Slashdot Mirror
MIT's New Music Sharing Network
tessaiga writes "The New York Times has an article about a new project at MIT to replace music file sharing over P2P with sharing over cable TV (reg free link). The Library Access To Music Project relies on the more relaxed copyright restrictions on analog transmission formats like cable. From the article: "M.I.T. students, faculty and staff can choose from 16 channels of music and can schedule 80-minute blocks of time to control a channel. The high-tech D.J. can select, rewind or fast-forward the songs via an Internet-based control panel. Mr. Winstein and Mr. Mandel created the collection of CD's after polling students." The article goes on to point out that this is (hopefully) legal under current laws because MIT already has a blanket license to broadcast music over analog media, and recording songs played over this system "would be no different from recording songs from conventional FM broadcasts"."
If MIT students can't find methods to get MP3 off the 'net, nimbly sidestepping the R*AA and other assorted vultures... well; do they really deserve to be at MIT?
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It's all nice and well till the technology takes off and soon they'll find the nice hole in the licensing that allows them to do it gets shut off.
Maybe i'm just cynical.
SysWear - Geek T-shirts (UK/Europe)
The high-tech D.J. can select, rewind or fast-forward the songs via an Internet-based control panel.
Can he do it fast enough to reproduce the vinyl scratch effect ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
A good idea in foresigh, but we all know the RIAA will demand some insane fee as they aren't traditional broad-casters or slaves to MTV...and when they don't pay, RIAA will send an army of lawyers after them...
of the evil-doer, and it is the RIAA, who shakes his bony fist and exclaims, "darn you meddling computer scientists!"
Quote at the bottom of the page:
LAMP is funded by the iCampus Alliance (MIT/Microsoft Research)
http://lamp.mit.edu
Okay, slashdot... does Microsoft get any props here?
(oh, sh!t, there goes my Karma.)
Davak
I'm a college student, and I can honestly say that if I had this I would use it.
I would use it to record all the songs I didn't already have on mp3. And for all the songs I couldn't get through this system, I would still hit the p2p. I don't supposed they have Super Eurobeat or garage bands music do they? No? The store doesn't either? Downloads for me.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Nice to see that the boys and girls at MIT likes Britney since "Baby One More Time" was number 4 most request song last week. Just can't get enough of Britney on the LAMP!
boston.com
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
sox -t ossdsp -w -r44100 -c2 /dev/dsp -t raw -w -r44100 -c2 - | cat | /usr/local/bin/lame --quiet -r -s44.1 -x -m j -V 2 -b 56 -B 128 -h - - > shareme.mp3
it's not because this is legal right now, that it will remain legal until the end of times.
If this becomes popular, my bet is that the RIAA will buy themselves a law which will outlaw this. If it indeed is legal right now, that is...
Am I the only one who thinks that, at this very moment, a RIAA lawyer will be drafting notes that use your comment as the centrepiece for a legal motion to get this MIT project shut down?
The way to combat RIAA, etc isn't by shouting from the rooftops that you'll pirate/whatever you want to call it their music from now till doomsday. The way to combat them is by supporting non-RIAA artists, by supporting innovative legitimate music-buying options such as the Apple iTunes store, by buying second-hand CDs, etc.
Giving someone the very ammunition that they need to shoot you down is suicide. Perhaps when you graduate to the real world you'll learn that lesson.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The loophole is that the data is converted from D to A? How hard is it to capture it back to digital? (and wait for the RIAA stormtroopers to knock on the door?)
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
One step forward and two steps back. All in the name of progress and innovation. Instead of using the technology we have now and improving upon that, we have to go back and use previous technologies to bypass roadblocks set up by the multimedia mafiosi. Oh well, hope this pans out.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
*sigh*
Stick Men
Would they not have a license problem as they can control the program by rewind and fast forward. In an analogue medium the flow is linear - this way, people can control the order of the music which probably means their analogue license won't cover it...
(In the uk at least, if you wish to broadcast music, there are controls on how many tracks from one album / label etc you can broadcast in a set period of time. )
great idea if it's legal though.
