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Dear CDDB Users: Thanks For Helping The RIAA!
A reader unblessed with a name writes: "I'll admit that when Gracenote took over the CDDB compact-disc database, I wasn't too annoyed. Now I am. Napster has just signed an agreement with them to use Gracenote's services, and by extension the community-built CDDB databases, to implement its copyright blocking."
The point was that I used CDDB, Napster was not really the issue. I've never used napster, and I have thousands of MP3s.
Unfortunately, you missed entire genres in music by your classification of bands as either RIAA-associated or unsigned. There are hundreds of bands making music on independant labels making music a hundred times more vital and creative than the schlock the RIAA labels push on the preteen and middle-aged housewife markets. For the anarchists out there, search Napster for "The Man Don't Give A Fuck" by the Super Furry Animals. Or the post-apocalyptic rock of "Helicon 1" by Mogwai. Or anything by Pavement, Death Cab for Cutie, Sloan, or any number of other bands. Open your eyes. There's much more to music than what your local "alternative" station plays.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
What you've shown is that nothing significant can stay under the radar forever.
Your right that there is clearly an arms-race going on. However, the copyright holders have the advantage that if they can't find the track easily, than neither can the general public.
Remember that their goal is to keep piracy levels low. They don't have to eliminate it completely. They will only goes as far as makes sense economically (how much am I `losing' and how much will it cost me to stop it?
On the other hand, some song titles are rather unique phrases or original combinations of words, and perhaps should be extended copyright protection - "You know where you went wrong", "Bizarre Love Triangle", "I Trance You", "Leafhound" are all examples of song titles that might qualify to varying degrees.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
I was wondering the same thing.
Does anyone know how to point WinAmp to FreeDB?Later...
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
I dont mind buying CDs- because lets face it thats what its all about. What i DO mind is paying 20$ for a CD. If the RIAA would simply comprimise and sell CDs for say 7 or 8 $ then I would happily pay for my music. I think that we as Geeks sometimes go overboard about "free information". Do you pay for your playstation games? CDDB usage is just napsters next step towards pacifying the RIAA- everyone knows that this wont stop people from rearanging song names etc. This will just go back and forth until SOMEONE decides to pay up- either the RIAA or the users!
This is a DB that even the studios are using to spread information (info about movies in production, complete cast lists/etc. before the movies are out)..
This 'could' be used to do that ( I bet they MPAA has made sure that they have the DVD codes somewhere so that it can be tracked)...
UPS Sucks
www stands for something: world wide web. So, the average dolt would assume that 'www' denotes a website.
Napster will only block a song only if the copyright owner requests them to. This allows the true owner of the property to decide if it should be freely available.
Freedom of choice for the owner - I like it!
take a look @
www.renatager.de
greets
hank
IAAL
It's denying the rights of the artist
And for the millionth time: what rights does an artist signed to a major music label have? Please quote figures on the proportion of Napster featured artists who retains the intellectual property rights on their music.
The vast majority of artists sell all their legal (and moral) rights to their creations, and retain only a limited and strictly contractual right to royalties from sales of it. They don't own the music.
So, if I wasn't going to buy the music anyway (I haven't bought any music since the 1980's), then how, exactly, does the artist suffer? The legal and moral loser is the owner of the intellectual property rights - and that's MegaRecordCorp.
Now, if we're talking about artists that retain their own rights, and distribute online, then that's a different issue. But I doubt you were thinking clearly enough to be talking about that.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Last I heard the song titles were now in Pig Latin. Unless, CDDB come with filters, especially Pig Latin, I don't see how useful this will be. Plus all of the typos. Then there is all of the possible slang and abbreviated spellings. I don't think this will have a big impact. You might want to brush up on Pig Latin if you want to Napster.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
If the RIAA and Napster block this song because it just so happens to be the same as the Piglatin translation of a copyrighted song, can I sue them for blocking it?
Any lawyers out there that can shed some light? Any bands out there that want to release some non-copyrighted material?
MadCow__42 kevin@cazabon.com
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Yes, at least on NT. edit %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts .
--
"At one point during the RIAA litigation process, I thought I would wake up one morning and find that Napster had totally shut down. However, now I just sit and watch as it slowly bleeds to death." -- me The entire "Napster" phenomenon will likely get a solid place in the computer halls of fame -- letting people around the world share music with each other. Instead of having the recording industry select which songs would be funneled through our local radio stations and television channels, the music lover could now sample endless varieties of music and discover fresh new bands. Ahhh, but "No," said the record industry, "you will not take the power away from me!" Napster, knowing their demise would eventually come from endless litigation, even offered the recording industry an offer that just might please both the labels and the must listeners. Unfortunately, the RIAA, in their short-mindedness, turned any sort of compromise down. Ironically, when has there ever been a time in history where over 70 million users have lined up screaming, "give us a product!" and then a company, already in a monopolistic position, shouted, "Go f*** yourselves!!" Napster will die slowly. With the dot-com hysteria now behind us, investor capitalists won't be so quick to fund another Napster want-a-bee. It just proves an age old point that, in the end, someone wants to and HAS to get paid.
This doesn't seem to prevent me from buying my CD's at the store... I've never used CDDB, but at least with it's recent "deny of access" to things like Grip etc, I won't have to deal with seeing a new version of that stuff every 5 minutes on freshmeat.net
You really need to sit down and take a refresher in copyright law. The original purpose of copyright law was to strike a balance between the right of the artist to earn a living and the public well being. "Art exists for it's own sake" is nothing more than a cop out for people who are too selfish to give benefit for receiving benefit.
Lucky? Your wording is just propoganda.
I think it is terrible that the effort and good will of the net community be used to stab us in the back, but I don't think we should say "Sharing is for losers". We got to realize that once we share something we don't control what other people do with it. And sharing is really what OpenSource is about. Never the less... Down with the RIAA! And I don't think this will stop us from sharing music. On the other hand we should be working to make a better and friendlier gnutella like system, because sooner or later Napster is going down.
Too bad I don't have moderator points today. Can I moderate an entire article as "Flamebait"?
Look people, I know there are a lot of GNU zealots here that buy into the party line, "Information wants to be free!" So the CDDB database gets used by the Bad Guys. So what? That's the price you pay for freely exchanging information -- Someone else is free to use it against you!
Okay, so CDDB is no longer "free" in the GNU sense. That's beside the point. Do you think they're so naïve that they're not also using FreeDB as well? The only reason you know about the Napster/CDDB deal is that they had to sign a license to use the database and someone thought it would be good PR to announce it publicly. I'll betcha a dollar, though, that they also have their hooks into FreeDB and any other GPL'd free-as-in-liberty databases out there.
Freedom is a double-edged sword. You can't grab the moral high ground waving the "Information is Free!" flag, then complain when people use it for the "wrong purposes". That ain't freedom. It's a license agreement.
Chelloveck
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Look out, Sol. The Shrike is coming for your baby.
I forget what 8 was for.
So this just adds to the apparent death spiral, since by implication friends and communities are for losers.
But strangely enough, that is probably the exact attitude of the marketroids who are abusing the community by ripping off the community effort by selling it.
This also fits in, in a weird way, to the whole Napster vs RIAA mess. Because there is a balance that needs to be reached as far as sharing vs respecting the rights of others. If I am required to share, then is that a fancy name for thievery? Are monopolies (in this case, of music) the means to achieve legalized rip offs?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Er, jedidiah, I completely agree with everything you've just said. I'm not really sure what the relevance is to what I posted though.
I agree that it would be nice if music wasn't owned by big labels, and that artists should try and retain rights and distribute their own work. If the artists that I like were to put their work online, easily available and at a reasonable price - e.g. $3 an album, which, after reasonable production costs, would still give the artist way way more than they get now - then I'd happily buy it.
The only problem with this approach is giving new artists mass market exposure. If MTV was really into the Napster thing (as they like to profess when their audience is listening) they'd give up on grossly manipulated singles sales and showcase a NapChart including new artist slots. Only they won't, because without a $5 million video, they've got nothing to show. Feel free to mail them and suggest they play new artist tracks along with a WinAmp visualisation. ;)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
>Yet, you take the work of musicians and distribute and use it against their expressed wished.
I question whether it is the artists express wishes that music not be distributed in MP3 format (which, in and of itself is not illegal, should you own the Music already -- piracy is the problem) or if that is the motive of the RIAA.
It seems many artists (Public Enemy comes to mind) have already done their best to try to encourage this internet music revolution. Perhaps they are unhappy with the current shackles the recording industry puts on them? Maybe they see MP3 as a way out.
>You both put time and energy into creating something intangible, and you both were denied its control.
Copyright doesn't allow you to put a literal stranglehold on how people use your music. Once someone buys a CD they can use the music how they please, although copyright does seem to hold people to personal use only (which includes ripping CDs into MP3 format).
If artists don't want their music put into MP3 format, they can simply keep it to themselves, or perhaps find a less liberal country than the United States (maybe they can convince SeaLand to change their laws?) to harbour their music.
>If you use Napster to download copyrighted material and feel ripped off by the CDDB, then you are an utterly despicable hypocrite.
That is assuming you haven't already bought the CD. I've lost/broken/scratched CDs before, haven't you? Napster is a great way to replace them.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
So now that I'm not usin Napster, I'm also not going to use Gracenote. Off to freedb I go. Of course, now that Graceland is in with Napster, they can just get all sorts of agreements with records companies to pass new CD info to them before it hits stores so they no longer really need us suckers now that we've done the work. And we didn't even get the $0.02 a day the kids in Indonesia get for making sneakers.
I wonder if I can get Winamp to use freedb or if I will be uninstalling that, too.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I am a pilot, a programmer, and an artist. Our society requires that I have money if for nothing more than sustenance. I would do the things that bring me joy regardless of whether I got paid or not. If I could not do those, I would still long to. Who I am is what I do.
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
None of the alternatives are mainstream yet. They aren't newsworthy, and when they are I'm sure slashdot will start covering them.
If you see something you think should be on slashdot, submit it.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
That being said, the act of publishing *professionally* is usually going to alter this default copyright structure. Since 1978, part of every American recording label...
Unless the 1978 Copyright Agreement was an international affair, how does this compare against the other 95% of the world's population* ??
So far it's being assumed that every creation that is listed in the CDDB was American produced, in exactly the same way that congress assumes that the internet is an American only network.
World population estimation for July 1st 1999 = 5,996,215,340
U.S. population for July 1st 1999 = 272,878,000
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census
[Steve]
It's funny how many times you have to show your I.D. in the U.S.
...at times it feels like Germany, 1942.
Just tried it, it didn't do anything.
So what? You knew when you submitted information to CDDB that they could have done this. If you didn't like that fact, you didn't have to submit information to CDDb.
Know what else? Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is in the public domain, yet publishers have the gall to sell for profit copies of the book! How dare they! It's available for free, so they're evil to sell it!!
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
But, you ask, 'how the fuck is (napster) going to get rid of (the riaa)?' I answer by pointing out the age-old reason why artists sign onto the riaa in the first place: because, without the riaa, they cannot get national, let alone international, distribution. With napster, any artist - local legend or megastar - can have their music distributed, worldwide, without going through the riaa. And, presuming that anyone who uses napster has a web browser, they can also sell their records (through snail mail) to their newfound audience. Do you get it now?
