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Obtaining Legal MP3s Outside of the U.S.?
frankkubiak asks: "I recently bought the new iPod with 40GB. I understand the arguments of the record industry, that I should buy the music I want to hear. Alright. So I don't want to get MP3 files by file-sharing. But here is my problem: I live outside the U.S., in Germany to be exact. iTunes only offers service to those inside the U.S. (see this related Slashdot article). I don't want a CD, vinyl record, tape or minidisc. I simply want to listen to the music. Even if I decide to buy a legacy audio CD, it is often copy-protected and won't load in my PC. So, strictly speaking, it is not even an audio-CD. Heise keeps a database of those un-CDs (German language. English speakers can use this fish-translated page). It sounds incredible, but even after hours of research on the web, I don't see a legal way to use this device with new songs. The only way I see to use this device is to buy a CD, and if I can't rip it, I'll have to [break the law and] download the MP3-file via file-sharing. I believe there are more people like me out there who want to listen to their music, without feeling guilty. Why is there no one meeting this demand? How does Slashdot feel about this?" Before you mention Napster, let's note that it has similar restrictions (see the "International Considerations" section). So where can non-U.S. internet users go to download the legal MP3s that they want?
yes
In a place like Australia, is considered stealing even if you own a copy.
The only way I see to use this device is to buy a CD, and if I can't rip it
Did they create a WORKING copy protection scheme yet? i.e. one you can't circumvent by shift key or just by using the CD under Linux???
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
You get them at http://opsound.org !
Licenced under Creative Commons licence...
The fine folks over at Allofmp3.com will sell you MP3s for a wide variety of artists. They don't seem to care what country your're in. As far as being legit, they say that they're registered with the Russian copyright authority and that they're authorized to sell what they're offering. I haven't heard about any independant verification of that, though.
muzik.agnula.org All of it is Creative Commons licensed music.
I use mp3search.ru. They have a deal with the Russian equivalent of the RIAA, so these downloads SHOULD be legal where ever you are. They tend to have the CDs we in the US pay more for because there "imports". Lots of B side selections and remixes. Downloads are around 10 cents a song.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I have yet to find a CD which protection cannot be defeated. Remember DMCA's only jurisdiction is USA (or at least it should be), so you are free to break the protection.
did u miss this article?
Some record companies have no problem with it.
Audio Luncbox also allows you to have unrestricted mp3 or aac. Enjoy!
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
The mentioned magazine c't actually has a test of like 8 or 10 legal online music stores which are accessible from within Germany in its current issue..
Crippled CDs are much more common in Europe than the US and Canada for some reason. Still, they're not all of the CDs last time I checked and they can still be ripped with a little know-how.
Warp Records entire catalog, including rare and out-of-print, and vinyl-only stuff available at Bleep.com.
Good quality VBR, and whole-song preview too.
y
Remember the little old lady that the RIAA busted? She claimed she owned all the music on CD already so it didn't matter if she downloaded all the music off the net? RIAA checked the checksums of the files vs her CDs and they were different. She was only able to use MP3s of the songs SHE RIPPED HERSELF from her CDs. You only get the right to own that particular copy of the song, not someone elses ripped copy. Silly, but true.
Indeed it is - without explicit permission from the copyright holder, we UKians do not have the right to make any copy. That includes format shifting, backups, etc.
Kinda sucks, really - I guess that 260GBP iRiver I bought is just a nice USB hard-drive with built-in mic and FM tuner, as I certainly can't buy electronic versions of the music I like (ebm, goth, etc). Hell, some of the stuff I like is hard enough to get on CD...
On the plus side, the law is effectively unenforceable - I don't know a single person who doesn't have some sort of audio device, be it cassette, mp3 player, minidisc, or whatever. I suspect that the vast majority of people in the UK have broken this particular law at some point, most likely right now.
On the minus side, that really means that, should they want to investigate you for some reason, that's another line of attack they can take. Remember, they *wanted* Al Capone because he was a gangster. They *got* him for tax evasion...
Paranoia aside, it damages the Law as a whole to have unenforced/unenforceable laws on the books. I don't see it changing any time soon, though - in fact, in light of recent events (the EU "super-DMCA"), I can only see it getting worse.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Could you use an american proxy server to make your connection appear to come from here?
x y/proxy-list/
http://www.atomintersoft.com/products/alive-pro
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Simple - allofmp3.com - they're located in Russia, where the royalty laws for downloading music work similarly to those for radio airplay in North America. Because of this, they are able to offer a HUGE selection of music without having to hammer out deals with the major labels.
