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Shawn Fanning Is Back Into Digital Music
prostoalex writes "News.com has a lengthy 3-page article on Shawn Fanning's new venture, Snocap. After years of development the company is coming out of the stealth mode and has apparently already secured a distribution deal with Universal Music, promising to turn file-sharers into loyal paying customers overnight. Both News.com and Associated Press are skimpy on the details, but apparently Snocap will market the technology that will (a) sniff out the files shared illegally and (b) fill the peer-to-peer networks with licensed content and serve as a clearing house for the ventures who want to license digital music, but don't want to deal with gazillion of music labels." (We mentioned Snocap last in January.)
Why would I bother with this when I already have an alternative that is free of charge, more secure, and has more content?
promising to turn file-sharers into loyal paying customers overnight.
Hasn't this already happened??
-Teiresias
Material that is available for legal distribution is just too boring to attract subscribers, at least currently. (Musically that is, so Project Goethenberg aside)
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
"promising to turn file-sharers into loyal paying customers overnight"
Other side-projects include:
Turning lead into gold. (codenamed "sorceror's" stone, for american market)
Project "elixir"; granting licensees eternal life.
Research into rocket powering pigs, and hell-proof cats.
What if they force the Internet provider to wipe any file that is not signed by them and thus prevent these p2p networks to be used for Free contents ?
As a provider of such files, I think I'd have a problem because I want my Free files to circulate freely so they'd better have a good sniffer.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
It seeks out and find illegal music, and then it fills the P2P networks with legal music.
excuse me, but isn't sharing legal music still illegal? If not, then I got like 350 cd's everyone can have a copy of... come and get it!
If I wrote something witty, you would say I stole it from somewhere.
Is it in WMA format? I read the article quickly and didn't see anything stating the format. But anyway, I refuse to pay for a WMA... or an MP3, even. Especially when there's DRM involved. There's no way I'm going to pay for a lossy Microsoft format.
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
What else are they offering besides Shawn's name? That won't be enough when stacked up against ITunes and other competitors. There has to be a real consumer value. The percentage of their desired customer base that has heard of Shawn is less than 1%. An even smaller percentage care if Shawn is involved or not.
1: Identify illegal music downloads.
2: ???
3: Profit
God spoke to me.
FTA:Record executives say they are also interested in a feature that will track peer-to-peer requests for songs that aren't yet licensed for digital distribution.
Just release a single titled "Teen sex anime barnyard hack crack lolita".
Snocap will market the technology that will (a) sniff out the files shared illegally and (b) fill the peer-to-peer networks with licensed content and
.COMers to have investors escape reality.
California crack must be pretty good these days as it still allows
The reality is CDs need to be priced at $2.50, $4.00 if it is good and new.
Consumers are rebeling at paying $15 for a BTO or Abba that costs the media producers nothing to produce. Plus, many already owned the wax versions.
The media induatry is slowly screwing itself.
Now lets support fiber optics to a country that will put real content on the web, let the adverisers pay for it and open up WebTV for real so I can loose my cable company forever. This country has to have no time for the lawyers and stupid monopolistic legislation.
No, that would be far too logical. Better to charge the consumer for a new copy in whatever medium is in vogue, and then prosecute the people who try to (justifiably) download all the old songs they have on cassette or acetate 78 RPM record.
I'm just saying we should clear the slate. If it's all about having a license, then let it be about that. But I think I'm owed a few credits for every album I've purchased more than once.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
I though Shawn stole it from his roommate while the roommate was napping - thus the name Napster
reference
SELECT * from tblArtistlist WHERE
artist = @SearchArtist and not in (Select Artist from tblBannedArtist)
OR @SearchArtist = 'Metallica'
Therefore every time you submit your MP3 TRM's to MusicBrainz, who in turn pass them onto relatable, his company can use that data to identify the songs on the P2P networks.
Far more accurate (although slower) than looking at the title of the files. Additionally, changing the metadata within the MP3 won't make a difference.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Why would I bother with this when I already have an alternative that is free of charge, more secure, and has more content?
These people forget that the DRM'ed content is incompatible with my living room DVD player, my car CD player and my portable MP3 player.