Is a Kazaa client capable of handling analog files. :)
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
It's basically a free version of Launch. Which is all very well but does it really take MIT to think this up. First time I used Launch I thought "wouldn't it be cool if this was free".
----
Part of the legal power that is being exerted is the very fact that its NOT analog signals..
The DMCA power that is being tossed around as a large stick applies only to digital format.
Since they are moving the audio do digital format, they potentially are asking for trouble.
Plus AFAIK a license to broadcast analog doesn't automatically give you a license to broadcast digital ( it makes sense that you should be able too, but when does law have to make sense? )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Its funny that some of the most noticeable things that come out of MIT are new ways to pirate software, movies and music. Like there aren't enough sources for them to find there Britney Spears albums already. This will be outlawed very quickly as it will soon be used as just another way to pirate copyrighted files. Also I am dissapointed that they took a step back and went back to analog instead of working on newer existing technologies.
They will still have to pay royalties on it, much in the way radio stations and web casters do. Remember the big fight last year over this? I'm sure they will try to argue that it is actually a webcast reguardless of the fact if it is analog or digital. Once they do that then they will have to pay per song played and that will stop it dead in it's tracks. If they do manage to convince the authorities it's more like on demand cable I'm sure their is or soon will be reg's that mandate royalties as well. Private networks are the way to swap music, throw a lan party, set up a wireless, or even run cable down the hall. When all else fails get yourself a portable or a hand full of DVD-RW's/CD-RW's and walk it over to a friends house. There are plenty of ways of sharing data that RIAA can't track/stop.
What is stopping the students on campus from contributing their "CD's" in mp3 form to LAMP? If they could do this and bump up the channels then this would be exactly the same as p2p file sharing, the only difference is that its analog and the "offending" files arent on your computer. These students are doing the exact same thing as all the people the RIAA calls "theifs," only MIT is doing it in analog. Its stealing in digital but it's a PHD thesis in analog. How stupid are these laws?
If I wanted easy I wouldnt be an engineer or a patriot.
This is incredibly exciting. If this makes it, I can just format my music drive, and have all of that space free to use again. To me it's not about "having" all of the music I could ever want. I just want to be able to LISTEN to whatever music I want whenever I want. If that can be streamed to me, then FANTASTIC. I want on demand everything, and this is a good start.
it's ALL about sharing/motives/intentions/behaviours. the daze of felonious greed/fear/ego based corepirate nazIE hoarding, is WANing into coolapps/the abyss.
those who have ignored/defied the caring/sharing mandate, best get ready to see the light.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator... that's the spirit.
Awesome! Now all I need is that ellusive TiVo -> iPod software and cable bundle.
Ballmer: Windows is more secure than open source code
From the article, for those who read all the way: "Mr. Winstein said he once received an e-mail message from a fellow student complimenting him on his choice of music (Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 8) and telling him "I'd like to get to know you better." She signed the note, "Sex depraved freshman."" This is a freshman girl at MIT... who is looking for loving... wants to get to know a gangly CS grad student... I AM STUPIFIED. Know what this means? This clinches it. The only reason we nerds are not getting any is because we're not looking for it. We're looking up net porn and wondering why we don't have girlfriends, while this girl's crying in her room about why we're not asking her out. Get out of your rooms and face the sun, gentlemen! Take a stand! Make this the day that college dorks around the world get girlfriends! WHO'S WITH ME?!
--Leo
no moretoll 'man' can win this daze? how lyrical?
Hi, have you been to college? Many, many, many colleges around the US that are too small to afford an FCC license and/or transmission equipment for a radio station broadcast over cable today. They have all the media in one place, you schedule blocks to DJ with training for the equipment, and users turn on their TV to listen. MIT *already has* pays royalties to do this. The absolute only thing different between this and a small college station is that they've automated the process so that you can do it from home, and thus don't need training for the board. Seriously, this isn't something that the RIAA doesn't know about, it's just a "Hm, cool." addition to an existing, approved system.
According to your (Score:4, Insightful), no, you are not the only one, but you are incorrect anyway ;-). What if we were talking about FM radio here?
