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"."

Comments

God help them!

[jkrise]

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?

-

Scratch ?

[mirko]

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 ?

Microsoft Funded

[Davak]

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

Re:Microsoft Funded

[kaiidth]

Microsoft are funding a bunch of campus style software and such. iCampus is one example of this, a large MIT research thingy, which covers funding for all sorts of projects (I seem to recall there being, for example, a student shuttle-bus which reports its location via gps to the web...). It's actually fairly fragmented; like most large lumps of university money it has been taken up by people as and when rather than as part of a Grand Plan.

Well, no matter how it appears, certainly if you ask MS or MIT they will tell you there is a grand plan - for sure. But relax, Microsoft have been throwing funding at universities for 'wired campus' style projects on a regular basis as far as I know, and as yet it has met with limited success from their perspective. They would love to own the education market, of course. They just haven't got a decent grip on it yet, and not for lack of trying.

You have to realise that research and industrial funding is an uneasy alliance at best. Good researchers attract funding whilst controlling the conditions under which it is given; bad researchers accept funding that comes with strings. In this case, MIT are, I suspect, in the driver's seat. This makes them relatively unusual; many researchers are rather naive and, on receipt of a few flattering comments and hints of 'long term collaborations', 'special relationships' or similar, will immediately go for it no matter what the conditions. Some even believe that they are the ones doing the 'using'. Having worked for one of these types, I can assure you that these researchers are wrong (do I sound disillusioned? Oh well).

It's worth keeping your eyes open, anyway; if you see anything using tablet PCs, MS DRM, heavy use of .NET, and 'Learning through [demonstration/play]' with [insert microsoft technologies], then you can more or less assume that the researcher is a Microsoft prostitute of some kind. But this particular project seems too 'free' to be particularly blessed by MS.

Don't know if that helps.

MIT likes Britney

[kyoko21]

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!

Way to go. Not.

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

Re:Way to go. Not.

[WIAKywbfatw]

Exactly. But it's a legal alternative to the traditional buy-a-CD-of-twelve-songs-even-though-you-might-onl y-like-two-of-them model. I wasn't suggesting that it was independent of RIAA, only that it was one of the many legal alternatives that challenges RIAA's status quo.

If in twelve months time, 10, 15 or even 20 percent (to use arbitrary figures off the top of my head) of the music being bought by 10-25 year-olds is through online buy-just-what-you-want stores, then that'll be a very big wake-up call to RIAA and the major labels.

In that scenario (which most probably happen eventually), the big boys will have to re-evaluate how they package, present and sell music on a wider scale. Right now, they probably look at iTunes as in interesting exercise, just as IBM once looked at PC clones in the same way. But sooner or later, just like IBM and those clones, RIAA et al will have to embrace a future that's not entirely of their making.

And the less involvement that RIAA has in the music industry of the future, the better for us all, regardless of where we live and/or our musical tastes.

Analog file sharing.

[yoder]

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.

Analogue vs Digital

[rbbs]

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.

Hell's frozen over, folks.

[gertsenl]

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?!

Re:Hell's frozen over, folks.

[illumin8]

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 listened to this story on NPR this morning, and when they asked the guy what type of music he liked, he said... (drumroll please) he was a big fan of show tunes. I think I can safely say that he probably isn't interested in some sexually deprived (or depraved for that matter) freshman girl. He's probably more interested in her brother.

Re:That's all nice and well

[Oscillatory]

Don't radio stations have all sorts of restrictions on how much control the users have over the playlists? IIRC, the restrictions range from: the radio station being strictly prohibited from publishing its playlist, request shows requiring at least an hour between when someone calls in a song to when they actually play it, DJs being required to talk over the beginning and end of the songs, and requring the DJ to not tell you the name of the song until after it has played.

Some of these are the kinds of restrictions that are being imposed on licensed webcasters, including e.g. webcast from a college radio station .. or at least things like can't publish a song on the playlist before it's been played, can't play an entire album, or more than three songs from the same album within 2 hours (something like that).

Broadcast radio has no such restrictions except as self-imposed by bad corporate radio .. college radio certainly doesn't require any of the above.

Why you people just dont get it.

[mumblestheclown]

Whoever came up with this idea is clever. But, he/she similarly totally misunderstands the point of copyright laws by playing "bright lining" games (as do, in my experience, many slashdot readers).

(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.

Re:Why you people just dont get it.

[thatguywhoiam]

I think you have the right idea, regarding your comments about the spirit of copyright.. but look at this particular comment from the article, I think it sheds some light:

"It's almost an act of performance art," Mr. Zittrain said. Mr. Winstein, he said, has "arrayed the gerbils under the hood so it appears to meet the statutory requirement" - and has shown how badly the system of copyright needs sensible revamping.

My interpretation of this is that the system the MIT guys have developed is supposed to demonstrate that you can build a feasible, centralized, (somewhat) random-access music distribution system within the framework of existing law. You can do this using technical slight-of-hand and the particular legal circumstances regarding analog transmissions.

When people realize that you can have this almost-Napster legally, which provides a similar service, the point is to realize that the new laws are broken. There's a huge distinction, technically, between a P2P network and this project... however to an end-user the effect is much the same - you can dial up some music, when you want, from a big selection, somewhere else. So really - what's the point in making a distinction legally between analog and digital transmission rights, if you can accomplish much the same thing with either?

Maybe I'm off-base but that's what I got out of it.

By the way, when you say:

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.

In the right legally, perhaps. Morally and logically, not so much.

Re:That's all nice and well

[tgibbs]

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

However, this may pose a political problem. RIAA's argument is that they are not trying to retract existing privileges, such as recording music off the radio. Rather, they argue, the ability of digital technology to make "perfect" copies is a unique threat that must be combatted with restrictions specifically directed to the digital format. So to go after MIT, they basically have to admit that this argument is basically a load of crap, and that they are trying to impose new restrictions on what people can do with broadcast music. Of course, the reality is that nobody but a minority of audiophiles cares about "perfect" copies, and they aren't interested in trading compressed formats like mp3, anyway. The MIT initiative offers what the average student really wants--the ability to select the music they want.