I gathered from the article that a dealer could forward a copy and the reciepient could then buy it. It sounds like buying the DRM key to unlock it to me. My hardware can't use that content. Get a clue guys.. Use a universaly accepted standard.
This is as useful to me as if you came in to my store and only had Lyra and not dollars. I'd send you away to get it exchanged into something accepted here. DRM music has the same problem. I won't take it. I can't use it. Calling it music doesn't make it playable any more than calling Lyra in the US money makes it good for buying things here.
Just because I can use it somewhere doesn't make it universal in my location.
The truth shall set you free!
I'm wondering if there is a legal twist here -
1. Create software that can plug onto P2P technology to prevent free downloading of content.
2. Offer software for free to various P2P software projects.
3. When developers refuse, take them to court because they won't add the copy protection plug-in.
4. Sue anyone who's using a non-DRM client for said P2P software.
I think people are vastly missing the point here. (Surprise.)
The idea with Napster was that Fanning *always* said that he wanted to work with the music labels. The labels (and the RIAA) unfortunately hated his idea so they sued him out of existence. In my opinion, that was a mistake. The oldskool Napster would have been a fantastic method of tracking and eventually reimbursing labels, publishers and musicians. It was the first effective music distribution network. So no: he's never been "pimping himself out to both sides of the fence." The idea was that he always wanted Napster to become the leading legitimate online distribution method.
Snocap monitors the contents of files being traded on current P2P networks (they don't say who but we could guess) and then reports that information back to a central server to monitor how often a file (of any type) has been traded and downloaded. That data can then be turned into invoices and sent to ISP's and their customers.
With that information, he could then approach organizations like ASCAP or BMI, who already get similar information from BDI and other broadcast monitoring services, and use that information for charting purposes and for reimbursement to publishers. BDI charges for this service, and so could Snocap. Since file downloads are a mixture of a broadcast and an "owned goods" model, it's not being welcomed by the likes of ASCAP either but there are likely tons of other options in terms of billing / invoicing services for this kind of monitoring. Remember: This was *always* the plan for the original Napster.
You can be "sick of" hearing Shawn Fanning's name all the time but the bottom line is he did have a legitimate plan for Napster to begin with which was summarily shut down by the record labels (who it likely would have benefited immensely had they followed it through its course.)
I think Snocap is a potentially good idea for many reasons. Mostly because I do enjoy the current methodology of the numerous P2P products out there, and also because having worked in the industry, it takes a long time to get your hands on the kind of data which something like Snocap could provide. Snocap could inevitably replace Soundscan if it was proven to be both secure and reliable enough.
If Fanning didn't do this it's questionable just how long it would take for an existing music industry company to do so.
$0.02
ad
Because I can! [Brainrub.com]
Music is like porn. There is tons of free porn out there, but the porn business is still booming. When a person "consumes" pornographic media, their desire for more generally increases. I believe the same goes for music. My exposure to easy music downloads has only served to increase my general interest in music. I listen to more genres and artists now than I ever thought imaginable a few years ago. And I have paid a decent amount for new music as a result, via the current channels.
We did something like this under contract from teh record labels. We placed drm on windows media files and distributed them on p2p networks. At first, silently delivering licenses to the media player to encourage seeding, then flipping the switch to require a payment before play.
It was easily defeated by the fact that people don't download Windows Media Player files for audio tracks. Almost always they get mp3s w no drm. No mp4, that may be a different story. Of course, you can "wrap" an mp3 file with drm as well, but it should suffer the same fate as those files on the networks that are loops/screeching audio that only have a small inpact on the network. Just mho.
fyi, it turned my stomach to implement such a system and we have abandoned drm completely since then.
From the whole "napster" thing, to the nonsense in The Italian Job...
First of all, why put napster in quotes like it is some sort of imaginary thing? And second, you're upset because a movie made a crack at a piece of pop culture?
Napster was a huge deal at the time. And since the case ended, with the exception of the Italian Job reference, what else is so incredibly over-exposed about Napster that warrants bitching about being tired of it? And I also wouldn't describe him as "pimping himself out to both sides of the fence". He had a great idea and he went with it. So he had the choice of either sticking to his guns and having nothing or agreeing to play by the rules. I doubt that you'd do otherwise.
I think they're not ready yet. This will be another story on another day...
And I know I speak for many people when I say: "Whatever".
John.
Is there any place that allows you to burn or transfer files to mp3 players all you want, when i download a song from say napster, i can only burn it like 3 times. Right now i am playing in my Church band, alot of times we play the same song several times every few months, when i get the song list for that week, i burn the ones we are playing to cd and listen to them while i am driving around doing my work. I have been playing music for 20 yrs. but not Christian music, so I need to hear the song a 10 - 12 times to get it in my head. After burning it 3 times thats it, no more burning that song, thats just STUPID, plus you have to use they're burn engine. I want somewhere that if i buy the dern song i can burn it 50 million times if need be, i paid for it!!! I guess the only other alternative would be to hook up an MP3 player in the car.
I think this could be the first step towards a system were the artist get the money they deserve.
And this is a bad idea because... ?
Once this is implemented, people will still have to reach into their pockets and pull out their credit cards. At that point, it becomes no different than iTunes or the "new" Napster or any of the others. Everyone downloading free music from those networks will just move on to the next free network. Is there something I'm missing here that makes this time different?
Perceived value is extremely important and explains who soda drinks can vary so much in price. Why can an event hall sell the exact same can at a ten fold the supermarket sells it? Certainly there costs can't be that much higher?
Why exactly can toll roads charge so much when most of the people on the road make less salary in the time it takes to drive around? Because they perceive the product they are buying as being worth the higher price.
ipods are worth it, cd's are not.
To counter some of your points.
MORE content. P2p has illegal bootlegs, p2p had the live aid concert for ages with the dvd only being out now.
MORE secure. No credit card to be stolen.
MORE useful. I still can't find that bootleg on iTunes. Or that alternative band.
MORE convenient. Yeah paying 99 cent +++++++++ my internet connection is so convenient. I don't know what salery you make but I can spend a few minutes searching for 99 cents.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Congratulations! You win the award for Best Use of Obvious Information for Karma!
He means lira. Italy's previous currency.
How does this work with Creative Commons?
Evolution is just a scientific theory. Creationism is not.
1. It should be AND @SearchArtist 'Metallica'
2. Might I suggest a join instead of a subquery?
SELECT * FROM tblArtistList As A
LEFT JOIN tblBannedArtists As B
ON B.Artist = A.Artist
WHERE A.Artist = @SearchArtist
AND B.Artist IS NULL AND A.Artist 'Metalica'
Digital media without DRM is like fish without bicycles.
Sleep is futile.
Damned slashdot ate my <>
1. It may be obvious to you, but there are probably a lot of people out there who do not know who Shawn Fanning is or that he created Napster. Why do you take this superior, exclusionary attitude? This is the kind of attitude that causes Linux-zealots make Linux look really bad. This is absolutely not 'obvious' information unless you closely followed the Napster/Music Industry wars a few years back and actually remember the names.
2. I already hit 50 karma back in 2001. This gets me no additional karma.
3. Why are you posting an off-topic rant at +2?
Congratulations! You win the award for best misuse of your high karma +1 posting bonus!
When a startup company's developing technology, it'll spend a period of time in "stealth mode" - i.e. they won't release any information about what they're doing so somebody doesn't come and copy their idea while they're still working on it. The website must not have been updated since they came out of stealth mode. (Plus, having such little information available might make people curious about the company). Maybe check back in a week or two.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
Wasn't (in alchemy) the mythical philsopher's stone (not the sorcerer's stone....I have no idea that is.) that could aid in tranmutating objects without requiring the laws of equality (ie- alchemy works like an algeberic equation- for it to work both sides need to be equal. you cannot create something new out of nothing, just alter what already exists).
click me
Apart from being short it also repeats itself and is pretty light on the details. Basically it claims to turn an exisiting P2P application/network from having illegal files to only having legal files and legal downloads overnight. Ehm, how? and just as important. Why?
P2P has this deal. In exchange for bandwith I get free content. With this in exchange for bandwidth and cash I get paid for content. So like iTunes and all the others except I need to upload as well? Oh and have a really crummy search?
