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9.) Protect vs. phish

They don't really play my kind of music, but they seem like reasonable people, and I'm pretty sure that they have nothing in particular against me. Why would I need protection from Phish?

I once put anit-phishing on someone's computer and they told me to "chill" ans asked if I had any food.

It was such a mellow confrontation that I was drowsy all day.

You might want to add that Mom and pop users should never go to a website using basic http. Since many phishing sites don't bother with https. The ones that do use https could set up a domain name like www.phish.com/paypal and get their certificate signed by a thirdparty. Now those Mom and pop users can go to the https site will a full sense of security. Do you think that mom and pop users will tell the difference? I know my Mom wouldn't.

Mom and Pop should keep a bookmark for secure sites they visit, such as PayPal or their bank, make sure the URL starts with "https", and always use the bookmark to go to the site, never click a link from an e-mail message.

Yes, somebody could get a certificate for https://www.phish.com/paypal, but Mom & Pop's bookmark will never take them there. If they're just typing in "www.paypal.com" (without the https), then a man-in-the-middle attack could redirect them to https://www.phish.com/paypal.

You might want to add that Mom and pop users should never go to a website using basic http. Since many phishing sites don't bother with https. The ones that do use https could set up a domain name like www.phish.com/paypal and get their certificate signed by a thirdparty. Now those Mom and pop users can go to the https site will a full sense of security. Do you think that mom and pop users will tell the difference? I know my Mom wouldn't.

Mom and Pop should keep a bookmark for secure sites they visit, such as PayPal or their bank, make sure the URL starts with "https", and always use the bookmark to go to the site, never click a link from an e-mail message.

Yes, somebody could get a certificate for https://www.phish.com/paypal, but Mom & Pop's bookmark will never take them there. If they're just typing in "www.paypal.com" (without the https), then a man-in-the-middle attack could redirect them to https://www.phish.com/paypal.

((pre coventry)) And know the ph is usually sysnonymous with some sort of scammage, a scheme, and what not. How did we go so far away form the originally usage?? [assuming that no one was "phishing" before phish formed} I hope this isn't toooo oftopic?? ;) Also rather nice to see the continued usage of the power of the people, democratic methodology, rather like when those things are put to use.... Thanks all the dev's out there ((slashdot included 3 )) who keep that set of values rolling... And hopefully progressing... TAGS!!! EGOR!!! TAGS!!!!

This is John Fishman from Phish. He used to wear a dress like that at most of their shows. He had this person make a sonic dress version for him.

Hope that cleared it all up.

-prator

I honestly haven't been keeping up on top of it, but the media always talks about Phish when talking about the other side of the coin.

http://www.phish.com/

I just listen to internet based radio stations myself.

I wonder if Metallica has ever figured out that Load didn't sell well cause it was a Load of Shit, not that people were actually downloading that crap?

Phish had the following setup during their 21+ yrs:
1. Audience members were free to tape any show.
2. Audience members were allowed to copy/trade and recording that they made and freely share it by others so long as no profit was made in the exchange.
You can read their Policy if you want the nitty gritty...

It's a fantastic way to get people to listen to your music - they never had a top 20 hit but were one of the top grossing concert acts in the country for several years.


In their last few years they also started putting soundboard copies of the show on http://livephish.com/ and allowed downloads at $10/show (FLAC or MP3) - and all profits go to charity.

A wish more acts had this kind of insight to believe in their fans.

Stephen

All these stories that have recently surfaced, have caused grief to the innocent, the original phishers or phishheads as most are refferred to. My boss, who knows I used to go to phish shows, just asked me about all the phishing stories in the news. Was kinda funny explaining to him that a phish-head http://phish.net/ or http://phish.com/ has nothing to do with these stories.

There is no controversy. Technology is not illegal. Uses of it are. People like etree make such a mockery of the RIAA's claims that filesharing is only used for evil that it's not even funny. Perhaps the RIAA is pissed off that so many bands are content with giving their music away for absolutely free.

I realize that they are lining their pockets and fleecing the artists, but at a certain point (and 95% shutting down seems like that kind of point) it stops making sense to continue business.

You don't need a record company to make an album. Get a bunch of guys together and record it at home -- heck, download the multi-track software for free on your favorite p2p app and mix the music yourself. Then spread the music through the web. If people like it, they might buy an "album" that has some value-added benefit, or do what they did in the OLD days:

Go see a live show.

