Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Develops Centralized File-Sharing System
pearljam145 writes "A new file-sharing standard designed to distribute copyrighted music and movies legitimately has been developed by a technology consortium. The system could deliver any content format to any computer, and users might even earn rewards points for sharing the files. Using the new standard, computer users could share small files containing information about music, video or other data, but not the content itself. The Content Reference Forum (CRF), founded by Universal Music Group backed by technology companies including Microsoft, is hoping the sharing file standard will be adopted by technology companies and incorporated into software music players."
What's the point of this if I can't actually share the content itself? Why would I want to share a description only?
They want me to host the files that will link to their servers and get them paid! This is nothing more than a distributed bandwidth reduction process. In return you get these imaginary points with no cash value. This isn't file sharing people, this is bandwidth redistribution.
I basically end up hosting 'links' on my computer that point to a pay-as-you-go service.
Essentially, I offer spam on my file sharing connection to other users.
Because each file has meta-information about myself, perhaps I can earn 'bonus points' and get free credit to download the latest Britney Spears single.
A simpler model of this system would be "we'll pay your for legitimate e-mail addreesses of your friends to whom we can send corporate spam."
The article is light on details, but as a business model I think this is one of the worst I've read about in months. The value proposition is so low I can't see anyone participating in this.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
once again, they clearly demonstrate their non-grasp of the file sharing concept, and for this target market's desires and needs.
*Bzzzt* Sorry, try again please.
How about a closed P2P network that you pay a monthly fee to access via secure clients, and that network would have actual files that you could download? Nah... too simple. *rolls eyes*
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
The real story was written by Will Knight of the New Scientist news service, for the record.
Come on now... Or was this just an amazing use of plagerism to illustrate the point in a story about fair use rights and legal music sharing (note that quoting verbatim half the story without attribution is not fair-use, at least not in the US)?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
It really just looks like they've found a way that they think will work to reduce their advertising costs.
This does not address in any way the real problems of the music industry, the copyright issues and the like, but has been hyped recently as exactly that - probably to distract the public attention from those issues.
If you RTFA, you'll see it's not about content sharing it's about advertising sharing. Users can share information about the content, but not the content itself. This is a non-event.
Imagine your ultimate stereo system. Don't be bashful - if it's really the ultimate, it should include a music library containing every piece of music ever recorded, and a program which can use your past music preferences to suggest new pieces of music for you to listen to. It would be an incredibly mind-expanding device, and one which is technologically not far off - but the introduction of the personal music library will likely be delayed by a decade or more because of copyright problems.
Electronic magazines; special interest news programs which are compilations of the most interesting articles from diverse sources; computer program libraries so programmers don't have to reinvent the wheel; information devices such as an encyclopedia you can wear as a pair of earrings - all of these things would be made much easier and less expensive by the elimination of copyright.
If we abolish copyright, it will be much harder for authors and performing artists to get paid. Absolutely true. Some will say this is a fatal objection. I disagree strongly.
Sometimes changes in technology lead to changes in the economy. The invention of the steam shovel put a lot of ditch-diggers out of work. And the advent of the information age is going to make it impossible for authors to retain strict control over the distribution of their work. Should we then pass laws to try to allow authors to regain that control? Absolutely not. If the authors find life more difficult in the information age, that's the way the cookie crumbles.
As it turns out, though, the information age contains more benefit than harm for authors. The process of getting published becomes as easy as pressing the 'return' key, and anyone can participate. The result will be to make the authorship process much less elitist.
We still have a challenge: how can we arrange for authors and artists to get paid? I agree that it's a challenge, but I think we're up to it. They could:
- get grants;
- hold an academic position where reputation counts;
- give live performances;
- market their recordings themselves;
- publish 'shareware';
- produce a new work and charge a publisher a moderate up-front fee for being the first on the market with the work;
- embed advertising in their work and distribute it widely for free.
We can also design alternative institutions to support artists - for instance:
- A 'book of the month club' which pays artists to contribute their work. True, without copyright you can't arrest freeloaders, but if the service is worth a lot and only costs a little, people will join it.
- People are willing to pay a little money to feel good. An on-line entertainment service which pays authors a small royalty and brags about it may be more profitable than one which doesn't.
But even if it becomes harder for authors to make money (and I'm not convinced that will be the case), the benefits to information consumers far outweigh the costs. And really, there's no other choice. The maintenance of copyright laws is just a finger in the dike. People familiar with computer technology understand that, in the computer world, "bits are bits." A piece of music, a book, a picture, a computer program - they're all just information, and the only technological way to prevent my copying any of them is to outlaw computers altogether.
After reading the article, this appears to be nothing more than some kind of perverted searching application. Basically a user will search for content and see links that the user can then select to download the material after paying for it. They should save the trouble and simply pay Google to incorporate this into their search engine.