Ok now, this is a little off topic by not by much. In all this talk about the illegal trading of copyrighted music and such on area is left out of the talks. What if I already own the CD/Cassette or even LP in question and I have no idea nor do I wish to learn how to rip a track of of it? As far as I remember, the copyright laws state that I am allowed to make as many copies of copyrighted material that I own for my own personal use and archivial purposes. Now by blocking the trade of mp3's from one user to another isnt it in effect limiting my ability to make a backup of any such media that I already own? Or what if I have the cd but it is scratched so bad it is un playable, so I want to d/l a few tracks off of it to play, perfectly legal but The RIAA has now foreced me to either go without that mucis or buy another copy of it. I think napster is a dead horse now anyway, its just a matter of time before the body stops moving, and as for the CDDB, I only hope that the start tryign to figure out what exactly the mass users of there service want and somehow find a happy place for all in there business model. JMO.. The Original Zaphod
"No A Zaphod, didn't you hear we come in 6 Packs Now"
Then what is the purpose of using the CDDB? Napster will have to create its own database of song titles in any case -- otherwise, how will they filter unblocked songs out of the CDDB results?
First off, Napster is complying with a court order. If you like Napster, then you should be happy that this seemingly impossible task is being done via CDDB.
Second, right or wrong, the RIAA has legal claim to their Copyrighted material. If you want to knowingly circumvent that claim, then you need to lose the hypocrisy and admit that you are a thief. If you own those albums, rip 'em yourself you lazy bastage!
Third, Napster has served it's purpose. By comparison to the present alternatives, Napster is crude, inflexible and clunky. Let it go! Don't let nostalgia and hype keep your neophile spirit bound to a dead horse.
Fouth, Napster doesn't love you anymore. As soon as Napster started pulling usernames, well before they signed with Bertlemann, and WELL before this development, they had gone over to the 'other side'. In fact, as soon as they incorporated and IPOd, their reason for being changed. Grass roots my arse! They're a business.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
What you are missing (I suspect you are not) is that almost all of the people here who chime in on this issue (I want a copy of a song on a CD I own to play on my MP3 player...I want the songs I lost when I broke a CD I own...blah, blah) are being dishonest with us and themselves about why they use Napster. I don't know a *single* person who has *not* used Napster to download a song they do not own the rights to. I'm sure there are a few, but these few do NOT account for Napster's widespread popularity. I believe most Napster users (including those here) are using Napster to download songs they have not paid for and have absolutely no intention to pay for. And as for the arguments that sharing increases CD sales, well even if true (and I do not believe it is) that's something the people who own the rights to distribute the music should decide, NOT us.
As I understood it the CDDB identified track names based on the overall signature of a CD, including its ID number and the lengths of all the tracks. How can this be used to identify individual MP3 tracks? And, if it is possible, why do we not have a tool which fills in the ID3 tags for totally unlabelled MP3 files, just from the CDDB. This would be very useful. Surely if this were possible, it would have been done?!
Napster has to comply with the court or they die. I'd say CDDB is helping Napster to survive. Why would anyone consider that helping the *RIAA*??
If CDDB *didn't* help Napster, that would be helping the RIAA, IHMO.
How can they be sure that everything on the CDDB is copyrighted? I'm sure that probably most of it is, but not ALL of it. Plus, as anyone who uses CDDB knows, the database is far from accurate, awash with typos and sometimes just outright mistakes.
Still, how long before someone makes a Napster plugin to check your MP3s against CDDB and rename them in subtle ways so that they no longer match?
A true creator MUST create.. it is an immutable compulsion.
Ah. And a true consumer MUST exploit, yes?
Money is not everything.
People who say that usually have more than enough of it in the first place.
I don't know about the US, but here in the UK, titles of works don't have copyright protection. The reasoning is that they're short enough that two people could independently come up with the same title. For example, there are about ten songs called Tonight, all different.
A big database of song titles, OTOH, can be copyrighted, as several people pointed out in the recent discussion on CDDB denying access to some clients.
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
those of you that are still using CDDB, and are fed up with them charging for community added content, switch to Freedb.org. It's not gonna up and sell the database.
---
I post links to stuff here
"Yet, you take the work of musicians and distribute and use it against their expressed wished. How is this any different? You both put time and energy into creating something intangible, and you both were denied its control."
;-) It doesn't make you despicable, but it can certainly make you a hypocrite because our ego tends to focus on negative stuff happening to _us_. Now, let me just say that I agree that this would be hypocritical behaviour. After all, if some information should be free, then all information should be free. Personally I have no problems with that, but many do. The problem is that they don't always see the big picture, like you do ;-)
There is a real difference. Most artists distribute their music in a *closed* way through record labels (not all of them do). While the efforts on CDDB were made to keep CD-track information *public* and share with others through the CDDB-database.
"You weren't robbed of the information itself, after all. If you wanted to keep a copy of the information that you submitted to CDDB, it would've been a trivial matter to make a backup. No, you were robbed of nothing."
Stealing, robbing and piracy are such stupid terms for information, so I have to agree. However, it is not nice to put up an open service for everyone to share and then close it down to paying customers, without giving a copy back to the community. What CDDB decides to do with their service is entirely up to them.
"If you use Napster to download copyrighted material and feel ripped off by the CDDB, then you are an utterly despicable hypocrite."
Feelings are irrational
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
The real moral is not sharing is for losers, but when ever you do something that the higher ups (ie your employer, the RIAA, the government) might look askance at, try to stay under the radar.
For example, LSD was legal and unknown until the media got ahold of it, in 1965-66.
The Grateful Dead were a great party until MTV's Day of the Dead in 1987.
Porn was free and unblocked by corporate networks in 1996.
I imagine that divx;) sites are going to get targeted next.
Many of you devoted time and effort to contributing to the CDDB database. It hurts to see your work used in a way you didn't want.
Yet, you take the work of musicians and distribute and use it against their expressed wished. How is this any different? You both put time and energy into creating something intangible, and you both were denied its control.
You weren't robbed of the information itself, after all. If you wanted to keep a copy of the information that you submitted to CDDB, it would've been a trivial matter to make a backup. No, you were robbed of nothing.
If you use Napster to download copyrighted material and feel ripped off by the CDDB, then you are an utterly despicable hypocrite.