Oh, but that involves actually being able to perform, and possibly even play your own instruments. Frankly, the only people I see that are really going to be hurt by this are all the corporate pop "divas" and hit-of-the-hour type crapola that pollutes the air waves thanks to the juggernaut of corporate media shoving it down our throats. Go and see a live band, give them your money directly.

If a jam band from Vermont could make a mint doing it, I'm not too worried about the death of music any time soon.

The band Phish has held three concerts that were simulcast live into 50+ movie theatres around the U.S. I watched two of them myself, the audio and video quality were excellent. More info here

There's only one true Phish website. I'm sure they're grateful to this new technology that helps keep people from being tricked into visiting websites belonging to boy bands, bleached blonde airheads, rappers or other so-called musicians. :)

[Hint to mods: The band Phish has been around about 20 years longer than the word 'phishing'. ]

Note that under this act, Bram Moolenar would've been guilty for the publication of the BitTorrent protocol, which by his own admission was intended to aid in copyright infringement (of Phish concert tapes, which are illegal to share, even though the band has no intention of ever enforcing).

Actually Phish has given permission for fans to trade concert recordings, so long as no money changes hands and there is no advertising involved.

Yes.

How many fans would they have if the only airplay they got was by begging a college radio station to play their demo tape?

Lots.

It's pretty convient that you can just plug in your 15" Powerbook to the soundboard and supply fans with perfect quality mp3s and FLAC files. If only more bands would do the same thing as Phish. I'll gladly pay $10 for 3 disks worth of live music.

check out this pic to see Phish's sound man and his power book at IT.

Phish actually sells their concerts online. They also don't mind if you swap concerts -- as long as you're not trying to making make money off of it./p.

On the other hand, for the hippie jam bands that let you non-commercially for your friends, obviously you want to rename the files .420pm instead...

Not sure if it is the one you are talking about, but Phish recently started selling concert downloads at LivePhish.com.

While recording and releasing a concert quickly is not a really difficult thing to pull off, selling CDs at the venue immediately after is a bit more difficult.

Phish is already offering all of their new concerts online. They record every show to a 48 track setup, any, and they've been releasing concerts off of their soundman's reference DATs. The sound of those discs is pretty good.

What they do now is send a clone of the DAT off to the people running their website, who transfer the show, chop the files up, compress them and put them online.

However, to be able to sell discs right after the show, those doing it would have to bring in an awful lot of CD recorders, all hooked into the soundboard feed. I would imagine quality control would be a bit difficult for a couple of reasons. One is all the discs would be running live. Another is it's difficult enough to set up a good distribution amplifier setup for the large number of CD burners that would have to be used, much less one that is portable. I also don't see how they could offer discs "five minutes" after the show, seeing as it would take longer than that to unload and case a few hundred burners.

There are a lot of good reasons to try it, though. There are a lot of people out there willing to pay for recordings of concerts, as evidenced by the healthy bootleg industry. A few artists (Pearl Jam, String Cheese Incident) have done decently selling limited pressings of entire tours. The Who offered CDs of all the shows from their last tour for sale online. This seems like a good deal for distribution as it won't take up a lot of rack space in the stores, but the shipping costs can get expensive. There is also the impulse-buy factor. Bands or promoters could get a lot of extra sales, I think, selling a disc of the show as a souvenier before the concertgoers even leave the building.

In short, I wouldn't be surprised to see this in the not-too-distant future. It is possible to get better than bootleg quality out of this type of record and release program, but it won't be as good as the typical major label live album, but then again, they also wouldn't suffer from the overproduction and editing that those often have. And there is a lot of money to be made here.

If you're interested in free music, go here.

I personally think that all "radio" as we know it is doomed. I don't listen to the radio. I would rather listen to something i know. Like a cd I own.

personally, i _hate_ listening to CDs in the car. unless someone wants to buy me a 300 CD changer that will fit in my trunk, i'm never going to hear something that i couldn't already play back in my head. boring. i can listen to a cd maybe once a year, because it takes me about that long to forget what order the songs are in from the last time i heard it. if i wait about 3 or 4 years, i might actually forget some of the songs themselves, but only the less memorable ones. radio keeps me somewhat interested because i don't know what's going to come on next. and, since i don't listen to the main stream radio, i occasionally hear songs that i haven't heard before or haven't heard in 3 or 4 years.

this is also the main reason that I like to listen to recordings of live music when i can. with good bands, you'll never hear the same thing twice.

