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OpenSource Alternative to CDDB
RUAOK writes "I put up a page dedicated to creating an OpenSource alternative to the CDDB system. The CD Index project (working name) is already up and running, ready for CDs to be submitted. All the code and submitted data will be covered by the GPL to protect this from happening again. "
is CDDB trying to pull a fast one or is it just the principle of them not being GPLed?
btw: "FIRST!!!!@!@!@!"
That'd be useful
And how are we planning on making sure people don't do fake posts or even make sure that somebody typed everything in correctly???
Nobody likes the way the CDDB has gone. Assuming Escient now owns the CDDB data and restricts its use an distribution, as yesterday's post suggests, there's a danger that things'll get messy if everyone just downloads the whole CDDB and re-uploads it to cdindex. Arguably this isn't any less ethical than having users type in all your data for you then putting restrictions on letting them use it, but "ripping off" CDDB would just cause problems for cdindex. If you do it obviously, that is...
The cdindex maintainer doesn't yet have a handle
on licensing for data. I say use the Open Content
license. It's a simple and safe solution.
Cheers,
David the anonymous coward Neto
I put in a cd with 13 tracks, but it only let me type in the first 12 ones :(
Is it in beta test mode at the moment?
Hmmm... Rob may want to consider patenting this thing before the CDDB guys do. God forbid we have a patent infringement case going against an OSS "business model".
I would have logged in, but my PW isn't working...
http://www.opencontent.org/
(Last I checked anyway - can't seem to get to it today)
I knew a open source alternative to cddb would come quick after yesterday's announcement but geez, almost overnight? Does it only support up to 12 tracks? Hell, I have a bunch of house CD's that are 40+ tracks.
Whoever is going to spearhead this kind of thing (and I suggest teaming together) really needs to put a lot of thought and not just throw something together overnight. The post about the XML based format is well thought out, and with planning could turn out to be awesome. I'd hate to see 20 little offshoots start up though that all suck
anyone else getting this?
Looks like we killed it....
someone creates something, someone else adds some functionality, it get's implemented, someone else finds a bug, etc, etc... so get to it! write some code for them!
Okay maybe not. The CDDB folks are a bunch of dirty bastards and shouldn't be able to lay claim to OUR submissions. They have done nothing. We have done everything. Time to take the power back.
How long would it take, really, to throw together a shell script that would allow you to:
1) Pop a disc into your drive
2) Query CDDB
3) Upload results to new database while playing disc.
If we did it this way, the CDDB folks would see normal-looking activity in their logs but every time we listen to music we would be contributing to the free database.
We have to be careful not to do this as a massive batch job because that will draw immediate attention to your IP address and put undue load on the new server as well.
Hey, silly people. Describe the product or project. The /. article and the web page do not say what this is about. From the context it is apparent that this is "a database of music CD contents". SO SAY IT!
I don't know why this is being limited to music CDs; I'd also like to have a better idea of what is on some CD-ROMs...
It would be cool if the people involved have submitted an RFC.
Using CGI appears to be bloat anyway, what would be sensible is a UDP version of the protocol. (This would also make querying of multiple servers easier.)
There is a new, free utility for this. It is called 'ls'. See popular Unix/Linux/GNU sites for more detail.
You NEVER forget the people around the world. Use UNICODE conventions to implement the database, I'm from Brasil and we have have many CD listed at CDDB. It don't works with accentual (diacritical) marks we use.
It do not applies only to latin languages, it applies to japanese, chinese, korean and so on.
I think they NEED to think about put an English Title and Original Title field in the protocol.
Unless I miss something here, querying by the disc ID only rules out the fuzzy searches currently supported by CDDB. It also hinders searches in case of different discs with the same ID which I believe possible, albeit unlikely.
They sent out a license to everyone using CDDB requiring that all apps that access the database display the Escient logo for at least two seconds while it is being accessed. They want to do this in order to establish brand identity, which essentially means that they want a little bit of advertising in exchange for maintaining the database for free. This, in and of itself is not such a bad thing. Most people in the Free Software community know how to share, and I'm sure this wouldn't have been a big deal except for the people who use the CDDB in a way that involves no graphical display whatsoever.
They made two mistakes. The first is, the Escient lawyers, seem to subscribe to the philosophy that, in diplomacy, you should shout loudly and threaten while waving a big stick around wildly. In other words, instead of sending a simple request, which many people probably would have heeded, they sent an iron-clad THIS-WILL-BE-OBEYED license letter. The other mistake they made was in writing the license in such a way that it's clearly intended to try and ensure that CDDB is the only game in town. Among other things, it disallows players that use CDDB from accessing other databases. This seems to be intended to stop the CDDB data from being copied from the original database, which Escient has some sort of claim to. Escients claim would probably hold up in court. The information was given by volunteers, usually under the mistaken impression that nothing like this would happen, but Escient probably had some legal language somewhere, which most people didn't see because their CDDB-aware applications didn't tell them. A judge would probably consider this the fault of the various CDDB applications, which were probably mostly created before the license came into effect.
So, now a group of people who are fairly annoyed about this have gotten together to create a new CDDB-like database and protocol. It'll probably be a better system than the original, which was sort of a kludge. The only thing they're really lacking is database entries. They can probably fill it out at least partly with older versions of the CDDB distributed under different terms. They intend to make sure that the licensing terms of the new database are somewhat GPL-like to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.
As for Escient, they'll probably keep on licensing their database to commercially produced CD player apps. Commercial software houses usually don't exactly grok the free software concept and probably consider any freely provided service like this to be ephemeral, so they'll go with a commercial service. As for actual competition between these databases, it's unlikely. The new, free one won't start out with as many entries as the old one, although it may be quite quickly built back up. The thing is, without having a license just as bad as Escient's, the new project can't really stop Escient from using its database. Even if the terms of the license prevent incorporation of the new database into a commercial one, what's to stop Escient from running parallel databases? Or, they could just route requests for things not in their database to the new databases server. The new database won't be able to do the same. On the other hand, it probably won't matter much, since they'll both probably stay pretty much up to date.