Right. Kazaa and others are what they are because I don't have to pay for what I download and because what is being shared is made by users. Bootlegs, old records, forgotten recordings, tiny bands. All the stuff you can't find in the shops.
If I am going to pay for downloads I want the bloody receiver of my money to pay for the fucking bandwith and not have to download it from some guys 56k modem. Geez. Is the music industry insane or just stupid?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Since they are tracking d/ls they should be able to see who is being d/led and arrange payment to the artists/labels for their songs being d/led.
The money to pay them would come from legit banner ads within the program interface. Think about how large of an audience advertisers would be able to reach. I'm not talking about the usual hit the monkey and win but legit ads for things like upcoming movies tennis shoes etc.
As long as the banner ads werent all that obtrusive and the prog didnt install any of the crap like the spyware that comes with KaZaa I would have no problem putting up with ads in exchange for free legit music.
Clearly the tech industry media is hungry for "rock stars" but what most of us realize is that Shawn Fanning stumbling into writing a groundbreaking application does not make him a visionary. The same holds true for Marc Andreessen.
Someone was going to write the first successful P2P app, and someone was going to write the first successful web browser.
But being that someone doesn't make you a somebody worth caring about when the bright lights have faded.
But it still doesn't render slashdot correctly...
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
"These people forget that the DRM'ed content is incompatible with my living room DVD player, my car CD player and my portable MP3 player."
Did I miss something? I have iTMS and an iPod. if I want it in my stereo, I use a $4 cable or a $100 AP Express. If I want it on my home disc player or car disc player I burn a CD.
and my iPod *is* an MP3 player, in common parlance.
What's the hard part?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The only way to get content for your CD player is to only use services that allow CD burning like Napster-lite. Then you can rip them back to MP3 and you always have a backup copy thats not DRMd.
Science is the Real TRUTH!
This would be simple to legislate... if the entertainment and retailing industries didn't have the $10 more per CD than they're worth to pay their lobbyists and lawyers.
I'd be willing to pay a media replacement fee to get new media for the music I've bought.
I've never heard anybody elected to office in Washington saying, "What about the people?" with regards to these things. It seems that Fair Use and other concepts are only justifiable in either a "what's the minimum we can let them have" or if an educational or library organization has lobbyists. It seems rather "fuck the people".
I understand the concepts around intellectual property and the "fruit of your labors" concept, but the Constitution grants the government the authority to legislate such things To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
It's clear to anyone who's not directly impacted by the revenue generated by the exclusivity that it should end at some point.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
This won't fly. For many reasons, but primarily there will be no assurance that what this software removes is truly unlicensed or even the file it thinks it is. And with no way to recoup lost files, it essentially won't gain acceptance. Whoever is hailing this as anything other than draconic needs to be shot.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
If you had put some creativity into it, you might be modded more Funny than +1.
ooh, let me have a go:
In case you are wondering what "Napster" is, it was the first big p2p sharing network, started in 1999.
In case you are wondering what p2p is, it's peer-to-peer, and refers to a network not relying on dedicated servers.
In case you are wondering when 1999 was, it's time to stop taking those drugs.
They wouldn't sell at all beyond the first couple of hundred if anyone could just press a button and magically turn one ipod into two for no extra cost.
Since copying information is now effectively a cost-free operation, any business model that depends on charging for copying information is doomed to failure in the long term.
Ok then, explain the Itunes Music Store which is profitable in its own right?
People will generally pay for something if it is right to do so, and they do not consider the price out of line. There is also value in diversity of content and guranteed quality.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That data can then be turned into invoices and sent to ISP's and their customers.
Isn't that going to require it to be very accurate at identifying song? Particularly not getting false poisitives, and sending a bill when no download occured?
I've not heard of any song identifying technology that is close to accurate enough to this. As I said in another post I've used MusicBrainz and that isn't close.
This reminds me of back in the early nineties when I went to a movie theatre with friends to see Dances with Wolves. We had been drinking and one of the previews was for the Adams Family, it was just a black screen with the music and the finger snapping. When it was done, somebody in the theatre whispered, "It is gonna be about the Adams Family". I was drunk and my self censor was turned off and bellowed "NOOOOO SHIIIIITTTT". If you had read the first two paragraphs of the article, assumed if you are going to be discussing it, you would have already known that so once again I say NOOOOO SHIIIIITTTT. So I don't understand why the parent is rated informative since they gave no new information that wouldn't be found by reading the article of discussion.