How much does all this cost? How about $0.01 US/megabyte downloaded? What if I told you that the vast majority of their catalogue was available in high quality formats, that you can encode to your file format of choice (including LAME with --alt-presets, or OGG)? Would that sweeten the deal?
Frankly, I don't know why these guys havn't taken off in North America, aside from a lack of publicity. I suppose there is some fear of giving your credit card to a Russian company, but their processor is highly reputable, and they now also accept PayPal.
Here's some reviews and FAQs about their setup and its legitimacy:
http://www.techimo.com/newsapp/i9599.html
http://www.techimo.com/newsapp/i9599.html
Looks like Apple's itunes won't be available in Europe anytime soon (apparently Napster seems to want to come back in Europe though).
Fair use is a nice idea, but as a legal concept it doesn't necessarily exist.
I agree wholeheartedly that I should be allowed to rip any CD, cassette, LP, etc that I have bought to whatever format I like, in order to be able to listen to it more conveniently. Eg, I should be legally allowed to convert my entire CD collection to oggs to play on my nice, shiny new iRiver HP-120.
Unfortunately, I live in the UK, where doing so without explicit permission is copyright infringement. Oh sure, no-one is ever going to get sued for it, much less lose a court case over it, but that's not the point. I do not have explicit permission from the copyright holders to do what I have done, so I have broken the law.
Just ending up in a non-US court would guarantee nothing. Each country has its own version of the RIAA, and its own copyright laws, not all of which have any concept of fair use.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
European music and artists : independent (mp3).
ecompil : universal (wma)
a cool label
epitonic : good independent site (mp3)
This is just a selection from google
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Futhermore, most CD drives still have the headphone port in the front and an audio wire in the back that can output CD audio. That'll let you have the recording start at the exact same time as the track playback...
Actually, in the US it does make a difference what the source of the copy is, as mp3.com found out the hard way.
Here in The Netherlands, anything you download as a private person is legal; how about that for fair use? (Putting stuff up to be downloaded is a different game; that's where the dues should be paid (and they make it hard enough))
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
They're primarily a WMP9 shop, but I believe at least some of the resellers use mp3's, which should work on your ipod.
iTunes itself is coming to europe, in theory the first half of this year; but it's anyone's guess as to when they'll actually launch.
Personally speaking, I prefer to still buy CD's, as I get to choose the rip quality (high quality ogg's for my PC, 128vbr mp3 for my flash mp3 player).
I just refuse to buy the corrupt disks, and stick to the smaller labels, especially the indie's. If you do want to import (cheap) CD's, I can personally recommend CDBaby for non-label music, and cd-wow are insanely cheap for more well known artists.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
You have to have a credit card with US billing address in order to buy songs on iTunes. Proxies will not help.
Just to clarify, while mp3.com required you to have a copy of the CD you were downloading mp3s for, and while you are allowed to make copies of your CD, the court ruled that YOU are allowed to make copies of YOUR CD, but are not entitled to copies from someone elses CD.
This is why the law is so stupid.
But believe me, I have downloaded many things I own in one format or another, and feel no guilt.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
However, unlike downloading a few songs, handing out 10,000 copies would be criminal infringement under the current definition.
Studio K7 has some limited offerings in MP3 as well.
I think both sell internationally - Warp is in the UK and K7 is in Germany.
Other than looking for non-RIAA music CDs, there are sites with legally downloadable music. It's not the pop hits of the day, but sites like Epitonic.com have great music that you can download in MP3 form legally. Google can help you find lots more sites if that's not to your liking; these are just the ones I have bookmarked.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Exactly the same is currently true for Sweden, although our implementation of the EUCD (delayed, will probably go through Jan 1 2005) will "correct" that.
it's in my head
From the introduction:
In particular, you should be listening to iRATE radio. It downloads and plays those legal MP3s that the artists have on their websites, so you don't have to go hunting for them. If you've already tried out iRATE, note that version 0.3 was just released, so get the update if you don't already have it.Request your free CD of my piano music.