Now some of the new developers might be angry at Escient and want to crush the CDDB by outgrowing them. But it can't really be done without making the license terms for the new database just as bad as the terms of the CDDB.It doesn't really matter all that much anyway if you think about it. Escient isn't exactly evil. They made the mistake of talking to the free software community with a corporate face, which is all about macho posturing and challenge. Lawyers really understand this stuff and deal with it pretty well. Regular joes on the street, without their own legal departments, usually don't take it so well. They may have had to think about this quite a bit, actually. See, if they send a polite request out to the commercial developers, it's showing weakness, and things go even worse for them with other corporate types than they have with the free software community. It's pretty primitive and tribal, but that's the way it works. Also, they're not on very good legal grounds if they ask the free software community nicely and send the aggressive terms to the companies. So, they had to send out something pretty uniform to everyone and take their chances. sort of reminds me of the time my friend was arrested for not paying a speeding ticket on time. They brought him into the courtroom in chains, just like the guys there for grand larceny and assault and what have you. His case took about five seconds (he had payed the fine on time, it was just a clerical error) and then they led him out, still in chains. Apparantly, they have to treat everyone the same, they they treat everyone like the worst sort of criminal.
Some developers have seen these problems as an itch and started to scratch. But it's not really important to harm Escient, just to have a free alternative.
Anyway, why don't CD's just have this information embedded in them already? I mean, really, would it have been that hard to set aside a little space in the format?
P.S. I Am Not A Lawyer and most of this post is conjecture based on very little information. But I'm running a fever, and vomiting frequently, so I might just be hallucinating that I wrote it anyway.
alot of aspect of this project is still half baked. specially on the software license issues, and database format.
too many questions are left unanswered. wouldn't it be wise to think about it thoroughly first before start indexing?
just a tought, hate wasting time repeating stuff.
The nice thing about licenseing in general is that you can't retroactively change a license. For example, if you release your X11R6 reference implementation as GPL, you can write an X11R6.1 with any license you choose but your old reference version will still be out there under GPL.
What this means that if the MySQL guys decide to change their license, you can still use the old server for noncommercial use (Which suits this project perfectly IMHO) MD5's already in wide use and I'm a bit hazy on what the status of that is, but really any hashing algo will do, as long as the values it generates are fairly unique.
Well, there are more than 120 CDs entered already, and seem to be more every minute...
When stuff like this comes up, the business types keep going on about 'well who's going to pay for it'. It is true that someone, somewhere is going to have to lay out the resources for the servers and the bandwith for access. However when the suits say 'who's going to pay for it' they usually mean 'how am I going to get you to pay *me* for it' and hense aren't very creative in their solutions.
One obvious way to support something like a massive CD info database is to make it a value add that your ISP provides for you. Most of us currently have access to Usenet, the Web, IRC and Email yet we don't pay a separate vendor for each one of these services. They are all provided by our ISPs as part of their service fee.
If the CD database was not propriotary and an ISP did not have to pay a licensing fee to a third party to provide the service, it could be a very attractive competitive tool. 'We provide access to a list of every CD known to man', they could advertise 'and our competitors don't'.
This is why we are so concerned about the Qt toolset. I haven't seen the new license that Qt2.0 has released, has anyone else seen it? I want to ensure that the entire base that KDE is based on is fully protected against comerical infringement.
I would hate for us to fully develop a great desktop and then have some company take the entire thing away. And now you people can't say that things like this don't happen.
Remember the cddb format, only use GPL'ed software!!!
To some extent I agree... There do seem to be some unresolved issues. But at the same time... Does it matter much? I mean, how much is the data set going to change? You need CD titles, Song track titles, and Artist information.
Umm.. QT2.0 is about as free as GPL.
It's got one small snag in it that makes all updates go to troll, for possible inclusion in the main tree.. but.. it's DFSG free.
Looks like KDE is legal now.
J
otherwise, there is no way of converting some
of the old data to our new format? Is there?
Listen freak, if you don't like KDE and the Qt license scares you then run off and run Gnome. For your information the Qt 2.0 license HAS been released, you just weren't paying attention. If Troll were to 'pull a fast one' it would be EGG ON THEIR FACES IN A HUGE WAY. KDE is out, it's stable, it's great and a LOT of people use it. If Troll were to turn around and start charging I guarantee there would be a loud outcry..and you know what? Tiny little TrollTech would suffer greatly for it. Troll is at the mercy of KDE, not the other way around, moron.
Sheesh, this article has NOTHING to do with KDE, yet you fanatics still manage to pull it into the thread. Slashdot just won't be happy until the KDE project shuts it's doors, will it? If I submitted an article about how the Chicken Consortium was going to place a surcharge on every square centimeter of shell on each egg at Safeway you fanatics would probably STILL find a way to turn this into a "KDE life-lesson".
and some non-human languages
Hmm... Klingonese? Or APL?
Indeed, the XML approach makes a *lot* of sense.
Now that I've started ripping and mp3'ing my CD
collection (got a p166 for xmas, a 486/80 is too
slow to play them) I've been thinking about a unified format for cddb data, lyrics, and freeamp playlists. I need to play with expat more and see how much work it would be - but getting the data in *any* descriptive DTD would be a good start...
It would be better for the protocol implementation to be written under a license that would allow commercial adoptation. Otherwise people will either not adopt it and continue using CDDB or rewrite your correct implemenation which will generate a lot of bad/incorrect/possible damaging CD Index code floating around. Plus commercial programs would quickly cause your database to fill up with entrys.
As a part of the XML overhaul (I think everyone agrees it's the way to do it) can we optionally scan the Cover Art- I know its copyrighted and all, but if it only comes up when the cd is in the drive (indicating that the person looking at the cover owns the cd - (in most cases)) would the artists mind? It seems to me only a little sketchier than copying the words that are the song titles and it would make the next round of clients pertier - Imagine X11amp with cd covers as backdrop for the playlist.
Don't put in the lyrics or you'll get sued to high hell. I can think of two alternatives.
1. Put in a "kill" protocol for those damn silent tracks they use as spacers to "hide" songs. Or even a "fast forward" protocol on it for tracks like the Nirvana hidden track with 10 minutes of silence before it. I know my Win98 machine remembers my play lists, and I think my Mac at home does the same. So, there might be the foundation of a protocol for this already.
2. Put in a few http: links entries for cool fan sites, album reviews, official sites, MP3 sites, chart standings, etc. This wouldn't require anything more than an extra column or two in the data base. You'd have a danger of getting spammers exploiting this, but it would still be interesting to have.
I've seen typing errors from the cddb (only once, on some classical music cd). I would imagine an account system where the page would perhaps send a one-time posting password to the email address, and create a cookie after the user logs in.
