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My.MP3.com releases Beam-it Beta for Linux
kurowski writes "My.MP3.com has released a Linux port of its Beam-it software. It relies on a closed-source library, but the (command-line) Beam-it front end comes with source and is GPLed. Way cool! (By the way it acutally works, too.) " We've been playing around with something similar in our office for a while - it's a lot of fun to have.
I am quite curious as to exactly what this does.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
If I reverse engineered this closed library. Would I get into trouble like that DeCSS chap? I would like to find, out of general interest, what attributes relate to which album by send lots of pseudo randomly generated data sets upto the server.
threadeds blog
Is it safe to assume that the lawsuit against MP3.com about Beam-it didn't pan out? Or is it still going on, and mp3.com is just pretending not to worry about it?
Don't get me wrong or anything, I'm just as happy as the next guy that they released a linux version of their project, but I jsut feel that because they kept the best parts of the program hidden inside a library that even if someone chooses to exercise the right given them by the GPL, they won't really be doing much more than skinning. On the other hand, this is the area that will get the most work anyway, as people make various versions, some for X, some as a text gui, some for emacs and so on, but it'll never be more than just designing skins unless the library is GPL'd. I don't think it's as great a thing as it could be until then.
Daniel
Does MP3.com's Beam-It software work with the studios' CD's or is it limited to MP3.com CD's? I tried to find this information on their Website when Beam-It was first announced, but everything was a little ambiguous.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Beam-It is software that reads the ID of audio CDs when you insert them in the drive and checks to see if that CD is present in MP3.Com's database. If it is, the tracks on that CD are added to your personal My.Mp3.Com account so you can listen to them in streaming MP3 and RealAudio format -- no file transfer is required, so you can "beam" a CD instantly. About 8 out of 10 CDs I own were known to Beam-It, so now I can listen to them anywhere through a Web browser.
Another feature I tried out is Instant Listening. If you buy a CD from a company participating with Mp3.Com, it is added to My.Mp3.Com the moment you purchase it. Instant Listening is a great excuse to buy an album over the Net -- there's nothing like receiving instant gratification while shopping in your pajamas.
The only downside to Instant Listening is that the MP3.Com partner I purchased from, Jungle Jeff, took 10 days to send the CD.
Instead of suing MP3.Com, the RIAA should be looking at how My.MP3.Com facilitates impulse purchasing at online music stores. The recording industry already has a monopoly on the artists most people want to hear. They can reap even more rapacious profits on CDs sold electronically without the overhead of distribution, packaging, store promotion, and other brick and mortar costs.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
Okay,
I'll admit. Its cool to be able to go home, go through my CD collection and instantly have access to those same Songs at work (where I have a high speed connection). I do have a few problems with the service though:
1) Why would I want some company to be able to catalog what CDs I have and which I don't? (I haven't seen their privacy policy yet... but should I expect direct mail asking if I want the "Latest CD from such and such"?)
2) What about when I'm stuck behind a firewall somewhere and don't have easy access? I'd rather have a CD full of MP3's (I just finished burning one that had 15 CDs worth of music).
3) Are small volume and no-name CDs going to be available? (or am I going to have to make my own MP3s of them if I want to carry them around?).
4) How much bandwith is it actually going to take?
They seem to have very little information available until you create an acount and give them your e-mail address. Something about that bothers me.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Let me explain my experience with them:
I wanted to learn more about Baroque music so I went to their site searched on Baroque and found several groups that played that style of music. I downloaded example songs from their CDs. Decided I liked a group called Moscow Baroque I ordered their CDs at less than what I would buy a cd for in a brick and morter. They arrived quickly. The CDs had both audio tracks for cdplayers and MP3 files.
Now this is a group that is a group that is not big enough to be picked up by a big label and sold. But the MP3 people can sell their music, and allow me to preview it.
BTW I do not have anything to do with mp3.com except as a customer.
Noel
RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix
kayaking
As I understand it, beam-it reads your cd and sends an A-ok message to my.mp3.com saying that you have the ability and fair-use right to listen to said CD.
Now, unless they're doing some good encryption inside the client, couldn't one just sniff one's local cablemodem neighborhood for connections going to the beam-it IP range and capture those packets, then send them out from your machine after a bit of modification and get rights to any CD your neighbors have rights to?
Now, don't get me wrong--I'm all for a very powerful interpretation of what is fair use and what isn't; but MP3.com should take reasonable precautions.
Side-note. What if, for every collection of unlicensed MP3s you downloaded by a particular artist, you send that artist a check for $10 directly, not through the record company.
"Are you beginning to see the possibilities?" (Strange Days)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
That would mean that a GPL front end on top of a proprietary environment that is not an operating system would be a violation of the GPL.
Unless I'm wrong! I don't deny that I could be wrong! I'm not a programmer.
+----------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
+ The urge to destroy is a creative urge
What I mean by that is that since the GNU GPL does not allow linking to proprietary libraries, unless the library in question is a core part of the os, (and then only if the GPLed app is not distributed with the os itself), it would seem that nobody except for the copyright owners are allowed to distribute this app.
I did not check this out on the website myself, since they apparantly wanted me to register, which I will not do on principle. So could someone with less scruples than me go and check this out?
The net effect of this could be that eg. Debian will not distribute Beam-It, in the same way that they will not / can not distribute KDE.
I would like to stress again that I could not check this out for myself, so could someone else please do it? For all we know, the orginal poster simply expressed himself inaccurately. Thanks...
Maybe I just don't get it, but from what I can read on the my.mp3.com site, the songs from your CD aren't really uploaded. I'm I wrong ?
***quote**
Beam-it(TM) software is a revolutionary program that lets us instantly identify what CDs you own so that we can add them to your My.MP3.com account. With Beam-it(TM), you'll never have to upload song files or convert your CDs to MP3s.
***unquote**
From what I understand, the client would send info on the CD (the same identifier used to recognize a CD when inserted and link it with a CD database?) and then the site would automagically, without upload, add the mp3 files of that album to your list @ my.mp3.com for your pleasure.
Not that I would do something like that, but is it then possible for somebody who hacks the client to make it believe he has any CD he wants to have and magically have access to the mp3s for those CDs on my.mp3.com??
Maybe I'm just totally out...
Egoine
I was wondering how long it was going to take for MP3.com to do this -- given the fact that the Linux community tends towards a more zealous and open defense of the manner in which Beam-It approaches the issue of ownership of information, it really behooves them to support the OS.
Also, I'm amazed at what a bunch of bad-asses they're being. Lawuit filed, they didn't run and hide, they ramped up their advertising and encouraged people to sign up their friends. Sure, this is good for their business, but I'd like to believe that it also shows some sense of the politics of turning people onto the issues of ownership that this all raises.
Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but there seems to be a real understanding of the fact that their business is predicated on certain assumptions about who owns the music, and how they ought to be able to use it, that are pretty progressive.
god is just pretend.
There's no uploading involved. It checks your CD-ROM drive & verifies if you have a physical copy of a CD. If you do, then it gives you (password protected) access to the MP3s of it.
Are the passwords unique or do they change on a fixed schedule?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I just used beam it to upload a cd and now I can listen to mp3's without encoding them or using my own hard disk space. That kicks ass. On a side note you have to set up your netscape mime types. They give pretty good directions on how to do that. Although they are directed at windows users and tell you to use RealPlayer I found every thing works if you replace realplayer with xmms %s. That's not enough though. When you try to listen it will redirect you to a page that says your browser is not set up. If your mimetypes are setup all you have to do is click where it says that you do not want to be directed there anymore.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I think it's an overreaction. People have ALWAYS been able to share, borrow (from the library, even), trade CD's. Just because there is a way to get around security, doesn't mean the majority of people WILL.
_ .:*~*:._.
How about hidden cameras, magnetic strips, bag checks, etc. at retail stores. Just about anyone can figure out how to get around these security devices. But the majority of people still pay money for merchandise.
The RIAA has nobody to blame for piracy than themselves. The only times I have taken part in music piracy is when I simply have to have a piece of music that is "too obscure" to be considered for widespread distribution. When I do pirate music, I try to contact the musicians to pay them directly because it is not their fault the RIAA doesn't consider them "mainstream".
Okay, I think I'm done ranting now.
.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.
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ASCII art?? I thought it was a REGULAR expression
Never have I seen so much whining! A company puts its butt on the line, going up against the RIAA to provide this service. They provide huge amounts of bandwidth to accomodate full quality streaming (128kb/44KHz). Then they release a Linux client.
And what do we hear? "Hey, they want my email address-- I won't use anything that requires an email address" "They released it under the GPL but kept a library closed-- I won't touch it!" And last but not least, "How can we crack it so we can pirate all these CDs?!"
People, for once in your life stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and appreciate what someone has made available for you.
Could you please specify in your posts which Linux is meant.
I have a Alpha, PPC and m68k boxes so most binary-only ports are useless for me.
So next time could you please say "a Linux/x86 binary is released" ?
