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| 25 new of 143 responses total. |
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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goose
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response 39 of 143:
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Apr 11 22:26 UTC 2001 |
It's odd how little the professional audio press is paying attention to this.
,
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mdw
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response 40 of 143:
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Apr 12 07:24 UTC 2001 |
Is it? Why would they care?
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raven
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response 41 of 143:
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Apr 12 23:32 UTC 2001 |
Now linked to the cyberpunk conf, your conf of networked society and it's
future.
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krj
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response 42 of 143:
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Apr 13 01:21 UTC 2001 |
Inside.com and others carry a story that Judge Patel is inclined to let
the holders of songwriting copyrights pile on in a class action suit
against Napster.
zdnet.com and other sources carry a story from the Wall Street Journal
about how major software manufacturers such as Microsoft and Real
plan to discourage users from making MP3 files and encourage them
to use proprietary, copy-controlled formats.
"...early testers of beta versions of Windows XP already complain that
the most popular MP3 recording applications -- which compete with
Microsoft's format -- don't seem to function properly, apparently
because of changes Microsoft made to how data are written on CD-ROMs
under Windows XP..."
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goose
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response 43 of 143:
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Apr 14 23:23 UTC 2001 |
RE#41 -- Because eventually we're the ones who have to deal with this
bullshit. ;-)
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krj
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response 44 of 143:
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Apr 17 05:32 UTC 2001 |
News pointers:
http://www.theregister.co.uk has a couple of stories about MP3 raids
at a Taiwan university. Dorm rooms have been searched, PCs seized,
fourteen students charged. The article, which is rather biased in
favor of the students, does point out the irony of raiding students
while East Asia is a hotbed of large-scale piracy for cash profit.
http://www.newmediamusic.com has another of their mindboggling essays
on the Napster case. Sometimes I can't tell if these writers are brilliant
or just blowing smoke; in a month it won't matter because they plan to
put all the juicy stuff in the for-pay section. Anyway, today's piece
discusses why it is that BMG is now running Napster, and the legal
implications of BMG sitting on both sides of the Napster lawsuit.
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krj
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response 45 of 143:
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Apr 18 03:48 UTC 2001 |
More stories.
1) http://www.theregister.co.uk reports that the Taiwanese government
has rallied to defend the rights of students whose machines were
seized in searches for illegal MP3 files, and it now appears that
the cases will be dropped.
2) Going back two weeks to my resp:31, where I wrote that the major labels
were probably trying to have the Duet and MusicNet systems in place
before the free Napster service was whacked this summer: A Reuters
story from April 4 says no, these systems are still vaporware, and
though the companies involved are promising a summer rollout (for
Duet, through Yahoo) or a fall beta test (for MusicNet, with Real and
Yahoo), other people in the industry think these deadlines are
wildly overoptimistic for services whose basic design parameters
and legal frameworks are still being developed.
And, they will be harder to use than Napster. And the songs will be
copy-prevented.
Another really great story was in the Wall Street Journal last week,
and MSNBC carries it at http://www.msnbc.com/news/558318.asp
"Bertelsmann tries to tune into Web bug finds it to be a jarring
strategy." Bertelsmann thought it would be brilliant to ally with
Napster and hope to pick up its millions of users, but the move has
been controversial within the company and has left the company isolated
with respect to the other four majors, who still seem bent on Napster's
destruction.
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krj
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response 46 of 143:
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Apr 20 18:19 UTC 2001 |
Here's an opinion piece I missed when it appeared in early April:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,23401,00.html
Author Lawrence Lessig writes:
"As Congress knows, but as the recording industry wants us to forget,
the struggle over Napster is nothing new to copyright law. The past
100 years have been filled with Napsters -- new technologies that
'steal' content. But in every previous Napster-like case, Congress
has struck a very different balnce from the one that the courts are
now establishing with the ((music)) labels. Every time a major new
technology for distributing content was born, Congress has assured
compensation WITHOUT GUARANTEEING CONTROL." ((emphasis KRJ))
"Take cable TV. Like Napster, cable was born as a commercial
enterprise devoted to making tons of money by 'stealing' other
people's content..."
The article says that some sort of compulsory licensing system, similar to
what was deployed at the beginning of the radio era, is what many in
Congress are starting to think about.