- qpt
--
Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
Uhhh... you need a P90 [or better] with a soundcard, a popular operating system, and an internet connection. Or your choice of the many other devices out there (MPTrip, Rio, Expanium).
The computer will require a data input device. I suggest a keyboard, but a mouse, or remote control will do. Speakers would probably be a good idea too...
You really weren't serious, asking that, were you?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
"So the long and short of it is that yes, pretty much everything on the CDDB is, in fact, copyrighted by someone. "
I create music as an amateur. I want no restrictions placed on its use. I want everybody else to be able to sample it, remix it, use it in their songs, use it in dj mixes, etc. I want it to be part of the public domain. What mechanism is there to let me do this? When I turn my songs into mp3, in the spots where you can put artist name, copyright, etc, I write 'use freely for any purpose'. Is this enough?
Surely I have the right to release my creations into the public domain. If I as author have the right to specify how copies are created, I want to specify that any and all forms of copying are allowed. There is no equivalent of the GPL or the Free Software movement in music. Even in electronica and hip-hop - which is odd since they are mostly based on sampling other's works. Which is of course how folk music disappeared and somehow became corporate property.
When I used Napster, I did in fact put my songs in the available-to-napster folder, and other people did in fact grab them. With my blessing. But when I re-recorded my cd (after a crash) I used RealJukebox instead of the music creation software I had used originally, and I entered in titles for the songs. Why not? It put them on the disc which is what I was after, having it sent to CDDB was a side effect I paid no attention to. So now the RIAA is going to act to suppress my songs from being distributed on Napster. HOW!!! They have NO legal right to do so! The RIAA is acting to suppress the transfer of amateur music, using, of course, the 'tax' money I paid to it when I bought my blank cds, even though they were NOT used to copy copyrighted material. So they force me to pay them money and use that money to deprive me of my rights and shut down a channel I use to distribute my music. What can I do about this? Once again, peoples' actual, important, first amendment rights are being trampled to prevent 'piracy' of Britney Spears. Sorry, but I think my constitutional rights should have more weight than the continued profit making of media corporations who exist only on public sufferance. Corporate charters can be revoked, and in fact only in recent times have they been granted for unlimited periods. We need to start revoking the charters of corps that act to deprive of us our rights. The same coprs that are, of course, making huge record profits thanks to the very technology they fear and lash out against.... it just frustrates me.
Drakantus is right - the other ones we try to keep an eye out for. If there's not something in the mainstream media, then write a review! Compare and contrast! Write a user guide!
I'd love to not post stuff about Napster - but right now, that's about the only option we've got.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
Napster is a database? News to me. It amazes me how much people stretch the truth to fit their own little opinions.
So if I burn a CD of my son singing "Mary had a little lamb" and entered it in the CDDB, that song is now filtered off Napster?
I know this will be posted 50 times to this thread, but here it is again anyway: http://freedb.org/. We're rebuilding it, we're rebuilding it better, and cddb can stew in its immoral juices.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
My idea has been done, at least sort of, with Catnap. Huzzah!
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Into my DVD-ROM.
Napster actually has received a total of 6 million filenames, including spelling variations, from the recording industry, a Napster spokeswoman said. That number represented 26,000 artist/song title pairs the company said have been effectively blocked from its service.
Time for the rot-13 songname 'encoding' scheme then, or double pig-latin (remove first two letters from word and place on the end) :)
--
Slashdot didn't accept your submission? hackerheaven.org will!
If a person inputs Track information into the original non-commercial, freely available CDDB, they most certainly have a right to complain about a corporate entity now using that user-submitted information in a manner contrary to the submitters wishes.
No hipocrasy, their two completely different situations. I'm a musician, and a geek, I own ALL Copyrights to my music because I refuse to sign a recording contract that would transfer them to any label.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Do all the angles of copyright law still apply if I *don't* have that little line of text saying "copyright 2001 by moi"? For example, if my diary is lost and somebody finds it, can they publish from it? today? 20 years from now? 20 years after I'm dead? 100?
When the circle of "in the know" gets large enough, there's always somebody who wants to "be cool" by blabbing about it to anybody who will listen. I've had plans foiled because the circle got too big and some chatty poser fscked it up.
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
this is a really kinda cool idea... for those who didn't get to the site, they provide a realplayer plug-in that streams music to you from its original source: they just keep a database of locations.
I wonder what the implications of copyright infringement are here... since you never actually download the tracks.
the excellent thing is like the 3rd song I listened to was a little ratm--streamed from www.sony.com.
Just in case someone wanted to share files that are on one of those lists, there is a simple way. Just add a Z or Q to the end of each word in the filename of each mp3 you have. Presto, no more filtering of your songs. This works because the Napster filter looks for exact word matches, and if you add an extra letter, it is no longer an exact word match.
MadCow42.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
I don't understand. Napster is given a choice: Make a good faith attempt to curtail piracy, or be shut down for good. They choose the former. So now you can use their service to legally trade *some* music, instead of *no* music. And for this, they are now bad guys? Using CDDB in this way is a "wrong purpose"?
What moralists like yourself fail to realize is that you are defending corporations. People with your view claim that napster users are taking away their hard earned profits. Well, I for one do not recognize their claim to my hard earned dollars in exchange for overpriced pieces of plastic with nice packaging.
By arguing in favor of the corporations, you are playing the Uncle Tom.
Since when is it right for corporations to make decisions for the good of the people? Why should we vote then? We should let the aristocracy decide who rules not the people, since the people don't know whats good for them.
I say NO! No longer will I stay a slave to the corporations! No longer will I only be a mindless consumer, stuck in a demographic, only a statistic. I am taking back some of my rights by removing the strangle hold that the RIAA has on the distribution of music. Will this kill art or the music industry? no. Did the home VCR kill the movie industry? no. There will always be a market of people who will pay for music. This is not about moral absolutes. This is a battle for $3 Billion vs. $12 Billion a year for the record companies. Does a few billion less in the pockets of business majors affect my life? NO WAY.