No, silly. I can't "ls" a CD-ROM what I don't have. I refer to seeing what is on disk 3 of various distributions. Disk 1 is binary, disk 2 is often mostly source of 1, but disk 3 is sometimes not described well. Or see what's on various utilities collection disks.
The MD5 hashing algorithm is used in much bigger systems than CD Index, so I highly doubt that RSA will want a kickback. Even if the CD Index surpasses the size of the CDDB now, it will still be but a drop in the bucket containing all users of MD5.
Don't forget a distributed model that will auto-mirror itself around the world.
XML has support for language tags, so this could easily be a multi-lingual database.
Subject says it all.
If the code to access the database is GPL'd, then does that mean I need to GPL any CD players I write that access the database?
Even if I'm not writing commercial code, that seems a bit restrictive.
LGPL allows for commercial adaptation...
I second the point about the lyrics, that's going
to cause a lot of trouble (as witnessed on slashdot).
I'd go even further: stick religiously close to
the KISS principle. Leave away all unnecessary data.
Fansite and other URLs can be invalid fast, I'm not
interested in chart standings and other people's
reviews. MP3 sites ? That's going to be trouble again.
And one more thing: No categories ! That's going
to cause only discussions and ulcers too.
Let people create their own catgories privately,
but don't put them into the database ! Please !
Stores its database on my system under, I believe, ~/.gtcd or ~/.cddb. I want to be able to convert that and send it right to the new cdindex system ASAP. I am mentioning GTCD because *ALL* of my CD's are indexed by this program.
I'm abandoning the use of CDDB *right now* in favor of cdindex. Hasta!
(babylon@netroplex.com)
> CD covers are indeed copyrighted and it is a
> serious concern. The main problem is that if
> you have copyright on your work and don't
> enforce it, it can lapse. If enough people
> start throwing your artwork around, people can
> (legally) challenge your right to it and take
> it away from you, putting your work in the
> public domain. This can *really* hurt artists.
This is not true. Copyright does not lapse in this case. *Trademarks* are subject to lapse if they are not enforced, but copyrights are enforceable at any time regardless of how widely they have been breached (and ignored) in the past.
> On the other hand, a small (say, 64x64 -
> 100x100 pixels) icon of the cover art *might*
> fall under "fair use". You'd have to talk to a
> copyright lawyer, though.
This is a good point. "Fair use" has never been clearly defined to my knowledge, but as a defense it usually seems to allow a good degree of leeway.
how can they proove you ripoff their data? i mean its really owned by the Cd companies not them.
They did nothing to gather it, the users did.
Just grab their data of one of those slakware Cds and add it to cdindex, shit, man, ill write a perl script and do it one post at a time, either way, they can get it, if its automated , no noe can stop it
No they cant, just use the last known good database before they went stupid, im sure all the redhat/slakware distros have it all there
xmcd did
Do it via proxy dude, http request via random proxy list of 50 free proxies
Although your argument is reasonable, I'd like to propose that that's exactly why we need to change. Yes, maybe that's why the new license was imposed, but that also shows that this company's business model sucks and that they are doing a poor job of adapting to the freedom and openness of the Internet.
The replacement for CDDB will allow for true freedom for this format not only by keeping the code free, but by permitting the decentralization of the whole system. Once anyone can run a server, no single entity can control the protocols. I personally intend to run a server for the lan in my building so those of us living together can maintain our own CD Index independently of any servers on the Internet. I will also gladly contribute any uploads I receive back to the parent indices, but will still remain unbound to any single company, protocol, or standard once I have my own server running.
This is true freedom, and that's why I'm very encouraged by the response to the need for this project.
I'd like to offer encouragement to the implementers to use XML over an established protocol, like httpd, as has been discussed on this forum. It's a great idea, and allows for flexibility and ease of implementation since both are already established standards and are well-supported within the community.
OH grow up air head, if linux is gpl, does that mean the cpu has to be gpl'ed?
Your concerns are valid. While some may be satisfied with "good enough," I'm glad to see that there is someone else who also seeks a "best" solution instead.
Yes, MySQL and MD5 licensing may offer few limitations right now that would interfere with this project. The whole POINT of the GPL, though, is that it is, so far, the only GUARANTEE of future freedom as well. That's the whole reason for the copyleft. Any historian/lawyer who focuses on bill-of-rights issues can explain this to you if you don't understand. (http://www.gnu.org/ can too.)
My suggestion for preventing MySQL from becoming an inhibiting factor in the future is to make server be able to use different back-ends. MySQL should of course be an option. Imagine using XML to store the data, as has already been proposed here. Imagine also using http for the transfer protocol, as is already being done. The back-end could be anything... raw individual XML files on a hard drive, a cgi, a MySQL database, a PostreSQL database (more free than MySQL), or a monkey with a notepad and pencil. It doesn't matter; as long as it can communicate in the same language with its clients and other servers (which should be XML over http), we can provide server admins with choice, flexibility, AND freedom.
How about it?
It's at http://www.gnu.org/ as is much other good information you should have read already before making an idiot of yourself in public.
If the sample code is GPL and a commercial CD Player bases uses this code to access the cd index then he is right.
Ben.
Programs are written from the bottom up: getting it to work first, then making it cross platform.
You seem to be thinking it should be cross platform first, then getting it to function.
But here comes the magic of open source! Releasing the source (as the author did) allows people to PATCH it to make it cross platform! The problem is automatically solved when another capable programmer takes on this code. See?
Pheering the Source,
(babylon@netroplex.com)
This project is hosted for free at record company server.
If the MySQL licence yould change one just have to write an utility to port the information to another database. MD5 is a bigger problem since it is used as the index. A possible way of solving this is to include the whol TOC from the CD in the database.
Is it just me, or does it seem we are witnessing a *HUGE* overreaction to a non-issue.
Instead of forking into a thousand different projects, each of which have little chance of completion, wouldn't it make more sense to work out a compromise with the current CDDB/Escient?
IMHO, Escient has not handled the licensing issue perfect, but they have not committed a mortal sin either. Shouldn't they be given a chance to 'correct' their mistake? Haven't they been acting in extremely good faith by maintaining the servers, bandwidth and support necessary to keep the CDDB working up to this point, all for FREE?