I want no one to escape [ his karma whoring ], but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continuous to allude me and you gain no deeper knowledge of current topic no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This post has meant nothing.
Back in the day artists needed the record companies because they provided a medium for distribution of the artists product, in the form of LPs, tapes, CDs, etc. The artists don't really make any money from these distributed media, but they do get their music out into the world. Artists income is primarilly from live performance, and it was healthy income so long as their albums were well distributed by a capable record company. Now, a medium for distribution (Free P2P networks) exists, and it isn't the recording industry so they're going nuts about it because they don't want to die off. What irks me is that they're winning now! Somehow, artists didn't choose to leave record companies, and consumers caved because of the threat of litigation (which I do not mean to make light of, it is a hefty threat). So that leaves us (in the most general sense of the word) working to keep a cumbersome, inefficient and net draining system in place. As I see it, the Recording Industry is really out of context, but it has lots of money in its paws so it's using it to thrash around.
Nowadays I could spend a bit more time sadly. :( damn this burst bubble.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
and my iPod *is* an MP3 player, in common parlance.
Only among the hard disk players selling for over $300. Mine is not an over $300 player. It's less than $60 and holds about 700 meg on a shiny disk. I can fit about 12 CD's of stuff in it which is fine for my commute and a day at the office. I don't have to carry a CD case. In raw numbers, I think the CD MP3 players may outnumber iPods simply because they are more affordable. I know of one person at work that has the apple player, however I know 6 that have CD MP3 players. If one is going to get stolen, dropped or otherwise abused in a work environment, I'd rather lose the $50 player, not a $400 player.
If I want it on my home disc player or car disc player I burn a CD.
The shiny disk that fits the portable works in my car, my PC, my laptop, and in my living room DVD player. Why burn a disk that may run for maybe an hour when you can burn a disk that plays everywhere and is good for all day?
MP3's just work. DRM does not. All my public domain old time radio is already in MP3 format.
Did I miss something? I have iTMS and an iPod. if I want it in my stereo, I use a $4 cable or a $100 AP Express.
Why climb behing the cabinet to jocky cables, or buy another player just to play another format in the living room that won't play in my car or portable? It's easier to simply avoid incompatable formats.
Did you buy the Circuit City crippled format player so you could play the non-return rental DVD's? Neither did I. I didn't spend the money to buy DRM enabled players, so I'm not interested in DRM content.
I only bought a DVD player after it was here long enough to be firmly established. I didn't buy any of the $600 DVD players or $40 movies. I have bought a $60 player and some sub $10 movies. I know the movies will play on my next DVD player when mine dies.
Will your music play on your next audio player when your iPod and/or PC dies? My MP3's will work fine on my next MP3 CD player. That's why I support the format and don't support a DRM format. Your gullability to follow the DRM trail disturbes me. Are you thinking ahead, or just for the here and now?
The truth shall set you free!
What makes a file legal vs illegal? If i rip an mp3 from my CD, encode it using old school encoders which no copyright information, no id3 or id3v2 tags, and it just so happen to be named "Britney Spears - Baby One More Time.mp3", how is a program going to know if that file is legal or illegal? It would be pretty bad if it deletes something that I created and spent time doing...even if I am a Britney lover and probably deserve to have that file deleted for being a Britney lover. But don't I have fair-use rights on my Britney Spears CD?
who doesn't want my bandwith used to support someone else's business? (I'm guessing no.)
In free P2P, while someone is downloading my music files, I or someone else can theoretically get something back from them. In this system, a user pays money to a third party, that points that person to my computer and uses my bandwith to deliver the file, and I cannot get any compensation. In contrast, iTunes supplies their own bandwith.
If I am misunderstanding something, please enlighten me, because this sounds ridiculous.
It's not just his name... it's the whole Shawn Fanning package!
(By which I mean poorly written software and/or a godawful UI)
allow CD burning like Napster-lite. Then you can rip them back
Why spend the time, money, and format change loss?
