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."

Comments

No Thanks..

[Kickboy12]

I don't want the thing downloading Backstreet Boys, or even worse... getting Dashboard Confessional from some emo kid.

*shivers* Scary thought.

Re:No Thanks..

[User 956]

or even worse... getting Dashboard Confessional from some emo kid.

Is that what they're calling it? So that's what happened to Katie Holmes' face.

In that case, you're right. I don't want to be getting dashboard confessional from some emo kid either.

Re:No Thanks..

[thelost]

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.

Re:No Thanks..

[jack79]

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.

Re:No Thanks..

[Kadin2048]

Well the player -- at least an iPod-style one -- ought to have a pretty good idea of your tastes, since the file metadata contains playcount, rating (one to five stars) and genre. Assuming you actually use the rating feature and set the genre correctly, I think it would be pretty straightforward to only retrieve music that's somewhat similar to what you enjoy.

Here's what I'd want on such a player: 25% of the space would just be for my music, and the other 75% would be a cache of music taken from other players, constantly refreshed whenever it "talked" to a player whose owner had tastes similar to mine. When listening to music I'd have the option to move it into my permanent collection, dump it immediately, or do nothing. Music would be slowly expired from the public portion of the player, oldest first, as it got full. That way you wouldn't get it clogged up with music that might not be your style anymore.

Of course if you shared a music player with anyone else, it would probably get very confused.

Re:No Thanks..

[TerminalInsanity]

Infected Mushroom, KMFDM, Girls Under Glass, VNV Nation, White Zombie, Ed Rush, LORDS OF ACID! Front Line Assembly, Das Ich, Mortiis Please dont say my music sucks, i'll cry. Because i care. I really do.

double entendre

[User 956]

And by "Spread Files Wirelessly", they mean viruses wirelessly.

Re:double entendre

[DrIdiot]

And by viruses, you mean N'SYNC and Good Charlotte albums... right?

Re:double entendre

[TeacherOfHeroes]

This could be a really neat way to model how real human viruses spread through casual contact. Create a file that reports back to a central tracking station and watch it go.

If its built into an mp3 phone you could even track its location, since the CDC already wants your cell phone number and cell phones are now being used to track you

Eastern Standard Tribe

[DoorFrame]

This sounds like an element from the plot of Cory Doctrow's Eastern Standard Tribe where all users of a highway system will be able to access each others music as long as they're on the same road at the same time, a real information superhighway.

Re:Eastern Standard Tribe

[GMFTatsujin]

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.

if they were ubiquitous

[victorvodka]

If these things were widespread and of sufficient density, they could form their own peer-to-peer grid networks capable of sending any sort of information, untraceably. It would be its own internet, the way the internet was first envisioned. Information would finally be completely free. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Time Warner/RIAA/NSA!

Re:if they were ubiquitous

[YrWrstNtmr]

Information would finally be completely free.

And no one would produce anything, because people do actually need to eat.

Do YOU go to work for free?

Re:if they were ubiquitous

[Blastrogath]

>And no one would produce anything, because people do actually need to eat.
>
>Do YOU go to work for free?

Yes I do. There are a load of things I do for no monetary reward that others get paid for, the same is probably true for most people. Some people get paid for writing out their opinions in print, for one example.

Music predates copyright by a few thousand years. People didn't need copyright to write or play it before, they don't need it now. Writing and playing music is fun and rewarding in and of itself, and there are plenty of ways that musicians have been financially supported in the past without copyright.

By the logic you put forward nobody would play sports anymore if you took away the professional leagues.

Re:if they were ubiquitous

[csnydermvpsoft]

Music predates copyright by a few thousand years. People didn't need copyright to write or play it before, they don't need it now.

Before copyright laws, however, there weren't easy ways to duplicate music either. Recording devices didn't exist, and neither did photocopiers.

Nightmare my ass!

[bombshelter13]

If these become popular it will be a dream come true for the RIAA. Hard, physical proof that someone is a music pirate! "Officer, arrest this man, he's carrying intellectual property theft devices!"

Re:Nightmare my ass!

[jrockway]

> "Officer, arrest this man, he's carrying intellectual property theft devices!"

"Officer, arrest this man, he's carrying a murder weapon."

Oh, you mean it's not illegal to carry something that could be used illegally? Damn the constitution! (Murder weapon in this case is a hammer that "this man" is carrying home from Home Depot to hang a picture on the wall.)

cool pranks

[icepick72]

certain risk (mislabeling files, creating intentionally corrupt songs)

Same as regular P2P but that's survived and comes in useful.

Drive-by music. Hmmm ... I like it. I will put an MP3 on my player that consists of only my voice yelling at the listener to "WATCH OUT BEHIND YOU". See how many paranoid people I can freak out. People would be doing that walking the street, in their car, on their bicycle, on the transit system. It would be great

Interesting ONLY IF

[u16084]

Only Useful If Paris Hilton is standing next to you with her Camera Phone....