Honestly, there are only a couple things that bother me about the new license agreement. All of which are easily correctable. Actually, what bothers me most, is someone (Steve?) *sold* Escient the CDDB, when in reality, did anyone ever really 'own' it. I'm not clear what Escient 'bought'. Did they buy the indexing alogritm, the CDDB protocol or the actual database content? And, if they did buy any of these, or any combination, did the people who 'sold' it actually 'own' it to begin with? IMHO, it seems to be a misguided decision on Escient's (and the previous "owners") part, when offering support for the CDDB in its previous form would have made more sense.
Therefore, let's propose a compromise. Escient will open up the database and GPL the content and server software. Escient can continue to support, help developers & operate the servers just as they have been, and still gain the benefit for their 'Tunebase' product. Also, other parties may operate mirror DB's, just as it use to be. Escient really hasn't lost anything (i.e. still drive hits to their cddb.com/org pages, easy access to the database for their Tunebase product, have a word in future development/direction, etc), and the DB is open again, along with robust, mirrored servers, as it use to be. Then, the OSS community can focus it's efforts on improving the existing CDDB, thereby helping the community, instead of being devisive and disorganized.
This whole episode has cast Escient in a shadowed light. But our petty, over-reacting, and general immaturity has reflected much worse on the OSS community as a whole.
The founders of CDDB didn't see the wording until we saw this discussion here at slashdot, and when we did, we immediately told the guys in suits at Escient that we thought it was perhaps a little too stern for what was intended. However they're not very quick to respond but I believe they will address your concerns once they understand the problem. We're passing some of the more relevant comments here on to them.
If any of the developers want to discuss this with me off the record (I'm one of the 3 original CDDB founders), I'll certainly guarantee to preserve your anonymity and pass on any suggestions you want to make to the Escient management. All three of us still have an interest in CDDB and Escient does heed our advice, though Steve is the only one of us who works on the new CDDB full time. I'm hoping he'll post something more official here.
Let me finish off by saying that the corporate culture at Escient is as hackish as anywhere I've worked, and they're basically good guys with the right intentions. They do have these in-house lawyers who get a bit carried away at times, but they can be brought to heel :-) Escient isn't the Evil Empire. There's no risk of them turning into another Micro$oft. A lot of this legal stuff is in fact to protect them from abuse by people you'd probably rather not have to deal with...
There's a lot of development going on behind the scenes with CDDB that we can't talk about yet, but I have to say that the only way any of it would have happened was by taking CDDB commercial with Escient's backing. We would *never* have been able to do some of the things that are planned otherwise, as we now have the help of Escient's lawyers to protect us in branching out into new areas that as individuals we wouldn't dare have risked. I really can't tell you right now what those areas are (and please don't ask; I can't even say off the record), but watch the project over the next year and you'll see some pretty impressive developments happen, I promise.
Graham Toal <gtoal@cddb.com>
(This is not an official CDDB reply)
PS, I approve of the freeamp cd index project; good luck, guys! Competition never hurt anybody.
A few people have mentioned writing a script that would allow us to download CDDB data and upload it to cdindex while we are listening to music. I would prefer a utility that doesn't even bother starting the music, but just grabs the data from CDDB as soon as I put in a disc, lets me verify that it is correct & edit it if not, then upload it to cdindex, one after the other in a nice streamlined manner.
And if anyone is really annoyed with CDDB it could easily be made useless by filling it with bogus but real-looking data for CDs that don't (and probably won't) exist. This would be most effective at a low but gradually increasing level so that by the time the owners realize their database is polluted and fifty time the size it should be, they can't just restore a week-old backup. A concerted effort to enter bogus data for popular new releases would be even more effective, especially if the new Madonna album (or whatever) came up with a title of "BOYCOTT CDDB. Please use cdindex instead" or something else brief but informative when xmcd polled CDDB for the title.
I looked at sunsite and found that cddbd is gpl'd.
why cant we start with this tool?
would be flexible, find ways of extending my technology and resources into new markets instead of grasping at their "IP" as a would-be cash cow; that's a cowardly, static strategy. I would create a Nielson-like service that distributed special CD-players to certain people to collect playing data about CD's for market research.
Not only is a company not allowed to own (proprietary) software, the GNU objective, but it only gets to choose from a selected group of services it can perform?!?!?
It appears that from most of the comments I read that people here are thinking "free beer". Very hypocritical.
Sean Farley
Althought IANAL, I think it would be perfectly legal to mine the CDDB for data. Escient does *not* own the data in the database. In fact, they cannot even make a case that they spent the time entering the data in, because they didn't even do that. For the database to be copyrighted there must be some original/novel way of arranging the data. As far as I know the data is not even arranged. (This is the same reason why the phone book is not copyrighted.)
So I say we mine CDDB, or at least start with the last time we could download the contents of the CDDB (anybody?). Then if Escient decides to pull some legal crap we can pound them into the ground.
This is true, you can't photocopy phonebooks, but you can take the data in the phone book, and make a new compilation yourself. A guy did this, took all the phone books in the US and put them on a CD and sold it for thousands of dollars. As far as I know the phone companies tried to stop him, but couldn't.
The information in the database is something we might call "common knowledge" (IANAL). You can't own common knowledge, because it's pretty much public domain. Think of compiling huge lists of email addresses and putting a copyright on it. If the database were copyrightable it would only be if they put significant investment into it. And as far as I'm concerned asking members of the community to enter in data, or buying an established database does not constitute significant investment.
Now THAT would lead to intense competition in the field of software using the database. "My users generated 30,000 hits, I get 30,000 gift certificates". Damn! I think it's time to write the ultimate CD player. ;)
It's not even that complicated. I've already -got- CDDB information for all the CDs that I own (and a few that my friends own) sitting on my hard drive, because I only query CDDB about any particular CD once - the information gets saved into ~/.cdtooldb at that point. So I can upload information about every CD I've ever listened to on my computer (which includes a couple that CDDB doesn't have anyway, and with typos fixed on some of the ones they do have) to the new database without ever hitting CDDB.
hmm, this seems like what you're looking for:
freecddb.freecddb.org (port 888)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I like this too, because for those of us behind firewalls, it "just works" (assuming websurfing is allowed, which is generally true). Currently some of the CDDB-compliant apps support HTTP fetch, and some don't--makes it a pain.
-Doug
UDP would be nice from a resource usage standpoint, but most firewalls block it out. I think HTTP should always be an option (is CDDB-over-HTTP subject to license restrictions?)
-Doug
Maybe a ./ aid fund would be appropiate or perhaps a list of casualties and their configurations...?