Forget you, forget about being in the moral/legal right, forget the corporations, forget myself. This is about payback. This is for everyone who feels ripped off by the establishment. For everyone who feels that paying $19.98 for a CD is morally wrong. For everyone who hates paying $70.00 for a pair of shoes that cost $1.50 to make.
This is for US, NOT them.
Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack! - Dr. Strangelove
I didn't realize the righteous flock was out and about on the internet. Regardless of the soapbox bro, the music industry has been making record profits for 10 years. They have no problems with free distribution...just the distributor they have no control over...Napster. The RIAA backers are already creating their own answer to Napster. This is about controlling profits , not stealing anything. Everyone already knows that Napster has created a spike in overall record sales, the industry KNOWS this. They simply don't want Napster controlling the free medium without a strategic commercial inserted here...and here...and here. See the real issue , don't run around condemning folks. As far as gracenote, I am shocked that no one saw this coming. This is the exact type of function Gracenote's DB seems built for.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I found that with DiscPlay 4 I could also replace the list server with ca.freedb.org and it provides me with a refreshable list of freedb servers.
John
John
I'm not really sure what the hell your point was...
But, the real point is that Napster is not just a database of song names, and the database is not the problem. The problem is that this little database contains the links to thousands of MP3's.
In case people haven't realized it, the courts are trying to essentially remove all links to questionable information (remmeber 2600 and DeCSS?). They can't stop the masses from trading/sharing in it because there's too many to police. But, if they can stop the large sites and companies from linking to it, then they have effectively removed it from 95% of the WWW users.
Expect search engines to come under fire next, with orders to remove links to pages offering MP3 or similar downloads. Then, they may even go to Usenet and remove the offending binaries groups from the major ISP's Usenet servers (this might be a stretch, as most Usenet users are pretty tech-savvy and would be able to point to a new server pretty easily).
At the end, we'll be left with what we had before. Only underground sources will be available for use. You're going to have to know to go to Astalavista to get your cracks, or IRC for your warez and MP3's. And, then the mom-and-pop users won't know where to find these things, and the RIAA and MPAA folks will be happy, because they know "us-types" aren't going to buy their crap anyways.
Looks like new entries with all the same properties are being added as fast as old ones are being taken out. The judge is going to be *pissed*, Napster isn't actually filtering anything.
It's quite possible when Napster said it was impossible for them to filter, they weren't blowing smoke, they literally *can't* eliminate the songs even when they are in plain view, because as soon as the filter goes through and scrubs, somebody logs in and adds it to the list again.
--Dave Rickey
Of course Napster isn't going to block everything that's in the CDDB; they'll use it to cross-reference, to find out that CD #7410473 track #3 is likely to be misspelled in N ways.
And how can anyone complain about this? "Oh, CDDB is turning on me and is now evil!" Come on, if you're downloading music from Napster that the artists/labels own and don't think you should get for free, why should you be getting it for free? Grow up and stop being so selfish!
Gumbo
Better yet, these apps support freedb out of the box: http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=10
Napster - A database of Song Names, some of which refer to proprietary IP, and some of which do not, ordered by the courts to remove the proprietary ones.
GraceNote - A database of Song Names, all of which refer to proprietary IP, helping Napster to remove the proprietary ones so that all that remains are the legally-tradable non-proprietary ones.
So if CDDB allows Napster to use their database for free, you'll no longer have any complaints?
No.
The arguments of the pro-Napster clique on Slashdot are so inconsistent it gives me a headache trying to keep up.
Well, slashdot and the "napster clique" are not one person, so what do you expect?
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
So is the CDDB still accepting new entries from random people? What if the new entries collide with something else in the database already? In the event that the new entries don't collide, is there any validation done?
... I think it's time to start submitting some CDDB entries.
Let's take a non-roseyeyed look at Napster. Forget what the Napster apologists have spun out since the RIAA began looking at them - Napster is only good for getting copies of MP3s of songs you don't want to pay for. I'll admit quite readily that I've downloaded copyrighted songs that I have no intention of ever buying. Sometimes, I'll get the song of a band I saw for 5 seconds on MTV, and just MAYBE it'll tempt me to buy the album.
If you take the copyrighted mp3s off, all you're going to be left with is a bunch of crap mp3s of people's bands, which you're never going to find anyway because you don't know what you're looking for. Also, just because a big record company isn't behind a band, doesn't mean that said unsigned band wants the world to get mp3s of its songs for nothing.
Napster is dead without its illegal aspect, for unsigned bands promoting their music, a far better option is mp3.com which at least has music grouped into categories, so you can find songs that bands want you to download, since I believe they get royalties based on advertising revenue.
Goodbye Napster, it was nice while it lasted
So, what? A license like the GPL or BSD License would be better? A license that allows Free redistribution and commercial or non-commercial use, but not if part of a filtering system? That seems too draconian for my taste.
The problem here is not who owns the database, or who they're giving it to, or what that party is going to do with it. The problem (IMHO) is that napster is being forced to muzzle itself, or die trying.
This is probably redundant by now.
lsmvcprm.com, Tools for geek power
Alert: this is not a troll!
All that has happened, basically, is Napster asked permission to use the database, and got that permission. Of course they pay for it's use, which is good. Thus, the company has no excuse to let individuals pay for their services: the costs will already be covered.
CDDB is a public database(sort of). Napster wants to use that database to prevent the illegal copying of music. Of course a lot of moral issues are involved. Should all music be free/Free? Is the RIAA's greed justifiable? Is copying music wrong or right? Who owns information? Etc.
The issue here is none of our business. A company using data from a _public_ database to control the use over it's _own_ application, is up to them. They don't claim to own the information. They just use the information which they have access to. What they do with it is up to them.