I can't link to the i386 library on my (Linux/Alpha, Linux/PPC, etc). Can I reverse engineer the library so it does? That would qualify as interoperability, wouldn't it?
I may be somewhat off course here, but it sounds to me like this would be an excellent opportunity for someone like myself to get back all of CD's that I've lost in the past due to scratches.
Essentially, as long as my CD's (which was of course bought legally) contents track is intact, I can add it to my database on mp3.com, and then capture the stream being sent to my harddrive, and voila, I have the mp3's. If I want, I can then just uncompress and write the files to my CD Burner.
I'll definately have to give this a shot.
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
Why not use a loop device (/dev/loop0) to immitate a CDROM so you don't need to burn CDs and waste time/blank CDs? Better yet, why not just write your own Beam-it like client that takes a CDDB hash and turns it into a Beam-it hash. I bet they might even be the same thing. Better yet, why not just buy music and support the artists you like?
<I>It relies on a closed-source library, but the (command-line) Beam-it front end comes with source and is GPLed.</I>
If it is pure GPL then it is violating it by linking to a proprietary library, they should either use the LGPL (but then other companies can use their software with their own library, I don't know if they are willing to allow it) or use a GPL with a special clause, or (and this amy be the better thing for them maybe) they can us e the MPL/NPL adapted for them.
Personally I would prefer to have it GPL'd completely but for a company this is not always possible, or at least not always the better solution.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I hope that mp3s are not the future of music, for 3 reasons. 1. They sound awful. 2. You don't get liner notes, et cetera. 3. The combination of the my CD player's DA converter and my receiver's preamp is far superior to the combination of mp3 decoders and my computer's preamp. This is the case with most people. 4. Lousy mp3s don't make good frisbee like projectiles. I can only pray that people realize that music media's first priority should be sound quality. That's happen about the same time people realize that SUV's are ugly, gas sucking, impracticle weapons.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
It seems to me that there is very little difference between the approach of releasing an "Open Source" player written to work with the hidden Windows API and releasing a "GPL'ed" player written to work with a hidden proprietary library.
Perhaps you should try out the software you're bashing before you criticize it. The GPL'ed piece of software is NOT the player, its the bit that authenticates your ownership of the CD to the webserver. The webserver sends the tracks of those CDs you're authenticated for in plain old MP3 streams, for which you can use anything you'd like. Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
I Forgot my password.. I have SO many to remember these days.. How about this.. Lets have one password for all the great slashdot readers.. lets make it somthing orginal. like cypherpunks and maybe the email could be root@slashdot.org and we will promise to only listen to the music for wich we barrowed CD's from our friends.. and unlocked. Good thing NO ONE works at a Sam Goodey or Maybe a Tower Record and has access to PC and alot of spare time or really extended breaks.. thats. I promise not to abuse the slashdot account.. and I know you wont either..
.2 winks are better than a nudge ay ay ay
nudge.. nudge.. wink wink..
"Open Source" CD Authenticator written to work with the hidden Windows API and a "GPL'ed" CD Authenticator written to work with a hidden proprietary library. ?
First, one point. What 'hidden Windows API' are you now comparing this to? The thing the Beam-It authenticator uses (the CD-ID) seems to be a well-defined part of the standard for creating audio CDs.
Until I understand that half of your question, I don't think I could provide an answer.
Do I think it should be open? Sure. Am I really that worried about it? Nope. Some kind of open 'authenticator' would be nice, but it doesn't seem to have as insiduous an effect as a proprietary player, in my opinion.
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Since the purpose of GNU is to be free, every single component in the GNU system has to be free software. They don't all have to be copylefted, however; any kind of free software is legally suitable to include if it helps meet technical goals. We can and do use non-copylefted free software such as the X Window System.
This means much more than just saving everyone the price of a Unix license. It means that much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead into advancing the state of the art.
Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As a result, a user who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them himself, or hire any available programmer or company to make them for him. Users will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes.
Schools will be able to provide a much more educational environment by encouraging all students to study and improve the system code.
Maybe that's why people are whining. They want what they are using to be free. It is manifestly NOT, if the library is hidden, otherwise, as I pointed out in a previously down-moderated post, there is no difference between this program being GPL'ed and me modifiying it and me modifying a program written to the windows API.
This is a shallow attempt to get the kudos of being free. Actually, I should rephrase that to allow for another possibility: this is either cynical or else half-assed.
