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MP3.com's Beam-It
Mutok pointed us to MP3.com's new
Beat It program. It is of course windows only which means I've never tested it, and functionally it works almost exactly like a collection of Perl scripts Nate and I hacked out a year ago to serve our personal collection of MP3s.
Basically, the software checks if you have a CD, and it tracks your collection. Then you use the software to track playlists and play your MP3s. There are a lot of interesting legal problems here, and the potential for abuse is high. But dangit if this isn't the future of music, I'm gonna be cranky. Now can I please have a Linux port?
Nice work -- I've been wondering about the verification scheme for several days but didn't have a handy sniffer.
I'm interested in what scheme mp3.com is using to compare the ripped data to what they have stored. I hope it's not a simple byte-for-byte comparison, because ripping, especially in the presence of dust and scratches, may not produce repeatable results. I'm guessing that they do something clever because, if the comparison were straightforward equality, they wouldn't have to send all that data to the server; they could send a one-way hash of it to the client instead and do the comparison on the client side.
As to whether the verifier checks different random chunks in each session, consider how much space would be required to store a large amount of unencoded track data on mp3.com's servers, even with standard lossless compression. That suggests that either the queries won't vary much, or that mp3.com has a method to compare sound from the mp3 to the corresponding sound from the CD. I'd be interested to know how such a scheme might work; I assume it would be done in the frequency domain.
I thought the same thing.... :)
But it's not like mp3.com won't win a lawsuit about that
I used to like mp3.com, back when it was a repository of information about mp3s, but not so much anymore now that it just sells stuff.
~Chris
Why make it that hard ... just create a username and password and pass it out to all 1000 of your friends.
... and mp3.com would disable accounts where more than one person tries to use it at once (possibly just for a limited time.)
Gonna fake the CDs? Not so easy. MP3.com could keep a database of (say) 1000 checksums for each CD, each for sequences of bits on different parts of the CD and of different sizes. When you add a CD, it requests the checksum of one of those those sequences. Unless you know the exact 1000 checksums mp3.com is storing, you'll have to have the entire CD's data available -- which rather defeats the purpose of trying to steal the data.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Otto Says:
"Your honor, this guy stole a song from us and gave it to... errr.. well, 3 people.. costing us a total revenue of.. umm.. $3.95... errr...."
The word "stole" isn't appropriate in this context unless the person speaking that quote had his physical copy of the song taken away by the defendant. If that's not what you meant then you should say "infringed the copyright on our song" instead of "stole a song from us."
Diplomat says:
Be very careful with your comments, or you could lead me to assume you're advocating theft. This discussion could benefit from a slightly higher moral tone. If I broke into your house, bank account or whatever and stole $3.95,
Copying information or art is very different from stealing physical goods, so the words "theft" and "stole" are inappropriate for use when referring to copying or copyright infringement. If I stole Otto's $3.95, he wouldn't have it anymore. I'd have it instead - meaning that I've deprived Otto of his $3.95. Otto would have to get a new $3.95 or beat me up and take his $3.95 back. But if I make a photocopy of few pages in a book Otto owns a copy of - or a make an MP3 of a song he owns a copy of, he can still read that book and listen to that song. He has no reason to buy a new book or CD - or to come beat me up. Using the words like "theft" and "stole" is almost as confusing as using the word piracy to talk about copyright infringement.
I'm sure you'd be incensed! Just think about it.
I sure would -- but that's because you violated the privacy of my home and deprived me of property that was rightfully mine. That's stealing. Photocopying pages from a book I own or a book Otto owns is not stealing. Depending on the circumstances, it's not even copyright infringement.
So let's get things straight here. If you mean copying, say copying. If you mean copyright infringement, say copyright infringement. Reserve words like like steal, theft, and stole to for discribing situations where theft has actually occured. By avoiding emotionally loaded language, you'll help promote more rational discussion.
It looks like it does a challenge/response with an md5 hash. As far as I can tell, it doesn't hash the random data from the track, it asks the client to send it outright. And I've seen it request up to 203 seconds from a random offset...
I think the challenge-response is used for logging in. Sending 203 seconds of audio data outright would consume 35,809,200 bytes of bandwith and take around 20 minutes on a 28.8 modem, so I doubt it uses such a method to determine what CD is in your drive.
As for the method I described, it would offer pretty good security, but I don't think they're doing that either because it would involve keeping a lot of uncompressed CD data live in their datacenter.
I found an online cd store that claimed to sell almost every cd pressed in the US or 150,000 CDs. Let's say there's around 200,000.
200,000 x 60m x 60s/m x 128kb/s x 1B/8bs = 11,400,000,000 bytes.
:)
-Paul
"I'm nobody suspicious... That makes me sound even more suspicious, doesn't it?" - Spike (Cowboy Bebop)
| In otherwords, to whatever degree, this is one
| more internet invasion of my privacy should I
| take advantage of it.
*Invasion*? Not as such - that collection of data on you is basically the price of using their service. It becomes an invasion if they don't *tell* you that it's the price of their service (sorta like the flap over Real Jukebox).
Whether it's a price you're willing to pay is, of course, up to you.
-- Rick
Nobody's asking you to pay. The service is free. They are just trading information on your listening & purchasing habits for a little disk space and a moderate amount of bandwidth.
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
Surely thats an mp3 client problem. I dont see why an MP3 player can't decode the start of the next track as the last one finishes and join the audio together seamlessly. It certainly doesnt need a new standard... Try submitting this to Xmms as a future enhancement.
It bugs me too, Pink Floyd isnt the same when it hiccups between tracks...
Baz
--
Beam It was put together for my.mp3.com which is a straight rip off of myplay.com.
Of course myplay have had linux support from Day one.
Rubbish ....
try pointing lynx at the URL's genrated
lynx -dump -source URL > file.mp3
Any linux hacker knows how to do that
True true, and you have to guarnatee yourself a 128kbit connection wherever you go...
Perhaps if some technological crisis hits storage and suddenly nobody could make any bigger hard disks. Then if... at the same time a technological breakthrough gave every device in the world a high bandwidth internet connection....
then *maybe* there mioght be a big future in this.
More likely - mp3.com want to use this as the distribution medium for their artists. Instead of buying the mp3's, instead you buy the rights to stream the mp3's from their server. The notion of owning music takes a step further back.
Therefore there must be something to it ;-)
Anyone who had anything to do with 'The Clash' must be worth listening to.
Joe Strummer's current stuff is available at emusic.com.....
So... with a bit of hacking it would be possible to upload the hamsterdance song instead of the actual mp3. Lots of scope for nasty minded individuals to ruin the service.
.... The Who... then upload the hamsterdance song instead as the mp3.
e.g. get CD, get first 8kbytes (usually pretty quiet I'd imagine). Tell their servers you've got an labum by
repeat.
then the next person to upload will get the Hamsterdance instead of My Generation.
could be fun
your points
1) Myplay lets you choose the bitrate you encode at to suit your connection - in fact you're not even limited to mp3 files - almost any format is supported. Also - you don't need the special windows only client. (Although I would say that myplay should get their arse in gear and produce an encoding client)
So... myplay does require you to upload your mp3's but the Beam-It client doesn't let you get at your own mp3s, they get uploaded to the server and then you have to trick the mp3.com servers to download to you so that you can get a copy.
