CDDB No Longer Allows Grip Users to Connect UPDATED

ezln23 writes: "I have been a regular user of Grip for CD Ripping and MP3 encoding for quite a few months now. Today when I attempted to rip a new CD I bought, I received this message. "Your CD player application is either not licensed to use the Gracenote(tm) CDDB(tm) service or its license has expired. If you are unsure what this means, please see our web site at http://www.cddb.com/lic/Grip. If you are a developer and feel you have received this message in error or wish to get your application licensed, please contact support for assistance." I guess the predictions in this article were correct." We've also received submissions about kscd and other applications that query CDDB, so it looks like CDDB has cut off everyone who didn't pay up.Update: 03/10 02:28 PM by H : It looks like it was a short-lived thing - I can connect fine to it this morning - and I can assure you, I haven't paid.

Comments

Re:Gracenote has freeware license

[norton_I]

However, the free (beer) license is still nasty, as it requires you to use cddb exclusively. So if you let you users have a choice between freedb and cddb, you can't be licensed. Also, you have to put their logo on your program.

As a side note, I wonder what this does to people with firewalls that strip/mangle/replace the User-Agent HTTP header? or is the filtering only on their cddb protocol, not http?

Economics of running a free, online DB?

[fhwang]

The obvious response to a move like this is to say: "Hey, everybody, use FreeDB." Which I agree with, but I also have to wonder: If everybody starts using FreeDB instead of CDDB, will they be able to afford it?

There's a lot of non-trivial work involved with running a database like this, and it seems like it might not scale well. If FreeDB ever gets extremely wide adoption, won't the costs of running it become nearly insurmountable? CDDB can finance this because it charges fees. IMDB is (I believe) owned by Amazon, and because its data is mostly dispensed via a web site and it can slap ad banners on the top. None of these options would appear to be available for FreeDB.

I am not posting as a nay-sayer: I'm quite ignorant about a lot of the logistics & financial considerations. I'd appreciate it if somebody more intimately familiar with the workings of FreeDB -- or any similarly large, free online DB -- would comment on this.

Gracenote has freeware license

[Anonymous Coward]

As of yesterday, Gracenote has posted a *free* (FREE, NO COST) license to freeware developers. As long as your application makes you no money directly or indirectly, then you won't have to pay anything to use the CDDB service.

I believe even Grip would be eligible for this, assuming it really is revenue-free.

FYI, the CDDB blockage is not targeted at Grip, but rather only allows licensed applications.

Hmmmm...

[DeeKayWon]

Considering Grip uses FreeDB by default, it shouldn't affect too many people.

Re:Hmmmm...

[WNight]

Why not set up a site that proxies CDDB queries. Point all the programs that ARE affected to this site, it generates CDDB requests that appear to come from programs that CDDB allows.

And no, I don't consider it cheating, theft, or underhanded in any way. CDDB lied to the community about the purpose of the DB, enlisted help under false pretenses, and then locked off access to a DB that many people had helped to create.

If we have to change an identifier in a query to get around their fraudulent business model it sounds good to me.

Fucking assholes who're willing to sell out everyone else just for a buck...

Gee...

[Bob McCown]

...use a service that requires a license fee, dont pay the fee, get cut off.

and the problem is?

Re:Gee...

[Danse]

Boy you've got some gall!

You don't own the names of the songs you entered -- the artists that wrote the songs do, if anybody.

Heh... doesn't matter who owns the names of the songs. If you compile a database of pretty much anything, you can copyright it. You're not copyrighting the names, you're copyrighting your collection of information. CDDB did that with their database and they don't own the song and album names any more than we do. So, if i create a list of all the tracks on an album, I have just as much right to protect that list as they do to protect their database. If they incorporate my list under false pretenses, then I should have some recourse against them.

Re:Gee...

[Pituritus Ani]

The problem is that they started out a community-based collection of title information that was painstakingly entered by thousands of users in the belief that they wouldn't pull something like this.

What Gracenote did is essentially the same as the Red Cross declaring itself a for-profit agency and charging for its services, while keeping all the donations made for it while it was a non-profit.

I am looking forward to the day they go out of business and/or are made irrelevant by free alternatives. And I hope the executive scum responsible for the decision die a slow, painful death. But I'm not bitter.

Re:Gee...

[Pituritus Ani]

Funny, I don't remember ever being promised anything by gracenote. I got way more from them then they ever got from me. I input the CD's I found that were not there, but most of the time I downloaded from them. I received a service from them in exchange for helping them build up their database. That was the deal.

Your words bely an apparent unfamiliary with the history of CDDB (now Gracenote). At its inception, the CDDB software and database were under the GPL. Thus, it was quite reasonable for submitters to infer that their submissions would remain free.

Where exactly did it say you get access to CDDB for free, forever, because you simply typed out the names of songs that someone else wrote?

I didn't say that anyone should have "access to CDDB free, forever, just because . . ." Gracenote should be compelled to release all tracks provided by users to the public domain, however. Not the same thing. This remedy wouldn't require that they run servers "in perpetuity" (as another posted said).

A horrible analogy. What gracenote did was start charging for a useful service in the only way it can -- hitting the application builders that enhance their programs with its functionality.

The analogy is a very good one. Your saying it is horrible doesn't make it so. Had they announced plans to charge up front, no reasonable person would have had an issue with their actions. As in the hypothetical Red Cross example, this wasn't the case.

Please study economics. These "free" alternatives are only free to YOU, not to the person running them. Do you think internet bandwidth and hardware resources grow on trees? Why don't you offer to pay a monthly service fee to FreeDB to help? Nah, you just want something for nothing.

