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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 143 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 14 of 143:
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Mar 28 22:11 UTC 2001 |
re #11: I think that massive MP3 trading, with the format's lossy
compression, has already proven that a huge consituency of listeners
care less about sound quality than about convenience and price.
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tpryan
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response 15 of 143:
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Mar 28 22:18 UTC 2001 |
Stores, retailers, and customers should demand that such CDs
come labeled as "may not play in all CD devices" in print as big as the
banner across the top. If it does not fit the "CD standard" it is a
fraud.
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mcnally
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response 16 of 143:
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Mar 28 22:22 UTC 2001 |
I'd go a step farther and label them "Specifically designed *NOT* to play
in many CD devices." After all, that's the point, right?
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krj
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response 17 of 143:
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Mar 28 23:10 UTC 2001 |
News articles in many online sources report that the RIAA is going
back to court to complain that Napster is not doing enough to block
RIAA-controlled songs from being swapped through Napster.
The RIAA is demanding that the preliminary injunction be modified in one
of two ways. First, they want the Napster filters to become "opt-in"
rather than "opt-out;" under this plan, Napster would block all song
files except those where the copyright owner had explicitly permitted
Napster trading. It's unclear to me if this would satisfy the concern
of the appeals court panel that the trading of files not owned by
the plaintiffs not be unduly hampered.
Second, the RIAA wants Napster to adopt a scheme to filter files
based on their checksum (based on the belief that most files traded
come from a very small number of original rippings to MP3 format)
and their "musical fingerprint" using technology from someone like
Cantametrix, which I don't understand much at all.
This demand seems to fall afoul of the Appeals Court's direction that
Napster was to filter out copyrighted songs to the extent that their
technology permitted them to do so. Remember that Napster never sees
the actual song files; they only run a directory server, and the
song file exchange takes place between the two users' computers.
This is why the filtering has focused on file names.
The plaintiffs argue that if necessary Napster should be forced to
re-design the system.
My I-Am-Not-A-Lawyer take on it: I think Napster is complying as
best they can with the injunction as modifed under the Court of Appeals
direction. The record industry is arguing that the loopholes enacted
under the Court of Appeals direction mean the injunction has very
little effect, and they want to effectively go back to the trial court
judge's original injunction, which was that Napster must halt the
trading of their songs, regardless of the effects on non-infringing
users or on Napster Inc.
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russ
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response 18 of 143:
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Mar 29 01:00 UTC 2001 |
The solution to deliberately buggered CD's is to buy them and then
return them as defective. Exchange, and then return the exchanged
one as defective. Do this enough and stores will stop carrying
buggered CD's, and the record labels will stop producing them.
That'll be the end of the problem until some other format comes along
that's got an apartheid policy built into the hardware. If players
and computers are built differently at a fundamental level so that the
computer can't read the audio (except, maybe, to pass it on to a
speaker in an encrypted form) then you'll be back to being unable to
rip your music. Even if you *can* play the music through your speakers,
you'll be unable to re-balance the tone, add reverb, or otherwise play
with the material YOU paid for... except as THEY allow you to.
I think this situation sucks. Sometime in the future I intend to
transfer my entire CD collection to HD storage and put the originals
into safekeeping somewhere. I may compress to MP3 for the car or
a portable player. That's my right under fair use, and any company
that tries to deny me my fair-use rights deserves a kick in the balls.
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mdw
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response 19 of 143:
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Mar 29 03:53 UTC 2001 |
[ English is redundant. ]
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lynne
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response 20 of 143:
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Mar 29 15:41 UTC 2001 |
<yes, but you're using French *and* English to say the same thing> :)
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mdw
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response 21 of 143:
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Mar 29 19:41 UTC 2001 |
[ Sure it ain't latin? ]
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mcnally
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response 22 of 143:
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Mar 29 22:31 UTC 2001 |
Yes, it's Latin, and once you've identified it as Latin you ought to
realize that either the "&" or the "et" is redundant.. Sometimes you'll
see "&c", but that's not particularly common..
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lynne
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response 23 of 143:
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Mar 29 23:07 UTC 2001 |
ah, my mistake. however, if you ignore the cetera part, "et" means "and"
in French as well as Latin. .
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gelinas
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response 24 of 143:
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Mar 30 03:46 UTC 2001 |
Well, yeah; French ain't nuttin' but gutter Latin.
;)
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krj
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response 25 of 143:
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Mar 30 04:07 UTC 2001 |
(*ahem*)
resp:0 :: More information comes from a story in today's USA Today.
Apparently the copy-protected Charley Pride disc isn't supposed
to fail completely in a CD-ROM drive:
"The disc will direct PC user to the Web site of ((the
copy-protection firm))... There users will be offered free
downloadable Windows Media versions of Prides's songs, which
can also be copied to portable players that support the
music industry's copy protection standards."
So that's what they plan to offer anyone who wants to listen to
their Charlie Pride CD on their computer.
So we might drift into a discussion of Microsoft's plans to make the
PC a copy-proof device. There's something called the Secure Audio
Path coming in one of the upcoming versions of Windows, and apparently
Windows Media is locked down, at least in the digital domain.
Remember that, as the court rulings have fallen so far, you do not
have a legal right to watch DVDs on a Linux computer.
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carson
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response 26 of 143:
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Mar 30 04:26 UTC 2001 |
(does anyone actually listen to Charlie Pride?)
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gelinas
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response 27 of 143:
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Mar 30 04:32 UTC 2001 |
Used to. And would again, did I buy music with any regularity.
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micklpkl
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response 28 of 143:
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Mar 30 04:50 UTC 2001 |
Thanks for mentioning the report in #25 --- I heard a snippet of that on NPR
this morning, and meant to research this a little more online. I don't
understand how this can be effective. What about all the users of these
so-called CD_ROM devices, what will they see to explain why they can't play
what should be a standard audio CD? There are many other unknowns in this
roadblock the industry is considering.