2) Yup there's a limit, maybe I should point out that when I first found myplay that mp3.com were offering an I-drive account to its users - offering a vast 50Megabytes of storage for mp3.com users. I'm sure myplay will respond by offering more space
Incidently my cd collection works out at about 300+ cd's - about 18GB in mp3's.
3) True, but this only works for mp3.com partners.
Myplay's version appears to be more online - buy stuff from emusic and you get a copy automatically added to myplay.
Not a carbon copy - but I'm shocked at how much mp3.com seem to have copied.
Thankfully 'look and feel' lawsuits don't usually go very far.
I actually have some code for producing long, seamless mp3's..
I just make one big one and then use a frame splitter to break it up -
then just do something like
cat file*.mp3 | mpg123 -v -
Myplay have a 'public playlists' section
If you think your music collection is cool you can make a playlist publically available. It's still gotta conform to DMCA rules - but anyone can listen.
Hey maybe I just like this feature because I've got to #2....
I don't care what the rest of you trolls think, I think it's pretty kewl. I don't know about any software that you can download to serve your own collection, but it does play all the music that artists have allowed mp3.com to distribute. So if you're into no-name & a couple known bands, this could be the thing for you.
The big deal is now I do not have to lug my cd collection back and forth to work. I beam the collection up from home, then when I'm at work and feel like listening to any particular song(s) I may fancy at that time, I can. This is a good thing.
"Even Prophets don't know everything"
The biggest difference is that my.mp3.com doesn't actually rip YOUR CD for you and upload it. They have an archive that they let you access if you prove you already own it. Pretty powerful if you ask me. I already emailed them and offered to port it to Linux for them.
........ "The faster I go, the behinder I get" - Lewis Carroll
Yeah, I saw somebody else mentioned this and submitted an 'Ask Slashdot' myself asking how the music industry might react to these 'waiting-to-be-abused' online libraries.
rm -rf / is the evil of all root
I thought exactly the same thing you did, that I wouldn't be able to find any of my music on it. While there are a few CDs I had that it didn't find, it surprised me with a few - such as Beck's One Foot in the Grave, and Grateful Dead - Mars Hotel.. overall i'm real pleased with the selection.
The main problem I have with mp3s (in fact, the only thing stopping me mp3ing my entire album collection) is that the annoying gaps you get between tracks which makes it sound awful if you happen to be listening to a concept album where there isn't necessarily a break of music between songs. Of course, you could turn the album into one BIG mp3 but then you can't choose which track you want from it (ie, mpeg files need a TOC!). Does anyone know if there's any plans to fix this in mp4?
I'm still not so very sure if this is going to be the future of music. Even though I can download every piece of music I might ever want from the internet I keep on coming back to my (on-line or not) music store to buy my favorite music in hardcopy, complete with a nice booklet maybe for once not a diamond box and a few pictures of my (at that moment) favorite artist.
:-)
:-) That's one nice thing you can do.
I want to be able to hold that box, look at it while listening to the music on my home stereo for the first time. I'd be hard pressed to find an attractive software equivalent for that.
Now I suppose there are a lot of people out there that don't need that physical representation of their music but I do and a lot of my friends agree with me.
In point of fact, I'd venture to state that the majority of the population doesn't agree with you. At least, the majority of the college students with some bandwidth..
Personally, I don't buy CD's much anymore. Haven't bought a CD in.. oh.. 2 years? 3? I'm not sure.. I've been playing with MP3's since it was brand new, and I switched wholly to it nearly instantly...
I was DJing parties at my fraternity with MP3's 2 years ago... One hell of a lot better than CD's. Why? Well, it's not a serious DJ thing, mixing and such, so all I had to do was make a playlist then go drink.
But the point I'm trying to make is that the music is the same either way. Hook a computer to a stereo, boom, essentially no difference (okay, a bit of noticable audio difference on anything lower than 160k mp3's, but most people can't hear it). I can't really recall ever looking at those worthless little booklets more than that first time I got a cd, except to see what track a certain song was on.
Is it really worth the $15 you pay for the CD to get that little booklet? Does the jewel case mean $15 of value to you? Most people I know use a CD carrier that doesn't hold the jewel case anyway..
Now, it's one thing to be able to show off your cd collection I admit, but for those of us that aren't interested in "physical" ways to show off our collection, the "virtual" collection is just even better. You might have a whole lot of CD's, but say I have 20 GIG of Mp3's (not really, not yet).. That's almost 2 weeks of solid music. For next to no cost. Admittedly, you can carry a lot of CD's around with you in a much more portatble format, but I can buy a burner and burn any songs I choose to a CD and do the same. For less than a buck a CD.
All I'm trying to say is that on-line music will continue to exist, but not in the format that you (or the record companies) think. Pay-for-play will not work, nor will buying songs online. I'm uncertain of what will work (hey, if I knew that I'd be making a load of money by doing it!)..
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
When buying certain stuff I in part do it for a feeling of owning something cool. Downloading a bunch of mp3's doesn't give me that feeling and, as such, lacks in user experience. And that's why I'll keep spending money on lame booklets and easy breakable plastic cases.
:-) But then I hate to waste my ca$h on something I have no need to waste it on. When I was a poor college student, this made more sense, possibly, but now that I'm a non-poor college graduate, I find that I still don't want to buy a CD. I have no need. Most of the songs on the CD are probably crap, and the one or two good ones I just download on MP3.. Since I probably won't be listening to them after a few weeks, I go through and delete old crap after a while...
A feeling of ownership? Sorry, I just don't grasp that. I own my computer, I own my car, I own my house.
I listen to music. It's the same whether I listen to it on a CD I own, a CD I made, or a non-CD that I still own. You can hear it either way, so what's the big deal about having a plastic version of it?
Maybe it's just me, maybe not.. I'm not anti-material possessions here..
Now don't get me wrong. I'd still buy some CD's.. Box sets of great bands; anything collectable, sure.. Same way I buy DVD's, get the really good movies that you want to own for a long time.. But most CD's aren't like that, just like most movies aren't like that.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's not the utility per se that matters here. (I personally couldn't care less about another streaming audio scheme.)
It's the implications of this utility that are interesting.
---------- ovidius naso
I would guess that if they don't have your version of the cd, basically you are screwed :-)
:-)
They *must* base their info in number of tracks, duration, offset, etc...
Which sucks, because many american cd's now include multimedia tracks instead of bonus songs like their foreign counterparts. IF I want to buy a video, I will. IF I buy a cd, I want music (the more tracks the better). Is this to difficult?
So, either the record execs don't have a clue, or I'm not in their target demographic. Or both
Abwh
Gerry -- #include "ea!.h"
why wouldn't you just play it yourself? Saves on download time for people like me who can't get fast internet connection and are stuck on 56k's that work like 28.8's
This also makes sense for people who have enough bandwidth at work to listen to streaming mp3s but not at home, and who don't own a CD burner to burn CDs of mp3s of their CDs. Especially for freelancers who don't have a machine at work they can call their own and load up with mp3s and other junk as they desire. Somehow I suspect this is not a very small segment of the population. I can also see myself using this when I travel.. when I visit my brother who has a cable modem, or friends at college, all my music is available to me.
I've only spent about a half hour on 3 separate occaisions 'beam-it-ing' CDs to mp3.com and already I've got 48 hrs worth of music available to me. Sure beats the hell out of encoding mp3s.
