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AudioGalaxy Reaches Settlement With the RIAA

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the horse-head-stew-for-dinner dept.

blanu writes: "Today AudioGalaxy reached an out-of-court settlement with the RIAA. To sum up the settlement, AudioGalaxy will pay the RIAA a lot of money and from now only provide songs for which the copyright holder has specifically given permission."

3 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Well, there goes another good service by owlicks58 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Dude, Macsatellite has been around for a long time for classic, works fine. For OS X you can use Sputnix which is the best audiogalaxy client out there IMO, it's awsome

    --
    -Alex
  2. Re:Use something else? by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Informative

    I gotta say, the best file sharing program I have found for large files (like mpegs) is eDonkey2000. The linux client works really well, too. If you check out ShareReactor, they post up big lists of all kinds of files you can get off donkey, but of course there are many, many things on donkey that aren't listed on Sharereactor.

    Donkey uses MFTP (I think Morpheus does too, now, actually...) where it takes a file, and hashes it to generate a unique ID across the network. Then, when you search for the file, you'll find many users with the same file, so it'll get different parts of the file from different users, speeding up the whole process. Also, people are forced to share any partial files they have, so the availability is usually pretty high.

    I find it can be a touch slower for getting small files (like .mp3s) than gnutella, but for big files (like mpegs), nothing beats it.

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  3. Lag time... by Pollux · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't worry about it. Here's my personal history with MP3s:

    First discovered them in 1997, when I heard someone in my high school computer club playing "Walk Like an Egyptian" on a computer at school. I thought he was playing a CD, but instead, he told me about "MP3s." Three months later, I was looking for the same stuff online with my own computer. They were everywhere.

    Music Industry's Response: "What are you talking about?"

    Had a small collection of my favorite music (couldn't build up a whole library, thanks to my whoppin' 850MB hard drive) by 1998. Many of the sites appeared and disappeared quite fast, so I started searching for search engines. I soon stumbled upon (and stuck with) Audiogalaxy in 1999.

    Music Industry's Response: "You mean people are getting our music for free? Where? Napster? Shut it down!"

    I enjoyed Audiogalaxy, because there was no security threat of using P2P software (aka Napster / Gnutella), plus there were a lot of nice leech sites posted all over on their FTP search list. Sure, it wasn't as quick and as easy as Napster, but Audiogalaxy was flying under the radar, while Napster wasn't. There have been other websites, but none as direct. That is, until the industry finally found them.

    Music Industry's Response: Hey, there are places out there besides Napster that hand out MP3s. Let's get everyone while we still can!

    My point: It took the music industry four years to realize that there CDs were being transformed into MP3s. It took them four years to find Audiogalaxy and shut them down.

    Whatever you find, I'd say it has a staying power of 4 years, unless they're quite public about it like Napster.