As on La Repubblica.it (use the fish if necessary) today, the EU Parliament approved a proposal for regulating P2P stating that acts committed in good faith by consumers - such as downloading music from Internet for personal use - won't be prosecuted. It still has to go through the EU Council, but it's a good start...
If it wasn't for SuprNova I wouldn't know about Icon of Coil, and then I wouldn't be seeing them play in London later this month with Swarf (excellent ebm industrial techno band) supporting.
... the music labels aren't missing out by me previewing the music, liking it, and then buying it when I finally see it somewhere.
So I support the bands by visiting their gigs, and buying merchandise there. I'll never see the CDs in the shops for these bands anywhere near where I live either. So
Perhaps not a solution for the original post, but some reading this thread may be interested in RipDigital. You mail them your collection of CDs and they mail back your CDs along with ripped MP3s on a data DVD they burn for you...
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
For those interested in obtaining legal copies live music by bands that support free trade of live music, check out www.etree.org. The traders there use the SHN format (lossless), and you can frequently get any show you want for free (either via FTP or sending a blank disc and a self addressed stamped envelope - B&P) if you ask nicely. For personal use, you are allowed to transcode the SHN o MP3, but please don't trade any shows in MP3 format (and likewise, don't turn an MP3 show into a SHN).
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
This came up during the one of the DMCA cases - the court asked about what happens when the protected content enters the public domain if it's illegal to distribute a mechanism to circumvent the protection. Under the current law, even if you have every right to the content, it's apparently illegal to take the necessary steps to get access to it.
This effectively gives the publisher an infinitely long copyright.
This is incorrect. The law states that you cannot download music. The law allows you to borrow a CD from a friend and make a copy. A friend cannot copy the music for you, you must do it yourself. That is what the law for Canada states.
-]Phreak Out[-
You may want to seriously consider alternatives like magnatune.com and epitonic.com. There is a great deal of quality, free music. In my opinion, anything with DRM is not worth owning anyway. Seriously.
harmonious design
Every time someone brings up the topic of "illegal mp3s" (which does not make much sense), dozens of slashdotters respond with links to music services that either sell their music digitally or give it away for free. Here are some of these links:
m usic.com/m agnatune.com/
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5 229
http://www.warprecords.com/bleep/
http://www.d
http://www.freeplaymusic.com/
http://
http://www.metropolis-records.com/
http://www.ninjatune.net/home/
The big "list", though, is at:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/5/05113
There's also an insane amount of free stuff in other formats (usually MOD-like, but you can usually convert to WAV and then compress to whatever format you need) at
http://www.scene.org/ and http://www.hornet.org/ plus one of the more involved scene artists, Bjorn Lynne, has lots of his stuff available for download, too: http://www.artistlaunch.com/artist4.asp?artistid=
So, if you want to listen to mostly electronic music, the internet is your playground. If you want to hear the "pop" stuff that plays on the radio, well, listen to the radio! (I'll trade you a radio walkman for that iPod of yours)
Actually, you *can* download music (in Canada). The other party may, of course, be in violation, but *that* party has to suffer the consequences.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I disagree. I am not an information anarchist, and I do believe in copyright, even if I think the current system is bad.
Congress explicitely spelled out fair use, and I believe that the wording does not really support the INTENT of fair use provisions.
Your example of a somebody making copies on my behalf is wrong, and misses the point entirely. I'd change it to be something like: "We have BS's new CD and ripped it to mp3s. Some guy in Topeka also purchased it, so it should be OK for him to have a copy of our mp3s as a matter of convenience."
In the case of mp3.com, the person had to put the audio CD in the drive so that the software could verify possession of the CD before "unlocking" those mp3s for that user. So the end result is the same... the person purchased the content from the content provider. Why should it be illegal for him to have that content in other formats? It's not! It's only illegal when someone else makes it available to HIM in those formats.
Can you tell me, if this person is allowed to download the mp3s of music from a CD he is in possession of, how the copyright holder is hurt any more so than if that person ripped his own mp3s (which is perfectly legal)?
I generally make it a rule not to reply to anonymous trolls, but it simply sounds like you didn't understand the argument.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
No, you can't legally download mp3's. In Canada, you can ONLY make a copy of an original, not of a copy. mp3's are copies of the original and therefore its illegal to download them.