What I want to know is where did they get their mp3s? I imagine that from day one they've been having all their employees bring in every CD they own, or can beg, steal, or borrow, and encoding them all and storing them up for the day they were ready (legally, technically, whatever) to announce this service. Now that is an interesting strategy if you ask me. I'm not familiar with myplay.com but it sure seems that someone at mp3.com has got a bit of vision.
-- Adam
sir, you know not of what you speak. take a closer look, what myplay offers is quite different from my.mp3.com.
not quite a carbon copy, if you ask me.
-- Adam
No, I'm not thinking about it; the places I mentioned are places I am using the service. I'm not worried about my boss, and I work on a Mac -- what does that mean, "no sound card"?
That last suggestion you had for a place where I might want to listen to music was very insightful -- that's exactly what I'm looking forward to, as soon as the bandwidth is available. I'm excited to be trying out one of the first services of it's kind and getting a feel for things to come. I just don't understand all the naysaying...
-- Adam
It may be available for the Mac, but when I try to run it it freezes every time. Hmph. I suppose some people are having good luck with it, though, and the idea is good -- but when they call it beta software, they aren't kidding. According to their forums, a lot of people are having the freeze problem.
//
Ok, so it may not be as easy as to only falsify packets. (Since it requires a "proof" of some bytes of raw data.) But what if you do this?
;-)
Someone connects to the mp3.com database through a proxy. But instead of sending the information directly you re-route the signal to another "spoofing client" that makes a request to the mp3.com server for a registration (but in another name). The "proof" requests are then transmitted back to the originating beam-it client which can provide the info.
Now, a good reason _not_ to do this would be that if your friend has access to the album in the first place you could just as well ask him to register in your name... But this way is much, err, neater!
I'm not sure how hard it is to change the registering login/password. But well, it's an interesting (IMHO) experiment anyways.
Actually, that's not all that's stopping you. Another thing is the spokenword message saying "Too many open streams. Please close some and continue. You should not share your password." or somesuch that you get instead of the actual .mp3 if you try playing too many songs at the same time.
--
--
"It's natural to expect there might be people doing stupid things with computers." - Michael Vatis, NIPC/FBI
Bullshit. Check the little box in your WinAmp preferences saying "save streamed files", and you're all set. Otherwise copy the URL you get into a web browser, or wget, or something, and just grab the file.
--
--
"It's natural to expect there might be people doing stupid things with computers." - Michael Vatis, NIPC/FBI
You were going to buy frontpage 98? That program is worse then hard coding HTML, even for someone who's never used HTML before.
Besides, its dumbasses running around with braindead editors that made the web so ugly..
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
that CD in their database, you can listen to the songs from the CD online.
>> Question: What's the point? If I have the CD, and I have a CD drive, then play the damn thing. As for being portable, CD's are easily portable
now"
I thought the same thing at first. Whats the point?
However you only need their software to verify that you own the cd's. After you have beamed over your cd info, all you need to listen to the songs are a web browser and a program that can play
Assuming they have all your cd's at mp3.com you could have youre entire collection available on line - from anywhere. Thats whats cool.
I'm not looking forward to the first time I have to file an insurance claim on $5000 worth of MP3s destroyed in a fire.
Got a library card? Wow, you own a lot of music.
By doing the things you suggested, ripping or burning, you never actually take ownership of the recordings in a legal sense. By using my.mp3.com, the implication is that you now legally own (a copy of) it and can do what you like with it in whatever format - a fairly significant difference.
Can't download, only stream.
> a linux version is definatly coming
I emailed them two days ago, and this is the answer I received a few minutes ago:
From: "Danny Sterne" <danny@mp3.com>To: <alessio@albourne.com>
Subject: RE: Beam it for Linux
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 14:10:23 -0800
Dear Alessio,
Thank you for your feedback, however at this time we have no plans for a Linux port of our Beam-it (TM) software.
Regards,
Danny Sterne
Customer Service
MP3.com - The Premier Music Service Provider Put your CD Collection Online in Minutes!
http://click.mp3.com/ct/o_sigmymp3/u_my.mp3.com
-----Original Message-----
From: alessio@albourne.com
[mailto:alessio@albourne.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2000 6:51 AM
To: beamitsupport@mp3.com
Subject: Beam it for Linux
Dear MP3.com team,
I was very thrilled reading your new service, but I discovered that on my Linux system I have not even a chance to try it.
I believe there are many Linux users willing to use your service, and therefore I'm asking you to think about plans for it!
Thanks for your attention.
--
Alessio F. Bragadini alessio@post.com
"It is more complicated than you think" (The Eighth Networking Truth from RFC 1925)
> AFAIK there is nothing illegal about making a copy of CDs you own.
:-)
In Italy it is, or at least that's what the local copyright-enforcement-agency (SIAE) suggested. More exactly in the 80s they said that it was illegal to buy a record (think about vinyl here) and to record a tape from it to listen in *your own car*. We never knew if it was true or not, since it was never enforced and never brought to any court, but technically I think they still have the same position.
One record company tried at that time to sell a "bundle" set containing one LP and one tape of the same record but it did't work well thanks God.
"It is more complicated than you think" (The Eighth Networking Truth from RFC 1925)
I've read that some of the restrictions include not playing more than a certain number of songs from one artist in a certain amount of time, and not playing more than a certain number of songs from the same album in a certain amount of time. That would pretty much eliminate the kind of request radio the original poster wanted. However, try http://www.launch.com for an interesting implementation of the same concept.
Go to the plugins page on winamp's site and look for "Dudsoft Gapless Output". While the plugin has quirks, it will remove the gap when playing back a full CD etc.
They won't release a Linux port because we Linux users are all 31337 n3t hax0rs who will break the protocol used to check to see if you own the CD :>.
It wasn't a reference to DeCSS; it was a reference to the idea producers of software may hold that those who use Linux might be more predisposed to reverse engineering the protocols than their Win32 counterparts.
Kind of interesting that CT says that they hacked these out a year ago and in the next breathe, seems to whine for a Linux port? Matter of fact, it seems that every time something cool comes out that isn't on Linux yet, there's a whining for someone else to do it? Why don't these guys quit whining and do it themselves?
[Or would that get back to the topic of their hypocrisy when it comes to OSS?]
Hmmm... surely the bitrate on the mp3s it serves isn't going to be full quality? If it was then the abuse potential for this "app" is huge!
I wouldn't mind betting it serves only radio quality mp3s to still leave some incentive for CD spoofers to purchase the CD. Haven't tried it yet tho so can't say for sure...
Howard.
floorten.com.
Hmm... what's to stop a site running a little perl app which generates valid playlists every minute (valid for an hour) and serves them up on a webpage for all to use?
Sounds like mp3.com have revolutionised the art of piracy to me. No more lame mp3 ftp sites - just go straight to them!
Howard,
floorten.com
I rip em and encode em, and serve em from my linux box. They use, oh, $50 worth of HDD space. That's what one month of high-speed internet access would cost me (and that I would have to have in order to stream decent-quality MP3s). I don't have to worry about internet congestion, MP3.com downtime, ISP downtime, or anything else. Easy. Innovative. High-tech. Plus, as an added bonus, I can copy all of em to my car and play em there too (I do, there's 570 songs on the MP3 player in my car). I kinda doubt that my cell modem can stream any kind of MP3.
