Record Labels Change Minds About Sharing MP3s

Mass Defect writes "While the RIAA continues to sue people for p2p file sharing, the record labels have made an about-face and given their blessing to users sharing MP3s via the social networking site imeem.com. In May this year the site was being sued by Warner for allowing users to upload photos, videos, and music to share. However to everyone's amazement, instead of being flattened, imeem.com managed to convince the label that this free promotion was a good thing. In July imeem.com signed a deal with the label. Since then the site has added Sony, BMG, EMI, and now the biggest fish of them all, Universal. Imeem now has the royal flush of record labels supporting its media-sharing service, each getting a cut of the advertising revenues generated by their catalog. Finally someone has figured out a way to do 'YouTube for MP3s' without getting sued out of existence."

Comments

Re:30 second clips are for non-members

[Technician]

"these 30 sec peview are dumb u cant even steal songs from here how is ti possible to download. plus these are intended to have em in our page we can never put dem in our ipods and such ya know. get rid of da 30 sec limit quick or da 50 cent guy below u will be right about losing alot of members"

Clipped right from a song sample page...

"You must be logged in to hear the full song. Click here to create an account."

You can listen to the entire song.. With an account. That is why there is so much Google information of how to cheat the system and download the songs. Nobody wants a bunch of 30 second clips of songs except as ringtones.

wow

[mincognito]

Wow. How amazing that the record companies agreed to this. Low quality streaming with loads of ads and a "download" button that sends you to the iTunes store or amazon. The annoying registration box that pops up after listening to 30 seconds of a song (you must register to hear the rest) is a nice touch.

Re:wow

[Freaky Spook]

I've been registered for a few days since I heard about it.

I have to say, I really like it. Once signed up I can listen to every song in full, and fair enough the site is littered with ad's, but I am getting legal music streaming for free.

I just load a playlist, minimize the window and let it play, its not really that invasive, I haven't had to sell a kidney, or hand my sould over to the devil.

pHR33 L394L /\/\P3z!!!1!!

[Novus]

I checked this out earlier when CNN pointed it out. While imeem doesn't make it easy for you to download music, they are streaming standard Flash video with MP3 soundtracks, which makes it easily downloadable e.g. using DownloadHelper. The MP3 files can then be extracted using e.g. MPlayer ("mplayer -dumpaudio -dumpfile foo.mp3 foo.flv").

End result: free, often decent quality (128 kbps), legal MP3s of music from major labels (where fair use applies; the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer also applies).

Re:Making available

[Technician]

Is this going to stop the RIAA lawsuits at all? This reads like an advertisement for the social site more than that the record companies have done an about face in policy.


Nothing changes in the P2P lawsuits. The RIAA has been solid on a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy being as good as the original copy is a bad bad thing. Making a copyable file and posting it is bad bad bad and we will sue...

This website is not P2P. It is a post and broadcast.. There is no download and pass along a copy.. well not without some google searching on how to D/L a copy in violation of the DMCA. The songs are protected by streaming flash and maybe an identifying watermark.

The site is now a web broadcaster. The site pays royalties out of the advertising revenue. There is no P2P. Copies stolen (copyright violated) may be identified for later lawsuits by watermarking or other identifiers provided at the site to prevent theft (copyright violations). This is probably why there is no listening beyond a 30 second clip without an account. With an account the info may be embeded in the clips so if they show up on Kazaa later, they know who to sue for the violation. How much personal information do you have to give to get an account? If it requires a CC number, you are pretty much a sitting duck if you D/L and post on Kazaa.

Re:The content is fingerprinted..

[Technician]

From the terms of service page...

"Any audio that you upload to the imeem service will be filtered by an audio fingerprint filtering system that prevents registered audio content from being full-length streamed to any users other than the user that uploaded it. "

This is why some tracks are fully playable without an account and other tracks are 30 seconds. They also frown on uploading content that you didn't create.

"You must not upload or present any media or content in which you do not have the appropriate rights to do so. You may be in violation of copyright laws if you do not have the appropriate rights to the media or content you upload or present on imeem. imeem will not tolerate known infringements or misbehavior by its users."

