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Ask Slashdot: How Do I Scrub Pirated Music From My Collection?
An anonymous reader writes "I tried out Google Music, and I liked it. Google made me swear that I won't upload any 'illegal' tracks, and apparently people fear Apple's iCloud turning into a honeypot for the RIAA. My music collection comprises about 90% 'legal' tracks now — legal meaning tracks that I paid for — but I still have some old MP3s kicking around from the original Napster. Moreover, I have a lot of MP3s that I downloaded because I was too lazy to rip the CD version that I own. I wanted to find a tool to scan my music to identify files that may be flagged as having been pirated by these cloud services; I thought such a tool would be free and easy to find. After all, my intent is to search my own computer for pirated music and to delete it — something that the RIAA wants the government to force you to do. But endless re-phrasing on Google leads to nothing but instructions for how to obtain pirated music. Does such a tool exist or does the RIAA seriously expect me to sift through 60 GB of music, remember which are pirated, and delete them by hand?"
From napster? A search for 128 kbit MP3 might be enough. Your legal ones are probably of higher quality.
One file may be legal for one person, and illegal for another. For example, if you rip your CD yourself, the resulting MP3 is legal. Copy the same MP3 onto a friend's computer, and it's illegal. I don't think such a software is even possible to write. Every pirated / illegal MP3 file would have to be already watermarked as such in order for the software to function. What if the "common" version of the file floating around on Napster was just a basic 128Kbps rip with a common MP3 encoder, and you used the same encoder to rip the same song from the original CD yourself? In theory, it is very possible that the resulting MP3 is bit-for-bit the same as the one millions of other people pirated from Napster, even though you own the original CD and ripped the file yourself.
Morphing Software
At least with kiddie porn the law says that any match, whether you paid for it or not, constitutes a violation. That's not the case with music--how are they supposed to know what files are legally downloaded copies and what are illegally downloaded copies? The only way is to keep a database of invoices for everything you have ever paid for, ready for when they come to audit you. But when are they going to search your files? At border crossings? Airports? Now you have to carry this bunch of invoices around with you all the time. It's akin to the proverbial "papers" you need to travel in a repressive regime. You see where i"m going with this.
I've heard FLAC loses the DC component of the audio wave, as well as is ambiguous with relation to phase (0deg/180deg)
Also, they don't work well with higher precision than 24-bit floating point, it loses precision.
(trolling the audiophiles - a sport)
how long until
It really doesn't matter. The only damages the RIAA can reasonably claim for you having pirated music is around $1/song. It's UPLOADING that music that they care about, because then they can pretend that your upload is providing that song illegally to 20,000 people and therefore claim that that single song is worth $20,000 in damages.
They RIAA has NEVER sued ANYONE for merely possessing pirated music. I don't think they've ever sued anyone for downloading music either. It's all about what you upload. If you aren't uploading anything, you should be fine.