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
Yeah, but where are they getting the actual MP3s from? Is somebody gonna go and rip all the tracks from my favorite eastern european techno-industrial-noise band that only two other people outside of germany have ever heard of? Since your not uploading the mp3 files to their database yourself, the actual files are coming from somewhere, right?
So how extensive is the mp3 database that they are using? If I can only authenticate my pop/mainstream CDs that they are likely to already have encoded, I'm not sure I'd want to. I have a lot of non-mainstream CDs, and I'd imagine that I wouldn't be able to use this for a good portion of them.
Laibach and PWEI are pretty mainstream compared to, say, Los Prisioneros (Chilean 80's prog-rock, a bit whiny in parts but good fun anyway)
gomi
Both ways, you're still paying for the music, so this would probably fall under the "shift-transfer" stuff that got the Diamond player through the courts (I'm not sure of the name, but its when you record music you bought onto a different medium, used previously for cd's recorded to tape).
What I don't see is a way for your existing (legally questionable?) downloaded MP3's to get onto the account.
Just my $.02
Yes.
Cf my other post somewhere in this topic.
It looks like it does a challenge/response with an md5 hash. As far as I can tell, it doesn't hash the random data from the track, it asks the client to send it outright. And I've seen it request up to 203 seconds from a random offset...
jon
That would be very nifty.
The frequency with which I've been getting beam errors, though, seems to indicate that they're doing some sort of straight-up threshold matching.
jon
Apparently, according to the discussion over at mp3.com, they intend this to be a pay service at some point.
you are stupid.
What I want now is for some hacker to to create an app that will seach cddb for cd id's of artists that I specify and that app to beam it to my.mp3.com, thus allowing me access to whatever album I want for downloading and distribution. How much storage will they need to store every cd that people have (assuming they only need 1 version in MP3 format)?
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
I am(and most of my friends are) college students with high bandwidth. .mp3 and .vqf files.
I'm making a rough estimate here, but I think I've got 100 Mbit access to more than 500 Gb of
Nearly everything is on the campus network and if I can't find something I could use getright and any search engine to find it on the web. Even if it takes a day to download I couldn't care less. That does not give me the biggest music collection in the world just because it doesn't feel that way. I don't claim owning the biggest library in the world either even though I can access more than 1 billion seperate documents from my home. It just isn't the same.
Sure, I can't hear the difference in quality between CD and 160k + mp3, and sure, the jewel case is evil and breaks when looked at. It's all beside the point I was trying to make. When buying certain stuff I in part do it for a feeling of owning something cool. Downloading a bunch of mp3's doesn't give me that feeling and, as such, lacks in user experience. And that's why I'll keep spending money on lame booklets and easy breakable plastic cases.
Strange. At least in the interets of saving bandwidth they could have used a cryptographic hash instead of sending the actual data. This would suggest a challenge-response protocol when the server randomly picks short frames from the CD and the client responds with their SHA-1 hashes. Only problem would be the impractical storage requirements because the server would need access to the uncompressed tracks. This is probably why they will only use a fixed portion of the CD instead of generating random challenges.
BluesPower
I wonder what bitrate mp3.com client is encoding CDs into mp3, 96khz?
I'd think a reduced quality copy of a personal collection is tolerable to record companies. This is just my common sense thinking, not contestable by law.
The record company didn't raise a fuss about cassette copy of CDs, but they did fight wars with digital cassette makers in 1980's about preventing digital tape users copying music from CDs.
just my observation.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
And beyond what everyone else is saying -- why even use a CD in the first place? I wouldn't be surprised if our children won't understand why we had physical media in the first place. I suddenly feel very silly for owning 1,200 CDs. BPM140
No, you don't actuallly rip your CD into an MP3 and upload that. They just verify what CD is in the player and compare that against their database of CDs they have already ripped. If they don't have your CD, you are out of luck.
-- Freedom means letting other people do things you don't like.
As I read through the comments posted on this topic, I see people boast about the amount of MP3's they have. Perhaps there is a dearth of morals at /. I believe that most people want to support the production of music that they like. I certainly do. To those of you who argue that most of my money is going to the big record companies, I say that's OK. Why? Because someone has to take the risk to make the CD's. If an artist isn't making enough money from their label, they are not prevented from moving to another label. (free market economy) There are lots of independent labels out there. As proof that an independent label can "make it" I show Manheim Steamroller. Chip Davis, AFAIK, started American Gramaphone for the group. I have no problems finding American Gramaphone CD's anywhere. To those of you who say that "I'm just one person, what do I matter?" Why do you have such a low sense of self-worth? One person can make a difference. It's just an escape from any moral accountability. Don't make yourself into one of those Script Kiddies that inevitably end up being portrayed as typical geeks in mass media. Show that you will reward the effort of the people who create and bring music to you.
Well, my CD selection consists of mostly Jazz/Blues and I scanned in all of my CDs over the weekend (around 700). I'd say I had around a 20% success rate. I have around 2500 tracks available to me, which is pretty damn good. Nothing like being able to randomnly play them at will.
It's really odd what music they have in their database. I was shocked when my 9 CD Stax/Volt box set was there but some very popular John Coltrane classics were not. In another case they had the Best of Screamin' Jay Hawkins (love those Constipation Blues, hehe) but not The Best of Fats Domino. Go figure.
What's even more frustrating is how sensitive the Beam-It software is. In many cases one or two CDs of a multi-CD collection refuses to scan in, and there's really no way to fix this. And the blue-screens! Sheesh! It seemed like every other Error 17 (CD not found) would cause the dreaded screen-of death). This almost always required a hard reset.
bitrate is 128 or 24 depending on hi/lo fi... the bit with the linux port means the following for everyone who didn't get it:
A program, written for linux, would upload the same TOC/track info/whatever to the same server in almost the same way that the windoze(1.7meg) or mac(499k) app does.
For anyone who really cares, the program sends an average of 60k to the server each time you 'beam it'.
also, for those of you who'd be curious in knowing more, currently i have only been able to use windoze media player and Realplayer to listen to the streaming mp3s which it appears can ALSO be saved to the hard drive when listened to in HIFI mode.
Yeah, this is a very potentially bugged issue...
note, in their faq it sez: CAN I SHARE MY PASSWORD WITH SOMEONE ELSE and the answer is 'NO'... i like their justification, don't you? i'm outta here. --nsfmc
Looks like most posters have just ignored you, and for good reason: your sarcasm is insulting and your conclusion lacks any real thought. Many /. readers will find a use for this, including myself. I don't exactly have the storage to handle all 200+ CDs I own. Having this as an online music library that I can access anywhere is great. If you don't have a need for this fine, but there's no point in being so rude...grow up.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Of course, they can't store the verification numbers for every single cd on some file on your hard drive and use that as a reference, so the verification number MUST be some sort of derivitive the cd's id (Don't know what else to call it, its not a serial number, but its a number thats unique to every cd of that title. I.E. Every copy of "Running with Scissors" has the same number. This is the number that CDDB uses to identify your cd) or the actual id itself. If this is the case, we won't have to create a database, we can use cddb's database. Its big, its there, and the protocol is well known. Just my $.02.
Wasn't the whole point of mp3's to listen to songs you don't have? I mean, that's why napster is so popular. And if I want mp3's of cd's I do have, I'd just use cdparanoia and lame, not some proprietary windows junk.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
I wish someone would do this with books so those of us who spend a lot of time away from home could access our technical and other libraries. (Of course, I could just be sick and tired of forgetting the books I invariably need.)