:)
Well, considering the answer to this is normally a change of OS and software... And the answer software wise is normally a free one....
The fund could just consist of a simple FTP site directing victims to various Linux distribution sites..
-Erik-
On a different subject, I want the cdindex program to have a switch to just print out the encoded url, and not launch the browser. (I wouldn't mind pasting.) I've got a wrapper script to set up to provide netscape with a special environment, and it breaks the url-passing that cdindex relies upon. And it insists on launching a new instance of netscape, rather than passing the url to an existing instance.
P.S. I thought the "shameless rip" comments in the source were amusing.
P.P.S. The first CD I tried to index was the Steve Morse Band, an instrumental guitar/bass/drums trio. Would that count as a single-artist CD, or do Van Romaine and Dave LaRue count as "artists"? ;-)
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
> there's a danger that things'll get messy if everyone just downloads the whole
> CDDB and re-uploads it to cdindex.
End users have no licensing agreement with Escient, so it isn't clear that there is any problem here.
This URL might be asking for trouble. While it doesn't look like Escient have any legal claim on the protocol, the *have* trademarked CDDB.
#define CD_BLOCK_OFFSET CD_MSF_OFFSET
to the top of the source file on my 2.2.2 system (yes I know I'm a version behind
I took this from the 2.0.36 sources. I'll e-mail them now and tell them.
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
For those interested I'm in talks with Rob (the guy behind this CD Index project) about possibly using a new format that's different to CDDB. Don't fret though - it's quite possible that it could also support the CDDB protocol too.
The idea revolves around using XML. The CDDB protocol is not very flexible - it allows you only to have a disc title, and track titles (and extinfo for each track - but that's unspecified). What we would have with XML is much more flexibility, so you can have a compilation CD and the protocol will support having a different artist for each track, and you can have lyrics in there too.
The whole system just works as a web server, the XML files are stored as their discid, so you request the file http://server.com/cdids/e453f35 and you just get the raw XML back. This is very easy for the applications to parse. We can also support http://server.com/cdids/cddb/e453f35 to return the cddb format for older player, but the XML format is more flexible.
The XML format also supports indexing and searching using sgrep or other freely available tools (e.g. harvest/glimpse can be easily adapted to work with this format). This solution is infinitely more scalable than anything based on a database backend (don't believe me? Why aren't any of the web search engines run on MySQL?).
Anyway, I think it's a good idea. I know Rob already has something working, but if this is to be a truly scalable solution, with lots of different servers, then it needs some extra thought IMHO.
If you want some further info on what I am thinking about, contact me at msergeant@ndirect.co.uk
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Checkout their notices on their web site. It quite clearly states that any data you submit to them becomes their property.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
I think it's GPL for the server code only - not the protocol. That wouldn't exclude anything.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Absolutely not - we can have "fuzzy" searches too - it just takes a bit of extra work. There's absolutely no reason why it wouldn't support a superset of the currently available features of CDDB. In fact I've been investigating search tools for this, and sgrep is looking very interesting because it does stemming automatically and some other cool stuff.
Different discid's are supported by having >1 XML file for the same CD. No problem there. That's no different to the current scheme either.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
There is CD Extra described in Red or Blue book (don't remember) that contain informations for the CD (Artist, songs, may contain lyrics, ...), but
most CD currently don't use this and almost no
program currently use this either, adding support for CD-Extra would be a good thing...
Technically, the content is the intellectual property of the respective Record Labels or Arists (depending on contract).
This is a good thing, actually-- it can be used to weaken Escient. I work for a Record Company. We've already told Escient to either compete through quality of service rather than restrictive licensing, or remove our intellectual property from their database.
Escient cannot claim ownership of data you submit if that data is already owned by someone else-- in this case, the data is owned by record companies or artists (depending on contracts).
I work for a record company, and I have had a long discussion with Escient. They are unwilling to change the terms of the license. The compromise you suggest is not possible unless Escient is willing to change. They are not. So there is no choice but to move forward with free alternatives.
I would like to add that the folks at Escient do not appear to be music fans or record collectors. They do not seem to have any respect for the rights of the artists and labels from whose work they seek to profit. And they certainly did not consult with an attorney familiar with the music industry before attempting to execute their business plan.
X11amp plugin. Scan the covers and you're off to the races. No need for covers to be stored on the cdindex.
Hmm, now that I think about it, it might be nice if we had thumbnails of the cover art next to the database listings that are displayed on the web page. It would also be nice for "lookup then shop" kind of activities.
I wonder if the copyright holders would object to this form of free advertising? I guess we could always try it and then if someone objects, pull their thumbnail.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I think I understand why the CDDB is being "licenced", even if I don't agree with how the company is going about it. They want/need money to support themselves, and the best way to do that is to draw attention to thier web site.
If this project succeeds, it'll need financial support for internet connections, servers, system administration, etc...
Add revenues aren't a bad way to go about it, and asking the developers "Pretty please, will you provide a button, plug this site in your About box or something?" sounds like a better approach than "YOU WILL DO THIS DAMNIT!" Maybe even make a deal with the advertisers to award developers for fully complying, like for every month that your player generates more than X hits, you get X gift certificates for CD's.
It pays to be nice about things like this.
Heh, I'd be willing to help, but apparently, the only OS's in existance are Linux and Microsoft versions...
/. :)
One day, I envision most GPL'd software being released with non-linux specific code. But it may be a cold day in hell before that happens... (Oh look, it's 33 degrees....)
The real point is that with a little careful planning, OS-specific code can be greatly reduced, modularized, or even eliminated, making porting easier. I shouldn't have to look at the source code, and realize that it will take far more time than it is probably worth to port over, and that I have other things demanding my time (like writing that compiler, or working with NACHOS. Or working, or writing essays. Or posting on
Just remember that there are other free OS's out there (HURD, *BSD), and that just becuase you are running solaris or something else, doesn't mean you can't contribute.
Whee, that was fun.
I am not entirely certain of this, and a legal type expert would need to be consulted, but...
I do not believe that you can copyright a database of information. Especially in this case since the database contains information of artists and song titles which are already copyrighted by the perspective record label/artist.
You can copyright the presentation and format of the database, however as that is an implementation of an idea.
Anyway, I believe that the information which has been contained within the CDDB archives could be extracted and put into a new format for use with another project. I notice that CDDB no longer has this available for download, but they did six months ago and I would think someone has an old copy lying about.