Who really thinks this is a great idea?

[ItMustBeEsoteric]

Illegal content? Copyright infringement? All "without user participation," but I would say that since people can download from you on P2P apps, without active participation, you could draw a precedent from that to apply to this: having shared, copyrighted music on a device that allows (forces?) others to download it simply by being in your vicinity is clearly a violation.

Of course, the second this moves from simply audio to pictures and/or video, you could wind up with other illegal content (i.e. child porn) on your player, just by walking by someone with a similiar device who so-happens to be a pervert.

Great idea here, people.

Re:Who really thinks this is a great idea?

[Alsee]

You're absolutely right.

That's exactly why VCRs are illegal! Because people could use them to commit copyright infringment!

Oh wait, no. You're an idiot. This whole issue was resolved twenty years ago in the Sony v. Betamax supreme court ruling. This is perfectly legal and it is a good idea for the exact same reason VCRs are legal and a good idea.

Yes people could decide to commit copyright infringment. So fucking what?

I have an entire folder on my computer of public domain / Creative Commons MP3 songs. The people manyfacturing this product have every right to sell it to me, and I have every right to load those files onto the product and to distribute and redistribute those files to anyone and everyone.

Of course, the second this moves from simply audio to pictures and/or video, you could wind up with other illegal content (i.e. child porn) on your player, just by walking by someone with a similiar device who so-happens to be a pervert.

Yeah, and?

Someone can mail child porn into your mailbox. And they could put a flyer with child porn under your car windshield. And they could hand you a free innocent-looking magazine on the street as you walk by, with child porn on page 8.

Someone could choose to commit copyright infringment using or to distribute child porn with it. Just as they could use a Xerox machine to do the same things.

And whenever you find files on it that you don't want... whether it is simply crappy music or child porn or whatnot, then you delete it. And no, you are not violating any laws if someone sticks child porn into your mailbox or broadcasts it onto your device and you had no idea about it.

The answer is simple. They have the right to sell it and you have the right to buy it, and YOU are responsible not to intentionally violate any laws.

-

Re:Who really thinks this is a great idea?

[Alsee]

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.

-

Push vs pull

[YrWrstNtmr]

...allows users to actively recommend songs by sending (or "pushing") music to other users in the proximity.

Current P2P is strictly pull. You select what you want, and get it from (wherever). Having random people push random stuff on to my hardware? Not a chance.

Would you allow someone to do this with your PC? Didn't think so. Remember that when you connect your new mp3 player to the USB port.

A potentially good idea, but we all know there is a tiny minority who will screw it up. Badly.

Re:Push vs pull

[legirons]

"Having random people push random stuff on to my hardware? Not a chance."

TiVO users accept it. Radio listeners accept it. iRate users desire it. Aren't the same type of people buying music devices too?

Re:Push vs pull

[YrWrstNtmr]

TiVO users accept it.

A single format, from a single source company.

Radio listeners accept it.

soundwaves. No actual files.

iRate users desire it.

Closer, but still a central point of contact.

Seriously...would YOU allow your hardware to accept random files from random people on the street? I wouldn't.
And neither will the sheep, after the first drive-by virus outbreak.

Re:Push vs pull

[legirons]

"Seriously...would YOU allow your hardware to accept random files from random people on the street?"

Absolutely -- it was a central feature of Konspire2B, which I still think is one of the most elegant/efficient transportion methods for various types of data. Kind of like a bittorrent/TV-station mix, where the users help out with bandwidth. Or like multicast except that it actually works on the internet.

Use wireless aswell as the internet for connections, and it becomes even more robust, with better availability, bandwidth, etc. That will be useful with video blogs, web and software (subscribe to this channel for wiki video news, software updates or slashdot stories from someone who's plugged-into a landline more recently than you, but check the sender's signature) as well as the obvious copyright-infringing uses. So maybe it has elements of a mesh network too. Some useful privacy aspects too (no ISP involved)

As you say, you need to be sure that your computer can handle malformed files safely (whether video, image, html, etc) and the client needs to be provably secure.

So software that can play an MPEG (etc.) without getting a virus is a prerequisite for systems like this. I think such software is probably needed anyway, even if you don't accept content from "unknown" sources.

And this is just the start of it...

