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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."
...can be downloaded right here in a zipped PDF. There's an XML Schema on the last page of the "Core Specification 1.0".
The Army reading list
its called usenet. and people share huge files there anyway. if this catches on little jimmy is going to be learning about tar archives pretty quickly.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
so... this program will help me correctly fill in the ID3 tags of all my MP3's? Thanks :)
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
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?"
Ontday alktay about usenetbay!
Haven't we learned that centralized file sharing isn't a good idea? This'll get shut down by the music industry in no tim-- oh, never mind.
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.
It's way too late for these industries to be asking us to trust them at all. For the bulk of us, I'm sure that trust is gone for good.
This won't really do much to protect content. I think it'll be just like all other protection schemes -- subject to transcoding into a format that can be used (and shared) by anything.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Points are given out based on how many people you can get suckered into paying to download a license for these files. Payments for getting friends and family to spend money on a third party product, how long until you get more points for getting them to also become a distributor. Tis nothing more than a pyramid marketing scheme. Pyramid schemes were once known for things like filter queen and herbalife. Perhaps we should call this marketing program "needalife"?
If they were being honest about they could just market to the masses with commercials and have honest downloads like itunes or the like. Instead they are trying to get the masses to go astroturfing on their behalf. Expose this for the lie that it is.
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
You know what's really SO great about this proposed file sharing system?
What's so great is that it doesn't actually allow you share anything. OH . . . MY . . . GOD! SIGN ME UP!!!
Now i can make "metadatas" that say things like "Britney Speerz r0XX0rZ! sHe 0wnz j00! loolollllol!!1!!11! omgroflbrb!!111!!!1" and . . . and . . . OMG! i can SHARE these with all my friends!!!
and then, presumably, because they had that metadata, they would now have the permissions necessary to purchase her music from some online music store without getting to listen to it first! Man! I WISH that wal-mart worked that way, but they'll let just ANYBODY come in and buy music without listening to it first, or, or, they try to make you preview it on those nasty headphone things? ew?
And they don't even give you POINTS for it.
God, i love points. One time, i got like, a millions points on pac-man, and i almost creamed my shorts.
iTunes is so dead.
** Chigusaaa!!! You're the coolest girl in the WORLD!!! **
1. Take well known slashdot joke, screw up formatting
2. Get modded to +5, funny
3. ???
4. Profit!!
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
It suddenly occured to me to wonder what would happen if you actually put out a bad review about something. Do I really believe that these guys will assist in moving such negative information around? Somehow I doubt it.
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?"