Besides, doesn't charging for taped concerts kind of go against the concert-tapes-as-promotion philosophy? The reason the Dead were the most successful concert band of all time was partially due to the free availability of tons of concert tapes. I know livephish has to pay for bandwidth, but this is a much larger divergence from the Dead/Phish philosophy of free concert music than people seem to believe.

A couple points:

- Phish does not allow soundboard patches at their shows (due to the illegal foreign "import" scene). These soundboard recordings will naturally sound better than your typical audience recording. I'll pay for the quality. Some of my audience recordings sound great. Others sound like they were recorded in a tin can.

- You can still freely trade any audience tape/mp3/shn. In fact, Phish just modified their taping/trading policy to allow ANY audience recording to be traded online (Taping Policy). The previous policy prohibited the online trading of audience recordings if a commercial release of the same show was available.

- How is this any different from the live Grateful Dead releases (i.e. Dick's Picks)? You won't find any of the Dick's Picks releases on etree. Seems to me like they are embracing a new medium.

The Jamband/Grassroots scene is one viable alternative. The scene, which has its roots in bands such as the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band, the jamband/grassroots scene is based on the principles of "tour lots, play well, allow tape trading".

Bands like Phish, Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer (three rather different artists) have become very popular primarily because of tape trading and putting on a good live show which varies night to night.

Some sites of particular interest are Homegrown Music Network and Jambase, the latter of which has a huge database of members interested in and willing to promote the bands it serves. Bands seeking to promote shows in certain cities pay Jambase to allow them access to all the members in certain zip codes, cities and states. These fans get promotional material to spread around their area, thus gaining more interest in the concert.

Another great site is archive.org's etree archive which has full concerts of lots of bands (from big names such as Dave Matthews to the unknowns like the Motet) in lossless SHN format.

Of course, the limitations of this scene is that it's basically all wrinkly old hippies noodling away on covers of Grateful Dead songs, but there are innovators such as the New Deal and Disco Biscuits, who play live, improvised trance/breakbeat house. Or Howie Day, a singer-songwriter playing Radiohead influenced songs using loops and samples to create a unique sound. OAR play (somewhat turgid) reggae-rock, and Illinois' Umphrey's McGee present us with an alternate universe of "What if Phish listened to Pink Floyd and Genesis rather than the Grateful Dead?". There's something for [mostly] everyone.

The point is, it's not just new artists targetted at the 18-25 market...all of music is sucking ass lately.

No drum synth machine I know of can react to other band members and the mood of a particular song on a particular night in a particular venue. Phish, Allman Bros, Spin Doctors; all have adaptive drummers. A drum synth can't do jazz/improv like even moderately skilled drummers can.

And no CG can smile like Julia Roberts.

Besides touring, you can use alternate methods of distribution such as: net downloads or you can even cut your own CD's and sell them through an online store. Basically, there is no reason for artists to be so dependent on record sales.

Perhaps you should "look it up" before posting.

String Cheese Incident and Keller Williams are both on SCI Fidelity, a record label started by the members of the String Cheese Incident. They actively support the trading community, even releasing soundboard recordings of selected shows in MP3 and Shorten format.

Phish and the Grateful Dead have had very public trading comminities throughout their existence, with the support of their record labels.

Not everyone signs away all of their rights when getting a record deal.

I think that the reason Nintendo goes after these people is because with a trademark or copyright, you have to enforce your trademark/copyright or else you face some sort of danger of losing the right to defend it.

This is only true of trademarks, not copyrights. Trademarks are completely different from copyrights -- the purpose of a trademark is to associate products with manufacturers.

If a trademark is abandoned, someone else can adopt and use that trademark. This is why trademarks must be defended. If other people start using your trademark, and you don't defend your trademark by suing them, then you can lose your trademark completely. Examples of lost trademarks are "Linoleum," "Escalator," and "Nylon." This is why companies like Xerox fire off letters when people refer to photocopiers generically as "xerox machines." They have to, or they can lose their trademarks. Companies also have to be very careful about how they use their trademarks, or they can lose them. For instance, here is an interesting page on the DuPont web site about proper use of their "Tactel" trademark. that summarizes the general rules of using trademarks.