Well it's "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.", not "News for Nerds: Stuff that matters". The punctuation may not seem important, but it makes a difference. The implication is that the "news for nerds" doesn't necessarily have to be "stuff that matters." A new utility is an interesting thing when it involves a technology that is often discussed on Slashdot: mp3's. Does it matter? Probably not. But as I've already says, it doesn't have to. Personally, I find it fascinating. Most online storage related sites won't let you store mp3's, even if they are perfectly legal. MP3.com is the first to encourage it. I think that's a pretty big deal.
-m@
Well, you see, the mp3.com client sends information about the cd you have in the drive, then their server knows which cds you "own" and will let you stream mp3s from their server. I believe the word is 'proprietary'.
Are the MP3s (for the CDs that I own) downloadable, or can I only play them streaming thru their special client?
What level of compression do they use? What encoder?
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
The mp3.com technology sounds the same as the technology put into RealJukebox which is dowloadable and you copy your cd onto your computer so you don't have to have it to play it. What is the difference?
I've been using Beam-It for almost a week now. I'm addicted. I had started to record my CDs as MP3 files, but quickly ran out of disk space. So I was still shuttling around atoms, when I knew that I could be just shuffling bits. Beam-It allows me to do that. From my PC in my office or den, I have access to my entire CD collection which is physically located in the living room. And it's free. I think it's a very cool application and very newsworthy. Now, can someone do that with my DVDs? --Mike Oeth
I have tried using beam-it on my.mp3.com, and I like it. It makes listening to my CDs easy, no matter where I am. The legal stuff may be a bit murky. If I can make a cassette copy of CDs that I've bought, then this steaming format should probably be okay. Sure, I could go out and borrow my friends' CD and "beam" them, but at least I can't save the audio stream to a file (unless someone comes up with a hacked streaming player that will do this).
A few notes about beam-it. First, I had trouble getting beam-it to work from my work computer. My guess was that the firewall was causing problems. Second, at home, I couldn't get some CDs to be recognized, even after many attempts.
One question I had was what type of info beam-it is reading and transmitting. It appears to be sending back several kilobytes of data. I would guess that the CD's ID is the only thing that it should need. Maybe it needs to verify that the CD is authentic, and so maybe it reads certain parts of certain tracks that are then checksummed. But, that still wouldn't explain why the track data needs to be sent back to mp3.com. For the conspiracy theorists out there, maybe they are secretly gathering personal data off our PCs.
Tim
The above is definitely not Off-Topic. Psiren got the first post and he asks the most obvious question which the article raises: Why is Beam-It in the title yet Beat It in the body of the article when apparently they are both references to the same program/service.
I expect it is called Beam-It, but I cannot go and check this personally since the my.mp3 subdomain seems to be down//.'d.
Posters below say Beam-It. Makes sense. References to Michael Jackson seem to no longer sell music and references to masterbation get U.S. Surgeon General's fired.
It will be interesting to see how this service fares and more interesting to see what it evolves into in the future. With broadband access at home, work, and in the car (plus wireless transmitters when jogging or working out), you may never have own a physical CD again, just the license. This could either be a Good Thing or a Very Bad Thing, depending on how future legislation (such as UCITA) turns out...
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
If this is some off-base reference to figuring out the de-css scheme for DVD's, remember that it was done on Windows. In particular, it was done because there was not a linux port.
Based on this one instance it would appear that not having a linux port can lead to full-exposure of protocol. Then again, maybe that is the intention.
When that song plays over and over again in my head, am I violating copyright? Have I stolen some one else's property? Does the same apply to ideas?
If I have the means to catch something, and the person who made the thing I've caught still keeps their creation, have I stolen?
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Quick workaround:
(Well, it takes a little time...)
To avoid encountering the "too many open streams" message, set up multiple accounts with unique username/password's. If it's your music which you are entitled to listen to, you should be able to stream as many instances of a song (or multiple songs together) as you want. After all, you paid for it.
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Check out the Utilities area on MP3.com.
It used to contain links and/or copies of most of the MP3 utilities one could want.
Now it has a few select choices. A few weeks ago I wanted a MP3 to Wave conversion utility that I distinctly remembered being there awhile back. No such thing to be found now. I wanted to convert some 'olde-radio-program' MP3s (Goon Show episodes) to wav format to burn on CD audio and send to my dad.
In fact, MP3 decoding software that feed to anything other than a sound card seem to be disappearing all over the place. I have this theory that it's the corporate types trying to snare MP3 in and make it a one way conversion path.
I also emailed them a couple of weeks ago offering to help out with a Linux port.
Hopefully if they get enough people offering to help with a port, they will realize that not only is there a demand, but they will not have to spend much development money to do it!
Why make it that hard ... just create a username and password and pass it out to all 1000 of your friends. Create seperate channels if you like. You'll never have to buy another CD again.
Have fun uploading 100 CD's. And creating that playlist. I find I won't be into more than 10 CD's at the same time.
... wait, we already have this. It's called radio.
I think that the time it takes to configure this stuff takes away from its value. The only way to really take advantage of it would be to buy all your CD's there and thus have them instantly online.
[tongueincheek] I'm excited that technology has gotten to the point where you can listen to music without carrying it around. [/tongueincheek]
Soon, mp3.com will be selling memberships where you can listen to a certain amount of mp3's per time period. And so you don't have to spend the time to make the play list they'll make a randomizing function. After that, they'll give away free memberships that are paid for by advertising. And then
Be very careful with your comments, or you could lead me to assume you're advocating theft. This discussion could benefit from a slightly higher moral tone. If I broke into your house, bank account or whatever and stole $3.95, I'm sure you'd be incensed! Just think about it. Signed, Not Much Of A DIPLOMAT
Don't try to KNOW everything, just know how to FIND it.
In order to clarify any possible confusion based on the posts here regarding My.MP3.com, the company has this to say: "The Linux client is currently under development." You have been heard. Regards, Candace Locklear GCI Group PR for MP3.com
This service also implies an automatic repair of your music. If your CD is scratched up, but the mymp3 server still recognizes it, then the music you can then download will be perfect (probably), off their server, and their archived version of your CD's. Not to mention, if you LOSE your CD, or it gets stolen.
Indeed. I have about 4.5GB of MP3s on my PC at the moment. Every single track is completely legal, as I took the time to ripenc them and organize everything in a logical format. Now, when I get home from work, I fire up XMMS and let random play create Radio Zeugma all evening while I sit and read /.
Creating this on-disk library took a bit of time. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone out there thinks there would be a market for creating custom hard disks for people too busy/lazy to cut their own. If done in the manner that mp3.com is doing, it would be legal it seems.
This is an ex-parrot!
A bit more info (for those who are interested!)
Basically, Beam-It sends the length of the CD in seconds, then first audio track number (not necessarily 1) and the last audio track. Then the offset for each of those audio tracks. That's it.
Can you imagine this: "I have this great new album. Try it: 24445,1,9,1454,2334,4435,5676,6341,7323,8583,9318"
Cool!
Asif T
He couldn't give me a timetable, but it is coming.
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Go to my.mp3.com - it'll give you the download list and recommendations on what else to try based on your previous downloads.
...j
That's what false contact information and JunkBuster is for! Did I mention it also keeps Netscape from ignoring its UI event queue while doing DNS lookups? It's fun for a girl and a boy.