[TractorBarry]

This is exactly the sort of thing I dreamed up in an earlier response to an *AA post (too lazy to go and link to it :)

The beauty of this sort of system is that, designed well, you'd be able to program your device to "listen out" for things you're currently interested in (this would rely on files being tagged with a bit more meta data than we get in current IDV3 tags etc.) With some sort of AI algorithm processing the tags you could also optionally allow the "pickup new music" function to take you off into new avenues of sonic exploration (Hmm... think I'll set the "weirdness factor" to 3 today). Hell I never knew how much I liked Bulgarian throat singing until I heard some on a radio station whilst cooking my tea :)

One thing's for sure though you'd soon find more good music than you'd probably have time to listen to - unless in the future you can get paid for being a "music filter" for a third paty (when most manufacturing ia automated new jobs will come into being...) And with digital transmission of the data the days of artificially induced shortages are over (ooh look, limited edition of 100 copies on BLUE VINYL !!!!)

So you make available what you please and passing people pick up what they please from you. Everyone gets to hear more music.

And what of the poor musicians I hear you say. In the future more bands will make more money than they do today from live performances, personal appearances, writing bespoke music for social events etc. etc. In an interconnected world there is now more opportunity for musicians/sound sculptors to both create works and to get paid for it. Admittedly there'll probably be less battery farmed, multi millionaire musicians producing trite pap (a la Britney Crap etc.) but there'll be more musicians earning a living.

Meanwhile the cavemen at the *AA etc. still just simply don't get it and are attempting to keep things going using their 1920s business paradigm.

Ho hum. Bring it on.

Re:PDAs and Memory

[PDA_Boy]

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.

opens up a whole new arena for spammers

[mrycar]

Make Millions of dollars sharing information. Call 1-800-sir-spama to get into this multi-level advertising oppostunity.

Do you want to get paid to attend parties, movies, and rock concerts? Maybe you are into exercise? How about making money on your way to work? If you sign up today, those hours of congested traffic and annoying public transportation experience start making you money.

All you need to do is download our "music" everyday from our service onto your AD-pod and it will do the rest. It will share all of the its content with anyone who passes by, making you money in return.

Our technology works by attaching ads to snippets of popular music and sharing those ads with those around you. Our ads give full credit to the artists and records label and get our messgaes out to the masses.

Sign up today

Wireless Usenet

[hey]

I think it would be cool if it was a wireless Usenet. Usenet uses a flood algorithm. In the olde days you could sent mail thru it.

Remote Mount?

[nurb432]

If you live in an area that has free wireless, i would imagine you could mount your drive at home, and have virtually unlmited space on your PDA.

Routing?

[B1ackDragon]

Unless they automatically copy every new file they encouter to themselves (meaning they'd have to be HUGE) I bet routing would be a problem. "User Error 719: No Route to Host/File Not Found. Please walk to nearest Starbucks and Hang out with more People."

I'm fairly sure any kind of ad-hoc mesh network with any type of standard routing protocol would be brought to its knees by the frequency of connection change.

They are gonna get sued.

[sbaker]

There is a good argument for P2P systems in general in that there are MANY uses for them other than stealing music - and yet many P2P systems have been taken down by hoards of ravening *AA lawyers. But it's quite a bit harder to come up with ways in which this device could be used legally. It's a music player - so people aren't likely to be using it for copying photos they've taken or software they've written - such as is the case with P2P on the Internet. How many people do you think you'll just naturally happen to bump into who:

a) Have a compatible player...and...
b) Have OpenSourced music on offer...and...
c) Actually want to recommend it to you.

I would be quite utterly amazed if I got one interesting and legal track in a year of use.

Furthermore, if the owners of these machines don't actively send the files, it's likely that there is a good case for suing the manufacturers for causing copyrights to be breached.

They are gonna get their asses sued unless they weigh this thing down with so much in the way of DRM that it'll be useless in practice.

The article links to the manufacturer says that this is for sending "Recommendations" - so perhaps it is intended that one only ships a short recommendation in the form of a brief clip.

Another possibility is that you'd have to be signed up to a music service based on the 'subscription' model...in that case, this is music you could just have easily downloaded for yourself - so the 'recommendation' thing would really be the only reason to use it.

Ad Hoc Networks

[kalel666]

Imagine some kind and generous soul buying these, and then leaving them in public places. Subway stations, parks, coffee houses, etc. Presuming you could hide them or otherwise make them conspicuous, you could have a repository of music from anyone nearby. Over time it would update and grow, reflecting a gestalt of what music is popular in that particular neighborhood/location. Would be kind of cool, actually.

MOD PARENT UP

[Requiem18th]

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/

Microsoft will sue for patent infringement

[tomcres]

I believe that Microsoft owns the patents on "drive-by downloads" as part of Internet Exploder. IE has been facilitating uninitiated covert downloads for about a decade now. Frankly, this is just a blatant rip-off of Microsoft technology.

Re:How about some kind of 'taste matching'?

[zcat_NZ]

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.

Last time I checked...

[Atario]

...music players have no way of running executables you copy into them.

Some quick comments from the people behind it

[Anonymous Coward]

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.