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Freedb.org Returns to Life
Trogre writes "The recently troubled free CD database freedb has been picked up by a group called Magix. From Kaiser's blog: 'Following my announcement that I would like to let freedb go, I was approached by many interested parties ... Even if I shall no longer be actively associated with freedb, I shall continue casting a critical glance on freedb's future. The decision in favour of MAGIX has given us a new prospect of further development, offered a congenial and comfortable atmosphere during difficult negotiations, and provided the newly implemented hardware with generous capacities.' This might be good news since Grip still doesn't support MusicBrainz."
And what's going to happen to Freedb2 (site that one of original founders forked from Freedb) then?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Following my announcement that I would like to let freedb go, I was approached by many interested parties
Well, given the name, I hope they got it for free.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
When most other CD rippers for both KDE and GNOME support MusicBrainz (amaroK, sound-juicer, banshee, etc.), there is less of a need to use Grip.
Personally, I switched over to sound-juicer when I discovered that sound-juicer embeds the MB metadata when encoding to Ogg or FLAC. It makes it much easier to refer to the particular track again later.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Most FreeDB/CDDB clients can access MusicBrainz through a CDDB gateway: http://musicbrainz.org/doc/CddbGateway
CDDB and FreeDB are old news. MusicBrainz is by far superior. It accounts for different release years, different formats, multiple artists, compilation albums, etc. "Why would I need to use your site? What's wrong with FreeDB?".
I'm not affiliated, just another happy user.
So at their request, I built a system which would send a query to the CDDB.com page (back before they became Gracenote), excise out the useful data, and store it, one album at a time.
I got it through proof of concept, and then explained while it was technically possible to continue in this vein (I had probably pulled three albums correctly in testing, one more at the demo), they would be fools to continue because the page format could change at any time, and if the fine folks at CDDB figured out what we were doing, the owners would be begging for a lawsuit.
They still didn't want to do the right thing, so the project eventually got dropped (I think Napster made the CD go bye-bye), I moved on to greener pastures, and the owners went on to found a handful of failed dot-bombs, I guess.
Ah, the good old days.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Hats off to Michael Kaiser for being the caretaker of freedb for the past 7+ years and remaining true to the community spirit the service represents.
Many digital music collections, mine included, owe a lot to freedb.
The data is accessible by the public, but as far as I know, the whole database is not. "We" created it. The internet community at large are the ones who populated it with the data that now makes it worth something to someone. I hope the new caretakers of the database do something great with it, but I also would like them to make the whole damn thing accessible, if even for just a little while.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
FreeDB2 will be bought by IBM....
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
They're a good company. Their Music Studio software is practically free when CompUSA has its rebate deals on it. It's a great piece of software for $30 - $0. Just FYI
After the split I exchanged an email or two with Horar about licensing problems he might be getting into, even though, thank God, IANAL.
The legalities of applying the GFDL or GPL to a database like the one managed by freedb.org are unclear. If you are interested and have deep pockets, you can try to get the courts to clear this up for us (although you might have to secretly agree to pay for Horar's lawyer, also, otherwise he might just shut down instead of waiting for a clear decision).
AFAIK, the data that the original CDDB developers made off with, to found what has become Gracenote, is not protected legally by any license in any way, since it was donated without any declared licensing, and it would seem to be hard to prove to the courts that those that donated somehow expected their contributions to be licensed in a particular manner.
I have my own personal opinion about what the original CDDB developers did, but they are almost certainly in the clear legally. Horar is on much less certain ground, but I'd be surprised if anyone bothers to take it to court.
IANAL, however as I understand it under US law: it is not possible to apply any license to this database, because the licenses are grants of rights, based on the copyright of the owner. However, copyright does not apply to this data. No one can hold a copyright on 'facts', only 'expressions'. A clearly stated (though no more authoritative) explanation from the 'copyright' article on wikipedia:
Compilations of facts or data may also be copyrighted, but such a copyright is thin; it only applies to the particular selection and arrangement of the included items, not to the particular items themselves.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Have always locked out 'freedb' and all the other internet spies that most all 'media players' seem to be infected with. All come with 'agreements' containing onerous vague 'permissions' and statements where users 'agree to be bound'! What is this stuff anyway? All I wanted to do was listen to a CD and instead I get treated to some unknown crook's sado-masochism dungeon complete with ropes to have usere 'bound'. Users are fools too as they 'agree to be bound' without knowing all the implications of 'being bound' but mindlessly click away thinking none of this can touch them. Another disturbing tidbit is the idea that the 'new' system intends to have special 'software'; and is a commercial for profit business complete with websites containing 'shopping cart' icons! Does this make your money disappear along with the remainder of your privacy...like it is MAGIXly gone?! What is this? Good thing that Linux allows the total lockout of this security hole. Windows 2K said they allowed lockout
of web and software spies by supposedly controlling the 'services' that facilitated them, but they did not really lock all of it out. WinXP is 'In-Yer-Face' nasty about not allowing 'end user' control of its 'software. I don't even want to think about 'Vista'. Certainly know that it interacts with hardware mods of new motherboards, north and south bridge chips, harddrives, and Intel CPU's to enforce nonviewable or modifiable secred DRM om all windows users. Good possibility that SuSE linux's will be also affected, as may be RedHat's product. Both of those distros were good once. The keyword is 'once'. SuSE is now the slave of Novell and we ALL know who they are. RedHat seems to want to kiss large corporate ass so much that they should ship their product in brown boxes. Enough rant...this will never get really posted by the managers of this site...and you all know why that is, don't you?
Here's some insight into what went on before the splitup.
Unfortunately, US law has nothing to do with it; the FreeDB2 developer is in Australia. One of the worst aspects of Australian IP law is that facts from collations of data themselves are copyright protected, thanks mainly to a legal decision over 'reverse-engineering' of phone books.
/. will make a dent...
This is also the reason Windows MCE & Vista have / will have no EPG in Australia - TV guide data is collated separately by a third party (HWW, which itself was recently bought by a television / media conglomerate (PBL / Nine)), and they jealously guard it against any use by devices which allow automated recording (PVRs, media centre PCs, etc) - ostensibly, to prevent "piracy" of the network's intellectual property (aka overseas TV shows broadcast 8 months after appearing on ChannelBT). If Microsoft decided they couldn't win against this legal aberration, I don't think you whinging on
The upshot of which is, don't expect FreeDB2 data to be available under any but the most onerous of licencing conditions. In fact, conspiracy-nut though it may sound, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the FreeDB2 developer was affiliated with one of the music / media conglomerates...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
That sucks for Australian listeners, but copyright law is dictated by jurisdiction. If I am sitting in American, I can suck-down FreeDB2 data, and do anything that I want with it. For any copy of this data sitting in the US, no matter how it got there, it is practically in the public domain*. Australian law cannot impact this.
* The data is in the public domain, a particular 'expression' of the data can be copyrighted. So if I download a PDF of the data from an Australian website, that PDF can be copyrighted. But if I copy the raw text into a database, with no font, color, and layout information, then my database is not infringing on the 'expression' that was bound by copyright. I can do anything that I want to with this database.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain