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Shifting From P2P To Stream Ripping

An anonymous reader submits "As users continue to try fending off the ever more litigious music industry, some seem to have dropped P2P entirely, moving to ripping instead. While they lose some control over what they are downloading, it's a untraceable way to download music (no way for the RIAA to track users or sue). With some of the more powerful software that's been coming out recently, stream ripping has become more main-stream. Some of the more well known software packages, like StationRipper, allow users to download several thousand songs on a daily basis. And, depending on how you read the law, it's 100% legal. How will the RIAA respond? As more users move to this type of technology to avoid the P2P lawsuits, how will the music industry respond?"

143 of 577 comments (clear)

  1. Good idea but... by sH4RD · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have tried playing with a couple stream rippers before, only problem is streams tend to be real low quality...

    --
    WASTE - The Secure P2P
    1. Re:Good idea but... by revmoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have tried playing with a couple stream rippers before, only problem is streams tend to be real low quality...

      Ever considered streaming from high-quality stations then?

      --
      I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
    2. Re:Good idea but... by nkh · · Score: 3, Informative

      When you connect to a Shoutcast station, the server sends you a buffer of the music being played, and IIRC stream rippers just make a lot of fake connections to have the whole song by appending these buffers, that's why the quality should be the same.

      What bothers me is that the program StationRipper claims it can record up to 300 streams at one time, when a usual 512k DSL connection is limited to 4 CD quality streams (128k mp3)...

    3. Re:Good idea but... by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ever considered streaming from high-quality stations then?

      Feel free to name a few - Either >256k/s, or >160k/s VBR (I don't know of any VBR streams, since streaming inherently tends to require CBR content)...

      Although, I've asked before, and I'll probably ask again - Why not just rip from CDs borrowed from friends (or the library)? Equally untraceable (if not more so, since although they can't tell what you do with the stream, I'd imagine it must look exceedingly strange to see someone listening to half-a-dozen stations at a time, 24/7), and you get to have 100% control over the resulting rip. Best of all possible worlds - You get the songs, you get as high of a quality as you want, you get whatever format you prefer, and not even the person you borrow the CD from needs to know what you've done (although at least for friends, most really don't care, beyond asking for some reciprocation).

      Like many /.'ers, I enjoy the use of the internet for almost all my informational needs; but sometimes, SneakerNet still offers advantages you just can't get anywhere online.

    4. Re:Good idea but... by Suidae · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why not just rip from CDs borrowed from friends (or the library)?

      Libraries are great sources, and so are used music and book stores. They will generally buy stuff back after you've had it for a while too. The music ends up not being totally free, but it only costs a couple of bucks per CD, which is better than anywhere else.

    5. Re:Good idea but... by Goldfinger7400 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      None of the radio stations on iTunes are of sufficient audio quality to replace purchased (AAC or otherwise) music, in my opinion. They have some very good stations with awesome music selection, but it isn't exactly a free music library. On the other hand, the quality may be better than most mp3's on kazaa (they all tend to suck for some reason compared to my ripped CD's, even though I use the same bitrate.)

    6. Re:Good idea but... by HermanAB · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yup, never underestimate the bandwidth of a minivan full of CDROMs...

      --
      Oh well, what the hell...
    7. Re:Good idea but... by alphakappa · · Score: 2, Insightful

      umm.. public libraries usually have some nice CDs.. and u can borrow them for free...and *cough*rip*cough*

      --
      "When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
    8. Re:Good idea but... by Hwon · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are many high-quality stations on Shoutcast. Some go up as high as 320k/s, though there are very few of those and genre is fairly limited. Though there are plenty of streams around 256 just have to sort by bandwidth.

    9. Re:Good idea but... by luwain · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Although, I've asked before, and I'll probably ask again - Why not just rip from CDs borrowed from friends (or the library)? "

      Exactly. This is the safest route and the person who lends you the CD is immune from prosecution (whereas the person who shares music online is at risk to lose their life savings to the RIAA).
      Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the Stream-ripping software will be found illegal under the DMCA as a technology that enables piracy...

    10. Re:Good idea but... by chrisfnet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the Stream-ripping software will be found illegal under the DMCA as a technology that enables piracy..."

      Wouldn't that mean that all of the software, even back to the BIOS would be illegal? Seems like a large daisy-chain to me...

      The BIOS allows the installation and operation of hardware, the hardware allows the installation and operation of an operating system, the operating system allows the installation and operation of the offending software.

      Heck, the hardware manufacturers allow the installation of the BIOS. What's next, suing computer retailers for aiding piracy?

    11. Re:Good idea but... by jrockway · · Score: 3, Informative

      Umm how do they know you're using a ripper? Oh. They don't.

      They send you a stream. Instead of writing it to /dev/dsp it writes /home/you/file.mp3. They really can't tell the difference :)

      --
      My other car is first.
    12. Re:Good idea but... by UnassumingLocalGuy · · Score: 3, Informative

      The only thing I have against ripping from my local public library is that the discs are very commonly scratched beyond recognition/ripability.

      --
      "Hu, ho, ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Hu, ho ho-ah-oh-oh-oh. Mario Paint! Whoaaa!"
    13. Re:Good idea but... by Kevin_Peters · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://freshmeat.net/projects/streamripper/ I use it on linux, and it's pretty cool.

      --
      The music is all around us. I can hear it. Can you?
    14. Re:Good idea but... by jkmiecik · · Score: 2, Interesting

      256kbps Chillout stream

      They're out there, you just gotta find them.

    15. Re:Good idea but... by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 3, Funny

      I get the idea that some of these things open up several streams at different times in the song so that they download faster than the music plays, which could be detected.

      Tim

      --
      Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
    16. Re:Good idea but... by mcrandello · · Score: 2, Informative

      Goodwill. Not only can you find CD's full of music for a buck or two, but you can get all kinds of nice software, sometimes only one version out of date. Word Perfect 8 suite still works as good as it ever has, and I really like all those fonts it came with. I've also discovered a lot of people throwing their early 90's rock collections to the curb. Thanks guys.

      With real luck you can get CDR's that someone has already thoughtfully filled with mp3s for you.

    17. Re:Good idea but... by ultranova · · Score: 3, Insightful
      When you connect to a Shoutcast station, the server sends you a buffer of the music being played, and IIRC stream rippers just make a lot of fake connections to have the whole song by appending these buffers, that's why the quality should be the same.

      And here I thought that you could just connect to the station, record the bytes of the stream to a file as they comes, and later cut the file to individual songs (with possible human intervention).

      I didn't realize that you would need to keep on connecting and cutting connection and then parsing the resulting buffers together, when there was so much easier and more reliable solution.

      But you must be correct, because you got modded informative. Moderators wouldn't be moderating comments up without both reading and understanding them, no would they ?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  2. Just make sure... by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    The station you rip is streaming their songs with the ID3 tags otherwise the software won't know when to stop one MP3 and start another one.

    1. Re:Just make sure... by Quasar1999 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually this really sucks when ripping from DI.FM... I find that it cuts the song off too early, and starts the next song too early.

      The one time I let it rip a channel for an entire day and ended up with every song being useless, unless I play it back in the same order DI did, as a good 3 second shift occured in every song compared to the ID3 tag being broadcast... pain in the ass!

      --

      ---
      Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
    2. Re:Just make sure... by peragrin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You just have to find the right channel.

      When congress was trying to get web radio to pay royalties, my favorite station was acting funny. So i setup a box to rip the entire library. took a week, but I got 6 gigs of music, none identical.

      Now when i hit random play my radio station comes back on the air.

      just for the RIAA, I have been buying the songs slowly through second stores. You won't ever see my money.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    3. Re:Just make sure... by LostCluster · · Score: 2, Informative

      In part that's because the station isn't quite broadcasting an "ID3 tag", the technical term is Radio Data System (RDS) which lets them transmit a freetext field to be displayed... which means a station's format for that is not standardized, and they're free to flash up promotional messages that have nothing to do with the song currently being played. There is no "start of song" or "end of song" indicator being transmitted at all...

    4. Re:Just make sure... by lavaface · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Actually this really sucks when ripping from DI.FM... I find that it cuts the song off too early, and starts the next song too early.

      radiolover for the mac allows you to shift the cutoff point by whatever amount to rectify this situation. I'm sure there are comparable solutions on other platforms.

