Slashdot Mirror
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."
Yes, at least on NT. edit %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts .
--
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.
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?!
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?
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
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.
Point one:
Making an MP3 for me to use it in my Nomad Jukebox is not against the wishes of the Artist.
Point two:
Many artists don't have a problem with this. In fact some artists openly encourage spreading of MP3s. It is mostly record companies and BIG music stars that have problems.
Point three:
People DO lose something. What was the purpose of sending it to CDDB otherwise? Why did they do it? It was not a nessesary step to get the MP3 in the end.
Point four:
I agree with you fully.
:)
Just wanted to make SOME points clear.
You obviously are playing devil's advocate, and so am I.
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.
I see a difference, once I look past the superficial similarities.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
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?
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...*
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
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.
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!
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.