Thank you for that oh-so-enlightened ad hominem attack and "econ in a nutshell," Dr. Friedman. It dovetails so well with the rest of your completely specious argument. I don't feel the need to wear my education on my sleeve. With regard to your point about free services being unable to exist without revenue, gosh--I can't imagine that there could have been any internet at all before all that commericalization arrived. (That was sarcasm, in case it wasn't readily apparent.)

Nope, you're just SELFISH.

Thanks again.

Re:Gee...

[technos]

They're charging a fee for our data. There was no 'data submitted automatically becomes the property of..' bullshit. They relicensed our intellectual property without notification or permission.

So, I am hearby relicensing, sans notification, my submission of the CD hash and track information for all of the rereleases of the Elton John catalogue. Gracenote, you have 24 hours to pull these entries from your database or pay the newly instated license fee, which is a free license to the rest of the database for grip, mp3cddb, and any other remotly useful cddb application I have used recently but can't think of off the top of my head.

Re:Since when should EVERYTHING be free?

[Danse]

So make your own free *DB service.

FreeDB already exists. That doesn't change the fact that Gracenote deceived those who helped to build their product. Apparently ethics are unknown to hardcore capitalists. All that matters is the money.

Re:The CDDB is a lot like Napster, or should be.

[trapperlake]

Well yes and no.

The real value to CDDB in particular is that they have accumulated a watershed of TOC's to CD's in the world.

When you insert that disc, it's not just dumb luck that CDDB knows it's one disc from another. As you all probably know the same "release title" can have different TOC's due to the disc mastering and pressing process.

The quaility of the CDDB service is that you all have helped make it a deep watershed of TOC inventory for every title.

In the game of matching a CD to it's meta data it's important to realize that the signature of the track offsets (it's Table Of Contents) varies from pressing to pressing. If CDDB is able to aquire the unique TOC's of the same CD release then they are better in position to give accurate data once the next query comes for it.

And so on.. so pretty soon for any given CD title, like Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon (which has over 100 different TOC's from all the pressings that it has had over the years) you're bound to be farily high on rate of successful query..

Which is what the QOS issue is about too.

CDDB has this watershed of data, and they are going to leverage it to it's maximum, which means makign deals with software/service vendors to get revenue for every player/service deal is available.

In the mean time it would be really great to just re-aim your player/system to freedb and use them.

Let freedb accumulate their database to actually be competitive with CDDB in the spirit of collecting the most CD meta data that is out there. The end result should hopefully be a viable alternative to CDDB which is free, open and really out of reach of any MPAA or similar forces.

The information is free, and needs to remain free.

This is possible and quite easy to do. Why more Napster users aren't installing a freedb plugin that will automatically "snarf" up the cd meta data from their own disc and send it to freedb is interesting.. Why people using Napster aren't already on the bandwagon is interestin. Millions of Napster users all with a plugin to feed the freedb database? Nice.

Why get mad when you can get even

[Coward Anonymous]

do they still allow additions and fixes to the DB? start fixin' it wrong... Enough mad people get even and no one will use such an ureliable service anymore.

Screw them anyways, use freedb.org.

[meldroc]

Set your CDDB apps to access www.freedb.org instead. No licensing or patenting nazis there.

In kscd (my CD player of choice) simply click on the preferences button, set your CDDB server to "www.freedb.org http 80 /~cddb/cddb.cgi". Other CD players should have similar configuration procedures.

Problem solved.

Heh...

[Greyfox]

Grip has been using freecddb for as long as I've been using it, and that's where I've been sending all my CD info when I run across the rare one that they don't already have in the database.

Those license terms are outrageous!

[yerricde]

As of yesterday, Gracenote has posted a *free* (FREE, NO COST) license to freeware developers.

There's a difference between freeware and free software. The terms of the non-commercial license conflict with those of a certain popular free software license.

Check this out:

The Licensed Application will only be distributed for non-commercial use on General Purpose Personal Computers. "General Purpose Personal Computers" or "PCs" are general purpose personal computers consisting of a desktop or laptop model, a display monitor, keyboard and mouse. PCs do not include any attachments or peripherals except an external CD drive, DVD drive, hard drive, printer, scanner and/or analog Audio Equipment such as speakers. An external device that reads TOC and also displays text or graphics is NOT a PC.

Note that this definition excludes computers with common peripherals such as (/me scans the back of my computer) trackballs, touchpads, drawing tablets, joysticks, floppy disk drives, Zip drives, tape drives, network cards, modems, video capture hardware, etc. (This license is useless, as floppy drives are included with most PCs, and use of a network card or modem is required to access the Gracenote CDDB® database.)

The real GPL compatibility killer: "You agree not to modify or disable any Gracenote CDDB Client functions or to otherwise interfere with the operation of the Gracenote CDDB Client." Also, "The Client ID must be embedded in binary form in your Licensed Application, and must not be easily extractable by End-Users or other developers."

Or this:

You will use the Gracenote CDDB Client and the Gracenote CDDB Database as the exclusive source for CD identification and Data when your Licensed Application accesses such information by reading a CD's TOC or disc identification number and retrieves Data or related data via the Internet. ... Your Licensed Application shall not have or enable a function that permits transmission of TOC or the combination of TOC together with Data to anyone other than Gracenote.

Translation: "You will not modify, or allow to be modified, the hostname or IP number accessed by the software." Not compatible.

Of course, there are a couple patents on using a TOC hash as a database key that keep you from just using FreeDB instead.

All your hallucinogen are belong to us.