  3. My parents used to do this by eaglebtc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They would put a tape recorder up to the radio and capture the latest songs, then make copies for their friends. Sure it sounded bad but they didn't care. And neither did the RIAA, because their albums sounded better than the crappy copies the kids made, so they figured they would still want to go out and buy the latest album because of the high fidelity sound. Now that we can get digital copies they are sorely afraid. THe next move will be toward an encrypted stream, but as I always say...if you can hear it, you can rip it.

    --
    Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
    1. Re:My parents used to do this by LostCluster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not to mention, recording the analog out of a DirecTV box or another sound card sounds pretty clean as long as you've got good wires...

      Analog copies aren't as lossy as they used to be, especially when you're recording a source that did most of its travelling digitally until the last moment.

    2. Re:My parents used to do this by pauls2272 · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Sure it sounded bad but they didn't care. And neither did the RIAA..."

      Actually they DID care. That is why a royalty is paid to record companies for every blank tape sold. To compensate them for the copying people did at home.

    3. Re:My parents used to do this by macgyvr64 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you can hear it, you can rip it.

      Darn right, that's what I say, too. If you're to hear the music before you buy it, the potential is there for it to be copied. I think the RIAA would prefer you just walk into a brick-and-mortar store and blindly buy CDs at their prices.
      So far, I like the iTunes store. They've done a nice job with ease-of-use, prices, and DRM. I've messed with playfair, but I really have no need for it...maaaybe once in a while I decode a single song for a friend, but it's nothing that would bring down the music industry in one fell swoop :-P

      Encrypted streams sounds good. I read elsewhere that some RIAA-backed company is about to deliver a P2P scanning tool (or something like that..) that checks audio fingerprints. If we just gzipped files or used some basic encryption, it could be easily made useless.

    4. Re:My parents used to do this by no+longer+myself · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Damn... Make a guy feel old. I remember taping off the radio myself, and it was a skill I performed with exacting precision. Can anyone else recall the difference between Type I, Type II and Type IV tapes?

      "CD's? Bah... Who needs 'em! They cost twice as much as the cassettes and LP's, and you've got to be some kind of music nut if you think you can actually hear that much of a difference. Besides that, you're just going to end up making a tape of it anyway so you can play it in your car."

      Ah... Them memories... <sigh>

    5. Re:My parents used to do this by the+arbiter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      All easily defeated, either with a pitch shifter to defeat the pattern recognition (just a few cents change would do it, while sounding the same to most folks), or, for the "invisible watermark" (which was put into "consumer level" DAT machines) a simple change in EQ will defeat it.

      If it can be played through a speaker, it can be copied. The end.

      --
      Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
    6. Re:My parents used to do this by SomeoneGotMyNick · · Score: 2, Informative

      I remember the tape types. But I forgot which is which.

      I think it had to do with the tape material. Ferrous Oxide (Type I?), Silver Oxide (Type II?), and some other expensive metal (Type IV?)

      My type of high quality recording back then involved a mono tape recorder. It was a 6 button one with a pause button. I placed the condenser mic 8 inches in front of the stereo radio speaker (in FM mono mode) and positioned the mic element halfway between the center and edge of the large speaker element for best quality.

      I got good enough quality out of the recording. They sound good in a mono player, but horrible in a stereo deck.

    7. Re:My parents used to do this by dustmite · · Score: 2, Funny

      Uh, dude, he's 'retro-quoting' from ... hmm .. late 80s or early 90s. Notice the quotation marks. That's the sort of stuff we used to say ..

    8. Re:My parents used to do this by fireman+sam · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "because their albums sounded better than the crappy copies"

      You just have to love the RIAA's arguments. Remember the anti piracy bit they had on the beginnning of video movies. In Australia it went like this:

      "Have you ever owned or rented a movie that wasn't quite right... poor sound and picture quality... " (I can't remember the rest).

      They argued against copying back then because the quality was reduced and would "harm" their reputation as the viewers enjoyment was reduced.

      Nowdays, they argue against copying because they quality is the same as the original (in theory).

      They can't argue thay you can't make copies because it reduces the quality and argue that you can't make copies because the copy is as good (in theory)

      --
      it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
    9. Re:My parents used to do this by dgmartin98 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      He's talking about sticking a separate tape recorder next to an independant radio, and recording the output of the speaker. What it sounds like you did, and which I did as well, was use an integrated radio/tape recorder.

      And yes, I have a cassette deck next to my computer, hooked up to my sound card's line out. My car is getting kinda older, so it doesn't have a CD player - never bothered to get one. I record MP3s from the computer onto the cassette deck, so I can use it in the car. I use Type II cassettes - I was too cheap to buy the Type IV 10-15 years ago, whenever it was that I last bought one. I've just reused them over the years, taping over old radio songs, and tossing them when they wear out.

      Type I and Type II have a drastically different frequency response. Type IV is only slightly better than the Type II, in my opinion.

      Hmmmm... maybe I should consider building a Line In for my car cassette deck, so I can hook my portable MP3 player directly into it.

      Dave

      --
      FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
    10. Re:My parents used to do this by vwjeff · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Now that we can get digital copies they are sorely afraid.

      They should be afraid because their business model has not changed over the past decades. I want more content for my $.

      I recently purchased a CD for $12 that came with a live concert on DVD. I think this is a great idea. I doubt that the larger labels would do this because they could sell the two items seperately and make more $.

      Are you listening RIAA? I am happy to spend my money but want more content.

    11. Re:My parents used to do this by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hmmmm... maybe I should consider building a Line In for my car cassette deck, so I can hook my portable MP3 player directly into it.

      I just use an FM transmitter from the CD/mp3 player to the radio. Not great quality, but it works, especially in a noisy pickup truck.

    12. Re:My parents used to do this by nolife · · Score: 2, Informative

      Did you know that the tapes had notches in the top near the plastic overwrite protection tab that indentified what type it was? That's how some players could auto detect the tape and adjust the bias accordingly. A Type II tape recorded with Dolby B and C noise reduction was a very good way to record your albums back in the day..

      Nakamichi Dragon cassette recorders still sell for over $600 on Ebay..

      --
      Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
    13. Re:My parents used to do this by Suppafly · · Score: 4, Informative

      Hmmmm... maybe I should consider building a Line In for my car cassette deck, so I can hook my portable MP3 player directly into it.

      Mini jack to tape adapters only cost about $3 for a cheap one.

    14. Re:My parents used to do this by tkrotchko · · Score: 4, Informative

      Type I - Standard tape, useless except for radio recordings and voice
      Type II - Better sound than Type II. Good for stuff you just wanted to listen to in the car.
      Type IV - Metal tapes. Good enough to tape an album and listen to in your home stereo. Expensive, so you had to wait for sales.

      I seem to remember
      Type III - Chrome tapes. Good enough for most stuff, but tended to be noisier too.

      This is all from 25 years ago, so its a bit tough to remember everything.

      --
      You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
    15. Re:My parents used to do this by cpt+kangarooski · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Type II - Better sound than Type II.

      So how did they manage that, exactly?

      --
      -- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
  4. How would the RIAA respond? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why, bribe^h^h^h^h^hLobby Congress to make it illegal, of course.

  5. Expect "internet radio" to disappear by Zork+the+Almighty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If a respectable number of P2P users switch to this, internet radio itself will be attacked. It has already been attacked, actually, but P2P was a bigger boogeyman.

    --

    In Soviet America the banks rob you!
    1. Re:Expect "internet radio" to disappear by millahtime · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't expect Internet Radio to dissappear. It isn't illegal like P2P sharing copywritten songs. If anything they might become regulated and get comercials but I really doubt it will dissappear.

    2. Re:Expect "internet radio" to disappear by jd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Unlikely, because bandwidth is more limited, as you've a central point that has to transmit the data. The only way it can work on an unlimited basis is by multicast, but ISPs won't enable it - evil, sick b******s that they are.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    3. Re:Expect "internet radio" to disappear by a1cypher · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As long as the commercials have recognizable ID3 tags that I can delete (spam filter for your stream ripper?) Then I would still be happy. =)

    4. Re:Expect "internet radio" to disappear by Lehk228 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Royalties for broadcast go to artist through ASCAP and the other groups like that, not RIAA,

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    5. Re:Expect "internet radio" to disappear by Klaruz · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's allready been attacked. Because of CARP internet stations play a physical reproduction fee to the record industry, in addition to the performance fee (ASCAP/BMI) that regular radio stations pay. So they're already paying for the users who may or may not be ripping from them.