However, I guess I feel this project is a waste of time and money. Unless you think you can improve this service somehow, I am unsure why you feel it is necessary. Remember you'll need dedicated internet resources to host this. How are you going to pay for that?
Steve
Please visit www.cdin.org for info.
If Escient owns the CDDB data and want to be bastards, they can put in copyright traps, i.e., listings for nonexistant CDs. That way, they can tell if cdindex uses their data, and if so, sue the servers. Even without explicit copyright traps, things such as spelling mistakes, idiosyncratic use of upper/lower case, punctuation, &c., could make a case.
I recall hearing that some phone books include copyright traps (i.e., bogus entries, often for fictional characters). This would suggest that phone books can be copyrighted. Street directories and atlases certainly can.
If this goes to court, it will be interesting. Someone sold the database to Escient, and presumably the question would become whether that someone owned the data.
Given that the US patent office seems to employ crack smokers in its application checking department, who's to say that something cannot be patented?
Case in point: Microsoft's style sheet patent.
The guy's app fails on my Win98 laptop with 'Error Reading TOC'
Windows users must *close* the audio CD autoplay app that comes up by default, not merely stop it.
Great idea no buts!
From: The Doctor What
To: support@cddb.com
Subject: Please remove my entries
I have submitted entries to CDDB in the past, however, upon checking your
web-page I see that you have added a section saying that any entries into
the database become your property.
I never have (and never will) agree to these terms. I added my data, in
good faith, with the idea that it is free (like speech) not restricted or owned.
Since this policy is different then it was when I entered CD data, I fully
expect you to remove all the data entered under my email addresses:
docwhat@gerf.org
and
docwhat@uiuc.edu
Thank you for your co-operation,
Christian Holtje
--
"There are monkey boys in the facility."
--Yoyodyne Comm System (Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai)
The Doctor What: "What, Doctor What" http://www.gerf.org/~docwhat/
docwhat@gerf.org (finger docwhat@gerf.org for PGP key)
The Doctor What (KF6VNC)
As an alternative to storing the images on the CD index - in the client program you could retrieve an image from one of the CD shopping sites like amazon, cdnow, etc.
Might be an easier solution with no copyright issues...
--erik
The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets -- Will Rogers
Hmm.
I'm trying to submit one of my CD's, and after it goes to the "check for previous artist" page, I get a blank page.
Slashdotted again?
--
John Kramer
John Kramer
God may be my co-pilot, but the devil is my backseat driver.
Actually, Escient purchased CDDB from the original developers. Who had formed a company and who did in fact own the CDDB database. It has always been the policy with CDDB that data submitted became the property of the original LLP and now Escient. The only thing Escient is doing is requiring developers who wish to use CDDB to follow the licensing guidelines. It does not seem to be a big price to pay for a free service for the user.
Really, you and other are making a much bigger deal of this than it really is.
Troy
He is one of the original developers of CDDB and explains the situation very well. Take a look and understand, think, then act.
Troy
Take a few minutes to figure out what is going on. Escient just ask developers to follow a license, if they were going to use CDDB. Effectivly, Escient is asking for a little advertising for a free service to the user. What exactly is wrong with that?
Take a look at the post by Krynos, he is one of the original developers of CDDB. He explains things well.
Troy
Escient bought CDDB quite sometime ago. They have not patented anything. They own the data in CDDB. Check out the comment submitted by Krynos at the top of the page. He is one of the original developers and he explains thing rather well.
Troy
MySQL is free for all use, you just can't sell it. So I could setup a CD indexing server and charge for each connection and still use MySQL for free. However, if I tried to sell a CD containing the CD indexing software, I'd have to pay the nice MySQL folks.
Are other people getting this reply when they try to find a CD that they just entered?
Is there a delay in the database processing the
info that comes in?
---- "First came stats, pulling habits out of rats
Perhaps in your constant-reloading-to-get-first-post fervor, you forgot to actually READ Slashdot yesterday?
One way around this is to only mine your *local* CDDB database - that way there'd be no nonexistant CD traps, and for all they know, you just re-typed the data for YOUR CDs. Should be safe, even in the unlikely event that they have any sort of hold over the data in their database. A script should be able to do this quickly.
If anyone is interested in joining a mailing list for putting together a new, open, CDDB-like database, please send me email at jwb@cp.net.
I expect to have a list up by the end of the day.
XML goes beyone Unicode UTF-8, implementing the entire ISO 31-bit character set. It describes, according to the specification, "all human languages and some non-human languages."
That ought to be good enough.
List is at:
majordomo@bigred.lcs.mit.edu
freecddb-developer
Soon enough it's going to take major funding before ever thinking of posting our sites on Slashdot.
./ aid fund would be appropiate or perhaps a list of casualties and their configurations...?
I can easily see an order form for more memory & bandwidth for your server on the same form as the submit story page. Or a "minimal server requirements" section on the submit story form...
Maybe a
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available
umm.. they could patent it. In fact, I think a CDDB-like system is probably even a valid patent, instead of the horseshit patents that are usually granted.
However, unless the CDDB guys filed a patent a while ago, it doesn't matter because it's been out for more than a year now, and there's plenty of prior art. So this should be safe from new patents.
-Erik
I would be flexible, find ways of extending my technology and resources into new markets instead of grasping at their "IP" as a would-be cash cow; that's a cowardly, static strategy. I would create a Nielson-like service that distributed special CD-players to certain people to collect playing data about CD's for market research.
That's their ticket to success - become the Nielson of CD audio data, collecting, interpreting, and selling reports on who is listening to what, when. All they need are broadcasting CD players.
Grasping too greedily has affronted the free software folks, and they may be losing their chance to build a unique market-research firm.
This who affair is an interesting object lesson on the whole "oh, who cares about licenses, it's free enough" attitude, too: sometimes, the slippery-slope suspicion is accurate.
I'm not telling them what to do. I'm telling them what the BEST thing to do would be, the opportunity that they are screwing up. I assure you, there's a lot of money to be made in the strategy I just described.
Look,just because you make an investment doesn't mean that you have a right to a guaranteed return. I could invest millions of dollars in a device to sell oxygen, but that doesn't give me the right to make money of it by making it illegal to breathe free oxygen.
This has nothing to do with "beer/speech" freedom anyway, it has something to do with the ownership of community-created content and the fact that people believed they were contributing to a project that was less free than they thought it was.