For the attention of rcurl and brighn... :)
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gull
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response 47 of 143:
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Apr 20 18:32 UTC 2001 |
Cable TV sort of works both ways. There are also "must-carry" rules,
forcing cable companies to put local TV stations on their systems that
desire to be there. There's been some argument about this lately,
actually. With HDTV, TV stations will soon be (or already are)
broadcasting two, possibly different, video signals. Even after analog
TV is phased out, there's still the possibility that one HDTV channel
could carry more than one video stream. The stations wanted to be able
to force cable companies to carry *all* their video streams. So far
the FCC has ruled that cable companies are only required to carry one
of them, and this has been very unpopular with broadcast stations, who
feel the FCC is favoring cable TV in their rulemaking. Over-the-air
broadcasting of TV is probably in trouble in the US, especially since
HDTV is, by most accounts, nearly impossible to receive with an indoor
antenna.
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krj
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response 48 of 143:
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Apr 20 23:29 UTC 2001 |
Two more interesting Napster pieces, these both from today:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010420/en/music-napsterudpate1_1.html
"Napster to use fingerprinting technology."
Napster is licensing technology to recognize songs by their "musical
fingerprints" from a company called Relatable. "There are many technological
challenges," says the CEO of Relatable in a quote. Yeah, like the issue
of where do you put a filter which examines the contents of the file...
As I've dicussed before, such filtering would seem to be impossible given
current Napster architecture, and the appeals court panel said Napster did
not have to redesign its system. I can only assume that Napster got slapped
very hard by the court-appointed technical master overseeing Napster's
compliance, in the closed and so-far secret hearing last week.
#2: http://www.sonicnet.com/news/archive/story.jhtml?id=1442959
"Indie Music Still Thrives on Napster"
Indie labels lack the financial and manpower resources to file the
notifications required under the injunction to force Napster to attempt to
filter their songs off. And many indies, who have to fight for exposure
for their artists, think this might work to their favor as more and more
major-label music is filtered off Napster.
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gull
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response 49 of 143:
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Apr 21 03:20 UTC 2001 |
Re #48: Simple; you put the filter in the client, and only send the
checksum to the central server. Then you alter the protocol just enough
to break the existing clients, so everyone has to download the new one.
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krj
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response 50 of 143:
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Apr 21 04:46 UTC 2001 |
From a design perspective that works. Now, stop the millions of users
from hacking the code resident on their computers.
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gull
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response 51 of 143:
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Apr 21 16:11 UTC 2001 |
That gets trickier. Much trickier. But there are ways around it. I read
an article recently about techniques to keep people from cheating in
multiplayer networked games. Some of the same techniques would help here.
Basically you'd have to make the program self-checking.
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russ
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response 52 of 143:
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Apr 21 21:55 UTC 2001 |
Re #51: But hardly beyond the capabilities of software people,
as the successful effort to find out why a certain Windows beta
gave a bogus error message when run under DR-DOS proves.
The fingerprinting will not be a killer, just one skirmish in the
arms race. It will be too easy to work around, either through
hacked fingerprinting code or alteration of the fingerprint
reported to Napster.
It may work for a while. If the visibility of independent music
labels and their artists rises in the mean time, so much the better.
I would love to see listeners abandon the producers of tripe such as
Britney Spears and learn to like real music.
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russ
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response 53 of 143:
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Apr 22 23:57 UTC 2001 |
Re #51: But hardly beyond the capabilities of software people,
as the successful effort to find out why a certain Windows beta
gave a bogus error message when run under DR-DOS proves.
The fingerprinting will not be a killer, just one skirmish in the
arms race. It will be too easy to work around, either through
hacked fingerprinting code or alteration of the fingerprint
reported to Napster.
It may work for a while. If the visibility of independent music
labels and their artists rises in the mean time, so much the better.
I would love to see listeners abandon the producers of tripe such as
Britney Spears and learn to like real music.
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slynne
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response 54 of 143:
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Apr 23 14:07 UTC 2001 |
Jeez, russ is such an ass. I might not like Britney Spears either but
only a loser like russ would go around calling someone else's musical
taste "tripe" while stating that the music *he* likes is "real"
[dont worry folks, I am not hurting russ's feelings as he filters me
out]
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raven
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response 55 of 143:
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Apr 23 20:31 UTC 2001 |
I dunno I think tripe is a pretty accurate assesment of Britney Spears and
her ilk. Wy not call the talentless for what they are? Afterall they are
making millions due to record company promotion (to tie back into Napster
:-)) while more taented muscians have to keep their day jobs.
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