  6. home taping by potpie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the 80's, it was believed (by large record companies mainly) that home taping of radio broadcasts was killing music. This is the exact same thing as home taping, and home taping is perfectly legal (is that time shifting or space shifting or something)! So really, there is no legal or moral reason not to do it, and the RIAA can't very well (unless I have too much faith in human reason- I hope not) sue people for taping the same broadcasts they get from the radio if they get it from the internet. That just seems far too arbritrary a lawsuit to happen... but the thought still scares me for some reason.

    --
    Esoteric reference.
    1. Re:home taping by BCW2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Go back to the early 70's, the death of the music industry was going to be the - cassette tape. Actually heard the exact samr quotes from industry execs back then as the ones they used against Napster. I mean word for word, like the quality of their product, the good speach writers are from the past.

      The funny thing was that no matter how good a system you had, a home recording never beat store bought.

      --
      Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
    2. Re:home taping by GlassHeart · · Score: 2, Insightful
      In the 80's, it was believed (by large record companies mainly) that home taping of radio broadcasts was killing music. This is the exact same thing as home taping [...]

      No, it isn't. The really scary thing for the recording industry isn't just that you can make a high quality copy, but that you can redistribute high quality copies with great ease. How many tapes or CDs can you make for friends before it feels like a lousy job? Even if you're willing, how many friends can you possibly have? On the other hand, how many copies can you share via P2P?

      The Internet is what they're terrified about.

  7. What's the equivalent for movies? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What's the equivalent app for ripping the audio/video feed from Windows Media player?

    1. Re:What's the equivalent for movies? by cyril3 · · Score: 2, Funny
      For some strange reason I have a vision of a Kalahari Bushman pulling apart a transistor radio to find the band inside making the noise.

    2. Re:What's the equivalent for movies? by Z-MaxX · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can use ASFRecorder, or, what I've been doing lately, use MPlayer with the -dumpstream option to save absolutely anything. I've recorded Windows Media video (with audio), RealMedia streams, MP3, and more. Works like a charm.

      --
      Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
  8. Satellite Radio XM PCR by Broadband · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As you know, XM Radio has a receiver for the Computer (XM PCR) that shows the music ID etc and a high quality stream with 120 channels. I wonder if any one thought of writing a software to rip the stream digitally?

    1. Re:Satellite Radio XM PCR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The biggest problem with this is that the stream is encrypted, or, at least, obfuscated. The transcoders are kept somewhat secret. Coding Technologies knows how though...

  9. streamripper by quelrods · · Score: 5, Informative

    don't forget streamripper.sourceforge.net They have support for just abt every os under the sun and if all else fails you can recompile yourself. I think finding a stream that spends 50% or more of it's time playing music you enjoy and ripping results in nice collection. (I do this because our bandwith at work is overused and streaming doesn't work out so well.)

    --
    :(){ :|:&};:
  10. How about this from the article itself by spoco2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seeing as though the posting is a direct copy and paste of the techdirt article... how about we also read the bit that comes straight after that on their site which states that, really, this is hardly a threat to P2P...
    "Well, some of the comments are a bit misleading. It's not clear just how mainstream this technology really is, and it's certainly not nearly as user friendly for users as basic file sharing applications. The idea is that it records songs directly from streaming radio stations (though, right now, it looks like only certain kinds of streaming radio stations work with the software). Also, copying a song off the radio (which is this basically equivalent to) often involves a lower quality offering with songs cutting into each other, DJs talking over the music and other radio-related reasons why it's not the same as getting a full track. "

    I used to tape of the radio too, and ended up knowing songs as ending with 'And that was Vanilla Ice on 2KBY7 with the HOT Ice, Ice Baby... Keep rockin' dude... yeaaah'.*

    It's not the same as a pure track... plus, as it says... crap quality.

    * No, I didn't actually have any Vanilla Ice tracks on tape... no... really.

  11. The obvious answer by BCW2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    how will the music industry respond?

    As stupidly as possible, just like normal.

    --
    Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
  12. Keys to the kingdom for $9.95?!? by LostCluster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, for a small monthly fee you can have the nearly the whole world of RIAA music streaming at you by request.

    $9.95 a month to Real Rhapsody will get you access to Real's entire library of 500,000ish songs in Real's streaming format, and $9.95 a month to the new Napster will get you access to Napster's library of 500,000ish songs in Windows Media format. In both cases, they've yet to establish a limit as to how many streams you can get per month.

    Clearly, there's a rather gaping hole if you're able to save either of those sets of streams into any non-DRMed format.

    1. Re:Keys to the kingdom for $9.95?!? by EverDense · · Score: 4, Informative

      Freeware Stream Ripper for Windows http://www.naturpic.com/all2wav/

      --
      http://jesus.everdense.com/
  13. What I dont want to hear in my stream rips.. by SCSi · · Score: 4, Funny

    .......(buffering)......(buffering).......

  14. Stream ripping easy does it with your friend Linux by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Informative
    I've been doing that with ALSA under Linux, and SoundBlaster Live! cards for a long time. No need to dowload anything. Here's how:

    Start alsamixer

    Set the capture source to "wave"

    Jack up the "wave capture" setting

    Capture the stream (or anything currently playing in fact) from /dev/dsp

    Just think people have been bitching and moaning about the truly staggering number of ALSA settings for SB-Lives!, now see how it's useful?

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  15. Re:cant see why i'd want this by real_smiff · · Score: 2, Insightful
    > Aren't there a lot of P2P programs that already prevent being traced?

    No, there aren't, because P2P by its nature requires each peer to know the address of the other peers.. and "anonymous" networks like Freenet are hopeless for music (so slow & poor content). You may be getting confused by blocklists which prevent certain address ranges connecting with your P2P client.

    --

    This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.

  16. Re:How will the respond? by localhost00 · · Score: 2, Funny
    I dunno, they'll either change their business model, or find a way to continue to exist through litigation.

    I dunno, I think SCO might sue them for that......

    --

    Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.

  17. De-mucking songs? by LostCluster · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most "radio stations", including the all-music channels on digital cable or DirecTV and Dish tend to muck up the starting and ending of songs with at least a crossfade between the songs if not a liner or DJ chatter over the song.

    However, couldn't software recognize the same song being played repeatedly by a station... and then identify the actual layers within the overlaps by what's found in all instances. In the end, it could take 8 hours of music in, and give back the 25 or so songs the station played more than once nice and clean.

    Ohh... would the RIAA hate that. No distribution, just the recording of a legal broadcast.

  18. Winamp - ml_www by lotsofno · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the cooler new ways of sharing music with my friends that I've been playing around with is the ml_www plug-in for Winamp (It was one of Justin Frankel's farewell gifts). The application lets you or anyone else access your media collection from anywhere, and stream or download your audio/video through a browser interface. Of course you can set up passwords and access privelidges. You can pick a song to listen to on your home computer while in the office; stuff like that.

    All you need is a Winamp running with the plug-in, and someone--probably someone you trust--drops in your IP in a browser and one of these two windows pops up, depending on which template you're using. You can download the newest versions here.

    There's a sourceforge project going on for the plug-in, but they haven't really brought that site up to speed yet. Most of the progress is in this Winamp Forums thread, with some occasional updates on Winamp Unlimited.

  19. So what's the difference by InsaneGeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sure there's a difference in that you are doing the equivalent of tape recording the radio, but legally there really isn't much of a difference.

    I don't really see much of a difference here. It's not the downloading that the *AA have been getting people for it's the sharing. If you leached only the *AA would let you do it to your hearts content.

    If someone is legally broadcasting that's basically the same as someone legally sharing a file unlike illegally broadcasting content which is the same as someone sharing a file they don't have distribution rights to. Legally it's the same to put out a stream you don't have rights to or put share out a file you don't have rights to.

    Everybody gets wrapped up in the "download" portion and unfortunately get screwed because they've only paid attention to download instead of upload. Maybe if the fined P2P users had been worrying about uploading instead of downloading they wouldn't be getting fined.

  20. Re:xmms saves streams just fine by dotslasher_sri · · Score: 2, Informative

    StationRipper actually seperates the songs and saves them by their names. try it..it works!.

  21. Re:How the industry will respond. by nacturation · · Score: 2, Informative

    Oh, and poke people's ears out with ice picks.

    Um, how exactly does one poke an ear out? Isn't that like using a shovel to remove a hole?

    --
    Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
  22. Sony Betamax and Grokster by pdcryan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are two reasons that stream-ripping will slip through the courts:

    1. Under the Sony Betamax case, time shifting is fair use. Under the Rio case, space shifting is fair use. So long as those cases hold up - the only difference between time shifting your TV with a VCR, and stream ripping is the quality. Basically, there may be no copyright violation here.

    2. Even if there is a copyright violation (I don't think there will be), the Grokster case said that where a software provider doesn't know about infringing uses, they are not contributing to copyright violations. Stream rippers, like Grokster, are out of the loop. There's no central database here. Don't forget, that even if RIAA is successful (which I don't think they will be here), who would they sue? Many streamrippers are open source, and distributed development projects. Lots of stones to turn over.

    What will RIAA do? Shut down the stations. I'd be surprised if Roxio's Napster 2 will be allowed to continue to use their 9.95 all you can eat streaming service for much longer.

    --
    Ryan Kennedy opposes comm
  23. Cognitive dissonance by no_opinion · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hey, rather than justifying new ways to get music without paying why don't you people shell out a measly $10/month for the 400,000 tracks on Rhapsody or Napster so that the artist can get something for their trouble?

  24. The law... by PeteQC · · Score: 2, Funny

    And, depending on how you read the law, it's 100% legal.

    So i guess it comes down to: And, depending on who has the best lawyers...

    --
    Montreal - Best city to live in!
  25. strongarming by hellmarch · · Score: 2, Funny

    Eventually the RIAA will make more money by scaring people into settling with them than they make from actual record sales. When this happens they will stop making albums and with no new albums to copy piracy will come to a screeching halt. Then with their pockets full of ill-gotten booty the RIAA will move to the Cayman Islands and relax on a beach drinking martinis and being serviced by pool boy sex slaves.

  26. Two words by ArchAngelQ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And those are:
    Lobbying
    Litigation

    That's how they will respond. I would bet a years supply of the best coffee beans money could buy on it.

  27. bad pun by dj245 · · Score: 3, Funny
    stream ripping has become more main-stream.

    How about "Having halfway crossed the legal hurdles, stream ripping still has quite an upriver swim before it becomes mainstream"

    Or maybe "Stream ripping, while not quite the open floodgates that bittorrent is, is gaining in popularity..."

    Or, if you don't like it, "Stream ripping may soon come under the guns of the RIAA and have nowhere to go but downstream."

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  28. re: depending on how you read the law... by lsdino · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And, depending on how you read the law, it's 100% legal.

    This is exactly what was said about Napster, look at how long that lasted. I think its a bit of a pipe dream to believe that there will be a legal way to acquire large amounts of copyrighted music for free w/o the consent of the copyright holder.

    And on the off chance it was legal to do this you can be sure that Congress would put a stop to it pretty fast.

  29. Broadcasters: Turn off crossfading by Sarojin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's really annoying when you get bits of the surrounding songs on your saved music. Turning off crossfading will facilitate smooth ripping. Thank you.

    I was doing this for a while. I streamed in about 15 niche stations that played the kind of music I liked, and got a lot of music. The error rate was fairly high, and I ended up with a lot of duplicates, but I found a lot of good music, and filled in some gaps in my collection.

    --
    HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
  30. If the RIAA was smart they'd love this... by Fred+Smythe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But they're not. What better way to kill P2P then to have the data pool flooded with crappy stream-ripped versions of songs? I, for one, would get really tired of having to download the same track 5 times to find one that was ripped properly from the CD, instead of stream-ripped or badly edited. It's already hugely in the RIAA's favor that any idiot can rip something badly anymore, but it washes in that the average listener doesn't have a discerning enough ear to notice it.

  31. Re:How the industry will respond. by damiangerous · · Score: 3, Funny

    Try inserting an icepick in your ear and it'll all become clear.

  32. Depending on What? by cyril3 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    And, depending on how you read the law, it's 100% illegal.

    Notice the small change in the quoted text. And it's still 100% true.

    This is not like the cat in the box where you cannot ever know if it's dead or alive till you open the box and discover it's dead/alive.

    With this law once you discover it is illegal, it's been illegal since you started doing it. So it's a bad plan to do it on the basis that you don't know if its illegal or not.

  33. Re: depending on how you read the law... by sir_cello · · Score: 3, Informative


    Well, UK and EU copyright law allows an exception for "time shifting" on domestic premises (i.e. video recording a television broadcast for playback later).

    It doesn't state whether the time shifting copy could only be used once, but it's implied, and generally the copyright exceptions are subject to an overridding berne three step test that the exception is limited to acts that do not prejudice the right holder. This means that although the exceptions are available, if you abuse them in aggregate then it could be a problem.

    However, theoretically, you could set up stream ripper to rip from thousands of stations, and only play back the song once at a later date, then delete it. Effectively, a music PVR. This would - in my interpretation - entirely justified under UK CDPA 1988 and the other EU national copyright laws that were harmonised in the late 1990s.

  34. Using a new legit tech for piracy only hurts it. by zapp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know why the RIAA is going after P2P? Because its used mostly for piracy. Sure, some legit. songs are being downloaded, but the majority of it is blatant piracy.

    Now here we are saying Internet radio is good, legitimate fair use; and then we use it for piracy.

    Just like how Apple tried to be relaxed with their AAC DRM, but people just had to crack it. Sure, ther e are valid reasons for this, but once again people will use a valid, legal technology for piracy and ruin it for the rest of us.

    --
    no comment
  35. Heh.. by Schezar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know anyone who buys or has CDs. Seriously.

    I'm the president of a huge club on campus, and I know many, many people. NO ONE has CDs. No one. ...

    We do, however, have two OC-3s and a T-3...

    --
    GeekNights!
    Late Night Radio for Geeks!
    1. Re:Heh.. by yerfatma · · Score: 2, Funny
      I'm the president of a huge club on campus

      Are you bringing the Civil War set to chess club this week, or am I?

    2. Re:Heh.. by pla · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I must be pretty lucky, my neighbor & 2 of my good friends have large (200+) cd collections

      Same here... I personally (well, between my own collection and my SO's) have over 500, though I haven't bought all that many in the last few years, due to the RIAA's antics. All of my close friends have at least 100 or so; I have one FOAF, who does semi-professional remixing (like for local DJs), with literally 10k+ CDs - His collection occupies a full room, with a few thousand of his "favorites" in floor-to-ceiling racks, and the rest in gigantic (but alphabetically sorted) piles in the closet. Sadly, with all that to pick from, he doesn't have much I like... I enjoy most of the Techno family of genres, but not House (go figure), which he mostly deals with.

      Perhaps this has some sort of regional influence (I live in New England, myself)? Or just a college-kid thing (why spend what little money you have on CDs when you can download them)? I dunno. I personally had a pretty nice collection even in college, although I didn't really get into CDs until midway through HS.

    3. Re:Heh.. by DebianRcksLindowsLie · · Score: 2, Funny

      I have over 200 myself, and so do most of my friends. Come to think of it they're always broke, too....

  36. Dear RIAA by I-R-Baboon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Dear RIAA:

    I have posted this before and will gladly post it again, no matter how many 11 year old girls you extort money from or how many scare stories you purchase to be run on mainstream American media, you have failed. Some of the people you are trying to frighten happen to be the Nerds and GeeKs that will continue to come up with ways to circumvent your bullshit. How much money have you wasted on these tactics which will always be circumvented or skirted? How much do you pay your drones to try to search for victims instead of real talent that can put out an entire album worth a reasonable ten bux as apposed to the T&A no talent losers or one hit per album wonders? Dumbasses, you are invovled in a war of attrition that you cannot possibly win. You are limited by money, we are limited only by our freetime and creativity.

    Music will be shared, downloaded, spread amoungst the internet quicker than the next M$ Virii of the day. It will be shared at LAN parties and USENET, it will be shared between wireless networks, and countless other ways that we can dream up since we don't need money to do so. The tighter you squeeze, the more creativity oozes with no love for your Evil Empire. You are the creator of your own worst monstrosity that you chose to confront with hostility. What will you do this article asks, who the fuck cares. We will find a way around it anyway.

    Maybe you should try releasing to public record how much money you have wasted and will continue to waste on this failed campaign before you try to accuse other things.

    --
    -1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
    1. Re:Dear RIAA by chrisfnet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I do wonder exactly how much money they RIAA has spent on copy-protection, DRM and like technologies.. also on commercials, publications and other 'propaganda'?

      They use figures to describe how much piracy hurts their profits.. I wonder if that includes their investment AGAINST piracy? Should seem fitting for the RIAA that it does.. because I'd imagine it's into the billions by now.

      What about a real estimation of the damage piracy inflicts? I'm wagering in dollars, it's far less than the amount spent to stop it.

      Hmm?

  37. Tired old formula by iustus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I remember when they shut Napster down. Napster was great, and efficient, but since napster had a centralized server it was easy to target and take down.