I simply avoid DRM in the first place. Then I only need to burn the MP3 CD and not waste time, money and conversion degradation. You are spending more to get less. Since it's worth less, I'm willing to spend less for it because it requires additional investmet to use it. Because it may be a DMCA violation, I'm not even willing to buy the DRM stuff in the first place. If I don't have it, I won't bypass it, and won't face legal problems for circumventing it.
It's my choice to vote with my wallet. I'm not casting a vote for DRM. It has too many legal snares, costs aditional money to support, and is incompatible with my hardware.
The truth shall set you free!
The labels (and the RIAA) unfortunately hated his idea so they sued him out of existence. In my opinion, that was a mistake.
Yeah, I have to chime in here. It was a HUGE mistake. In fact, there are a few people like me who are so pissed, we'll never buy from RIAA members ever again because of what they did to Napster. That may sound stupid or an excuse to illegally copy music. The fact is, I own cases and cases of legally purchased CDs and roughly 99% of my MP3 downloads were songs I already had in my collection but downloading was faster and easier than ripping myself.
On top of which, a good number of the downloads that weren't in my collection led to purchases of CDs.
If the music industry had found a way to work with its customers, who clearly wanted this medium, I would have been happy to pay for online music. But instead, they sued their customers and they sued Napster.
So, my feeling now is FUCK THEM. They won't get another penny out of me. They want to make things right with me, they can send me a check for all the crappy quality cassette tapes that stuck to tape heads and got eaten up, or for all the CDs (you know, the media that's supposed to last forever), that got eaten by (Slashdot won't take my link to: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_328113.html)
Geotrichum fungus while I lived in Mexico.
Yeah, that'll fucking happen. Fuck 'em. I suspect the RIAA will have a much shorter lifespan than I will. I think they've outlived their usefulness and that's going to become readily apparent over the next decade. The music industry business model will change, the power and the money will go to the individual artists, where it belongs, and the RIAA will be but a bad memory.
And even if it doesn't happen, I'll keep hoping for it and I certainly won't help those assholes out.
If I'm going to be part of the distribution system (DRM'd shared files, right?), I'm going to need to be reimbursed for my upload bandwith and access to local storage on my machine by either snocap or the record labels themselves.
I mean, if I didn't exist, they would have to serve the stuff themselves, and incur bandwith fees as a result (not per bit, but pay for bigger pipes to provide the service). Also, the distributed mechansim makes server storage less critical, lowering cost of maintenance for their systems.
I'm not being greedy, just practical. This is, after all a business relationship I have, right? I'm just doing this to help out the starving artists and help get them better sales and increase their royalties.
And the children. Think of the children.
So...where's my cut?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You're talking about the awful American remake aren't you, not the original classic?
Actualy it's a new just made up format for exchange, like DRM is new and you want me to use it. Most places won't take it trade. Is that any diffrent than trying to sell one of your DRM tracks to someone else? Nobody will take it. It's not good for anything. You only accept it if you can use it, not if you may in the future sell it to someone else. I can legaly sell my old Styx, ELO, Pink Floyd, Charlie Daniels, Chicago, Aerosmith, Steve Miller band etc, LP's and CD's. Can you legaly sell your latest iTunes track?
CD's are legaly accepted in trade and work. Public Domain, and Creative Commons MP3's legaly can be passed on and work. DRM tracks break and don't work.
The truth shall set you free!
Most people seem to be missing the central point of the article.
The idea seems to be to scan P2P networks for tracks. If the tracks on your PC have been downloaded "illegally", then the RIAA will send you a bill for the tracks, and a little extra for costs. Effectivly they will say:
"You've got our tracks. Pay us money"
Now you can say,
"Tsk,Tsk. Not a shread of proof do you have private company boy, except for your(possibly falsified) records. I might have borrowed the tracks from my friends, direct exchange etc. And besides, I had to format my disk yesterday anyway."
To which they will say(in the initial letter they sent you):
"You can pay us the $100 you owe us now, or we will sue you under the DMCA, PATRIOT, HR2391, and just about any other bullshit law we got past the braindead zombies on capitol hill. You don't like it? We can sue you for that too. Pay us the danm money of face a lifetime of bankruptcy. P.S. Any attempts to start a protest group will also lead to instant litigation. Have a merry fucking christmas. Buy a CD for $30! Now piss off!"