----------------------------------------------
the pun is mightier than the sword
2001-03-02 03:11:47 Usenet, The Next Generation? (articles,internet) (rejected)
2001-01-12 01:21:38 Anonymous publishing: Does anyone need it? (articles,Privacy) (rejected)
Sorry, but I don't get the impression you really want to report about the alternatives. Having once story after the next rejected without any reason is not exactly encouraging. You see, many of these projects were slashdotted once when they started -- but forgotten about later, when they became usable. It's useful to remind people again when projects become usable.
--
www.rose-hulman.edu/~castlebs
Excuse me, but it's the labels who own the copyrights on the work that is distributed, not the artists. All the artists get is the result of their contract with the label.
In other words, Napster is only hurting the bottom lines of the labels and companies making this music, not the "poor artists".
For those of you who know of Jamiroquai, a UK hip-hop artist, you'll know what I mean. I.e. "Save the rainforest" and then he goes out to buy 2 Lambourghinis and a mansion.
Why should I care about a frankly small dent in their income?
---
Vollernurd.
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
Damn that pisses me off.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What? Do you live in a cave?
This napster situation isn't just about napster. It also isn't about a few kids stealing stuff through the internet. It's gotten WAY bigger. Hell, my grandma has heard of napster now.
This situation involves the music industry as we know it. It involves every artist that has ever tried to get a record deal. It involves all of the huge mega-corporations that own the rights to all the music that people work so hard to make. It involves fundamental laws of our country and changing them. Hopefully for the better. And most of all it involves power.
Can you imagine what a significant event it would be if the record company's fell and copywrites, by law, would always be owned by the creator? It would open everything up. No more record companies shoving teeny bopper crap down everyones throats. There would be a place for everybody, every type of music. Distributed power. Quality would be rewarded and crap would sink...analogous to how slashdot works.
*pulls head from clouds*
If that not "stuff that matters", I don't know what is.
FUNK!
This could work out very well for Bertelsmann. It's like having a private chain of radio stations that only plays their music. Bertelsmann has around 18% of the music market globally; the top three players are all around that level.
Check http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=11
and
http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=10
...you're mad because Gracenote provides a service that will make it more difficult for you to break the law and thieve copyrighted music?
Do you also get your soda pop by tipping over the vending machine and collecting the cans that roll out? Oh, wait...that would be wrong.
Now, we see the value of CDDB for the filtering that the RIAA wants Napster to do, and the RIAA has been scrambling around trying to compile lists of song titles (probably 90% of the effort in creating a CDDB type service of their own) when IMHO they should have already had such a list in a CDDB like service for at least a couple of years - in fact, I'd be willing to bet that the RIAA, even as they devote time and energy to compiling their lists are failing to take advantage of their own efforts by compiling these lists into a CDDB type app.
In fairness, I suppose, if the RIAA had such a service and CD Rippers used it to populate ID3 tags and name MP3 files, it'd probably be an even bigger irony, but still...
I also have to ask - aren't many if not all song/album titles (and not just the songs themselves) copyrighted? Could Gracenote / CDDB be the next target for the RIAA scheist...er, lawyers that is? After all, if they sue CDDB out of existence, they set a precedent that they are the only ones who can build such an application as the copyright holders of the song titles- next thing they'll be charging companies / software authors that write CD playing software for computers for the right to use their database. Heck, its not at all inconceivable that such a service could be integrated into normal CD playing stereo components (and stereo component manufacturers charged accordingly) - how hard is it to put a two port ethernet hub into a CD player that would allow even the average Joe to connect their CD player and computer to their cable modem / DSL service for the purpose of retrieving song titles (and, heaven forbid, allowing the RIAA to spy on your listening habits)?
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Know what else? Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is in the public domain, yet publishers have the gall to sell for profit copies of the book! How dare they! It's available for free, so they're evil to sell it!!
This doesn't follow. Alice in Wonderland is still in the public domain. Publishers sell it, that's fine. Commercial distros sell Linux too, and that's also fine.
But CDDB isn't in the public domain anymore. For your Alice in Wonderland comparison to work, publishers would have had to remove Alice in Wonderland from the public domain, and make it illegal to acquire a copy of it without paying a publisher for it.
It's not blanket blocking, napster sends cddb the name of the Artist/Song that the copyright holder wants blocked, and cddb sends back a list of 'alternative' file names.
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
Done.
Drakantus is right - the other ones we try to keep an eye out for. If there's not something in the mainstream media, then write a review! Compare and contrast! Write a user guide!
You say this now but Slashdot has never acted like it's interested in lengthy user submissions. I've stopped bothering when my last attempt at an editorial sat in the submission queue for about week and I had to mail you guys about it only to be told someone would get around to reading it "soon". That's why my stories go on kuro5hin because I know they'll get read and I'll get feedback.
As for short submissions, I've basically stopped those as well after this story where you editted all the coherence out of my submission and made me sound like a raving zealot instead of maintaining the original theme of the submission.
Quite frankly I don't understand why with the authors slashdot has no one writes anything longer than a paragraph about a submission. Is reading submissions that much work that we can't get the kind of review, comparison, or user guide that you've just suggested?
I think he was being serious. Don't be _that_ suprised, not everyone knows about computers yet.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
Second, I think what's going on is actually the complete opposite. Almost. People dontated their time by entering the CDDB information, and were under the impression that the information would be free and available to everyone at no cost. Now they turn around and take money for supplying a list that they didn't create and giving it to Napster to make doing something people want to do more difficult.
Virtually everyone who contributed to CDDB wants their information to be shared for free for the good of the community. You can't say the same thing about artists with respect to Napster. Quite the contrary - many of them applaud and encourage the sharing that goes on. Many do not.
If Metallica doesn't want me downloading their MP3s, they've got nothing to worry about.
Now, what would be more interesting is if the artists were the ones to come forward to say "I don't want MY music traded on Napster." That I could respect. Some artists have made it quite clear, and I guarantee that I have not downloaded a single song by any of them!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Money is not everything. Our society is so muttled in money. We are imbrued with the stain of a currency-based economy. It is our bane and it will be one of our greatest downfalls.