There needs to be some element of the music that can be sampled or shared -- and I mean for every single track on the system. The whole reason people have to share music illegally is because it's impossible to sample every track on an album without buying the album first. People are wise to the fact that a lot of the time, albums have one or two good songs, and no one's dumb enough to go out and buy an album like that without sampling it first. For this system to work, you need to be able to sample any and all tracks that you want, and to share those samples with everyone, and then get kickbacks if those shares are turned into sales... like an affiliate program.
wow, my brain is working today!
stuff |
I guess I don't get it. There has to be some value to the metadata in these files over and above what you can get from freedb (currently about 250MB compressed with about 1.1M CDs cataloged).
Otherwise, why would people want to host and share this information? Maybe they are going to give away the lyrics for free? Song snippets? Music video snippets? Somebody who has bothered to RTFA, please give us a clue!
-Rick
Apple has demonstrated that when you give people the choice to buy music in the form they want, and at a reasonable way, people will buy. There are no gimmicks in their offering, and you simply pay for what you want.
Today, when I walk into a record store and look at the prices of CDs, I usually end up not buying anything at all, not because I cannot afford them, but because I do not think I am getting value for my money. 18 dollar CDs with 2 or 3 songs that I really want, is not a good deal in my book.
I wonder if they'll ever figure it out ... sigh
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
if they had thought of this before they started prosecuting everyone in sight, then it would probably have worked a whole lot better
this is not content they are talking about putting on this sharing network. it is advertising - don't get the two confused!
the last ten years have seen the entertainment industry working very hard to blur the line between content and ads. people regard movie trailers as content, some in the movie industry are starting to regard the movies themselves as advertising (for merchandise like action figures and lunch boxes, which is where the big money is).
2 1337 4 u!
What did you expect? That's not what their expertise is in. For /decades!/ they needed only to rule the market with an unyielding fist of lawyers and kickbacks, and they could sit back and watch the cheques roll in.
Now the're sitting up from their ten thousand dollar leather bound board room chairs in a panic asking "Who is this 'cus-to-morr' person?!"
It's no surprise at all they have absolutely no understanding of our needs.
I can safely say that regardless of price (including free)or method of delivery, I'm not buying anything from Brittney Spears, 50 cent, Creed, or whatever "superstar" they have this week. Its not my music. And that is the fundamental flaw in their piracy argument: They are assuming that if it wasn't for file sharing I'd be buying this crap. Personally I stopped buying CDs in any real quantity in the mid-nineties - well before napster. I'm not going to start again anytime soon. Its still not my music.
iTunes and Napster 2.0 aside, I can understand why it's so difficult for the record industry to develop a truly unique offering that we would be willing to pay for: We can't even think of one and we are the target audience. There are still compromises in those services which we would love to do without (like proprietary file formats) and the selection needs to be significantly larger.
Perhaps, instead of trying to build a new service using existing content, we should build a new service for musicians and writers where they can post new works not belonging to a publisher and get paid by a subscription fee. If the content was worthy, people would pay. Eventually, it could become the method of choice for emerging artists, thus cutting off the record industry's supply. Or we can just keep downloading illegally...
--KS--A musician friend of mine once summed it up as "All the record industry is good for now is creating rock stars. And who needs more rock stars?"
Nowhere in my post did I mention any justification for file sharing, and btw, I dont (and never have) done it.
What I am saying is that suing 14 and 15 year olds is not going to solve the problem, do you think it is? File sharing is wrong period; but price gouging by record labels is only making things worse.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
If you read through the veil of marketting mumbo-jumbo, you can see what this really is. Basically, they are going to have a system like iTunes. You buy a song and have the rights to it. Now by using this CRF file, they are letting people think it's P2P [but not]. Secondly, this in the end helps out the music industry, without much benefit to the users.
To the music industry this idea has 2 functions. First it helps spread the word on particular music. [ie FREE ADVERTISING] It's viral marketting all over again. Secondly, it helps them reduce cost. Instead of building a search engine and maintaining the bandwidth to support the users similar to iTunes, they can piggy back off of other P2P systems and use the bandwidth of the users.
What they save in technical costs they pass a part of it back to the users through these "rewards."
In the end..this is just smoke and mirrors... Instead of all these gimmicks, why don't they just start moving towards the iTunes concept instead of fighting all the way. They are going to end up there eventually...it's time that they face the facts...
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
I don't know if they realized the god connection, but they certainly do see themselves in a superior position handing content "down" to us mere consumers.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Essentially this is merely a new way to distribute banner ads, with possible discount points for spamming your friends. The freely downloadable files are merely promos with BUY buttons.
Strangely, the article does not mention at all that the content itself will be pay downloads. Who wrote this, the RIAA? Not that it's wrong to pay for something, but the article makes it sound like the industry is giving something away, which they definitely aren't.