If you can't see that a program that depends on a hidden library is a problem then maybe you should check out this discussion of library licenses:
LGPL, but in case you don't feel like reading it here's a quote about libraries:
Proprietary software developers, seeking to deny the free competition an important advantage, will try to convince authors not to contribute libraries to the GPL-covered collection. For example, they may appeal to the ego, promising "more users for this library" if we let them use the code in proprietary software products. Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all.
Don't you think that your line of argument will result in boosting the popularity of a non-free library?
Let's face it - the only reason they are ultimately offering this service is so they can keep track of what you listen to and what you own. This is the kind of info record companies pay for...
So... they're watching you.
There's supposedly this NSA/FBI/CIA profiling system which tracks people who read certain books - do you think they would be interested in who listens to certain types of music? I wonder if they would buy this kind of info from mp3.com.
Or maybe schools want to look for those 'unstable' students who sepend too much time listening to the wrong sort of music.
Trust me.... It's all about information.
I think you're being simultaneously both overly paranoid and naive. The real scam going on here is that their cheating you out of your airmailes bonus points! Think about it - instead of having to offer you an incentive to provide information as you do when swiping the grocery card every time you buy kitty-litter the marketing moguls now have direct access to it for Free(TM). But even there I think that this will be a good thing. It will let companies know "What People Really Want" and they can be responsive to our needs and this is a good thing and isn't that what democracy is really all about being able to have the things we want to buy made available for us and aren't we all happy to live in an information age millenium technological forward looking society........choke.
beamit -e userid -p mypass ; eject
It's a lot easier than ripping a stack of CD's, that's for sure.
It also appears to have a -b flag (batch mode) that will do the eject for you, and wait for the next CD insertion. You wouldn't have to type anything; just keep inserting CDs.
Unfortunately I can't get the client to work with my SCSI CD-ROM... anyone that's gotten it working care to explain the -g flag, or show me the command-line you used to launch it? Thanks!
--
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
But is the sectors that it asks for actually random? It seems that to do this mp3.com would have to have a database containing all of the cdda info from every cd in their collection. Say that on average each cd contains 500 megs, this would add up very quickly. Isn't it possible that they just created a database with random sectors sampled from each cd, and then check the client for these specific sectors? This would dramatically cut down on the amount of info they would have to store in there database. A way to test this would be to create two different accounts, and sniff the packets as you beam the same cd under each account. If the sector info is the same, a database could be created with each cd's id and sector info. Which if true, it would seem that the RIAA's case against might have merit.
If you just try to download the path to the mp3 with like netscape it gives you a mp3 that says sorry, use a streaming only client. So I wrote a little script to use wget to spoof the winamp user agent and that seemed to work about half the time, and isn't working at all now, im not sure what kind of checks they had going. Hows everyone else do it?
From what other people here have said, it appears that Beam-it answers some kind of challenge-reponse protocol from the server in which it does send pieces of the audio track sometimes.
The Beam-it README states that it relies on cdparanoia, which I believe is doing some scratch detection-and-compenstation.
So, as long as cdparanoia can read your audio tracks, then Beam-it will work for you. But if that's the case, you don't need My.MP3.com anyway. Unless the part they ask for isn't the scratched part of your disc.
I had hoped to use My.MP3.com in a similar way: I wanted to take advantage of their Instant-Listening program to get access to pre-encoded MP3s of all the CDs I buy. I have an empeg that I am migrating all my music to, and ripping/encoding get tedious.
However, their server software seems to do some tricky stuff to be sure that you're using a "streaming only" player, and not downloading the MP3 file. Nothing that can't be circumvented I'm sure, but maybe it's not worth circumventing.
But to get back to the point, yes, you could just use a WAV-writer plugin with your MP3 player and get your audio data back as long as Beam-it recognized your CD. I have several very scratched disks that I tried with Beam-it and they all worked. Of course, some of my discs that were in perfect condition didn't work, but that's another story.
Sure it is. But there's another possibility that lets them ask for arbitrary sectors while keeping their database size managable: A one-way hash, like MD5. They divide the CD into chunks of, say, 8192 bits (1KB), and compute and store the MD5 key (which is 128 bits) of each chunk. Then, they request an arbitrary chunk from the client, and check that the returned value has the same MD5 key as the one stored in the database for that chunk. Under this scheme, the verification data for each CD only consumes 1/64th of the data required for the CD itself. This is in fact considerably smaller than the MP3s of the music that they're keeping around in order to stream it to listeners.
Whoever you are, keep it quiet! Not everyone is interested in geeking out, you know. Why would they care that you get to play with spaceship operators and hack on websites 18 hours out of the day!?!
Sheesh! :-)