expensive recording studios/production techniques/hire hot producers. There's lots of *excellent* music which isn't associated with the RIAA, that in general, is ignored.

If it wasn't that the music was RIAA-promoted, chances are you wouldn't even be interested in the music, or at the least, that it would exist in a more cheaply-created fashion. So not paying the RIAA would hardly be fair. If you don't like it, buy some of the 90% of music, often well-reviewed, that isn't RIAA.

So the Fed would say, for example, that I can't play back-to-back songs from say Vatic[a.n] because that would infringe on copyright laws, that apply to webcasters?

Or would it only apply to Creed?

Sounds like crack induced hysteria to me.

Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie has a song called "Every OS Sucks". (mp3.com -- FRRYYY) (Or, if you've got QuickTime, you can try their video)

I think thats Ironic!

Fiorella Torrenzi might be safe too. I doubt M33 will press charges...

12 cents per track, eh? Does Itunes actually pay bands?

One of my bands has songs up on mp3.

I'm not sure how many plays we've had. It currently shows 4,500 and we probably will never see a dime from them. They used to have an earnings page but the amount of songs played and the amount of money they owe us would change.

I used to send them the same email every month for a year asking about it. They'd respond "you'll get an answer in 6 to 10 business days". They changed that in a wise decision that you had to pay them to get them to answer your question. I'm not going to pay mp3 money to ask them how much money they owe us. I just want to know why it's changed.

Rather offtopic, but speaking of bands making fun of Metallica, a friend and I decided to make a joke death-metal band a while back because we were bored. Our first song is entitled ...And Then I Laughed and Had a Beer". I did the vocals, my friend did all the guitar work, and the drums are a drum machine program.

"everything since AppleDOS is just a bunch of crap"

A songwriter friend of mine covered it here... not a bad tune.

Oh but it did burn! Some glorious Canadians (who didn't know they were Canadian and thought they were British (just because they lived in England!)) burnt that sucker down in the name of the Queen in order to keep the evil spread of democracy out of Canada! Hee hee! Wes

Actually you can download it legally if you really want to, from mp3.com.

funding of all these market experiments did create an incredible coverage of ideas. A lot of good ideas got funded that wouldn't have.

IMHO the funding of ideas was a double edge sword. What generally seemed to happen is that someone would have a good idea, then a competitor with IPO funding would copy the idea, and try to smash the originator of the idea by selling under cost, or simply reverse engineering and tossing out the idea for free.

The really sad thing about the boom and bust was that so many really good ideas were crushed under the weight of the IPOs.

MP3.com is probably the best example of a company destroyed by its own arrogance. The core MP3 site laid a good solid foundation for music distribution on the net. But the arrogant nimrods running the company thought that they could single handedly rewrite copyright laws...and destroyed the company.

Most the dot bombs that went under were a laugh, the good ideas that went under were sad. It doesn't matter how good and idea is, if it gets destroyed by the marketers it is historical rubbish.

The "Sonic Gene" mentioned in the Economist article is not the only one. I attended university where one of the piano professors has been working on a project like this for many years now.

His name is Brent D. Hugh, and he has downloadable .mp3s here. This has been a pet project of his, and it's definitely worth checking out. His personal site is available here as well.

Happy listening!

The system is broken, hardcore. Now if you release open source software you are aiding terrorists? Ever since the "Stella Awards" I've always wondered where America was going. Criminals can sue the people they are robbing if they get hurt. Then the RIAA starts prosicuting fans. When it comes to Microsoft ... you name it. It seems we are justblowing up the world! The funny thing is CHILD PORNGRAPHERS can - I'd link to the story, but news.com took it down, actually got off because his computer was hacked into, and he didn't get a search warrent, but not the RIAA!! If that bill passes they won't need a search warrent, just look up legal hacking on google...you'll get tons of links on it. Oops I'm off the subject. If we are all on the same page, and reading the same stuff, then we all know what the other guy can do. So why would open source be so bad, and as far as documents ... there are documents for everything

So what is, Ishkibble's name and SSN then?
He can have hundreds of nerds checking up on him.
And if he doesn't do his homework, Trogdor is going to burninate him.

The scary thing is that some good social engineering versus the school is bound to turn up some SSN's if you just have the name of a student.