Of course its very unlikely you'll get caught, however, it is still illegal.
Audio Lunchbox, an indie-only digital music store has made their entire catalog of music available globally. Cross-platform (Linux, PC and Mac compatible), No DRM, the option to choose either Ogg Vorbis (Q6) or high-quality MP3 (192 kbps VBR) and an excellent selection of music (Sasha, Death Cab for Cutie, Mozart and even Jimi Hendrix) is worth checking out. To quote from the About section: 'Audio Lunchbox was founded in April 2003 by 4 individuals with a common vision: to increase exposure and availability of great independent music.'
Totally untrue. Vinyl has a *much* lower dynamic range (and a much lower SnR) than does 16bit/44.1kHz PCM.
Ok you got me there. I used the wrong terminology.
I meant sound fidelity. I.E. an actual recording of the music rather than a 16-bit interpretation of one;-)
This is obviouly why when digital recording is used in most studios (Home or professional) 24bit/96kHz is now used.
Also the quality of the machine you're using to play the music on is a factor.
$50 CD player Vs $500 turntable and vice-versa. Who wins?
You get what you pay for.
Mines a pint of the black stuff.
You can't drink a pint of Bovril!
When people say vinyl has better quality than cd's, they are speaking strictly about quality, not performance. For an extreme example, humans can hear up to around 22kHz. A 22kHz sine wave converted to 44kHz digital then back to 22kHz sine wave becomes horribly distorted. The distortion becomes less as the frequencies drop.
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People who say they can hear the difference are primarily speaking about analog music, like classical. I personally have heard the difference between a perfect quality vinyl and a cd in some classical music. With music thats digitally created and never really becomes analog you most likely won't be able to hear any difference at all.
This difference in quality also was much more apparent when cd's first came out since AD/DA converters were not the quality they are now. If you can find a perfect vinyl record of classical music, a high end turntable, high quality amp and speakers and compare it to one of the first cd players that ever came out playing the same music, you could hear the difference quite easily.
Performance comes into play when you start talking about scratched records and cd's. Cd's hold on to their quality much better than vinyl.
When the cd format was first being worked on, one of the rules was that Beethoven's 9th had to fit on a single disc since it was 74 minutes long. The engineers found that for a disc to hold beethoven's 9th and have the quality of vinyl, it had to be sampled at 16 bit and was 12cm in diameter. This was too big to make portable cd players realistic so its size and sampling rate were decreased, resulting in lesser quality than vinyl. (http://www.urbanlegends.com/misc/cd/cd_length_sk
All of the "copy protected" CDs that I ever bought were perfectly readable by iTunes, and are now nicely stored in MP3 format on my iPod.
Oh, maybe this is because I have a Mac :-)
No, "sound fidelity" is still wrong, and hopelessly vague.
Once again: it isn't a 16-bit interpretation. Sampling does not involve taking "pieces" of music and then throwing them back, hoping it's going by too fast for you to hear. Sampling involves getting a collection of samples that, when converted back into analogue, represents the input waveform (up 'til the threshold your current sampling specification allows) almost exactly.
As for digital recording, 24bit is used precisely because DSP is so popular. 24bit does give you a greater dynamic range (although popular music doesn't tend to use it), but it also removes the amount of dithering you have to do on a signal, as you have many extra bits being used for various digital process computations.
Sampling rate is another story entirely. Nyquist states that 44.1kHz should be adequate, but I understand the idea of leaving room for error; consequently, 96kHz is certainly appropriate. Anything higher than that, though, and studies show you're probably actually degrading the signal.
Warp make all new releases available electronically via their online store Bleep.com. It's based in the UK but sells worldwide. They are also ripping their back catalogue as quickly as they can.
You might also try Epitonic. Hasn't been updated for a while but they have lots o'stuff, catgeorised, reviewed legal and free to download.
...they offer the Bleep Music Store. All files are high-quality (VBR with the settings cranked up) MP3s, unprotected -- they *gasp* treat you like a customer instead of a serf. Also you can preview tracks -- not just 30 seconds of a track, but all of it (albeit in 30 second chunks, so you can't just rip the whole track to a .wav file before buying). Also there's Magnatune (tagline: "We are not evil" ;-} ). Warp have the advantage of 'famous names' though, like Aphex Twin or LFO.