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
Napster is a database. It is also a communications protocol. It is a search engine and a GUI. It is all of those things and more.
For one, this will only help stop mass producer's of MP3's who can't figure out how to do stuff properly (like renaming).
What I would propose to beat the RIAA is to develop a plug-in for Napster that allows the client to search and share for scrambled names. The key would change every day, and be hosted on several servers outside the RIAA's extent of power.
Every time the system connected to Napster, it would connect to the servers, which would also update the list of mirrors.
I know this is a bit vague, but I hope somebody will figure out what I mean.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
But napster is not king. Opennap for example gives you 100% of the functionality of Napster without having to deal with the RIAA.. yet. There will always be up-and-down servers, etc.. but thats alright. The list of servers right now is centralized with Napigator, but how hard would it be to reverse engineer the napigator ? Damn easy..
I put up a opennap server on my cable modem one night.. within 2 days I had over 300 users using the server and 250GB of songs indexed on my system.
RIAA is nothing more than a speed-bump... honestly I think it's the best thing to happen to push people out of using a centralized and corparation controlled service.
RIAA may of made their worst mistake by not settling something a bit more reasonable with Napster.. it's going to push people to other avenues. (No, I am NOT talking about Gnutella... ) I can see the RIAA board all start laughing when they talk about gnutella as a threat.
anyway...
--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
Actually, it's not a plugin. It's just an applet running on a web page, hence no download.
I thought the party line here was that you only used Napster for uncopyrighted songs, right? So if they choose to filter out songs by RIAA clients how does that stop you from sharing your authorized songs? Am I missing something?
It might take a while.
Don't you all remember the pre-napster days? searching for ftp sites, etc. It was a pain in the ass. Then napster came along and made it easy.
Now it's a pain in the ass again.
Something else will come along. It's too big now. The only difference is now it will be done right (no corps involved and there must be no one to sue). Gnutella looks like a good replacement. If we could only get it working right.
--
CatNap filename encryption proxy
Daily news on P2P / file sharing
--
This space intentionaly left blank.
RIAA: Here is a list of 150,000 songs that we want you to block. You have 3 days.
*THUD*
Napster Admin: OK.
*2 days later, Napster Admin wakes up from a hangover*
Napster Admin: That was some party, hey? Oh shit. The RIAA thing. Holy Mother of Perl! I don't want to mess with typing or OCRing all that in!
*an idea forms...*
But on the other, I hold the art form of music on a quintessential pedestal. It's one of the few mediums capable of transferring raw emotion simply by lending an ear. It's "magical," or at least the closest thing to magic I think we have. I think it's a gift _meant_ to be cherished and shared.
I mean, seriously. When the first neanderthal crudely pierced a few holes in a bone, extracted the marrow and pressed his/her lips to the end and began to play the first notes of music, was it done to accumulate profit? No. It was done with the realization that it is an emotional outlet, something with great beauty and unbridled power over the human "soul."
I shed a tear. Prostitution of the body, a superficial husk, is illegal. Prostitution of emotion and thought is highly encouraged.
I'm not whistling a new tune, but for the love of all that's unholy, I'm tired of everyone speculating on my (and other Napster/music lovers) moral decency just because I happen to highly respect and admire the beauty of music for the above reasons.
if the RIAA are smart enoenough to use technology to persue technology then why is it taking soo damn long to implement a technology which we'd want to pay for and use!! [has the idiot who suggested that p2p sharing of audio files would never work been fired]?
suppose this means that if there is a tagging service for movies, DON'T USE IT!! cos it will only be sold to the movie industry and aid in their crusade against the [theft and] sharing of motion pictures
Regards Sinesurfer A Nerd is someone who lives for technology, A Geek is someone who lives for technology and loves it
It's denying the rights of the artist.
It's theft. Pure and simple.
But you "I want it all for free" thieving scum don't understand that.
Or do you actually want an end to reward & creativity?
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
Doh. I inserted Moby "Play" and got 10 different entries. Impressive.
Or does this seem strange...
Napster - A database of Song Names - ordered by the courts to remove the song names
GraceNote - A database of Song Names - helping Napster to remove the Song Names.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
I guess its time to build an OSDN lookup-table/DB of CD songs.
did anyone hork a complete CDDB dump file?
shucks
1 step forward and 2 steps back
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
Simple. First, nobody doubts that the RIAA companies, singly or in concert, can hire people who can devise a very good technology to digitally distribute their "property" in a way that will satisfy their requirements.
They may even be bright enough to do some market research and find a mechanism that doesn't aggravate their target audience too much -- I wouldn't bet on that, but it's possible.
The question is, do they want to? And I think the answer is, no, not very much.
You've got two world-views within the recording industry:
- One world-view hopes that digital
distribution will simply go away if they stick
their fingers in all the holes in the dike.
-
Another world-view recognizes that the holes
in the dike
aren't enumerable, and that digital distribution
is coming whether they want it or not.
In neither case is Napster part of their plans. In the first world-view, they're the enemy and must be destroyed. In the second, they're a competitor and must be destroyed.There never was any hope that Napster would be spared.
If I monkey with /etc/hosts (or whatever the Winduhs equivalent is), can I silently redirect *.cddb.org to my choice of freedb mirrors without causing undue pain and hardship on myself?
- Pithy comment goes here.
From the napster site.
The court has issued an injunction directing Napster to block the sharing of specific music files after we receive appropriate notice from the copyright holders
So it's not blanket blocking.
That notice must include the following information: the work's title; the name of the featured recording artist performing it; the name(s) of one or more files containing the work available through Napster's file-sharing service; and certification that the rightsholder owns or controls the rights to the work they want excluded.
So the 'full CD signature' is not supplied. But then Napster is track based rather than album based (actually I suppose really it's file based).
Let the RIAA make it as hard as they like for people to share music from their artists. Give them enough rope to hang themselves. If the only tunes on Napster are free tunes, then free tunes will get traded and free tunes will get heard.