Will this make the local paper?
Will they call Slashdot a "site for hackers"?

"Our government only wants to protect us".

Heh, is anyone else reminded of the song "The Terrible Secret of Space" by The Laziest Men on Mars?

Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie(free registration required to listen)

Look for the song entitled 'Behind the Scenes at Microsoft'. Wish they'd let me link the song directly... :/

Minimalistic techno played with a C64 (so really not for everyones ears ;-). The guy also does live gigs.

The Canadian comedy group "Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie" has a verry appropriate song about this... called "Every OS Sucks"... available here

In support of our troops, Hidden Agenda is proud to announce the release of "Proud to be the Great Satan," a celebration of everything Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden hate, including, but not limited to, cruise missles, pork, pornography, and Jews.

It can be downloaded at: http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/5/hidden_agenda.ht ml.

--------------RAEL--------------

...are written by the science fiction fan community. Commonly called 'filk music' (the name is a typo of 'folk music'), technology is only one of the many themes used by this genre.

Here are some links to technology themed filksongs:

Steve Savitzky's computer songs. My favorite is The World Inside the Crystal.

There are other technologies besides computers though. Here are some songs about space exploration available as MP3s.

Here is a list of links to science and technology filk songs.

Actually, it's barely tolerable come to think of it, but it was fun. You can find a not so bad version up at:
mp3.com but I haven't updated that in a long time either.

About halfway down the downloads page there's a link to his mp3.com page.

Try his mp3.com page

She has made one of her novels, Borders of Infinity, available as an audiobook online for free at http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/215/the_readers_ch air_inc.html. It's good.

First, the idea of porting the Windows into Linux has been around for a long long long long time. It's always had it's supporters and dissenters, so far nothing in this string of posts have contributed anything new to the argument.

It comes down to getting decent apps on the Linux platform, and I know I'm probably gonna get flamed for this, but 95% of the software honestly sucks. At least Windows apps generally conform to a standard and typically very polished. Yes, I know that Linux apps are getting better, but they aren't there yet and why we all argue about every little thing, Microsoft moves on to the their next version, happy to throw something at the Linux community to get it all rialled up.

So far, the only version of Linux that I see as promising is Xandros and that's because they are in control rather than 5 million whiney geeks, hackers, cracker, dweebs, or whatever we call ourselves today.

Second, every OS out there sucks. They all do. Windows X.X, MacOS X.X, Linux and every other OS that is out there sucks.

I would love nothing better than to see a free, open source OS dominate the market because it is fast, stable, and actually easy to use. Linux is 2 out of 3. Windows XP is generally fast, stable, and a lot easier to use than Linux. MacOS X is fast, stable, and easy to use to a certain group of people while the rest think it is either moronic or insulting to use. In my book that puts Linux at 2 out of 3 while XP and MacOS are at 2.5. Perhaps Linux, in it current form, isn't the answer for the desktop. Maybe the GNU community needs to develope an OS from the ground up that is geared towards the Desktop, and let Linux handle the server and workstation market (where it is competeing extremely well). That way we aren't wasting are time trying to make the Swiss Army Knife of the OS world.

Oh, BTW, DOS under NT, 2000, and XP is an emulator, just like DOSEMU in Linux. It provides enough of DOS so that many, but not all, old DOS programs will run. The great part is that since those DOS apps run inside a Windows app, if the DOS program pukes, it doesn't take the OS with it like what used to happen under Win 3.x and Win 9.x.

Finally, here is a link to a funny song that helps make my point on OSes sucking. :) It should make at least some of giggle. :)

Cya L8r
Lee

Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie have an excellent documentary on exactly this.

actually, i have found mp3.com to be kind of cool and useful for certain things. i found some cool local bands that way. i lvoe finding new bands that no one has heard of and making my friends listen to them. i prefer to do taht with local bands and i found mp3.com to be the easiest way to discover local bands, other than listening to this radio show called local bands on WPLR 99.1 in the new haven area of connecticut. they play music from local bands for half an hour every sunday night at like 10 or 10:30. it's pretty good, although some of the bands suck.