As an aside, does anyone know if the component audio recorders use CD-ROM
technology, and will thus be affected by this attempt at copy-protection?
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senna
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response 29 of 143:
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Apr 4 18:37 UTC 2001 |
That still screws people like me over who don't have the bandwidth to download
songs regularly. I don't even have an MP3 player on this computer.
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flem
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response 30 of 143:
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Apr 4 23:46 UTC 2001 |
I read a few days ago that some of the big boys are planning to start some
kind of subscription-download service of their own. Anyone know anything
about that?
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krj
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response 31 of 143:
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Apr 6 06:14 UTC 2001 |
There's a raft of articles and I'm not coming up with a good synthesis.
Some time back the Universal and Sony labels announced that they would
offer a subscription plan called Duet, and this week it was announced
that Yahoo will become a part of this project. Details are scanty,
and the articles I've seen indicated that the files will come with
"digital rights management" encumbrances to inhibit trading and
loading in portable MP3 players.
Monday's announcement was that BMG, EMI and AOL-Time-Warner are going
to do a partnership with Real Networks to form a subscription service
called MusicNet. The article in NewMediaMusic.com said that
MusicNet would be offering Mp3 downloads, but I'm not sure that's
a reliable report. MusicNet had the air of having been thrown together
in a big hurry so that, in last Tuesday's congressional hearings,
the industry could claim to be moving forward in offering music
on the Internet.
But I think the major labels have decided that they need to have something
which looks sort of like Napster in place when Napster-as-we-know-it
comes to an end this summer. Users with some technical sophistication
will probably continue on with underground Napster clones or Gnutella,
but millions of Napster users aren't too sophisticated and the record
companies need to have something to offer them by, say, July.
So, all five of the majors have signed up for one service or another;
the indies are so far out in the cold, and also left out in the cold are
today's music retailers, who are starting to scream very loudly.
Also apparently out in the cold are the holders of the music publishing
copyrights; the blurb in Inside.com says the proposed subscription
services are not dealing with the concerns of those copyright holders.
Unfortunately inside.com isn't offering much content for free any more,
so I haven't been able to read the details.
There was another story in today's news: MTV has concluded a deal to
sell song and album downloads -- priced individually, rather than in
a subscription service as described above -- from all five labels.
This is the first time anyone has been able to offer "one-stop shopping,"
and of course the indies are left out again.
Things are moving very fast, and my picture of what's happening is murky.
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flem
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response 32 of 143:
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Apr 6 18:22 UTC 2001 |
I, for one, would strongly support a "pay-for-download" of high-quality
digital recordings of *single songs*, were the price within reason.
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mcnally
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response 33 of 143:
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Apr 6 20:03 UTC 2001 |
They're not exactly Napster stories, but Salon has recently had a couple
of interesting stories about the payola-like business of radio promotion
and about "indie" promoters' near-stranglehold on American FM playlists.
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/03/14/payola/index.html
http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2001/04/03/payola2/index.html
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krj
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response 34 of 143:
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Apr 6 20:18 UTC 2001 |
Greg in resp:32 :: but in what format would you pay for these songs?
You're not buying a song, at the most basic level; you're buying a
computer file.
The Cnet story on the MusicNet service to be formed by AOL, BMG, EMI and
Real says that the files they sell will come encumbered by digital
rights management stuff. This is in contrast to the NewMediaMusic
story I quoted earlier, but I think it more accurately reflects the
thinking of the major record companies. So far the "digital rights
management" copy prevention systems have been generally
rejected by consumers.
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flem
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response 35 of 143:
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Apr 6 20:46 UTC 2001 |
A good question. I think I'd probably want an uncompressed version, so's I
could convert it to whatever format was convenient for me, but I'd probably
be willing to pay for good quality mp3's at a lower price.
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mcnally
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response 36 of 143:
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Apr 6 22:15 UTC 2001 |
Unfortunately the record companies have consistently and repeatedly
demonstrated that they waren't willing to sell what you say you're
willing to buy..
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krj
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response 37 of 143:
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Apr 11 17:11 UTC 2001 |
More bunches of articles and I am short of time. There's a Reuters
story today which I have from:
http://www.latimes.com/wires/20010411/tCB00a2780.html
Napster had a compliance hearing in front of trial judge Marilyn
Patel yesterday and she was not pleased. "(Napster) was warned by
a U.S. judge on Tuesday that it could face closure if it doesn't speed up
its efforts (to block copyrighted songs). ... Patel said it was 'disgraceful'
that copyrighted material remained on Napster's system."
I don't fully grasp this, since the current situation was dictated by
the appeals court panel when they told Patel how to revise her injunction.
So I don't see how Patel can throw out the directions of the appeals court
just because they don't work effectively, when the appeals court for
reasons of its own overruled Patel's original effective injunction to
close Napster.
In the same article, Napster claims to be close to reaching licensing
deals with the five majors. Napster says that once the licensing deals
are reached, the majors will drop their suits; well, fine, but there are
still a large number of independent labels whose claims to infringement
damages are as good as the major labels' claims; what's going to keep those
claims from pouring out of the woodwork if Napster settles with the five
majors?
The other articles are more think pieces, less urgent news so I will
try to make time for them later this week. (I'm on vacation and we have
Leslie's recital and a family visit.)
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krj
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response 38 of 143:
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Apr 11 19:49 UTC 2001 |
(Much bigger stories on this at www.inside.com and www.wired.com.
The Patel quote above is incomplete; she did acknowledge the controlling
authority of the appeals court ruling, though she thinks they should
reconsider because the injunction crafted under their guidance is
ineffective.)
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