response 102 of 151:

Aug 10 16:01 UTC 2001

Gee. You know, that DataPlay device sounds an awful lot like a minidisc
player. Hmmmmm. (Twila goes back to contemplating her minidiscs.)

response 104 of 151:

Aug 10 16:41 UTC 2001

I'd be afraid I would lose them too easily being the size of a quarter. 
It would be handier to carry around and seemingly light.. Feh I have 
enough trouble keeping track of my minidiscs. :)

response 106 of 151:

Aug 10 21:59 UTC 2001

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/6cd.html
 
"6 CDs a Year, or, Consumers and record labels are at war."
 
Nothing too original here, but it's a nice essay.  It does point out 
that in the conventional economics models, the progress of technology
is supposed to lower prices so that consumers can get more bang 
for their bucks, but the record industry is using its oligopoly power
as best they can to prevent this from happening.

response 108 of 151:

Aug 13 17:00 UTC 2001

That was certainly true when I was in Chicago.  There were two decent record
stores in Hyde Park, but neither of them were very well staffed, and I
wasn't familiar enough with them to just blunder around the place on my own,
the way I do in Encore or Wazoo.  I ended up buying two CDs the whole time
I was in Chicago, both of which I was ordered by friends to go out and buy
This Instant. 

response 110 of 151:

Aug 16 19:16 UTC 2001

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/2001-08-15-korea-napster.htm

Two South Korean brothers, both educated at American universities, are 
facing criminal prosecution for copyright violations.  They wrote a 
Korean-language Gnutella-style file sharing program called 
"Soribada," which translates as "Sea of Sound;" they felt Korea
deserved its own file-sharing system.   Potential penalties include
up to five years in prison and fines of $38,500.
 
Soribada does not user a Napster-style central service; it is clear
they are being prosecuted as the authors of the program, not for 
operating it.

response 112 of 151:

Aug 19 16:29 UTC 2001

Only peripherally related to main topics here:
 
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,539104,00.html

"How Radiohead took America by stealth," by the UK paper The Guardian.
 
Radiohead's recent success, according to this article, relied 
on internet fan communication.  The record company mostly stayed out 
of the way.

> Most controversially, Radiohead and
> Capitol encouraged fans to copy and
> circulate free bootlegs of Kid A (((the next-to-last CD))) in its
> entirety across their own sites three
> weeks in advance of the album's official
> release, upon which it went straight to
> number one with no radio airplay, no video
> and no hit single. 

The article does raise the question: so what does Radiohead need 
Capitol Records for?  Why doesn't the band take over its own 
relationships with the fans?

response 114 of 151:

Aug 20 17:31 UTC 2001

Re #111: A CD has room for 74 minutes of uncompressed stereo audio.  If you
use any of the other features, the amount of audio you can put on is reduced
accordingly.  So you're not really savig anything by eliminating those
features from the spec.  74 minutes actually turns out to be a bit short for
some classical music.

Minidiscs hold considerably less data than CDs, but they get around that by
using a lossy psychoacoustic compression algorithm to compress the data on
the disc.  It works similarly to MP3 but it's a proprietary compression.  In
theory the loss of data in the compression is unnoticable to the human ear.

response 116 of 151:

Aug 22 17:07 UTC 2001

Genuine Napster news!  :)
 
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6946163.html?tag=lh
 
In a conference at Aspen, new Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers promised 
that the new subscription based Napster service would open by the 
end of the 2001.
 
Quote:
 
   ((Hilbers)) said Napster could still be a place where 
    people swap music free of charge, so long as it
    isn't copyrighted. 

    "I'm very much a believer in what
    Napster stands for, which is the
    sharing of music among friends
    and private consumers when it
    comes to making available things
    like my children's Christmas carol
    singing or a garage band," Hilbers
    said. 

In which Hilbers demonstrates an awesome ignorance of intellectual
property law (everything is copyrighted now) and the market demand
for children singing carols.  I'm sure BMG invested $50 million 
in Napster because of the huge audience demand for other people's
children singing Chrismas carols.

-------

Songwriters represented by a copyright enforcement organization called
Copyright.net have launced a new lawsuit against Mp3.com.  They argue
that Mp3.com was the original source for many Mp3 files traded on Napster, 
and thus Mp3.com should be assessed damages for downloads from Napster
and related services.  
 
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/depth/mp3082101.htm

quote:

>The argument goes like this: MP3.com made compressed copies of about
>900,000 songs, which it placed on its computer servers -- without obtaining
>the rights to do so. That created a vast bootleg library, from which MP3.com
>subscribers could download songs. Once on the user's computer hard-drive,
>a single song could be copied and passed around infinitely in the music
>underground.

This seems totally bogus to me: I never heard of anyone using Mp3.com 
as a ripping service to get tracks for further distribution, it seems 
like it would have been much harder than ripping the tracks yourself.
I think we are now suing for theoretical copyright infringement.
I suspect this suit has only happened because Mp3.com was bought by 
Universal Music Group, and the songwriters think they can now tap 
Universal's very deep pockets.

response 118 of 151:

Aug 22 18:46 UTC 2001

Actually, I thought that technically, things that had been released into the
public domain weren't copyrighted. Also, things on which the copyright has
expired (and there are a few recorded pieces old enough to qualify, now) are
not copyrighted.

this post is (c)2001, but is hereby released into the public domain ;}

response 120 of 151:

Aug 23 23:13 UTC 2001

Re 118.  For a recording to be in the public domain through age alone,
it would have had to be "published" before 1922.

Anything which was never "published", regardless how old, is still
under copyright.

response 122 of 151:

Aug 24 06:04 UTC 2001

You bet there were recordings before 1922.  Edison patented the
phonograph in 1878.

response 124 of 151:

Aug 24 10:08 UTC 2001

Re 121-122.  I'm aware that recordings existed before 1922, but I am less
certain about what technology existed to mass-produce and "publish" them. 
Wax cylinders?  And how many of those still exist in playable condition
today?  I don't think the 78 rpm record was invented until later, was it? 

I guess there were player piano rolls, but they were not "recordings" so
much as encoded sheet music.

This is further evidence, if any were needed, how howlingly unreasonable
it is that published items dating back to the early 1920s are still under
copyright -- let alone non-published items dating back to the beginning of
time.