another good way to discover other bands is to look at other bands members of your favorite bands have played with, or opening acts for your favorite bands. they usually have something in common (or sometimes don't, but that's rare). go to a small club or bar in your area and listen to a band or bands for like $5-10. go to the whole thing, not just the "headliner". a lot of times the openers (usually 1-2, sometimes 3) are decent bands. of course that doesn't always happen as i went to see psychedelic breakfast (i went to grammar school with their guitarist) one time at toad's place in new haven (they were opening for max creek that night) and the other opening band, spiral trace, was a high school band that absolutely sucked, so we just left, not seeing the other bands. we ended up getting drunk at yale instead, which wasn't a bad idea at the time. :) if you live in the new haven area, or anywhere in connecticut, toad's is a good place to check out. also pyschedelic breakfast and max creek are on mp3.com if they are new to you and you want to check out their music.

my last suggestion is to join any email discussion lists pertaining to the bands you like or the types of music you like. etree.org has a some discussion lists that pertain to taper/trader friendly bands. always a good way to find new music. so good luck on your music search, i'm sure you'll find a lot out there.

actually, i have found mp3.com to be kind of cool and useful for certain things. i found some cool local bands that way. i lvoe finding new bands that no one has heard of and making my friends listen to them. i prefer to do taht with local bands and i found mp3.com to be the easiest way to discover local bands, other than listening to this radio show called local bands on WPLR 99.1 in the new haven area of connecticut. they play music from local bands for half an hour every sunday night at like 10 or 10:30. it's pretty good, although some of the bands suck.

another good way to discover other bands is to look at other bands members of your favorite bands have played with, or opening acts for your favorite bands. they usually have something in common (or sometimes don't, but that's rare). go to a small club or bar in your area and listen to a band or bands for like $5-10. go to the whole thing, not just the "headliner". a lot of times the openers (usually 1-2, sometimes 3) are decent bands. of course that doesn't always happen as i went to see psychedelic breakfast (i went to grammar school with their guitarist) one time at toad's place in new haven (they were opening for max creek that night) and the other opening band, spiral trace, was a high school band that absolutely sucked, so we just left, not seeing the other bands. we ended up getting drunk at yale instead, which wasn't a bad idea at the time. :) if you live in the new haven area, or anywhere in connecticut, toad's is a good place to check out. also pyschedelic breakfast and max creek are on mp3.com if they are new to you and you want to check out their music.

my last suggestion is to join any email discussion lists pertaining to the bands you like or the types of music you like. etree.org has a some discussion lists that pertain to taper/trader friendly bands. always a good way to find new music. so good luck on your music search, i'm sure you'll find a lot out there.

Why would you want alpha versions of Daikatana when you could have
this? :D (from the guys who brought you the "All Your Base" song...)

First time I heard Superfly's Johnson I just about fell out of my chair... lol

Oh, sorry, I didn't make myself clear.

I've been ripping my own CDs for years on end now, for my own convenience and without breaking any laws. (oh well i don't need to prove that fact, you won't believe me anyway.).

I'm not saying they HAVE to deliver uncrippled CDs. What I'm saying is that I won't be buying crippled CDs. Saying that I'm the one who brought it onto myself by stealing in the first place, I could take that as an insult, but seeing you're just as ignorant I won't be taking it personal.

I found some good music on mp3.com. Look up Ted Bjõrling. I'll be buying netCDs from him, thankyouverymuch!

I don't mean no disrespect to all the Slashdot crowd happy to share whatever comes into their /pub/incoming, but it's just not my bag, baby!

Dave

clicka

For any big Asimov fans, Manplanet has a great song based on the story. It's aptly titled "I, Robot".

Even if the company doesn't exist anymore, SOMEBODY probably still has the rights to the software.

If the game's publisher has been out of business for more than ten years, and the publisher was not bought by IDSA, it's pretty safe to assume that whoever owns the game's copyright doesn't even know he owns it. The chance of the copyright owner actually finding out about your piracy and taking action are about the same as the chance of a software patent holder doing the same on a random original program.

Just look at "Zero Wing", an old arcade game. Toaplan, its publisher, has been out of business for a long time. Had the company who bought Toaplan's copyrights known about the song and music video that sampled parts of "Zero Wing", then we probably would have seen legal sparks fly a couple months into the "All Your Base" craze. But we didn't.