The discussion in the developer's mailing lists are gearing toward maintaining the old protocol for a while (a long while maybe) and develop a new one, both using the same dataset.
This way, we can accomodate old clients while the new clients arrive.
Mysql was used because it was available. But note that even though Mysql is not GPL, it is free for non-comercial use (and source code is available). CD-Index certanly qualifies as non-comercial and the guys over Mysql are very open about these things (they are one of "us", not one of "them":)).
As for MD5, it only being discussed. Nothing is hardwired for now.
The main point of the effort seems to be coming up with a protocol. Protocol use is obviouly free of concern.
The reference libraries for database access will not be GPLed, for the reasons you stated. They will probably be LGPLed or something, allowing free use even in proprietary software. The objective is to disseminate the protocol.
Any full implementation (reference clients, server software, etc) will probably be GPLed.
Seems odd to me that they can limit access to datat *I* typed in. They never asked for my permission, so how can it be ripping off if I decide to submit my data to a different database?
silly people. license changes are NOT retroactive. RSA couldn't do a thing to prevent the use of MD5 now; they would be laughed to hell and back if they tried to patent it after years of prior use. And it's not in their interest at all.
See the recent /. article on this.
Basically Escient, though not trying to restrict user access to CDDB, is trying to strongarm developers of CD applications that use CDDB into complying with their terms, which include displaying the CDDB logo each time the CDDB is accessed and prohibiting the application from using any alternative databases.
It's not clear at all whether they actually own the contents or format of the database in any meaningful way, as the original program (xmcd) which used the protocol is GPLed, and the CDDB relies on user contributions to work. We made the database, now Escient wants to take it away.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
OK, CDDB is not the perfect format. But it already works. I don't really believe that Escient has the legal ground to stand on here, particularly with regard to the format. It is based on xmcd, which is GPLed. They can't take that away. There are also older versions of the CDDB server which are GPLed, I believe. So if someone were to build a new database which uses CDDB format and solicited new contribution, I doubt that Escient could do a thing about. They might try, though, and the potential legal costs are likely to scare people away. That may be what they're counting on.
If someone wants to make a better format, fine, but anything that uses it ought to be backwards compatible with CDDB (which is one of the things Escient is trying to prevent happening). Then it could be pointed at either an "official" Escient CDDB server or a new database which uses the same protocol.
Where it could run into problems is from submitting entries which were downloaded from CDDB originally. It's not clear whether Escient can own those, but most CDDB users explicitly or implicitly agreed to their terms.
Anyway, my point is that backward compatibility is important. It should only be abandoned as a last resort. There are a lot of CDDB aware players out there already.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
Graham Toal wrote:
> Competition never hurt anybody.
It is the anticompetitive part of the original post that I find most disturbing. Escient is trying to exclude applications from using another database if they use an official CDDB one.
They may have a right to protect their data (thogh the fact that it all came from volunteers doesn't give me too much sympathy for their ownership of it), and I don't really think it's unreasonable that applications display the CDDB logo while accessing the database, but this anticompetitive part is what's way out of line.
For the most part, I think Escient has been doing a good thing making the database freely available, and I don't begrudge them trying to make money on it. But if they are too obnoxious about it, we won't use it anymore.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
The theory is that someone took the time to organize and compile data for a phone book. Therefore, you cannot simply copy (physically or electronically) it and use it for other purposes or sell it. I think 'copyright' is the correct term in this case.
IANAL, but my wife is a librarian who must deal with these issues all the time. If you want, you can go through and compile your own list and organize/present the data in your own way and sell it. The information itself is not under copyright protection.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Let me first say I'm not familiar with CDDB. But if they provided the internet access, hardware, and software to store the database, this could constitute a significant investment. I think the sticky issue in this case is the public contributing data. That fact IMHO complicates things. But I would lean towards CDDB having some sort of copyright on the database though. I wonder what their stated policy was when people signed up at CDDB?
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
This sounds like an excellent idea! I like the idea that we can already upload data in the current format, with a utility to convert the compiled data to XML when it is ready. If this is the approach Rob and you are looking at, may I suggest you make that explicitly known so we know whether we should go ahead and upload our CD info now or wait. Obviously, for compilation CDs waiting is in order, as the current format doesn't support artists/track yet. If this is a bad idea from your perspective, that would be good to know also. Good luck!
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
the checksum algorithms which identify a CD do not ensure a one-to-one mapping between checksum and CD. they are one-way calculations. this presents a difficulty for exporting the data from the old CDDB database to an alternative database that implements a different checksum algorithm (such as that proposed by the cdindex project). the two algorithms will desire different data from the CDs, which protects the cddb database from an outright conversion.
in other words, you need to stick a CD in the drive, calculate the cddb checksum, download the cddb info, calculate the cdindex checksum, and then upload the cdindex info.
but i don't know the cddb algorithm. maybe one is a subset of the other.
someone please tell me that these will not come back to haunt us later.
1) The project is using MySQL - it was my understading (after reading the MySQL liscense) that MySQL was not GPL and that it is only free for non-commercial use. Could this (or other restrictions) cause a problem?
2) I found this notice on the Cd Index page - "Note: The MD5 algorithm is copyrighted by RSA, but there are no restrictions on its use." This seems like a much bigger problem. Sure, RSA has no restrictions on its use *now*, but wait till CD Index is the dominate CD database on the net and its web site gets more hits in a week than most portals hope for in a month. You can be sure that RSA will want some sort of kickback then - even worse, all the data is indexed using their algorithm.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
I've been talking to escient about the licensing
issue a good but. They have real concerns - not from the OpenSource community, but from the MS's in the world (IMHO).
here's what they had to say:
------------ begin snip ----------------
Hi Roger:
Here's the clear case. This clause helps protect our data aggregation from
being ripped off. We don't own the data (ie. a song title), but we do own
the service that provides the disc recognition and related CD data. We have
real costs associated with aggregating data and providing the service. Not
all of our data comes from contributions....a great deal of our data
submissions come from record labels and artists. This all costs money and
we need to protect it so that we can continue to offer the service for free.
-------------end snip -------------------------------
The GPL was never intended to limit this kind of business. In fact, it actually encourages this. (Make your money from the service). The whole thing is that we want them to compete on level and quality of service, instead of the exclusionary license.
They plainly admit to their stake in the IP. They're pretty cool with all of that. They just want some insurance to their longetivity (ie show us the money).
