RIAA Unveils Net Tracking Tag for Online Sales

openbear writes "A story over at MSNBC talks about the Global Release Indentifier (GRid). It is a code akin to the Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code found on a CD or cassette tape in stores. Each track will be distributed online with an individual GRid serial number and will be reported back to rights societies and collection agencies sold or transferred."

Comments

Which side is MSN on?

[feepness]

Look at the header from the article:

A music industry trade body launched on Monday electronic identity tags to keep tabs on Internet music sales in a bid to compensate musicians and song writers as more of their works become available online.

If that isn't leading I don't know what is. They specifically do not mention the RIAA and are trying to portray it as compensating the poor artists as opposed to saving music industry executive's asses.

This is news?

[the_verb]

It sounds like an industry-approved ID3 field. I'm assuming this 'net barcode' would be paired with some new file format, something that weaves the ID into the music itself rather than tagging it on as an afterthought.

I'm not sure how they plan on compensating artists with this plan, since there doesn't seem to be a *payment* mechanism. It strikes me as a first step towards 'Music Audits' in which a hard drive is scanned for the works of particular artists.

--v

firewall.

[Kewjoe]

and thats why having a nice firewall that blocks programs from outbound transmission is crucial.

Bad Journalism 101

[burgburgburg]

industry that is reeling from lost sales compounded by a slumping global economy and the growth in online music piracy.

Industry "fact sheets" make reporting so much easier. Now I have time for another nap.

Re:Bad Journalism 101

[Stanl]

You couldn't be more correct. The music industry and it's partners consistently disseminate its news releases with prepackaged quotes, phone numbers of "friendly" experts and hand-selected excerpts from related technical and legal documents to make writing these types of stories "easier" for the press. It saves the writers time from having to do indepth interviews and actually reading up on what they are writing about. My news writing professor is spinning in his grave.

Don't any of you fools read the article?

[Samurai Cat!]

"Jessop cautioned that GRid is not designed, nor is it intended for, keeping track of songs that wind up on online file-sharing networks, a major source of music piracy."

All this is is a way to track online sales of individual tracks. Nothing to do with CDs, P2P, etc.

I don't think so...

[pair-a-noyd]

These "tags" will be stripped out the day this hits the wires.

These people seriously underestimate the resolve of teens.

My kid is 17. Here is what he tells me. He won't buy CD's because if a CD has a song that he likes there will be 12-15 songs on there that he thinks SUCK. In other words he's paying ~$15 for ONE SONG. He would rip that one song to HDD and compile his own CD to use in his car with only the songs that he likes.

But, at ~$15 each and being limited by law to only working a max of 20 hours a week at minimum wage he can't afford too many CD's.

Thus enter Kazaa. He can leech all the songs he wants for free and burn his own mixes for his car that suits his taste.

And forget that stuff about buying music online, he can't do that as a kid and I don't have or use any form of banking system. I live strictly by GREEN CASH ALONE and have nothing at all to do with any financial institute in any form. Despite that fact, even if I did have credit cards or bank accounts I would never use them online for any reason, ever. Nor would I permit him to use my accounts.

Kids are smart, far smarter than the people that try to maintain their grip on the music industry.
NOTHING that they can devise will stop piracy, ever. If something must be paid for there will always be someone that will find a way to get it for free.

The digital age is Pandora's box. It's been opened and there is no closing it now.

I predict to see a tool to strip the tags on freshmeat the next day..

You call yourself a geek?!!

[Thud457]

A real hacker has no concern about any purported "intended use" of a technology.

He just wants to find out what nifty stuff he can do with it.

sheeeesh!

Seeing how the media companies solutions are always half-baked, it'll be quite interesting to see how this bites them in the ass. And who they point the finger at while trying to deny their own crapulocity.

Solution without a problem?

[nolife]

Anyone actally read the article? Either the article is missing some information or the listed planned usage for this thing is far from what they actually plan on doing with it.