    Everyone imediatly when to Gnutella-net. Since Gnutella net was not centralized it could not be shut down. But the problem was, not being centralized meant that propagating search querries was ridiculously expensive in bandwidth, thus it was a slight pain in the ass.

    Then we were worried that they would start sueing individuals, so someone developed free net that would use everyone else as a proxy to hide the origionating IP, thus the IP you see is not that of the person downloading the file. This would have worked but was damn stupid as far as wasting bandwith for anonymity.

    the RIAA held off while on individual lawsuits, freenet never took off, now that the lawsuits are becoming a problem again we come up with stupid solution 'B', this streaming data client.

    Basically, our file sharing clients will get worse and worse, and it will boil down to asking ourselves "do I really want to get this song in a shoddy quality, with skips and pops/waste a half hour in failed attempts to get it, or is it easier to just buy the song online legally?

    And in fact, this is the way it should work. There will always be free clients and you will always be able to pirate music, it just a question how much of a pain in the ass it will be, and whether or not you value your time and quality of music over your money.

    If the RIAA was smart(they aren't), they would lower the price of song downloads to 20 cents (an artist usually makes 10 cents per song on each cd), no one would bother wading through all the fake songs on Kazaa and most people would flock to the pay sites.

    $1-$2 a songs? ppppttttt. . . Pirating methods don't suck that much . . yet.

    --
    Saying "Militia really just means National Gaurd" is like saying "Press really just means PBS"
  38. Re:cant see why i'd want this by haxeh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Alright, I have to reply to this one.

    Yes, there are p2p applications that do prevent tracing. There's MUTE, which seems to have promise, although it's not particularly well documented. There's also GNUnet , which seems to be really intelligently designed, but I have no idea how well it works in practice, I don't think it's ready for mainstream use yet. And of course, freenet with FROST , but it's as slow and unreliable as the rest of freenet.

    Ultimately, I think we can all agree that anonymous internet, especially filesharing, is coming and is going to render the RIAA's efforts useless.

    As far as stream ripping, however, I think the idea was just that you could leech mp3s all day long and make a collection of whatever the stream is playing, not as an anonymous way of getting specific mp3s you want.

  39. GOD damnit! by zbuffered · · Score: 4, Funny

    Every time I find a new way to get music, you /. pussies have to pick up on it and show the unwashed masses how to do it! Now radio stations can't handle the traffic. Now the RIAA's on the scent. Now I can't stream rip. Damn you for showing everyone the idea!
    [puff puff]
    I'm sorry for yelling. But you guys may have just ruined this by giving it this new audience.

    --
    Synergy is your friend
  40. I said it yesterday... by The+Master+Control+P · · Score: 2, Funny

    Use their own litigious bullshit against them. If every p2p client simply implemented a one-byte XOR on all outgoing and incoming transmissions, it would be quite illegal for the (RI || MP) AA to attempt to decode it because of that wonderful piece of legislation called the DMCA. Remember? Illegal to circumvent any acess control device? By implementing such a measure (even one so braindead that it could be cracked brute-force by a 20-year-old laptop in a matter of seconds), it is illegal for anyone to decode your transmissions without your express permission. I give express permission to everyone except scum would work for the (RI || MP) AA.

    The best part is the horrible or wonderful (depending on your view) irony of it: Screwed by their own bought-and-paid-for legislation. Geeks the world over will roll on the floor laughing their asses off!

    1. Re:I said it yesterday... by Have+Blue · · Score: 3, Informative

      Everyone who makes this joke is neglecting the fact that this part of the DMCA only applies to encryption added by the legitimate owner of the copyright on whatever is being protected. So, no, encrypting your Kazaa traffic will not let you countersue the RIAA when you get busted.

  41. There are more than one way to skin a CAT. by CygnusXII · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I subscribe to dave TV (direct TV.) It has dedicated
    music channels, by Genre. 80's, 90's, Jazz etc...
    I use a video capture to bring it into my machine.
    I then use a recording package to rip the songs,the audio comes in on it's own channel, and
    Total Recorder or Goldwave works fine, for doing this, then convert to whichever compression you want. I
    want from the blocks I recorded, and process them,
    myself. the quality is fine, for me. I find this a good enough alternative.

    --
    My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
  42. Streaming fees by Lugae · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I know I haven't kept up with the developments in this area that well, but didn't the FCC decide to impose fees on Internet broadcasters? If that's the case, wouldn't recording a stream be the same as recording off of the radio? Sure, it's better quality, but the principle is the same, and there are royalties being paid. Of course, I don't see that as a reason for the RIAA not to try and shut it down. My two cents.

  43. Obligatory by Have+Blue · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just whatever you do, don't cross the streams.

  44. For Mac Users... by toupsie · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you are using Mac OS X, you can use audio hijaak pro. It lets you record RealAudio, Windows Media and MP3 streams. I use it all the time to time shift radio shows I like to AAC or MP3 for my iPod. Works like a charm. You can set up schedules and file sizes. Really sharp.

    --
    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
  45. How much of those royalties do the artists see? by Mustang+Matt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I never understood the concept of royalties on blank media. I mean I can buy cassette tapes and tape my own voice on them. The RIAA doesn't need any royalty off that. Just like I can buy CD-Rs and burn backups of my databases and other files. The RIAA doesn't need any royalties off that either.

    Slightly OT: I have a friend who's an upcoming musician and he paid a company to get his stuff on iTunes. He's had 4-5 paid downloads already but hasn't seen a dime.

    --
    The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
    1. Re:How much of those royalties do the artists see? by poofmeisterp · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Did he know they pay out bi-yearly?

  46. amazing by mikeg22 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is truly amazing the lengths to which someone will go to obtain something they didn't pay for. Some people say, "Well, I wouldn't have bought it anyways, so whats the difference?" to which I reply, "If you wouldn't have bought it, why would you go through so much trouble to copy it?"

  47. Except by metalhed77 · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you're doing this your only viable option is to encode to wav and use up a lot of space. The point of stream ripping is that it preserves the original encoding. There's no way i'm reencoding a 128 kbps MP3 from /dev/dsp.

    --
    Photos.
  48. Re:Using a new legit tech for piracy only hurts it by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You know why the RIAA is going after P2P?

    They aren't; they are going after some users of some P2P systems. P2P is a very wide area- with lots of protocols- most of the internet is P2P- the IP protocol itself is P2P. USENET especially is P2P.

    Because its used mostly for piracy.

    No; well maybe. But that's not necessarily true for all P2P or for all time. For example Skype is P2P, but there's presumably little or no piracy going on there.

    --

    -WolfWithoutAClause

    "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
  49. This is all stupid (no offence) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I tried stream ripping using RadioLover on a Mac. As it happens, there's an iTunes station that plays exactly the music I like, and nothing but. That being the case, I get much much better results from stream ripping than P2P, where I've spent far too much time searching for niche music no one is sharing.

    However, as my wife pointed out, the point of saving the streams becomes moot, since I can always switch on the iTunes stream anyway - why duplicate the commercial free radio station? Good point. (On the other hand, the internet station *does* include rare vinyl tracks that are out of distribution, which you can't buy anywhere, and which are very difficult, if not impossible to find on P2P, so there is some value to stream ripping.)

    This seems to be a similar situation to digital TV. The BBC plays commercial free movies at DVD quality. I click record on my EyeTV 400 PVR, and get DVD quality movies. Great again. Love it. However, the irony does not escape me that this makes the BBC the biggest faciliator of "pirated" movies around. It also makes me question the difference between digital TV recording and the olden days of VCR recording movies. What's the difference? The quality is better.

    However, I'm getting quite used to the high quality of the movies, and to be frank, beyond my obsessive collecting and quality control obsessions, it really doesn't make a damned bit of difference. I can't share them on the internet cuz they are too big (1.4GB-4GB). My friends don't have computers for entertainment centres, so the movies I record are as useless to them as a copy-protected music disc, ie. a coaster. And besides, no one seems to think the value of a movie is nearly as high as the people selling them.

    So what's changed? Ripping streams is like recording radio shows to cassettes. Hard disk recording digital TV is basically the same as using a VHS deck to record analog TV. The big difference is the quality is better. And...? That's about it.

    The only people digital media would seem to help are commercial pirates, who with digital media can now make better counterfeit copies - and yet the RIAA/Hollywood doesn't seem to be doing much about them. (Hollywood themselves are responsible for the majority of movies in the wild anyway.) Greedy? Certainly. Insane? Possibly. The only thing worse than greedy insane people are the ones with enough money to buy polititions, high priced lawyers, and too much cocaine.