Reread the original post with FM radio in mind, and then tell me the RIAA will have lawyers drafting notes to have all FM radio stations shutdown because of the comments of people that say they are recording songs from FM...
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Here and here.
/. mods should try news.google.com and save our souls from the NY Times registration database. The same goes for you submitters. It takes a couple of seconds and would save /. readers some time.
You
relies on the more relaxed copyright restrictions on analog transmission formats like cable.
Just watch your ethernet cabling with an oscilloscope while pumping mp3's over the net.
Looks like analog signals to me.
After loosing a good chunk of rights, privacy, my music collection ... common, anything But the tv!
It would be nice if we could get this at the other end of Cambridge... Wait, Harvard doesn't even have the dorms wired for Cable TV yet! Damn you MIT, one day we'll show you! *shakes fist*
(the term "bright lining" means doing some activity with a full knowledge of where the law or regulation is and doing something right up to this regulation, this living up to the letter of the law, though, the implication is, not the spirit.)
Copyright is a socially constructed concept. Basically, copyrightholders are entitled to a monopoly of sorts for a limited time on their work. most people agree that the primary reason for this is to encourage more creation of works.
When people talk in terms of "it's legally okay to copy a song from the radio" or "it's legally okay to copy three pages, but not the whole book", then they are basically referring to PRAGMATIC copyright interpreations and rulings based on past technological and social circumstance. as technology and social circumstance change, it may become necessary to change (usually tighten) what is allowed in order to best preserve the spirit and intention of copyright, which, again, is to encourage authors.
here's a really obvious sign of when the spirit of copyright is broken--i call it the "extrapolation" argument. basically, somebody takes an existing interpretation and tries to "scale it up":
- sharing music with your kid sister is ok, so sharing music with everybody's kid sister is (Napster)
- photocopying one page is ok, so let's set up a distributed system via amazon's new full-text thing by which everybody downloads one page and somehow they are combined again (slashdot/amazon)
- MIT has a blanket license for analog music / copying music from existing analog sources of music is ok (radio - unscheduled recordings, includes ads, not complete songs), so let's play a clever trick by which people can get whatever they want in a high quality, but analog format (MIT)
All three of these will work, in the short term. And all three will generate stricter interpretations and a clamp-down, because they are so clearly against the spirit of the socially beneficial copyright law (oh, shut up already, completely-anti-copyright anarcho-libertarians - go and do a little historical research about every attempt to do away with copyrights and patents completely). The end result of this will be stricted interpretations and more bitching and whining on slashdot. What is the root cause of this? The evil RIAA and MPAA? Yes, they occasionally go overboard (the mickey mouse extension act is pretty egregious), but generally they are in the right.The root cause is those who think that they're being clever by bright-lining copyright interpretations without realizing that they are interpretations that are subject to reasonable modification as circumstances warrant, not god-given cast-in-stone truths. or, in other words, more technological sense than social understanding.
Disagree? reply, not mod down.
"We have measured total signal-to-noise ratio, on a cheap television, at approximately 45 dB, or between 7 and 8 bits of resolution"
Hmm. I love 8 bit mods, but I doubt this system sounds too hot. It also sounded like it was mono at this point. If that was the case, I'd say the students at MIT would be better off just downloading stuff that is high quality and freely available without restrictions. There's plenty of it.
On the other hand, I check Kazaa the other day and I noticed that there's still about four million users. Maybe they rigged up the counter.
Big difference between the two. You post would imply a lonely girl crying in her room... a "sexually DEPRIVED" girl.
Sexually "Depraved" implies something very different (though not necessarily bad...)
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Anybody remember this?
Soon they'll come up with a way to share music wirelessly. Some day, every living room and automobile will come with a "receiver" for this amazing new technology. Thousands of music broadcasters, calling themselves "stations" will broadcast music freely over the airwaves. "Free Music for All!"
Of course, if you want digital quality, that will still cost you $10 per month.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I'm still at a loss - how is lossy analog via FM radio or television still any different than lossy digital music, such as MP3s? Is it simply an issue of availability that makes MP3s so detestable by the MPAA?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
l337 m4d pr0p5 to Bill Gates!!
