Slashdot Mirror
MIT's Music Net Shut Down Over License Issues
aurum42 writes "MIT's LAMP music-over-cable initiative has been shut down due to licensing concerns, as reported on The Boston Globe. Ars Technica has a good summary of the story. It appears that Loudeye did not have the rights to sell music to MIT for distribution over cable, although they apparently assured MIT that they did in fact have those rights. Murky, unexplored legal quagmire or RIAA influenced revisionism?"
Does MIT have a case to sue Loudeye? Seems Loudeye misrepresented themselves. It may be better/easier if MIT simply works in partnership with an organization that does has a lot of agreements with the music industry already, like Apple or such. Maybe an MIT branded iTunes?
1. MIT found a way to "get around" the system using the analog hole.
2. RIAA picked holes in contracts until they could close down MIT's system.
Nothing new here. RIAA is still evil.
"How to now get free music? There are more than enough geeky MIT students to find a solution to the problem. MIT-only file sharing? Passing around burned copies of CDs? Having everyone switch to using Kazaa? All I know is that something new will show up sooner or later to replace LAMP. "
There's expressed demand here. People are saying "we want compressed music we can put on portable devices, we want individual tracks as opposed to complete albums, and we want to be charged reasonably for it." Since the RIAA isn't responding to supply and demand (Why should they? They're an oligopoly!) they won't provide these. The result? The people find their own way to get what they want. This didn't happen overnight. It started way back in 96-97. It really din't become a 'let the cat out of the bag' situation until Napster was sued. Oops RIAA, good job.
The RIAA really fouled up here. They forced people to solve their own distribution problems, and now they have to face the very real possibility that their customers are so independent delivery-wise that the RIAA is not as necessary for an artist to become popular.
Double oops, RIAA.
There are quite a few people here that think this whole music thing is about getting music for free. There are bound to be cases where it is true, but in the vast majority of cases it's not even close to being the only factor. Once the RIAA figures this out, assuming it's not too late, they'll be able to provide the services these people want instead of butting heads with places like MIT.
Hey RIAA, how about fulfilling consumer demand? Ya make more money that way than with lawsuits.
"Derp de derp."
Anybody?
I for one would be grateful if places with clout, like MIT, would spend their resources advocating for better policy rather than engaging in legal contortions. If MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Yale, NYU, etc. threw *serious* support behind good policy (like the Eldred act, IMHO), the RIAA would find it much harder to have their way with congress. Admittedly, uniting these institutions of intellectual debate is much easier said than done, but they are uniquely equipped to put forth balanced proposals that address a broader social agenda than would ever emerge from an industry lobby. We could really use someone with the clout, resources, intelligence and neutrality of MIT to help write (and right) the rules of the game that are fair to *all* the stakeholders, not just the RIAA.
What we are finding is that leaving the fox (the RIAA) to guard the hen-house (IP policy) is great for the fox and bad for everyone else.
I don't know, I'm here at MIT, and the response to both the inception of LAMP and its destruction was extremely apathetic. A whole bunch of people I know used it once for the novelty ("Hey, that's kinda cool.") and went back to their machines in their rooms and played _their_ music. It was frustrating; I think there were 16 channels? It was more like an all request radio station than an MP3 player, so you had to listen to everyone else's crappy music, too.
I can't say much about us taking it personally; I live on West Campus and we're, sterotypically, the more "normal" kids on campus. I can't speak for the kids on East who are more MIT stereotypical (who are the types of kids typically behind these types of engineering projects), but I don't think many people care about this whole thing.
I guess after a while the novelty of all the nerdy things starts to dwindle. Sure, it sounds cool that people were able to "outsmart" the RIAA, but, when it comes down to sheer usability, it didn't score very high marks.