As far as a database backend, I think OpenLDAP is a better choice than MySQL. (Speed, and configureability). You could configure the attributes (fields) to the cddb format, and provide a cddb compatible server.
Also, OpenLDAP provides for replication and alot of backends. Very stable IMHO.
I think all of this could be worked out, but escient is at a critical point... they have to be able to say, We own something, and it's worth something, and someone can't just come and take it away. Personally, I think that they have such a 1) niche, and 2) recognition (cddb) that they are realy OVERLY protective. But, if it was your business (money) what would you do in their shoes?
Roger
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Hrm, wouldn't it be better to create some sort of setup that really didnt care if it was a actual database, a bunch of text files named by index, or what? More of a format for storing the information, and less for how to get it. I'd kinda like something that would be easy to keep a local copy of for my own CD's. But who's to say I'm not insane and this could be addressed somewhere already.
- silvein
Thanks, I had the exact same problem and couldn't figure it out.
CD covers are indeed copyrighted and it is a serious concern. The main problem is that if you have copyright on your work and don't enforce it, it can lapse. If enough people start throwing your artwork around, people can (legally) challenge your right to it and take it away from you, putting your work in the public domain. This can *really* hurt artists.
On the other hand, a small (say, 64x64 - 100x100 pixels) icon of the cover art *might* fall under "fair use". You'd have to talk to a copyright lawyer, though.
The same applies to lyrics and liner notes -- they are copyright the original authors, and cannot be used without permission. And there, you don't have the option of doing low-res versions.
Some artists don't have a problem with their stuff showing up online (like The Residents, who's site I created, http://www.residents.com/), others are very uptight about it.
-- Meet the Residents -- http://www.residents.com/
A URL linking to an image of the cover would certainly be more efficient to store. My only concern would be with the volatile nature of such things, and keeping the URL current and linked somewhere meaningful.
-- Meet the Residents -- http://www.residents.com/
The new / extended protocols would better support more complete data such as artist for each track of compilations, release dates, country of origin, maybe liner notes, maybe links, maybe a voting system, who knows?
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
They only own the data, and that's debatable.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
There's only data that makes it from CDDB onto peoples local CD info caches. They put a CD into the drive, and retrieve the data. So people only have real CDs locally stored.
This data may or may not belong to Escient. If users were to upload that data to a free server that converts the data to XML, we should not be in any trouble.
Analogy: I can take the phone company's directory, reformat it, and sell it myself. The phone numbers are sort of public, but the directory is copyrighted by TPC. If my directory has enhancements, I'm entitled to roll my own. IANAL, of course.
Similarly, users should be able to voluntarily give us the CDDB data (which after all is actually owned by the artists and record companies), and we can enhance it by offering more fields to be filled in, etc. The enhanced data becomes ours, not Escient's, and we give it away with a viral free license (copyleft).
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
1) Pop a disc into your drive
2) Query CDDB
3) Upload results to new database while playing disc.
I don't think this would be legal under the license, since it contacts another non-CDDB database.
I submitted a patch for this last night and it's
available in the 0.2.0 version on the website.
You can also now use '-l' to get the url line
without launching the browser (going to be
necessary for interfacing with scripting tools
or existing apps).
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
He says he plans on releasing the CDindex code under a free/GPL license. Is that wise? The GPL will basically cut it out of anything commercial, which though good in many cases, might not be such a great idea this time. That means that it would be just us filling up the database, which might take a while. Then again, who knows. If it doesn't take long, then this would be a good time for the GPL. If it's slow, maybe the LGPL is in order.
It will be an improvement in that it will not have the licensing restriction that the CDDB people just added (2-second splash screen, plus icons that link to them). The cost would not be that much at all. CDDB got other people to mirror their database for free. I'm sure these people will have an even easier time. Think about it, there are maybe 50,000 CDs that people are going to need to store information on. Assume they have average of 13 tracks, plus artits and title, all of which might average 40 characters. So that's 50000*15*40 = 30000000 ~= 28.6 MB. And that's plain text, which, as we know, compresses mighty well (though you probably wouldn't want to do that). As for bandwidth, we're talking 1k per request. Sure, there might be a lot of requests, but even so, it wouldn't add up to too much.
Good choice for the inaugural CD. I'll be indexing all the CDs in my office today - about 30 or so. Good luck.
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
and the ones with the words don't know too w
I *REALLY* like the XML idea.
bnf
this space intentionally left blank (oops)
I spent the last two hours submitting my cd's to the site. The only issue I found was the linking of not found cd's to already existing lists appears not to work. A couple of my cd's were already listed, but the id generated by the program was different for my disc. Supposedly you can link the other id to the tracklist that's already there... but when I did this, the search function on my id didn't work.
I think the above comment on the cover art is a great idea. The Music Match Jukebox already has this feature - all my mp3s are matched with their covers (ripped from CDNOW). It would be really cool of a cd player did this too.
- Jeff
You can patent whatever the hell you want, but if that patent wouldn't hold up in a court of law, then it's worthless. Don't worry about patents where you KNOW you can get them tossed. In this case, there's enough "prior art" to get it overthrown.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
For the new format, please make sure it's extendable.
/%/)+Eddy
I'd love not only to get the tracknames, but
the lyrics too.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
It seems that Slashdot is becomming more and more of a political tool. I say exploit it. Let's all work _TOGATHER_ on this one and show 'em what for!
If you love your source code, set it free!
I can't speak for anyone else here, obviously, but I can speak for myself. And personally, I do not like this. It's not the advertising that I mind. I agree with you (and Krynos) completely on this matter.
However, I do have a problem with the part that states that you are not allowed to use the CDDB in conjunction with any other database. Sounds like they're trying to put a stranglehold on the market to me. Advertising is fine. Unfair restrictions to gain market share at the expense of everyone else are not.
Anyway... that's $1/50.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Excellent idea. I've been digging into XML over the past few weeks, and this is a perfect application for it. Make XML the canonical form for storing the data. All other formats are translated from XML. For example, it would be a snap to write Java servlet that read the XML and returned the info in CDDB format. Ok, we need an XML DTD tailored for CD data. And of course it should be open and publicly reviewed. Randy Weems rweems@nospam.hotmail.com
It's already done.
Try telnet freecddb.freecddb.org port 888
It's running version 1.3.1 of cddb and has about 120,000 CDs online but it lacks the web/cgi-interface.