Hmmm... just doesn't quite roll off the tongue like I thought it would...
Uh, never mind.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
This is precisely how it is different from an FM broadcast. This is the provision that the copyright lawyers will go after.
So Microsoft sponsored LAMP?!
But LAMP is Linux Apache Mysql {Perl, Python, Php}
eg http://www.onlamp.com/
Well, the title says it all. Go there! IUMA.com
The music industry will change to meet the technological realities of today.
Just because business structures worked in the past does not make the structure inherently 'good' and does not imply any right for them to exist in the same form in the future.
Existing companies will innovate or be driven out of business by upstarts.
Imagine the producers of horse-drawn buggies complaining about the damage done to their business by this new automobile technology!
I call it simply 16 college radio stations! I guess they wouldn't have made the NYT unless they came up with some imaginery barely-legal hook for their very "innovative" idea...
Of course it is legal, there is no law stopping radio/TV stations allowing anyone they choose to pick what to play and this is no different.
Actually, it's
NetBSD, AOLServer, PostgreSQL (NAP)
Thanks for being so polite in pointing out that I mis-read one point in the summary.
..
..
I read it as they were broadcasting *digital* audio over their existing analog cable TV network and based my comment off that.
Are you always this fucking rude to people?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
SURE, mod me down for calling a spade a spade. Justify and rationalize your actions all you want, you filthy pack of thieves. Keep stealing food out of the mouth's of artists and their families, you vermin scumbags.
If they aren't collaborating with a law school to make this a more multi-dimensional project then this doesn't really strike me as a great idea.
The FCC has mandated that all commercial and non-commercial stations are to be "digital" under a system known as "In Band On Channel (IBOC)" (which has undergone several name changes since first mandated).
Since all radio stations are now licensed for analog broadcast of MPAA materials under ASCAP/BMI/SESAC (the major artist licensing groups that make up MPAA, along with the recording industry itself), does this not mean that all stations will now have to apply for and pay to get license/permission to play materials in digital formats?
This could wipe out a lot of small stations, both commercial and non-commercial, and allow the megacorps like Clear Channel to control all such media, and essentially censor by exclusion any music that they deem to be "unfriendly".
---
"Eustace? Eustace? Are you there? Are you there?" = John Leeming
I don't think anyone here cares if they steal or not. They are all rich rock stars anyway, if they only make $1 million this year instead of $2 million they can go fuck themselves. I program open source for a living and I DON'T GET PAID, therefore no one else should. Don't worry, I won't be starving, my mom buys me all the food I want (I live in her basement)
Brilliant. This is why a system of laws that was supposed to enlarge the public domain with excellent works now serves the intersts of the worlds large publishers. We have gone from 28 year copyrights to perpetual copyrights in less than 100 years. If you think things are right, you are a slave and will take any old shit shoveled your way.
The result is that big publishers have all the power. They don't have pay artists, authors, scientists or anyone. That's because they control the channels of distribution and can force any old junk they feel like. Is it reasonable to you that 30 year old music dominates the airwaves of this country? Is it reasonable to you that scientist do all the editorial work for magazines without compensation and then pay to have their work published? Is it reasonable to you that those scientific publications are so expensive that even major universities can't aford them? The extrapolation to digital media is even worse.
The students at MIT can share 3,500 RIAA records, great fucking big deal. They are shafted because the world is much larger than those few songs or even the RIAA. Good luck trying to get original work onto that network, it's not going to happen. The students of MIT will only get more RIAA dog food out of this new network.
What you don't get is that the whole basis of copyright law is broken. When the founding fathers of this country made 14 year copyrights, they did so because publishing was expensive and they felt it needed to be encouraged in the vast wilderness that was the US at the time. These conditions are obviously untrue today. Publishing is cheap and the protections needed are proportionatly lower. The public domain can and will grow better if copyright law is scrapped alltogether.
It's over already, really. Scientists have gone out of their way to publish their own peer reviewed journals because it's cheaper to them. Others will follow and leave the RIAA and other rapists like that in the same dustbin that Edison's Phonograph patents are sitting.