It appears this is supposed to be used so that a retailer can be charged correctly for every download they offer. Meaning a standard method of keeping track of online retail sales. To do this they will encode some unique bits in every file sold online. Sounds bogus already. I do not see the connection between me having a unique coded file and tracking total sales from retailers. Where is the discussion about how my number is reported or disclosed to anyone? Seems to me the real goal is to track a specific file after it is downloaded. They find your file on KaZaa, track it to the retail source, they release your name and bingo, full swat team visit. Maybe you would become the retailer and they will charge you the original downloader for every instance of the unique indentifier they can find online.

I'm not some consipracy theory nut but I can not honestly see the connection between tracking sales and a unique number embedded in a file.

Jane Fonda Is My Cousin

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

You are making a slippery slope argument. This is a flawed way to debate a point. Your argument is that if online retailors are allowed to track certain data, any whatsoever, eventually they will begin tracking names and credit cards numbers to prevent piracy. I will quote this:

"The slippery slope argument is clearly invalid if it is meant to be a point of logic, for it does not follow that "if b is an exception to A, then no part of A is true." Specific exceptions to a rule or principle do not in any way logically imply that the rule is otherwise false or never justifiably applicable in any cases. In fact, calling something an "exception" points out that only it is the relevant act that the rule does not cover. If, for example, a pharmaceutical drug should be used only by people who have asthma, that does not imply people should also take it for arthritis or pregnancy. Permitting stem cell research on embryos does not logically imply that sacrificing infants or terminally ill patients is acceptable.
It appears the argument is meant to be more an argument about people's psychology, and, spelled out, it seems to be something more like "if you make any exceptions to a rule, particularly a cherished or time-honored rule, people will think the rule arbitrary to begin with and will see no reason to follow it at all." Hence, any exceptions undermine respect for a rule, and thus eventually lead to the rule's not being followed at all. Or another intended argument might be "people cannot generally make fine distinctions, so if you make an exception to a (time-honored) rule, people will think you have shown the rule to be flawed and therefore unnecessary to follow."
A slightly different, and more sophisticated version of the principle might be "if you make exceptions to a rule, people will generalize the reasons for that exception and apply them to other aspects of the rule to which those generalizations will also apply." In the embryo issue, the argument would be that "if you allow embryonic stem cell research people will see that defenseless human life has only instrumental value --value for helping others-- so nothing will stop people from wanting to kill infants or people with terminal diseases to help others." Or it might be phrased as "if you allow embryonic stem cell research because embryos are not viable on their own, then you will end up allowing infanticide and termination of the lives of the terminally ill because they are not viable on their own either."

Just for you: Tinfoil Hat Linux: Enjoy!

Re:You're right....but could this be a compromise?

[DunbarTheInept]

You are assuming the RIAA actually is trying to stop pirates. Past experience shows they also despise fair use (like for example, taking your favorite ten songs from different CD's you own and burning them onto a "best of" CD for yourself, or converting them to MP3 for your portable player.) They want you to pay for every copy of the song you have, and I see this as a means to get there. Until I see the mechanism by which they will ensure they DON'T flag fair users as pirates, I'm not believing them.

They lost their right to have me give them the benefit of the doubt years ago.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

[frumiousbar]

My god, from reading this thread you'd think this identifier is the work of satan or John Ashcroft (redundant?). People, before posting the standard knee-jerk reaction to something, why not do a little research.

This is a harmless number & metadata scheme that is intended to identify electronically distributed content since the existing identifiers (e.g. UPC and ISRC) have limitations that don't satisfy the needs of content owners, publishers, and retailers. I was involved in the project so I know first hand this has nothing to do with P2P or consumer tracking.

Re:Bobby Brown Is My Cousin

[AndroidCat]

Didn't you read the article?

Yes I did, and their explaination smells like week-old tuna. How is the GRid going to stop a retailer from selling more copies than they report back to the record companies? Why does the GRid have to be incorporated as part of the music file? Retailers will have to manage track ids externally to the music file to handle all the companies that don't use GRid. How does the GRid help track sales in any way?