Most disturbing part of the terms of service is they claim you retain your copyright when you upload, but in uploading you provide an unrevokable license to them.. This is bad.

"Member Content, you agree to and hereby do grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, imeem, its contractors, and the users of the imeem Site an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully sublicensable, fully paid up, worldwide license to use, copy, publicly perform, digitally perform, publicly display, and distribute such content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such Member Content on the imeem Site or Service."

Basicaly you give them a permanant license to use your content in any way they want forever including distribution. They could compile your work and then sell it worldwide and you would get jack for royalties.

Re:Making available

[Novus]

There is no download and pass along a copy.. well not without some google searching on how to D/L a copy in violation of the DMCA. The songs are protected by streaming flash and maybe an identifying watermark.

First of all, it is unclear whether streaming audio is a form of copy protection in the legal sense; Streamripper, for example, seems to have survived an earlier DMCA takedown attempt. Depending on your browser's cache implementation, you may have a copy of the FLV file on your hard disk already. In any case, you've already downloaded the file when streaming it (from a HTTP perspective, and, presumably, therefore, a legal one).

How much personal information do you have to give to get an account? If it requires a CC number, you are pretty much a sitting duck if you D/L and post on Kazaa.

Name, gender, date of birth, email address. Only the email address in checked, and you have 10 days of use before you even have to finish that check. In any case, why would you even want to post any of this on Kazaa, when imeem already contains the material in a legal and accessible form?

Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement

[Maniac-X]

Uh no, sorry. http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/firsts/copyright/ (with photographic proof) Original copyright law was 14 years, extendable one time for an additional 14 years. The original penalty for violation of the copyright law was, turn over the infringing material to the copyright holder for them to destroy, and pay 50 cents per page you had to turn over. The act was signed by George Washington and went into effect in 1790, and DID NOT CHANGE AT ALL until 1891 when copyright protections were granted to non-citizens. Currently, copyright does not expire until 70 years after the death of the creator. Research has been done to suggest that 12-14 year copyrights are optimal, as it allows the creator to get a bunch of money out of it, and then after it goes out of print due to lack of salability (NES games?), it returns to the public domain relatively quickly so anyone interested can get ahold of it. This is how it should be, but its not.

Re:30 second clips are for non-members

[Novus]

There are two reasons for a track to be limited to 30 seconds: either you're not logged in (easily corrected; creating an account is quick and free and the personal information required is minimal) or imeem has determined that they lack the rights to distribute the track even to members (in which case only the uploader can hear the full track).

Citation needed

[tepples]

Copyright, as it was originally set in the United States at least, was originally for a term of 28 years, after which it could be renewed for an additional term of 67 years. That was up until the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, which changed the term to 95 years. But where did the 67 in the current statute come from? It was 28+28 under the Copyright Act of 1909 (use Google). Then a change to 28+47 was phased in starting in 1962, ending in the Copyright Act of 1976 (use Google). The Bono Act is where the 67 came from.

See the original wording, which is still present in the Title 17 statute. That's the original wording as amended by the Bono Act.

Re:A couple of choice comments on the announcement

[morgan_greywolf]

That's right, but you also tend to make it sound like the artists were forced into signing contracts with record labels. They practically are. Because of the tactics of the RIAA and other industry groups, content that is not from an RIAA label doesn't get exposure. You either sign a contract with an RIAA label or live in obscurity. Doesn't sound like much of a choice does it?

And lastly about the DMCA: you appear to believe that copyright works and is more or less okay, but the DMCA is wrong/bad The DMCA prevents me from legally playing my legally purchased DVDs on my Linux machines. It doesn't stop me from doing it, but it still stands that the act of playing a legally purchased DVD on a Linux machine is a criminal act in violation of the DMCA.

The DMCA prevents me from bypassing DRM so that music I legally purchased on iTunes can be played on a non-Apple media player.

The list goes on. I'm sorry, but if I pay for something, I should be able to use it on any device of my choosing in the manner it was intended to be used.