--
but a lot of fun illegaly. Obviously, there is no big demand to get mp3s of cd's you own. But the idea of collectively sharing a pool of cd's amoung some geographically distributed friends is quite tempting and interesting. Illegal of course, but all that's stopping you is a stupid FAQ question that says "Should I give out my password"?
The /. blurb doesn't make this clear enough: The purpose of this is not to play the cd that is in your drive; it lets mp3.com build a list of cds you own, and then you can listen to songs from those cds via a shoutcast-like stream. I suppose this makes sense for people who have enough bandwith to listen to streaming mp3s, not enough CPU/disk space to encode their collection themselves, and not enough patience to change cds on their own. Somehow I don't think this is a very large segment of the population.
If you have, say, a few hundred CDs (and I know people who have thousands), and you suddenly feel like hearing a track from one of them, chances are you may not have it on hand. However, if you have said CDs at home, you have a licence to use them, and this provides an alternate means.
In future, such licence registries could be used for other things. Say, a favourite CD of yours is destroyed; if you have legal proof that you own a licence to play it, you may be able to get a new copy for the cost of the media.
(Granted, that could be open to abuse, unless CDs are serialised or somesuch. Though the potential is there.)
I have no legal basis for this, but it seems like this sort of hits right in the gray area of US copyright law - it's illegal for people to download music they don't own. It's illegal for people to upload music they own for people who don't own it to download. But is it illegal for people who own music to post it so other people who own it can download it again? If so, how far does that right extend. If I own the LP version of a track, can I download the live version? I haven't ever heard any discussion of a case like this before; even RIAAs own propaganda doesn't mention it. Any legal scholars want to take a whack at it?
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Not only that, mp3.com has a _lot_ of bandwidth.
Inside the m3u is just a plain http:// address. Use wget and get the mp3. Simple as that. Damn, faster than ripping/encoding it.
-- adraken
that is technically impossible. if something gets to your PC, then you *can* save it. in the case of an mp3 streamed through http, it's not even hard: just find out the URL and use wget.
And if you want something even more portable, just buy a little MP3 player. I've got 90 mins of music in my little Rio (and 12 hours of battery life from a AA).
Meanwhile, the General Manager's son, who is working here for the holidays, has his headphones plugged into the CD drive of a spare PC. He also has a small pouch of CDs to the side of the PC. The PC does not have a sound card.
I have a portable PC. I've got about 12 hours of music on the hard drive, I use it at work and at home (I'm listening to "Rasputina" as I type). As a coincidence, my network adapter is in the shop, so I'm acutally dialled into my work network using a 28.8k link - try streaming through that.
Friends of mine use those removable IDE drive trays to shuffle Gigs of data back and forth.
I've been minimising my demand on the network, such that I'll be moving to a 1Mb/s Wireless Bluetooth link when that becomes available. Streaming MP3s through it is such a waste.
Meanwhile, the General Manager's son, who is working here for the holidays, has his headphones plugged into the CD drive of a spare PC. He also has a small pouch of CDs to the side of the PC. The PC does not have a sound card.
I have a portable PC. I've got about 12 hours of music on the hard drive, I use it at work and at home (I'm listening to "Rasputina" as I type). As a coincidence, my network adapter is in the shop, so I'm acutally dialled into my work network using a 28.8k link - try streaming through that.
Friends of mine use those removable IDE drive trays to shuffle Gigs of data back and forth.
I've been minimising my demand on the network, such that I'll be moving to a 1Mb/s Wireless Bluetooth link when that becomes available. Streaming MP3s through it is such a waste.
(Ooo, this could be a duplicate - I hope not, sorry if it is...)
I wonder what they do about variants? If I have the Australian distribution of Album X, with "bonus" song Y - But MP3.com have the US distribution of Album X, with "bonus" song Z, does that mean I'm screwed, or do MP3.com just give me access to the near match they have?
I'm going to use the Beam-It stuff simply to expose MP3.com's database to the obscure stuff I like. If this means that 90% of the stuff I own is unavailable because my taste is strange, or simply that I live in Australia and our local releases are different, so be it. If it means that they buy one extra copy of each CD from struggling talented artists I've found (eg; Wendy Rule), then Great! Time someone showed "them" that commercial CDs don't start and end with the top 50.
Okay. Nothing is wrong with 'storing' it at a remote site. THe problem is.. and this is where the dynamic interpretive nature of law will come in to play, is that mp3.com is not offering to 'store' your music for you.. they already *have* the music, and simply let you listen to it if you can show you already have the cd.
The problem? Although you personally have the right to make copies of your music, that does not necessarily give mp3.com the right to broadcast/distribute that same music to you.
Umm...
because the radio station must pay royalties every time it plays a song, and mp3.com does not?
As I've said before, the fact that you personally own a cd, and can make personal copies of it, does not mean that anyone else has the right to distribute that music to you.
I couldn't agree more. If this is the future of music, I'm gonna be more than cranky. I'm not saying there is no place for mp3. It's fine for playing music on your laptop (for example), but for serious audio, the quality just isn't there. Plus, as you say, when you buy a CD you get more than the bits on the disc; you also get the lyrics, liner notes, etc. that (to me at least) contribute to the whole musical experience.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
"...functionally it works almost exactly like a collection of Perl scripts Nate and I hacked out a year..."
"Now can I please have a Linux port?"
Why? You have software that works the same. If your concern is for other people, just make your scripts available for them to download. I don't understand the problem.
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I was fooling with beamit and put about 120 tracks up, and i went to try to play a few of them. I noticed that it had mistakenly identified my Limp Bizkit Significant other CD as Magick Rock - Volume One - Rise 13 (whatever the hell that is).
This may be a big problem because at least 1 in 10 cds that i look up in cddb have multiple cd listings assigned to the same id. I dont think beam-its gonna be around very long. It is too easy to abuse, because it trusts the client computer. If i found out the id of a particular cd, whats stopping me from burning a cd of crap with the same id and beaming it to their server, then downloading the tracks? Or i might give my friend my username and password so he could beam cds to me, and could access my collection.
Its convienient while its there, but dont count on being able to use it for long.
with the list of cd's that I own? From the terms of service:
I especially don't like the fact that the privacy policy is mutable to the point that the terms of service even allow for it with the "then-current" phrasing. The entire terms of service are at http://www.mp3.com/my/terms/index.html.
I'll admit, it's a bit paranoid, but I'll stick with my CD-R's for portable MP3's.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
My question is, who is liable?
You borrow a CD from a friend - not illegal, afaik. The software detects it, scans its track info, ships the data to Beam-It and Beam-It registers this as "yours", and now allows you to stream the songs on the CD, even though you don't own it, and even after you've given the CD back to your friend.
Do you click on a button that says "Yes, I own this CD"? That would at least make you liable. Otherwise, would they be liable for sending you music you don't have rights to?
Another thing is the spokenword message saying "Too many open streams. Please close some and continue. You should not share your password."
Why not log in as yourself? Or a dummy login?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
According to their download page, you can get the software either for Windows or for Macintosh. Seeing as though they've covered both of the major end-user computing platforms, I would hope that eventually they would go ahead and release a Linux port (should users desire one).
For more information, click here.
You can already steal music from the library without this service. Just bring the cd home and either burn a copy of it or rip some mp3s of the tracks on it. This my.mp3.com service adds nothing there. It doesn't even save you the trouble of burning your own mp3s, since it just streams them to you rather than letting you ftp them.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
... which has been around for a while...
(Go check sourceforge.net for Gnome and Java Nap clients)
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Banner-ad targeting doesn't bug me -- Imagine, never having to see a banner ad for Korn or LimpBizkit again! Joy! OTOH, it's been a long-standing principle of mine never to give truthful information on any form unless there's a compelling reason (like you want your package to arrive at the correct address).
On the third hand, no invasion of privacy is necessary to compile a list of your likes/dislikes -- mp3.com can track the bands you like and the bands you hate without having your correct name/address/email. All they need is a unique identifier, like your login to the site -- you can feed them bogus demographic data (anyone tracking self-reported demographics should be shot before taking those data seriously anyway).
gomi
Even if a technological crisis hit storage, I think it'd be too late. The 40 gig IDE drives are already falling in price to the point where they're worth buying. That'll hold 60 uncompressed CDs and almost 800 compressed to an level that won't change the playback experience for most users.
I'd be interested to see someone try the streaming of new music. My first instinct were I to buy such a "streaming right" would be to try to find a way to save the stream to my local drive...
But really, you are right, this is just another instance of corporate types trying to get us to give up control of our local data. NC redux. In that, it has nothing really to do with technology and everything to do with control of data.
Control your own data!
The cake is a pie
It's not even the first 8k or so; I've seen it request 203 seconds from a random offset within a track.
:( But notice in your sniffing all the 331 requests and their responses...
The only question remaining is whether it always asks for the same chunk from the CD; if so, this can be put into a database.
I don't have time to mess with it more today, though.
Yep. It definitely looks like a challenge/response pair to me.
Unfortunately I have no real debugging tools here. Someone with softice could do this in a few seconds.
jon
Granted, you are probably listening to NSYNC and Backstreet boys, but generally (i mean REAL music), dont you think that the people who went to the trouble and effort of making music should get paid for it? I'm not claiming to own the CD for ever MP3 i have, but i dont consider myself to *really HAVE* the track unless i have the CD or LP. Besides, half the stuff you download is shitty quality with pops, crackles and squeals. Once again, i must stress this : YOU ARE AN ASS
No one seems to be asking what MP3 gets out of this - and I think it must be pretty obvious, they get a huge database of musical preferences and demographic data that they can then assemble, and (probably) flog to other businesses. At the very least expect banner ads for *only* those bands that you like - or ones that others who own the same music as you - will show up.
In otherwords, to whatever degree, this is one more internet invasion of my privacy should I take advantage of it.
Of course, it is *so* open to abuse that I don't think it is a viable idea anyways.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
They only have Windows & Mac versions of the 'upload' software, but you can play the m3u playlists with any MP3 player, whether Linux, Be or OS X, as long as it can cope with the long URLs they use. This is good for me as I can 'beam' the CDs in from home, and play them at work, without taking them in and possibly losing them.
Note that the URLs for individual tracks expire after an hour, and then they play you a speech message saying "go and make a new playlist". They weren't smart enough to offset the expiration window by the duration of each track, so you can't play an indefinite playlist. They also forgot the 'shuffle' button.
However this does mean you have an hour to download the MP3s they have of your CD, which (assuming you have a good connection) is significantly faster than ripping them yourself.
I suspect CmdrTaco's scripts are more like myplay.com, which is a similar legal MP3 repository, but requires you to do your own ripping.
But this does not mean that you cannot play songs in your playlist under Linux. MP3.com just streams your music to you in the MP3 format. Fire up your favorite browser, make sure you have it set up to load XMMS or other favorite MP3 player and listen away. Unfortunatally you will still have to authenticate your CDs off of a Windows or Mac box; on that note, know if you can run beam-it under wine or VMware?
I have to agree with CmdrTaco on the fact that the chance of abuse is huge though! Whats stopping people from just reverse enineering the CD codes or borrowing their friends CDs for a few seconds to add it to their available tracks?
Alright, I'm gonna be a bit whiny here, but with good reason!! So read on...
1) I want the ORIGINAL my.MP3.com back!! I want my lists of songs I downloaded from MP3.com!!
2) Streaming is cool, but the CD playlist thing is... not needed, unless you are a frequent user, which I am not (I have a life off the computer, you know).
and
3) Let MP3.com be MORE customizable, Like SlashDot! Wow... That would be cool!!
The Gray Wolf
My 80286 is like the Bible: I swear by it every night when I try to run something.
It's not quite as simple as that.
The transaction between the client and server includes not only the standard CDDB foo (number of tracks, total length, byte offsets for the beginning of each track) but also has the first 8k or so of raw data for each track. The only way "piracy" will really work is if someone builds a client that allows a user to rip and store that info in a single file, so that others can use it. I think it basically comes down to a effort vs. return issue, since if you don't have physical access to a given CD, you will have to rely on the generosity of others to get access. That is, somewhere, someone has to stick that CD in a drive and generate the info from it. To get things to a point where it's "beneficial" to a large portion of the internet, it will also attract enough attention to be shut down by law enforcement.
Personally, I don't think it's worth it. Also, since this service is dependent on mp3.com obtaining the CDs that you want to listen to, the LCD factor is high (Lowest Common Denominator) and people who listen to esoteric/hard to find stuff will be screwed. People who want to listen to the Backstreet Boys should be in heaven. People who want to listen to Laibach, or Pop Will Eat Itself may not be so lucky.
If the system was properly designed, it would be very difficult to spoof your possession of a CD without actually having some sort of access to a complete copy of it.
For example, mp3.com could keep a sizable portion or complete copy of the unencoded track around at their site. Then they could ask you to take a random number of bytes at a random offset, append a random key string they specify, and hash it with a strong hash algorithm. On their end, they would do the same, and you'd be denied access if the results did not match. In this case, you'd need to have the sizable portion of the unencoded track on hand to answer their responses - or act as a man in the middle with a friend actually having the CD.
The connection wouldn't need to be encrypted as hashes obtained from sniffed connections would be useless because the key string would be specified by the server and change on every attempt.
Rob, please... this mp3 thing affects absolutely nobody. I could make the claim it's not unlike my own mp3db program and no doubt winamp could say the same. Or xmms for that matter. Or how about the dozens of geeks that were bored and wrote their own perl scripts? This is just noting the obvious.. it has no implications on the majority of readers here...
AFAIK there is nothing illegal about making a copy of CDs you own. (either here in the UK or in the US)
So what is so illegal about storing those CD "archives" at a remote site? Nobody would complain or try to sue you if you stored backup tapes offsite, in fact they would applaude you.
It's the same argument as taping a CD 10 years ago. I may want to tape a CD to listen to in the car, and that is OK. If I then sell or broadcast that tape then I'm breaking the law - I have no problem with that. Fast-forward to today. If I want to listen to music anywhere on my MP3 player then I should be able to.
There's no legal issue here at all. (only the music industry not trusting it's valued customers)
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
And it seems like a strange program...
The Beam it software gets some info from the CD, to identify it. Then it sends that info to mp3.com, to match with their database. If they have that CD in their database, you can listen to the songs from the CD online.
Question: What's the point? If I have the CD, and I have a CD drive, then play the damn thing. As for being portable, CD's are easily portable now.