    Still, it will be fun to tell the grandkids about it. (I was a student during the era of photocopy hysteria, so I've already got a sense of how ridiculous and incredible this is going to seem in the future.
    "But wouldn't photocopying a book cost more than buying the book?"
    "Yes, Virginia. It seems fear and uncertainty drive people to extreme forms of irrational thinking and behavior."

  50. Here is why I buy CD's by cide1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know on slashdot, there is always someone who will prove you wrong. Today, I am that guy. I'm 21 years old, live on a college campus with a fat pipe. I pretty much don't remember when we didnt have MP3s. I own between 500-600 cd's, and I feel that it is money well spent:

    l: It's not illegal.
    2: A hard drive crash doesnt erase my collection. Burned cd's, backups, what have you get scratched, and aren't reliable. My factory made cd's will last much longer.
    3: I can legally rip them at a high-bitrate in whatever the common format is.
    4: A lot of my collection is indie / small label punk, these bands probably make less than I do, stealing their cds instead of buying really does affect them.
    5: The main reason I buy cds is that when I rip them, there are no pops, none of my tracks are cut short, there are no duplicates, and the tags are 100% correct. I can put them in a database, and magically all the songs by the same artist end up together. When you buy cds, you get much better quality.

    If I do use an MP3 service, it is just to see if a cd I'm thinking about buying is any good. I generally use Limewire, and store what I download in a seperate folder away from my collection, so I can easily delete it.

    The RIAA does some stupid things, but I still think it is worth the money to actually buy the CD, and I view boycotts as one of the most in-effective tools to combat the RIAA. I think a well-written letter will do so much more than 1% of the population boycotting cds.

    --
    -- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
    1. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by dknj · · Score: 2, Informative

      2: A hard drive crash doesnt erase my collection. Burned cd's, backups, what have you get scratched, and aren't reliable. My factory made cd's will last much longer.

      Ha ha ha, not likely. I no longer carry original cds around because they get scratched way too quickly. When I get a cd it gets ripped to my computer and I make a copy. On average a cd (copied or not) lasts about 10-12 months in my car before it becomes unplayable (this is also partly my fault since I no longer attempt to put cds back into their original sleeve while driving).

      -dk

    2. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by GigsVT · · Score: 2, Interesting

      much more than 1% of the population boycotting cd

      I was in WalMart here in rural Virginia the other day and saw a chick wearing an anti-RIAA shirt.

      I think you underestimate the number of people the RIAA has pissed off.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    3. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by lvdrproject · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Maybe, but i think you over-estimate the number of people who realise that:

      (a) it is, in fact, the RIAA that has them pissed off
      (b) while the RIAA is ridiculously greedy and deceitful, nobody is entitled to just get free music whenever they want
      (c) the RIAA should be blamed for 'taking' (inaccurate, sorry, but for lack of a better word) artists' money, not for 'being squares' or whatever and trying to protect the music they make money off of

    4. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
      1: It's not illegal.
      2: A hard drive crash doesnt erase my collection. Burned cd's, backups, what have you get scratched, and aren't reliable. My factory made cd's will last much longer.
      3: I can legally rip them at a high-bitrate in whatever the common format is.
      4: A lot of my collection is indie / small label punk, these bands probably make less than I do, stealing their cds instead of buying really does affect them.
      5: The main reason I buy cds is that when I rip them, there are no pops, none of my tracks are cut short, there are no duplicates, and the tags are 100% correct. I can put them in a database, and magically all the songs by the same artist end up together. When you buy cds, you get much better quality.

      Here is why we download music:
      1. Contrary to popular belief, downloading music (pirated or not) is NOT illegal. Since all you have to rely on is the NAME of the file you are downloading, you can claim negligence. Hey, how are we supposed to know if the song is pirated or not? What if we live in a cave? Brittney Spears, who?

      2. Backing up mp3s (ogg, whatever) is cheaper than backing up CDs. (And you're going to backup your CDs anyway unless the RIAA intends to reimburse you for your scratched CDs.)

      3. If we like the music, we'll "legally" rip the song at a high-bitrate in whatever format we like from another source (ie. library CDs, friends, used CD stores, etc.).

      4. A lot of indie bands release their music for free online, because they dont have enough $$ to distribute CDs. Sometimes they'll print their music on real CDs (not mp3 burns), but only if the demand comes. Hence, a better business model than printing 400,000 Cds, driving around to every CD store and FM radio station and risking a load of $$ if noone is interested in your music. Sometimes the artist is from another country and not on the radio, so no luck in finding the CD here. You can try to buy CDs for your favorite indie, but if it exists it will probably only be an mp3 cd. Sometimes if you ask the artist you can find out if a REAL CD will be released, but only if the demand is there.

      5. the main reason for downloading is not to to fulfill your deepest orgasmic audiophile desires, but to test the water. We know CD quality is better, but why pay for something you've never heard, or for an album which has only one song you like? Or sometimes you can find out what the music sounds like in different countries, like say the DJ/Techno/Rave scene in UK (as opposed to the crap they call DJ here in the US).
    5. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by merdark · · Score: 3, Insightful

      1: I'm 21 years old, live on a college campus with a fat pipe.

      2: I own between 500-600 cd's

      Sooo. At $20 average cd price, and choosing the lower of the range you gave, $20*500 = $10,000. Ok, let's be REALLY conservative and say they were only $15 each. $15*500 = $7500. AND, you claim you are a student.

      So, either you are bullshitting, or you are admitting to everyone here that you are from a family that is very very rich. Either way, your opinion is clearly from teh point of view of a very very small minority.

      I view boycotts as one of the most in-effective tools to combat the RIAA.

      Did you see their profits plummet? I think the boycott is working quite well. I can't believe you seriously suggest writting a LETTER to them. Give me a break. These are the same people who were convicted of price fixing by the US government. The prices are STILL high, and only seem to be goin higher.

      Boycotting CD sales is the only way to combat the RIAA. Copying the songs only give the RIAA more excuses to justify their absurdly high prices. I have not bought a single RIAA affiliated CD in the past 3-4 years, and I urge everyone here to do the same. The only way to get through to these people is by hurting their bottom line. When they cannot afford their Ferraries anymore they might start to listen.

    6. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by robolemon · · Score: 2, Informative
      I seriously doubt that indie label punk would even average $15. I have bought so many CDs at 3 dollars or less that I don't think your argument holds up. For argument sake let's say 5 dollars.

      So let's say the collection took 6 years to build up (starting at 15 years old is not unreasonable), that would make it about 300 dollars a year, or around 30 dollars a week. Not entirely impossible for even an enterprising minimum wage worker.

      --

      I design user interfaces for a free network management application,

    7. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by Mycroft_VIII · · Score: 2, Insightful
      As for boycotting the RIAA it isn't working. They aren't getting the idea that what they are doing is wrong. They are proving that they need to do it more. Hurting there bottom line is just going to make the more agressive. You stop buying from them all together and they will become like SCO and be forced to live only as a law suit buisiness. Not what I want to see happen.


      Yes, given thier current stance that loss in revenue MUST be from P2P and nothing else*, a quiet boycott won't change how they behave anytime soon.
      The best ways to make a boycot work are to write them and tell them you've stoped buying thier products (and why), to get the media's attention in such a way that shows as many involved in a boycot as possible, and to stop downloading thier music! (if few to no songs are being shared online, yet thier down in sales by a huge amount that could not possibly be related to the number swapped they might get it).
      The anti-RIAA t-shirt is acutally a good idea. If enough people were wearing t-shirts or whatever that said boycott the RIAA, especialy if they made it hard to connect to p2p, this would help create a 'buzz' that would be hard to ignore. Somthing like "I Won't buy, download, or listen to anything the RIAA produces. Ask me about the big RIAA boycott". Well probably better get someone who's actually good at t-shirt messages.
      In summary, for a boycott to work, it'll take more effort than just not buying thier shiny disc's that somtimes plays in cd players and somtimes just locks up your mac.

      Mycroft

      *e.g.:The bad dip the economy took, the low percieved quality of many of thier cookie cutter bands, the angry people who've gotten sick of thier bullying, copy protection schemes that cause problems, the larger numbers of people hearing of how they mistreat acts, the perception that thier prices are to high, and many more I'm sure.
      --
      https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
    8. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by syrinx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unless you're in Canada or somewhere where they don't have real money, CDs are *not* $20. Try $7-$10. $14 at the most, for brand new releases. So your so-called "REALLY conservative" estimate, $15, is close, if you only buy the new releases from major label bands at a Best Buy or something, and are unfortunate enough to live somewhere with sales tax.