To which you will say:
NO CARRIER
May the Maths Be with you!
For a compressed song, though.
Losslessly compressed songs are still weighing in at around 25-30 MB.
Bandwidth may be relatively cheap for 128bit AAC music, but the next thing that consumers are going to demand from the music industry is higher bitrates and eventually lossless compression. Can Apple transfer a 30 MB file and still make money at $0.99? Probably not.
Might be boring to you, but the live music archive strikes me as stuff that's legally distributable and *very* interesting. Perhaps something on these lines...
Don't take it too much for granted that next mp3 player will remain backward compatible. MP3 is still a licensed technology, and the people who own that technology don't have to keep licensing "free" versions - they could lock it up in drm just as easy as microsoft could lock up wma, and then you'd have nowhere to go to replace that $50 silver disc player when the buttons finally stop working.
If you want free you better find one of those silver disk players that can handle ogg or some other free format. Ogg sounds better, anyway. Sounds like... victory.
No.. No they're not.
Average joe blow consumers are not going to demand higher bitrates or lossless compression.
They might have it marketed to them, as a way to differentiate download services, but none will hear a difference, nor understand why the files are bigger or take longer to d/l.
Which is proper. Since there is only 1 Philosopher's Stone, calling it Philosphers Stone would be inane.
click me
Boy how you'd get that one wrong if you'd put money on it. I'm an extremely principled person
Principled like you would do something illegal (whether you knew or not is irrelevant) and then, after it being defined illegal in court (so now there is no question as to whether you know or not), not change? I don't see how that's principled. It sounds more like your stubborn.
I don't view that as being unprincipled, or playing both sides. I think it's more a case of adapting to circumstance. He put a lot of time and work into Napster, something that he believed in. And now he thinks that this technology can be improved and utilized in a way beneficial to both the record labels and the consumers. What's so wrong with that? He's not selling out, he's changing his approach. His old approach was deemed illegal. I don't think he's selling out by transforming an illegal good idea into a legal good idea.
Just one example of a band who uploaded their own music and shared it freely. This proved to be an incredibly sound business move for them. For their evil DRM schemes to work, the monopolists will have to lobby to make giving your own music away an illegal act.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
SO they are going to piggy back onto peer-2-peer? they are going to use the bandwidth that i pay for every month and expect me to just share out my files so they can charge someone .99 while utilizing MY computer (power, wear and tear, ect.). Talk about your moneymaking schemes...if they want this to work they had beter be offering the people who share a part of that money. Yes, a lot of people do it now for free, for whatever personal reasons. But when big RIAA money sucking corperations start trying to use my resources and charge others for them, i guess thats when i draw the line.
I can see it now....
There are 1 users sharing music on this node... /list
~RIAA money sucking whores server! PAY UP BITCH!~
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This is MY galaxy...go find your OWN!
..Is about what an .MP3 is worth to me. Seems like another attempt to lend credability to selling DRM'd .MP3s at $1 a pop. Which is just never going to fly with me, ever.
Not that I willingly listen to or buy any music released by RIAA companies anyway.
Whether or not a court deems anything illegal is irrelevant to having principles and morals.
I believe at the time Napster was finally shut down (early 2000? or so?) Fanning was claiming to be working on pattern recognition technology in tandem with several researchers. Not metadata / tag reading, actual waveform pattern matching. This is because they wanted to circumvent someone putting up a Metallica song by naming it as a John Denver song. (for example.) Whether that's what Snocap ultimately turns out to be is unknown obviously but I'd still be interested to see what it is at least.
I agree: as long as it's an open-source "I'll name that track whatever I want" system, then no there wouldn't be any accuracy at all.
ad
Because I can! [Brainrub.com]
Napster and Kazaa is less for me about the latest albums being ripped but the weird content. This weird stuff ain't legal at all. Just that I can't buy it legal either.
So not really sugar coating it either. Just pointing out why iTunes means nothing to me. It ain't got what I want.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
a)Why would any customer use anything that will sniff out somthing that could possibly get them in trouble. b)Fill P2P with lisenced content? How is this at all helping the industry?