The God given truth is that information sharing is good and moraly correct. Things that get in the way are evil. Greed heads like the RIAA are a particularly evil bunch of pimps.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What they will do is make is suck like other comercial broadcasts. They do this so they can shovel a small selection songs they wish to sell at you. Once they have it under control, they will leave it alone, but the loss of control will not be tollerated.
Back to work, slaves!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's like saying "You're not allowed to walk into this high security area, but if you LIMBO in we can't do anything about it."
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
We have made these incredible advances in technology, and we decide to go back to *analog*?? You know what I mean, 1 step forward, 2 steps backward, kind of thing. It's almost like having a monopoly decide for us that THEIR OS is the best one,so YOU'LL have to stick to that, to H*LL with all other technology.
MIT in bed with the RIAA. OK, here's the trail. AOL/Time Warner--->RIAA---->WTBS(MIT)---->WTBS(Ted Turner)--->AOL/Time Warner--->MIT(Walker Memorial)---->ASCAP--->RIAA--->AOL/Time Warner.
The Media Has Paid off MIT! Think about it. huh. (lol) Now I am ready to accept my -1 Mod fate.The thing about Napster that made it cool was that it allowed you to respond to any musical impulse that you felt. Someone could walk in the room and make a crack about your cheap sunglasses, and 60 seconds later you could be playing the corresponding ZZ Top song. The LAMP project does not come close to providing this, it is really just a college radio station that happens to be very responsive to listenter requests.
They won't have problems with the RIAA because the service really is not equivalent.
"You mean, I just have to ASK for it?!?!" ...or something along those lines...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
(the term "bright lining" means doing some activity with a full knowledge of where the law or regulation is and doing something right up to this regulation, this living up to the letter of the law, though, the implication is, not the spirit.)
Copyright is a socially constructed concept. Basically, copyrightholders are entitled to a monopoly of sorts for a limited time on their work. most people agree that the primary reason for this is to encourage more creation of works.
Using your very logic, it seems that anything over, say, 28 years old can and should be rightfully put in the public domain. The very laws that extend copyright are, in fact, the "bright lines" that you mention.
Drop me a line if you want a temporary login to try the system out...
DaC
As someone who has used LAMP several times, I can assure you that it's not a filesharing network (Though MIT is in the process of creating a carefully monitored Legal network). Yes, one could, theoretically, convert the stuff coming down the cable line back into digital, but the quality really wouldn't be worth it. It really has FAR more in common with a request based radio station than any kind of sharing network.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Here's the registration-required link, shamefully omitted from the original post. (For all you anti-privacy zealots)
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
In case anyone else wants to read some of the other coverage....
At least with this sort of system it stands a chance against courts and the RIAA. They can prove that they have all the music legally purchased, and potentially argue that the streaming they're doing is nothing more than playing music at a party.
If I've got a party with 150 people at it, I'm not required to pay royalties.
You need a life and a reality check. With out capitalism, people would be a hell of allot more lazy. With out patents the computer in front of you would have never been invented. Stealing is never right, you can justify anything out of envy or jelosy.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
I don't really see what the big idea is with the MIT LAMP system. The N Y Times is touting it as a new creative music 'on demand' system that has the potential to curb the rampant p2p campus file-sharing that has cause numerous legal and bandwidth issues. The central problem with this characterization is that it is largely hype. The system is only marginally more 'on demand' than regular radio. It broadcasts 16 universally accessible channels much in the way that satellite radio works today. The only advantage is that you get to see the playlist ahead of time and perchance reserve time in the near/far future to become a DJ on one of the stations. The so called 'on demand' feature entails being thrown in a queue of students/faculty so as to be able to listen to a specific album at an unspecified time. Other than price it would seem that this system has no advantage over internet 'streamers' (such as rhapsody, e-music, and music-match) which allow you to choose from either 100s of thousands of albums or artists for instantaneous listening all for a small monthly/yearly fee. IMHO, what made file-sharing so popular was not only the free access to a huge selection of music but the near instant gratification one enjoyed as a result of high speed networks. The internet streamers allow all this with the caveat of a nominal fee. The MIT LAMP system, however, denies the desire of music consumers to access what they want when they want it. As a result this system will do little if anything to ultimately curb either the number and volume of files being shared or the concomitant lawsuits generated by the RIAA
The internet and related technologies are MASSIVE enablers of self-publishing on a level never seen before. Want to reach potentially billions of listeners? you can do it from your bedroom with zero third party support-...the intermediaries survive. how can this be?
