Slashdot Mirror
New Music Player to Spread Files Wirelessly
PontifexPrimus writes "A new P2P / media player project could allow mobile music devices to automatically transfer media files from other players running the same software. While there seems to be a certain risk (mislabeling files, creating intentionally corrupt songs) there also seems to be a huge potential to this idea (get on the subway to work and when you arrive there your available music has doubled). Of course, this also is a nightmarish scenario for the RIAA-like organizations, especially since such swapping occurs without active user participation, in a drive-by way."
the idea is to have it work on the basis that it learns your listening habits, what you enjoy and then proactively retrieves music from other push enabled music players on the fly. If you don't listen to the Backstreet boys or music like that it will be very unlikely to pick that it.
Kind of like last.fm but more aggressive.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
From TFA, file jumping will only happen "Based on what you have been listening to in the past and which files you already own". So unless you have a secret Backstreet Boys habit this should be avoided. The concept seems similar to http://www.last.fm/index.php which generates reccommendations, neighbours and radio stations based on the tracks you listen to on your PC.
To store music on the Treo650, you will need an SD card- you are not yet able to store non-.prc / .pdb files in a PalmOS machine's RAM. The T5 / LifeDrive both have separate storage areas (the T5 as flash-based and the LifeDrive as HDD-based) to which you can copy non-PalmOS files.
A WindowsMobile PDA will let you copy any file to RAM, although, as you have noted, storage capacity tends to be too low to make music storage viable.
Basically, leave the RAM for essential applications, and use an SD card for non-essential applications, music, video etc.
This AC is right, your choice in music says nothing about your intellect (or morals, or political affiliations, or favorite text editor...) is just your taste in music. I don't delude myself, many of the songs I listen to have stupid lyrics but I like the melody and that's what matters to me. I usually can't pay attention to lyrics while coding (or reading, browsing, writting emails...) anyway. Mhmm I have the sudden need to link http://www.ocremix.org/
But... the future refused to change.
Set up a different station for each 'type' of music you like? That's what I did. That's why pandora lets you make a bunch of different stations. I like almost every type of music except country, but the type of music a want to hear _right now_ depends on the mood I'm in.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
You mean "Sony v. Universal Studios"
Yes, thanx. That's the right title of the Betamax case. I wasn't paying attention and I wrote it wrong.
determine if there are substantial non-infringing uses
I'd like to quote the Supreme Court's exact rule: "it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses".
That is in fact a rather difficult test to fail. I am not aware of any product ever failing that test. The Supreme Court knew full well that it was a test that was almost impossible to fail, and they explained themselves quite well why they ruled that way. That an innocent inventor creating a new product for some legitimate purpose cannot be expected to have some crystal ball to know what percentage of users will use it in what way, and that he is not responsible for people who turn that product to some other illegal use. The basic principal that spoon inventors and spoon sellers are not responsible if people start using spoons to commit murder.
as we recently saw in the Grokster case, the key phrase is "non-infringing uses".
No, you are misstating the Grokster case. The Grokster result had absolutely nothing to do with non-infringing uses.
The Grokster case absolutely affirms the Betamax ruling that Grokster cannot be sued simply for making P2P software, even if that software is overwhelmingly used to infringe. That Betamax is an almost absolute shield against being sued for making and providing a product.
What Grokster says is that that does not prevent you from being sued for doing other things. Well duh, if you commit murder while selling VCRs, Betamax is obviously not a sheild against being held liable for that other illegal act.
Grokster did not lose for making and providing the P2P product that they did. That was perfectly legal.
What Grokster was held liable for was something completely separate. They were held liable for running advertizements essentially telling people to commit infringment. They would have been liable for that even if they had not been providing P2P software at all.
Grokster would have won had the P2P product been exactly the same, if only they didn't tell people they should use it to break the law.
I can sell spoons, but I am going to lose just like Grokster lost if I run ads saying that you should use my spoons to run around gouging random people's hearts out.
Spoons are legal and Grokster's P2P is legal. Telling someone to commit a crime is not.
As presented, there are very few non-infringing uses for the device qua file-sharing device since everyone involved in the sharing must have the copyright holder's permission to share the files.
Did you even read my whole post before jumping to post? How did you possible miss the part where I stated that I have an entire folder on my computer of public domain and Creative Commons music files, and that is is absolutely legal for anyone and everyone to distribute and redistribute those files as much as they like. iRate alone has probably close to a hundred thousand such songs that are perfectly legal to redistribute, and I am aware of many other sources for tons more music that is perfectly legal to redistribute.
You can even do an Advanced Google search restricted to Creative Commons works that are free to share. Doing a "free to share" search on the term MP3 gets over 3 million hits. The Creative Commons website has many links to sites with free to share content. And this website has a bazillion links to free music, many of which are explicitly free to redistribute.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Doctorow's model, if I recall correctly, was that the automatic trading of songs would happen between two "tollbooths" on the highways. The tollbooths would count the number of songs you went in with versus the number you came out with, and would then charge your music account accordingly. THe more music you picked up on your trip, the more you got charged for.
The interesting twist was that if you had more than a certain amount of songs, you could trade freely because you were seeding everyone else around you, thereby earning exponential revenue for the copyright holders.
Neat idea.
Hi, I am Lars Erik Holmquist, leader of the Future Applications Lab in Sweden that did the Push!Music project. It has been interesting to read all the comments here and there are even some new ideas we would like to follow up on.
But just to clarify:
1. This is a research prototype, not a product. We have tested it in small-scale user studies but have at this point no plans to commercialize the technology.
2. The purpose is NOT to spread music or other content illegally. There are a number of systems that allow you to pay for songs you have downloaded via filesharing and even give compensation to the person you got it from, for instance Shawn Fanning's Snocap. There are also several ways you can subscribe to "all-you-can-eat" downloads, for instance the current incarnation of Fanning's previous venture Napster. When a payment model is in place, Push!Music will simply help people find more music, which can only be good for the artists.
3. When we do our current user tests, we are careful to stay strictly within the limits of Swedish law: we only use music that the users have paid for, and we limit copying to within a small circle of friends.
4. Many have brought up issues like viruses, spam and unwanted songs, advertising, the problem of correctly predicting what someone will like, etc. Of course there are potential problems with new ideas but that is no reason to not explore them! We are building and testing prototypes to find out more about both problems and unexpected opportunities.
5. Several mentioned using the concept for other media, and we are already looking into this, for instance digital photos. This might also be easier for copyright reasons, since people would then mainly share material they have created themselves.
Thanks for your interest, and if you want to know more I suggest you read some of the papers on the web site. There is an additional paper coming up at the Intelligent User Interfaces conference that will talk more about the problem of matching songs to users.