On the other hand, copyright holders are free to allow or disallow the copying of their works, and this has no effect on the validity of the copyright, or their ability to enforce it in the future. For example, rock bands like The Grateful Dead and Phish explicitly permit the non-commercial copying of concert performances by their fans. They would not do this if doing so would result in the loss of their copyrights on either the songs or the performances.

I'm wondering, why is it necessary to encode song names? Since the vast majority of Slashdot are law abiding citizens who would only use Napster to trade non-copyrighted music this should be an issue.

Ok, this really bugs me. You'd think that on Slashdot, such a hotbed of Open Source activism, people would understand the difference between "copyrighted" and "freely distributable."

Linux is copyrighted. That doesn't mean you couldn't trade copies of the Linux kernel on Gnutella or any other filesharing system. There's plenty of music that's copyrighted, but which you can freely trade on Gnutella or other filesharing systems.

See the Phish Audio Recording and Transfer Policy, for one example.

Gumbo

"well, I ain't got that, but I sure got some powerful pills!"

Phish's official policy. From here.

--
All taping must be for personal use only, which may include trading (via analog or digital tape, CD, or digital file transfer). Recordings may be traded only for an
equivalent amount of similar media (cassettes or CDs, pre-recorded or blank). Regardless of any expenses incurred, no money may ever be exchanged as part of
a trade; however, stamped, self-addressed envelopes may be included with blank media. In addition, the media by which audio trading is publicized may not be
commercialized. Therefore newsletters, web sites, clubs, or any other communication forum facilitating audio trading cannot accept advertising, offer links for
compensation, exploit databases compiled from their traffic, or otherwise derive any commercial profit in any form. Stores or businesses may not offer to
duplicate Phish media for customers or sell or otherwise provide media containing unreleased Phish music for any price.
--

In other words: Listen all you want, but please don't sell it.

IMHO, this is how copyright should be, i.e. the literal translation should be "sellright".
--

As some above have said, (and I'm not trying to be redundant) there are many other places to get MP3s, most of which existed before Napster.
Oth.net used to be an amazing source for them by listing searchable FTP sites full with albums and singles. There's always other less dependable websites like AudioGalaxy.com and LycosMP3. There are all BIG, well-known WWW sites, which, although not quite 100% reliable are well established. This does not cover the thousands of pages you can find if you go to Hotbot and search for 'mp3'.
Then, of course, there's IRC. Here again, there are hundreds of communities across dozens of servers all working on one thing: getting/trading MP3s. (My recommendation is to try some of the IRC servers on the Eris Free Network).
Then of course, you've got other Napster-like clients like GNUtella, FreeNet, and Globalscape's CuteMX (most of these share more than MP3 files).
And college students will always have the trusty, reliable LANs where students share their large collections.

Ok, so you knew this already. Bottom line: MP3 is not going away, not now, and especially not at the hands of the RIAA. If they are only half as smart as their lawyers are blockheaded, they would work with some of these companies, as well as organizations like the Frauenhoffer Institute to develop a replacement for the MP3 file format. One that maybe sounds twice as good for half the file size, so you can get 320kbps encoded songs for 3MB or so. New technology is the way to fight MP3. If enough people think it's worth it to pay $0.50 for a song that sounds twice as good and can be downloaded in half the time, guess what? They'll be more likely to get that song as opposed to an .mp3 file. Relatively secure encoding already exists. The band Phish released MP3s that you could listen to for free three times, then a window popped up that reuqired you to enter a credit card number and pay some small amount of money to continue listening to the song (apparently, an executable was appended to the WAV file before it was encoded... You couldn't remove this prompt, or extract a WAV file with WinAmp).

If Lars is reading this, spend money on getting new media developed, not on paying your lawyers. You may win against Napster, but not against MP3.

oh come now. The previous poster is not saying that we need to be constantly relativistic, he is only pointing out that nothing can be truly PROVEN in science, maybe this is why lots of people turn to religion. Scientists are CONVINCED that evolution is fact, and that the big bang is fact, but these ideas (and any others) cannot be proven. I'm convinced that there is no god, although this is mainly because the whole god thing just doesn't do it for me (this does), but this is different that being proven.

The whole point to Phish's music is that they stand for freewill and the freedom to enjoy life.

Embodied in the song "Free" or "Prince Caspian" or any other number of songs.