That's easy, your first statement is not true. The intermediaries are buying ISPs so that you can't really publish from your bedroom. My ISP, like many others, has a "no servers" clause despite a glut of bandwith. It's not a conspiracy, it's simple anti competitive practices . When the big dumb publishers get finished screwing up the internet we know, someone will make a new one.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ah yes, that's what idiots like you keep telling me, but you have it backward. If the point of copyright it to encourage publication, the cheaper publication is the less encouragement it needs and the weaker copyright law can be. Get it yet? If the internet had existed in 1776 the US would have no copyright laws at all.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Let me get this straight: we already have numerous P2P networks through which people can freely share digital media. These guys have created a system that distributes ANALOG versions of digital songs; only distributes data deigned appropriate by a central authority; only distributes locally, not worldwide; only allows users to hear the music from their TV, and not move it elsewhere.
And this is supposed to be a good thing?
No wonder Microsoft is funding the research... creating "innovations" that make people's lives worse instead of better seems to be their specialty.
The only "benefit" I can see from the MIT system over P2P file sharing is that the MIT system allows the RIAA executives to continue to harvest extreme wealth from the creativity of underpaid artists and the greed of contribution-hungry politician.
Instead of creating technical kludges that make our lives worse instead of better, would it not be better to junk the DMCA and other obsolete copyright laws bought and paid for by the RIAA and friends?
Weed has a different view on Internet file-sharing. .
Instead of trying to shut down file-sharing, we think people should be paid for it. It's great. It makes sense.
http://weedshare.com/
Now the RIAA will go after cable providers. This is another huge move in the right direction! NOT.
Moving things around is not going to hinder the massively funded music and movie industries. If anything this will close the noose that much tighter around our technology creativity and what is viewed as fair use.
I would expect more and REAL projects from MIT.
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
see: http://www.minidisc.org/keep/thompson.html
Britney Spears: "I went to London last week and it's so cool there. I'm thinking of moving there. It's really beautiful. I love it there."
Our gain and the U.K.'s loss! Yipeeee!!
their "project" is basically icecast with a netjuke front end? Very original!
Look at my karma - I'm bad, just like Michael Jackson!
Mr. Winstein said that the equipment cost about $10,000, and the music, which was bought through a company that provides music on hard drives for the radio industry, for about $25,000.
Nice job, NY Times.
I know you were joking, but I want my Karma, so I'm going to reiterate your post in a serious tone.
the Dvorak's Symphony No. 8 first?
Me, I would rather looking up net porn.
Your right stealing is wrong. Copyright infringment is not stealing of course, so your comments are in no way related to this article or discussion. Please stay ontopic.
you should become a riaa investigator, there is a definite future cause you would have to prosecute 60 millions criminals!
please
Basically this is the same thing that exists on almost every single digital cable system today, the only difference is that it's owned and run by the school, they chose albums they thought the students wanted, and you can briefly control it at times. Essentially all they're doing is mixing a campus radio station with digital cable music systems.
Of course, this won't do a damn thing about piracy. I have very little choice in what to listen to, I must rely entirely on what they chose, I need a tv and cable (not certain if that's standard for students or not) when more students are likely to have a computer than a tv, and I sure as hell can't put it on my iPod and listen to on my way to class.
All they've really done is make a newer, more user-controlled campus radio station. Sure, 10 points for improving slightly on an old idea (at least, for some) but absolutely zero for doing anything about kids who can't be bothered to respect people's intellectual property rights.
ok, fair enough, but tell my why should I pay for Jimmy Hendrix music when the guy is long since dead, or contribute toward Beatles royalties when 2 out of the 4 guys in the band are dead, and all the royalties don't even go to Apple Records anymore anyway.