The more draconian the RIAA gets, the more people will want and seek out alternatives. This could be the start of something wonderful.
I have been reading a lot about Napster and MP3. Now the question is do you need an MP3 player that they are advertising, to play from Napster or a real player will do? What other requirements are there, if any.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
I can guarantee that the entire set of CDDB files, while they might all be copyrighted due to inherent copyrights by artists and their creations, the set of music which is copyrighted is NOT the same as the set of music the RIAA has a right to control.
I know many local bands here in Austin who WANT their music on Napster. In fact, I've been explicitly asked to share it. I also inserted their files into CDDB (this was before they went all evil on us, mind you, which reminds me, I need to resubmit to the friendlier, open versions).
I feel doubly betrayed.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Furthermore, because the music-sharer is in control of that ID3 copyright field, there a only two possibilities: 1) The user distributes mp3s with a blank or falsified copyright field. They're lying about the copyright status of the music. 2) The user distributes mp3s with a correct copyright field. In this case, and _only_ in this case, could Napster be held responsible for contributary infringement. There is a mechanism in place to work out all of this copyright nonsense. Why implement another harsher mechanism (govt-imposed regulation of a public information distribution mechanism)
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
For those unsure of how they propose to implement this:
There is a copyright field in the newer ID3v2 tad info.
Since the CDDB was a community based system, it would thus rely on the people ripping it to enter the correct information. There is also a field which specifies: "Encoded by".
These fields are all good and well, but it will take a lot of time and effort for them to verify these.
:)
Sometimes those who say "I don't like to use or contribute to that piece of software, because although it's free beer, I don't like the license" get accused of whining: "hey, it's free, if you don't like it don't use it but don't whine about it". The real lesson to draw from this is that licenses *do* matter and it's worthwhile discussing what we want out of them.
--
Xenu loves you!
At the height of Slashdot's reporting on Napster (twice or thrice a week) I couldn't understand what relevance it had with regards to being "News for Nersa" or "Stuff that Matters", some service that is primarily used to pirate songs was getting sued, big deal.
Now that Napster has been rendered useless as a file sharing service by the RIAA and a court of law, why is Napster still news? Everyone I know has moved on from Napster and now uses a service that surpasses Napster's poorly designed service in one way or the other. For simply sharing and obtaining music there are iMesh, Audiogalaxy, Music City, Ohaha, Gnutella and a host of others. For uses of P2P beyond simply grabbing MP3s we have Mojo Nation, Freenet and Publius.
Why doesn't slashdot start reporting on these systems instead of beating the dead Napster horse?
Sorry if this has been asked before, but I don't see it in the FreeDB FAQ....
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Napster users aren't taking someone else's music and then selling it back to them. Whereas the CDDB is taking the result of other people's labor -- a database rather than music tracks -- and selling it back to them. And now, also using it against the people and the activity that created that database in the first place.
So if CDDB allows Napster to use their database for free, you'll no longer have any complaints? The arguments of the pro-Napster clique on Slashdot are so inconsistent it gives me a headache trying to keep up.
Well, they just got the string that identifies mp3's that Joe User automatically rips and renames using CDDB. That's enough, isn't it?
Hugo
But I didn't.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
I think that the RIAA would just assume have Napster completely shut down. Napster is lucky that there is such an easily accessable database of music titles to use as a filter.
OK, assume for a moment here that they have some way to separate RIAA music from independent music. In that case, why does anyone object to this? It will only help them block the illegal stuff. Are you upset that your contributions to the CDDB are helping to prevent you from illegally downloading copyrighted music? If so, are you also upset that the money you pay in taxes helps prevent you from stealing your neighbor's car?
On the other hand, if they don't have any way to separate RIAA music from independents, then this is bad. Some of the musicians with matierial listed on CDDB might want their music to be shared on Napster, in which case it isn't illegal. I would expect that Napster and Gracenote have figured out some way to separate RIAA music from independent music, though. One easy way they could do it is to get a list of artist names from the RIAA and filter the CDDB stuff based on that (would be *much* easier then getting the whole list of songs from the RIAA).
------
But you've changed, dude. Now, you sit quite as people call you a thief; or worse, you jump on the bandwagon yourself can say that the whole napster thing was nothing more than a mass looting of the riaa's accounts. Man, I hate to say it, but.. you're conforming. And, by the speed of your change, I might even think that you were conforming while napster was around.
One day I'm "sharing" tracks with "friends" I've never met. The next day, I'm "stealing." What the hell happened to you, Napster?
This reminds me of that guy we all knew in high school who used to let us borrow his car all the time. Sure he was friendly when we were hanging around and borrowing his car. But once we crashed it into a tree, he wasn't very friendly anymore.
Everything was cool when you were cool, Napster. Remember? We were all having fun until the cops came a'knocking. Hell, half the stuff I stole I didn't even like.
Well, I've gotta go shave my donkey ears.
why bother waiting for downloads when you can just stream the music you want to hear from all over the web? No charges, no registration necessary, no adverts, no delays.
Where do you rubes get this idea that there's some sort of copyright admendment floating around somewhere?
Art exists for it's own sake, no to enrich Robber Barons or even lucky musicians (like Metallica or Paul McCartney). The "control" granted to the RIAA (not the artists) exists only to serve public policy objectives, not because Dr. Dre is considered to have some inalienable right in this matter.
Ultimately the whole POINT of copyright is *forcing* them to share, even if they *don't* want to.
The only difference is supposed to be the timing.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I hope this isn't blanket blocking.
I have material to which I own the copyright which is entered into the CDDB.
So now I'm blocked from distributing my own music over napster because someone who bought a CD typed the information into Napster?
Hopefully the record industries will have to supply a full CD signature to CDDB and then they block all tracknames with a matching signature.
Now is the time for independent producer to make albums with identical CDDB signatures to RIAA music.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)