Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Legal Music Sharing Returns To MIT

Posted by timothy on from the swallows-to-san-juan-capistrano dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Two MIT students relaunched MIT's believed-legal music sharing network today, using a Linux-based consumer audio device that also launches today as a commercial product. The 'Library Access to Music Project' (LAMP) system was first launched a year ago, but shut down after its content supplier encountered legal hurdles. The re-incarnated LAMP is based on StreetFire Sound's RBX1600, which network-enables multiple inexpensive consumer audio jukeboxes. So... what do you think? Does the new version look legal?"

4 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Serious potential by Pan+T.+Hose · · Score: 4, Informative

    Notwithstanding the rather unfortunate name this project has a serious potential.

    "Does the new version look legal?"

    Of course it looks legal, but is it enough to avoid lawsuits? Very unlikely. MIT is the very place where the hacker culture were born, so obviously it is the first place for RIAA to keep an eye on.

    --
    Sincerely,
    Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
    "Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
    1. Re:Serious potential by 3terrabyte · · Score: 3, Informative
      Libraries have lots of clauses in the laws pertaining to copyrights, allowing them to do what they do. Forget music for a moment, don't forget they're lending out copyrighted books to people for free!

      Your mom is not allowed to make copies of those CD's. Is it enforcable? No.

      She might like to know that due to the Patriot Act, the government can check her library records whenever they want and not tell anyone about their inquiry. Of course, it's suppose to only be if she's a possible terrorist threat. But that hasn't stopped them busting dope dealers under the 'terrorist threat'.

      Personally, I don't think the RIAA wants to tackle the 'library problem'. First of all, it's not that popular of a practice. It's also quite tedious. But those things aside, I'd say the RIAA would never want to undermine a library. That's just to close to home to voting parents, and would really paint them in a bad picture.

      --

      Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?

    2. Re:Serious potential by MushMouth · · Score: 2, Informative

      Both sides are illegal, haven't you ever read the FBI warning at the begining of a DVD. The reason they haven't yet gone after those whose are leaches is that it would be next to impossible to catch them. As if they set out honeypots, it would likely be considered entrapment.

  2. Slink-e did this 6 years ago. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Winstein's conclusion was based on the high expense of CD jukeboxes with computer interfaces, because at that time, no solution existed for gluing inexpensive consumer audio jukeboxes to computers -- a situation that changed with the advent of the StreetFire Sound RBX1600."

    Guess they never heard of the Slink-e, which has been around for more than 6 years. In fact, it's so old it was just discontinued a couple months ago!

    http://www.nirvis.com/slink-e.htm

    Sure, it doesn't handle the audio side, but that's pretty trivial to do.