The big thing seems to be the sales aspect. If you buy a CD from there, then you can listen to the songs while you're waiting for the cd to arrive via snail mail.
Still, I think that this type of marketing can only go so far. Is any company actually having big success in this type of venture? (selling music online) I know that everyone said is was the next big thing, but you have to take that with a grain of salt. Given the option of spending 5 minutes to find a song as an MP3, and buying it for $1.00 or so, I'll take the 5 minutes.. Legality doesn't bother the majority of people. I mean, it's not an easily prosecutable offense, now is it?
"Your honor, this guy stole a song from us and gave it to... errr.. well, 3 people.. costing us a total revenue of.. umm.. $3.95... errr...."
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
According to this page, it's also available for the macintosh. I know that doesn't help most linux folk, but c'est la vie.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I initially thought this would be easy too; I checked it out a little bit. Look at this (simplified) capture.
8 6545,197950
->20 20 20 20 20 00
HELO mail=XXXXXXX@earthlink.net vers=0.90 cver=win004 sern=3933243
0a 20 20 20 20 20
AUTH meth=md5 pass=7998e0845cc98a85930b51212204d619
0a 20 20 20 20 20
MDID time=19739 tkof=150,27502,83547,93115,114317,121907,142117,1
0a 00 00 00 00 00
VFCD mdid=508103
0a 00 00 00 00 00
20 20 20 20 20 00
->RVDT trck=1 sect=18032 nsec=203 rate=22050 chnl=stereo bits=17 size=238728
->(238728 bytes of track data)
0a 20 20 20 20 20
-350 size=238728
---more negotiation snipped---
-231 mdid=508103
Okay.
So near as I can tell, they use a challenge/response scheme for authentication. This is fine, and a little debugging will fill in the details there.
Looks like the MDID setup call passes track offsets; note the parameters strictly increase. I'm guessing that the time= parameter has something to do with the time the TOC on the disc was burned, but I have yet to try to correlate it to actual time in seconds.
After the MDID call, we get 232 back; then the real fun starts.
VFCD kicks off what looks like a pretty solid verificatation process. The server uses 331's to ask for random numbers of seconds from random sector offsets, and the client replies with RVDT's and track data.
If all the tracks are verified, a 231 is replied from the server with the 'mdid', and the connection hangs up.
That's as far as I've gotten.
Looks pretty solid to me thus far. I have yet to try beaming the same disc twice from two different machines; if the verification code always asks for the same #seconds and starting sector, obviously we can build a db, and we're golden.
Anyone interested in continuing this work, drop me a mail.. (jdc@pobox.com)
I'm still not so very sure if this is going to be the future of music. Even though I can download every piece of music I might ever want from the internet I keep on coming back to my (on-line or not) music store to buy my favorite music in hardcopy, complete with a nice booklet maybe for once not a diamond box and a few pictures of my (at that moment) favorite artist.
I want to be able to hold that box, look at it while listening to the music on my home stereo for the first time. I'd be hard pressed to find an attractive software equivalent for that.
Now I suppose there are a lot of people out there that don't need that physical representation of their music but I do and a lot of my friends agree with me.
The day that the only way to obtain the newest music of any of my favorite artists is by downloading an MP3 (or something like that) will be a sad day for me indeed.
My guess is that on-line music will perform a function similar to pay-tv, you subscribe to get a nice selection of music sent to you instead of some lame DJ's selection. Or a live registration of a good concert or a pop-festival.
Maybe they'll even cut back on the commercials if you pay them a little.
Oddly enough I posted this story last week but Slashdot ignored it..... Perhaps because I pointed out that the whole site is an exact carbon copy (check some of the html and layouts) of Myplay.com.
.wav files .wav files to .mp3 files using LAME .wav files
Myplay have been offering an online storage system like this for free for the last 4 months and they don't force you to use their technology, or limit you to streaming only.
So - for all you Unix users who don't want to cart a CD selection back and forth here's an online music HOWTO
(1) Get CD Paraoia or cdda2wav
(2) get LAME
( You can also get GRIP - that's a fancy GUI system that uses GTK - nice and easy)
(3) Extract your favourte CD audio to
(4) encode
(5) Delete the
then....
(6) Get XMMS
(7) Listen to your funky mp3's
Now for the anytime/anywhere part....
(8) go to Myplay.com
(9) Get an account (they're free)
(10) upload your chosen tracks
(11) Listen to them wherever you go
okokok but there's more
If you want to show off your music taste you can assemble your favourite tracks into public playlists which anybody can listen to - so it's like creating a radio show. (they use icecast for this BTW)
Plus they've also got a few free tracks, both from themselves and from affiliates like emusic.com....
SO.... my.mp3.com is not Innovative... it's a copy.
So - why isn't myplay in the related links box?
Ok, here's a thought... What's the difference between this and an all-request radio station? Answer: You *own* the CDs already (at least in theory).
Think about it. If there were a request radio station, and you were the only listener, is there a law preventing them from playing whatever you request? So what's to stop MP3.com from just streaming to you personally *ANY* music you choose to listen to? (Regardless album ownership.) It's theoretically no different than request radio.
Yeah, we can *record* a media stream, but I can also record songs off the radio. What's the difference? Just because this is more customized? Because it's on the Internet? Big whoop -- every real life radio station tries to do this exactly: play songs I want to hear. It just so happens that online they can do it to perfection through mass customization.
I don't think MP3.com has gone far enough! I shouldn't need the CD to listen to music - I should be able to listen to ANYTHING they have available.
-Computers hate being anthropomorphized.
This seems like a huge waste of bandwidth to me.
Twenty CDs and a backpack has a higher bandwidth then I have at work...
(Or maybe it is just this new 20 gig HD I got here at work. I've been copying CDs to it for a week now. I have almost a hundred here. Why would I want to download each time I listen when I can just save them to the HD? This seems better than wasting company bandwidth each time I get the urge for NIN.)
Why, oh why is everyone pushing all this connectivity stuff when the thing that is improving the least in most computer systems is the bandwidth? You can get a 27 gig drive for $200 now. That just cries out for new applications, but all these companies can come up with is new ways to send too much information through tiny little holes. I don't want my music to skip just because I'm downloading a new Quake patch.
New app: cheap motherboard+large hard drive+good sound card->awesome stereo.
The cake is a pie
I emailed them the day it came out, and asked them about a linux port. I got an email back from an engineer saying they are working on it as fast as they can. Then I got an email from some suit saying "thanks for the email, blah, blah, blah" that didn't even address my question. A good friend of mine wqorks for mp3.com, and he says that almost everyone there sues linux, and a linux version is definatly coming. Another question, off topic, how come I submitted this story last week and it was rejected? Sure, it's not a great slasjdot story, but now the news is 1 week late making it even less interesting. Just my 2 cents.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
I did some Packet Snffing of the BeamIT client-to-MP3.com last night and determined that the CD info sent to MP3.com is not encrypted, making it quite easy to proxy-spoof mp3.com into thinking you own CDs that you do not.
The data on the CD sent seems to go a track-at-a-time and isn't the conventional format that you send CD data to CDDB. Instead, it seems to focus on the sector start and end positions for each track and some additional information.
Nontheless, I suspect that unless MP3.com reworks their protocol to use encryption, it will jsut be a matter of time before someone fully reverse-engineers the protocoll and "Beams" hundreds of CD's that they do not own. I wonder what the recording industry will think of that?