      Also, plenty of students have a lot of spending money. It's called "not being a lazy ass" or "having a job". $7500 over several years isn't that much, if music is what you enjoy and spend money on. Hell, students at my old school probably spent that much just on weed over the four years... well, the ones who smoked weed were there for longer, but you get the point.

      Basically, you're another example for the need for a (-1, Stupid) moderation choice.

      --
      Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
    9. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by eofpi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Most songs just aren't worth $1 per song, especially for a lossy, low-bitrate, DRM-encrusted file. And that's before the major labels try to hike the price up.

      Every previous change in standard formats has been an increase in audio quality and/or consistency.

      • Examples:
      • Vinyl was prone to scratches; 8-tracks weren't.
      • Cassettes were an evolution in tape technology (and, iirc, CrO2 was higher quality too).
      • CDs brought the consistency and durability of optical digital media to music.
      MP3 just doesn't add anything. It's a lossy encoding of the CD audio, it's easily destroyed by virii, worms, and particularly nasty windows crashes (other OSes are unfortunately statistically insignificant in the end user market). AAC doesn't either. It's got all those risks, plus DRM out of the box. I haven't heard of anything else of comparable or better quality being used for music sales.
      --
      Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
    10. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by BobTheLawyer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Contrary to popular belief, downloading music (pirated or not) is NOT illegal. Since all you have to rely on is the NAME of the file you are downloading, you can claim negligence. Hey, how are we supposed to know if the song is pirated or not? What if we live in a cave? Brittney Spears, who?"

      yes, that's a really plausible defence.

    11. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by MartinG · · Score: 2, Informative

      stealing their cds instead of buying

      What, go round their house and take their cd collection, do you? :)

      Sorry to have to bring this up for what seems like the millionth time, but when you are copying without a licence from the copyright holder you are breaking the law, but it IS NOT STEALING! It's not even the same type of law breaking (civil vs criminal)

      You can argue about whether its the moral equivalent or not for ever, but I am in favour of calling things what they are.

      --
      -- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz .@adgimnoprstu
    12. Re:Here is why I buy CD's by Mignon · · Score: 2, Funny
      My mom raised me on vinyl as a kid, so maybe I handle media a lot more carefully.

      Hmm, interesting. I was breast-fed and tend to treat them pretty gently too.

  51. Did anybody consider by lightspawn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ripping from digital cable music channels?

    A smart app could figure not only when the songs change, but OCR the picture to try and parse the artist, album and track info.

  52. this is what the RIAA defends... by the+arbiter · · Score: 2, Informative

    Everyone should read this.

    http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

    Yeah, those poor record companies. Legal theft is a hard way to live.

    --
    Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
  53. Digital out? by node159 · · Score: 2

    Everybody talk about the analog loop hole, what about the 'Digital out' that most of the better sound cards have? if you feed that back in you have a digital copy and unless you have stupid DRM on everything i dont really see how you can bypass that.

    --
    GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
  54. Esound is your friend by Trolling4Dollars · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you are on the Linux platform and you use the Enlightened sound daemon, then you've got most of what you need to do stream ripping. I've used 'esdmon' to "tap" into the sound stream from RealPlayer (for some of my favorite internet radio boradcasts) and xmms. You can also use 'mplayer' to snag RealAudio streams as well. The following combination of tools gives you the equivalent of Tivo for your favorite internet audio streams:

    1. RealPlayer
    2. 'esdmon'
    3. cron
    4. 'oggenc'

    Here's my personal bash script to get these guys to work together and save the stream to an Ogg Vorbis file:
    ---

    #!/bin/bash
    DISPLAY=roy:0
    export DISPLAY

    datestamp=`date +%D%T | sed s+/++g | sed s+:++g`

    esdmon | oggenc --raw -o /home/colin/radio/hos-$datestamp.ogg - & /usr/local/RealPlayer8/realplay /home/colin/radio/wysu.ram

    ----

    Make the assumption that the .ram file points to the stream that you want to capture and replace the home dir path and hostname of the X server to reflect your machine.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah... I'm sure someone out there could do it better, but this should get some people started.

  55. Not for $16 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No CD is worth that much money.

    I buy from BMG Music Club, which has monthly sales, and if you buy during those sales, you get CD's for just under $7 each.

    That's a decent deal, and I find I'm willing to buy 6-10 at a time for those prices.

    But for $16, Brittany better give me a BJ and agree to not talk when I'm around.

  56. The RIAA has anticipated this by jgabby · · Score: 3, Informative

    The RIAA has been expecting this for a while now. Over the past several months they have been lobbying the FCC to put copy protection on the new Digital Audio Broadcasting (IBOC) to prevent this very thing. So far the FCC has held back from doing anything because RIAA has failed to show harm already being done - I wonder if this will be their example?

    They argue that ripping programs to individual songs is illegal because it is "librarying" - which is NOT a legitimate fair use. Rest assured, they will come after it.

  57. I just signed up for allofmp3.com by dougnaka · · Score: 3, Informative
    And I've spent a whopping $3.50 and got 4 full albums. It's legal, and like buying CD's doesn't screw the artists anyways. I'll go to shows and buy merchandise from them to pay them directly, where they get higher royalties.

    There's an interesting thread here about it, scroll down to the one that starts "OK, here's the scoop on allofmp3.com" by ronross.

    $.01/MB is about what I think is fair for online music, you like $.99/track great, I don't, I like $.05/track. If I thought artists deserve to live like rock stars I'd send them parts of every paycheck, or buy them coke, but I don't. If a musician makes more a year than I do for what is obviously less work then they can't complain.

    The URL again where you can legally get tons of good quality music for $.01/MB is www.allofmp3.com
    The English button is at the top left, FYI.

    Oh, and by the way, I welcome all flames/spam/etc to my personal email address kgb@submarinefund.com

    --
    My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
    1. Re:I just signed up for allofmp3.com by Torne · · Score: 3, Informative

      I also use allofmp3, and I think I should clarify its legality as your post is a bit optimistic about it. =)

      The artists do not get paid; you know that, but it's not neccecarily obvious to others. Some of the music is sourced from a single bought CD, most is sourced from downloaded MP3s. The Online Encoding Exclusive tracks are all CD sourced; the others are at best 320Kbit MP3 sources - yes, all the non-Exclusive OE tracks are being transcoded, not encoded from the original.

      Yes, it's legal for them to operate the service because they are complying with Russian law.

      However, it is not neccecarily legal for you to USE the service. The situation seems analogous to buying stolen goods when you know they are stolen. It's not exactly analogous from a legal POV, though. I don't know the exact position of US law, but piracy law in the UK and much of Europe counts the party receiving the copy as liable as well as the party making the copy. I consulted an intellectual property lawyer and was assured that yes, under UK law, usage of allofmp3 is definately illegal, though it might be treated leniently given that someone who's not really clued in might believe that the site is a legitimate music seller.

      Coverage of P2P lawsuits in the US suggests that US law does not consider the recipient of a copy liable, which would probably make it legal to use allofmp3, but IANAL and my lawyer friend doesn't know US law well enough.

  58. Re:Questions: No record? Legal? by evilviper · · Score: 2, Informative
    What interpretation of the law supports this?

    Betamax case. Time shifting.
    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  59. Huh? by kikta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think the parent poster was referring to www.di.fm, not FM radio. RDS only applies to over-the-air FM radio broadcasts.

    For DI.FM's MP# streams, it would be ID3.

  60. Home recording laws an exception to copyright by geekee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Home recording laws are an exception to copyright that allow people to record stuff from the radio or TV for their own use without paying any royalties. Congress decided this was fair because taping from the radio was poor quality anyway, and a hassle, so it didn't affect the value of a song in terms of sales.

    Now, as people on /. attest, people want individual songs of the internet, not albums. Also, digital technology makes it easy to sort out the songs you like from a stream relatively easily. Therefore, even though people say it's unfair, home recording laws will not allow recording of digital radio, because it will eat into profits from legitimate sales online, and therefore, is at odds with copyright law. Remember that copyright is a constitutional right in the United States before you start screaming about how ther RIAA is going to bribe congress to take away your rights. Your standing on thin ice if you think you have the right to record internet streaming audio just because you could do it before with analog radio.