BTW, if anyone wants to check out some tunes from their marathon 7-1/2 midnight to dawn New Year's set here's a mirror, (and I should have another up on my site this weekend), BTW 75,000+ people paid $150-$175 to see this show, so keeping your phans happy can pay off. And while I'm at it, if you want official Phish merchandise, try here

--

OK, so they are important, but there are a lot of musical groups that have built a degree of freedom into their business models.

Phish, for example, allows people to bring DAT recorders to their concerts, record the show, and give it away to anyone who wants it. The only catch is that no one may take money for them. You have to either give them away, or trade for another concert. They do not collect copyright royalties on this stuff, but they've more than made up for it, because tape trading is probably what gave them such a rabid fan base.

There are many other bands that allow trading. The coolest place to go to get hooked up is http://www.etree.org.

This sounds bad, but maybe recorded music just won't be marketable in the future. The recording industry has tried for years to build copy protection into digital recording and playback gizmos, but people just don't buy them. I think the idea of being told what they can and can't do with the stuff they buy turns them off. That's why I've been afraid of investing in a DVD deck. The industry cannot control piracy without replacing the current technology (compact discs, MP3, etc) with copy protected technology. However, people won't buy something unless they can do all of the things they are accustomed to doing with their current systems.

Back in the 1950's and earlier, when recording quality sucked ass, musical groups made their money from touring, and recordings were viewed simply as a way to maintain boost ticket sales. I would like to see the industry swing that way again. There is nothing better, in my view, than going to hear a great live show in a club or small theater. And God knows how hard it is to find a good live show these days.

I think the overall quality of music will improve this way. If they can't build a loyal fanbase on the touring circuit, they will either evolve to the point where they can, or they will have to grow up and get day jobs.

Just think -- no more Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears.

These are just my thoughts, and I haven't thought too much about them. Let me know what you think.

Take care,

Steve
========

The Dead started a movement in music that is very similar to the open source movement, and readers of /. would be wise to know about it as it offers parallels to the software industry. The model is now being followed by literally hundreds of "jam bands" (see JamBands.com).

The model is simple: play lots of concerts, improvise so every concert is different, allow people to freely record and trade your concerts. You get free publicity, and if you are any good people will buy tickets for your shows and buy your albums.

Another band called Phish used this same model. Without any radio or MTV play and no hit singles this band now regularly sells out 20,000 seat venues. They just sold 75,000 tickets for the new years show where they were the sole performers (they could have sold more but the place wouldn't hold any more). These guys are all millionaires and people trade their MP3's all day (and DAT's and CD-R's through the mail too). They have an official policy regarding MP3 trading since they even have their own MP3's available for download for fee!

You wanted to know how many other bands encourage the trading of their music, look at this, the bands that allow taping list. Note that these are bands that allow fans to record their live concerts and trade the recordings. Some of the big bands on this list are Perl Jam and Dave Matthews Band. There are many other small bands that are using MP3 for publicity that don't explicitly allow fans to record the live concerts.

This site, Sugarmegs is devoted to trading MP3's of live concerts and is fully condoned by all of the bands. The bands traded are Grateful Dead, Phish, and many other bands that allow trading of their music under the same model such as Widespread Panic, Medeski Martin & Wood, Moe., and others.

There is a lot of free music out there and it's not all hippie jam bands. There are many jazz artists that allow recording and trading such as Branford Marsalis, John Scofield, Medeski Martin & Wood, Bill Frisell, and Ken Vandermark. Almost all bluegrass is tradeable and some of the major bluegrass festivals have special sections for people to setup microphones (Merle Watson Memorial Bluegrass Festival, for instance).

There is a movement in free music (and subsequently free promotion of artists!). Much like free software, not all copying of music is copyright infringement!

Burris

"I only wonder how this (and the upcoming boxed set) will affect the rules of trading these shows as bootlegs."

Here is their official policy on audience taping of officially released material.

This astounds me... Phish allows people to bring recording devices to shows, and freely distribute the recordings at their will. To buy this in mp3, wouldn't make much sense, when I could run over to the flea market and pick up the tape for $2. I doubt this is a move on the band's part at all... are they still signed by Elektra? Read their audio recording policy.

You listen to exactly what I listen to! Are you sure we aren't the same person? All my car CDs are Phish and They Might Be Giants...