I certainly won't support the godfather of the DMCA (Fanning) in any of his business ventures. His last business venture accelerated the loss of freedoms in America that is rivaled only by the corporate patent land grab.
So use my analogy of $25 an hour meaning you could spend an hour downloading 20 songs or spend $20 to spend 10 minutes to download the same number of songs from the iTMS. That STILL leaves you with 50 minutes of that hour to do something else like:
Read a book
Garden
Fix a leak
Watch TV
Play a video game
Eat dinner
Make dinner.
The value proposition works. If your time is worth money, then spending 10 minutes on iTMS is saving you money.
GPL Deconstructed
"Snocap"
There's a joke in there... somewhere.
I agree with you, except how you're quantifying the saved time.
You're basing its value on an hourly wage that is totally unrelated because the time saved would most likely be spent on other things, like you listed... and quantifying those more likely alternatives isn't easy.
If your time is worth money, then spending 10 minutes on iTMS is saving you money.
I agree 100%. It's just using an hourly wage to quantify the DEGREE to which how much "money" you're saving doesn't make sense (to me at least).
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that doing this would underestimate the value of the saved time, because some (like myself) value an activity like reading a book at more than what I make at work.
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
Bandwidth is cheap enough, even getting ripped off you wont pay more than $2 per GB of bandwitch, and making a profit of even $.3 per song at 30MB will be enough to pay for all the bandwidth required even if they were getting ripped off. I'm currently not paying more than about .30 per GB and I'm sure apple gets far better rates with the volume they are purchasing. Sure it may quadruple there bandwidth costs, but the bandwidth costs are only a very small fraction of the overall costs, and easily absorbed.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now. - Ed Howd
"The idea with Napster was that Fanning *always* said that he wanted to work with the music labels. The labels (and the RIAA) unfortunately hated his idea so they sued him out of existence. In my opinion, that was a mistake. The oldskool Napster would have been a fantastic method of tracking and eventually reimbursing labels, publishers and musicians. It was the first effective music distribution network. So no: he's never been "pimping himself out to both sides of the fence." The idea was that he always wanted Napster to become the leading legitimate online distribution method."
Do you recall him acting in a friendly manner to the labels? If I recall correctly, he started up the service with the understanding that it would be used primarily for unauthorized distribution of the labels' intellectual property, followed by repeated denials that they were aware of copyrighted information being traded (although it was completely bloody obvious to anybody with a brain), followed up by repeated denials that they could do anything to prevent copyrighted material from being traded. If I recall correctly, the courts had to tell them to take action to remove identified copyrighted works, and then they required the copyright owners to jump through an enormous amount of hoops to do so. In other words, they were stonewalling. Sometimes stonewalling is an appropriate tactic, but it's not something you do when you want to "work with" another party.
If Fanning and company really had good faith intentions of "working with" the labels, they would not have taken these tactics. A more appropriate, and very easy, approach would have been to tell the labels:
But they didn't. They stonewalled every inch of the way.
Business is business. A big part of business is treating the entity with which you wish to do business with just a bit of respect. I've been involved first-hand with deals with Microsoft, Yahoo, and other big names, and common courtesy is rule #1. This is such a huge no-brainer in the business world that I can't fathom why anybody would be shocked that the record labels litigated rather than "working with" them.
If somebody tried to sell me yard care services by taking a shit on my lawn, I would have zero interest in working with them. The record labels took a similarly dim view. What would you do in that situation -- work with the people who shit on your lawn, or the people who treat you with respect?
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Now he's a pawn in our capitalist system of bullshit :)
I see he's learned to play the game very well.
Shawn appears to be selling the desperate a solution to their problems. I hope he walks away rich as hell and our economy continues to dwindle due to lame buisness moves just like this.
some people will take the legit rout of paying for their downloads (ex: itunes) but there are others who don't recognize file sharing as a crime or simply do not care. the idea that some of those people will suddenly have a change of heart a pony up some cash is ludacris.
Get your torrents...
IIRC, Iceland is the only country that charges for overseas downloads ...
But a distributed "distribution" system would be nice (@see Steam's mistake)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
... as a traitor, that is. Fortunately there are many other better P2P options available. Goodbye Shawn.