    --
    Vote for Pedro
  61. Type III tapes by Compact+Dick · · Score: 2, Informative

    And I have no idea why there was simply no type 3.
    There was a Type III tape, namely FerriChrome. FeCr was to deliver the best of Type I [ferric oxide] and Type II [chrome], but died an early death as it didn't. They were on sale only in the early 1970s, AFAIK.
  62. Legal Question (was Re:Good idea but...) by Lawrence_Bird · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Given the reasonable assumption that the 'fair use' guidelines would permit me to make a copy of a CD I have
    bought, what then happens if I sell or give the original
    away? Am I somehow legally obligated to destroy my copy,
    be it a duplicate of the original cd or mp3s ripped from it?

    1. Re:Legal Question (was Re:Good idea but...) by yaba · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hm... I would assume that the same as to Software applies: You have to delete or destroy all copies.

      However who knows, unless the cover of the CD will be replaced by an EULA?

    2. Re:Legal Question (was Re:Good idea but...) by greyfeld · · Score: 5, Informative
      Actually burning a friend's CD with an approved device and approved media is completely legal as long as you are not selling the CD's. The Audio Home Recording Act was basically the government giving into the music lobby. They record companies (many owned by the makers of the recorders) realized that there was nothing they could do about home taping and the manufacturers of recording devices agreed to levy a tax on their product and everyone would look the other way. If you are using a device that is made specificaly for copying, then copy away!!

      There is a catch though, you must use a device that is "commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals" and for which the primary purpose of the device is to make such recordings. What are these devices? Well they are DAT tape recorders, Cassette recorders, and CD recorders sold in places like Best Buy that are set top units. CD-ROM drives and computers are not "marketed for the primary purpose" of making digital audio copies, so they don't fit the law. You must also use blanks that are for the express purpose of copying music. They must also contain the SCMS (serial copy management system) that prevents you from making copies of copies. Source disks must be originals in these devices. Obviously, these controls do not exist on CDROM drives or computers.

      There is a tax on these devices and blanks that is distributed out to the artists as royalties based on their popularity, etc. That's the crux of the issue - CD-ROM drives are not marketed as primarily CD copying devices, nor are computers and they do not contain the record copyright controls. But these set top boxes have only one real function, and there is a additional tax levied on them in the U.S. to legitimize their use.

      Find a copy of the law here.

      Section 1001 defines a "digital audio recording device" as: "Any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use ...".

      Section 1008 says "No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the non-commercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog music recordings."

  63. Doing this legally, with artist support by Eythian · · Score: 2, Informative

    iRATE radio is a project that downloads music that bands have released for free, and plays it to you. Based on how you rate the tracks you are given, it gives you more that it thinks you'll like by comparing with other peoples ratings. This results in a pile of MP3's that you like (at least to some degree :), and an easy way to get more that fit your tastes. You also have control over how regularly you hear each track, and so on.

  64. Re:Stop perpetuating this myth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I have the solution for your problem. Instead of thinking of it a lousy CD quality, think of it as awesome tape quality.
    Kids these days.

  65. It's still second generation re-encoding! by rustman · · Score: 2, Informative

    Virtually all stations re-encode the stream from their source material. The source may be anything from a WAV or AIFF file to a 128k or slower MP3, which then goes through an AGC and possibly a compressor/limiter, the songs are segued together and then it gets re-encoded.

    So a stream ripped 128k track is going to have a lot more artifacts than an original MP3.

    Also, as most stations segue their music you're going to not get clean starts and ends on your songs.

    Finally, it all depends on how often the stations updates the meta info inthe stream for the streamripper to split the tracks. For example, the latest version shoutcast reduced the metadata frequency from 8 seconds to 30 second intervals.

  66. I used to do this by Feezle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember "ripping" Pink Floyd's "The Wall" from a WBCN broadcast in Boston in the late Seventies. The quality of the cassette sucked, but I couldn't in my wildest dreams afford the album on my budget, so it sufficed for a while. As soon as I could afford it I bought the real thing.

    Maybe RIAA could make part of their problem go away if record labels made lower quality downloads of tunes available for free. Good enough for blasting out the dorm room window, but bad enough so that if you can afford the real thing you'll want to pay for it. Artists could build markets, not alienate listeners, and still make money from people who can afford to pay for full-bandwidth versions of the music. They obviously aren't making any money from people who can't pay anyway.

  67. The funniest thing I've read in a long time by Infonaut · · Score: 4, Funny
    "depending on how you read the law, it's 100% legal"

    Umm... ok. That's exactly the iron-clad legal guarantee I was looking for!

    --
    Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
  68. Shoot... by Foreign16 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think this is a great way to listen to what I want to download to my ipod next. It takes the guess work out of who sings the song. I can let it rip for a while. come back, play through and go download the tracks I really like via itunes or whatever your liking.

  69. You can do this with... by bot24 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Just because I've seen lots of people posting: "You can do this with mplayer", and I like mplayer, I will post this in it's deffense.

    You can do this with:
    • SndRec.exe
    • mplayer
    • xmms
    • A tape recorder
    • A cd-burner(not a computer one)
    • A dvd-burner(again, not just for PC's)
    • A pvr
    • A camcorder
    • An answering machine
    • A cell phone
    • People with good memories
    • A piece of wax, a crank, and a needle
    • Bits of hard drives(preferably ones that you haven't used in a cannon)

    If you have any other good suggestions of things that the RIAA should burn, post replies(Is that "allowed" here? etiquette?). (I even checked to make sure that this article is less than a week old before posting)
  70. it's actually unlikely to by Trepidity · · Score: 2, Interesting

    MP3s from 1997 may well be non-transparent, but it's very difficult in double-blind listening tests for people to distinguish a good VBR mp3 made using a perceptually-tuned preset (say, LAME --preset standard, and especially LAME --preset extreme) from the original CD. There are a few isolated codec-killer cases that are distinguishable by people who have trained to listen for specific artifacts (mostly cases of pre-echo), but they're not that common.

  71. audio ripping made simple, part 1 by ajs318 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What I'm envisaging is a gadget with a HDD and a USB connector. You plug it into a PC and it pretends to be a USB audio adaptor, something like a SoundBlaster Extigy perhaps. The PC sends PCM audio to it over the USB connection, fully expecting it to be converted to analogue, amplified and listened to. Instead, the gadget is simply writing the raw PCM data to its own hard disk. Maybe it could add WAV headers, maybe it could recompress on-the-fly into MP3 or Ogg Vorbis and write to a flash card instead of a HDD, but those are just details: the main thing is that it's snarfing data that is being broadcast down a bus.

    The fun part is that it also pretends to be -- well, it is -- a USB mass storage device. So now you just mount it and read back the raw PCM files.

    Alternatively, if you already have the necessary software for playing audio from a stream anyway, why can't you just hack the source code a little so that it outputs data to a regular file as well as or instead of the DSP device?

    --
    Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
  72. or you could use this which is free... by modipodio · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://streamripperx.sourceforge.net/

    a bit different from audio hijaak I know but good for what I use it for and its under the gpl if you care about such things.

    --
    __________________________________________________ "UNIX is a fascist state, Windows is a democracy.
  73. Suddenly I lost all sympathy for him by Daemonic · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Ratajik says he's trying to sell music from StationRipper via Amazon): "if users click the 'Buy' button they can buy the music being ripped.
    So it's not just a case of taping stuff off the radio for yourself - there's morons doing the online equivalent of setting up a stall on the high street selling mix-tapes made off the radio.

    This is where the problems lie. Stop trying to go public with services/sharing/selling. You are stealing from somebody.

    Kids copy a few tracks off the radio, or from their friend's CD, and no-one cares that much. It's what we've had for decades, and we can all live quite happilly thank-you.

    As soon as someone starts distributing en masse to the world at large - to people they don't really know - the balance tips.

    We have a balance between how much hassle/loss of quality we'll endure for free music. The record industry has a balance between how much hassle it is to track/sue people against how well organised they are, and how widely they're distributing their stuff.

  74. Just wanted to point out: by Amiasian · · Score: 2, Informative

    Since no one seems to have mentioned it, I'd like to do a small plug for a really great Mac Stream Ripper. It's called Audio Hijack. Though, it's not limited to Streaming Audio. It can record any sound that runs through one's sound card -and- it does live audio effects as it's being ripped (if you want).

    So! Happy ripping!

  75. streamripping by celimage · · Score: 2, Informative

    As an artist streamripping, downloading, filesharing etc. does not bother me. However, if you sell or market this material in anyway and profit from it that bothers me a lot. The word "piracy" gets thrown around a lot but pirates did not loot ships to share things with their friends they did it so they could sell the material as their own...... Dennis Jennings http://celestial-image.com