Shifting From P2P To Stream Ripping 577
An anonymous reader submits "As users continue to try fending off the ever more litigious music industry, some
seem to have dropped P2P entirely, moving to ripping instead. While
they lose some control over what they are downloading, it's a untraceable way
to download music (no way for the RIAA to track users or sue). With some
of the more powerful software that's been coming out recently, stream
ripping has become more main-stream. Some of the more well known software
packages, like StationRipper, allow
users to download several thousand songs on a daily basis. And, depending
on how you read the law, it's 100% legal. How will the RIAA respond?
As more users move to this type of technology to avoid the P2P lawsuits, how
will the music industry respond?"
Good idea but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good idea but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever considered streaming from high-quality stations then?
Re:Good idea but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Feel free to name a few - Either >256k/s, or >160k/s VBR (I don't know of any VBR streams, since streaming inherently tends to require CBR content)...
Although, I've asked before, and I'll probably ask again - Why not just rip from CDs borrowed from friends (or the library)? Equally untraceable (if not more so, since although they can't tell what you do with the stream, I'd imagine it must look exceedingly strange to see someone listening to half-a-dozen stations at a time, 24/7), and you get to have 100% control over the resulting rip. Best of all possible worlds - You get the songs, you get as high of a quality as you want, you get whatever format you prefer, and not even the person you borrow the CD from needs to know what you've done (although at least for friends, most really don't care, beyond asking for some reciprocation).
Like many
Re:Good idea but... (Score:5, Informative)
Libraries are great sources, and so are used music and book stores. They will generally buy stuff back after you've had it for a while too. The music ends up not being totally free, but it only costs a couple of bucks per CD, which is better than anywhere else.
Legal Question (was Re:Good idea but...) (Score:3, Insightful)
bought, what then happens if I sell or give the original
away? Am I somehow legally obligated to destroy my copy,
be it a duplicate of the original cd or mp3s ripped from it?
Re:Legal Question (was Re:Good idea but...) (Score:5, Informative)
There is a catch though, you must use a device that is "commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals" and for which the primary purpose of the device is to make such recordings. What are these devices? Well they are DAT tape recorders, Cassette recorders, and CD recorders sold in places like Best Buy that are set top units. CD-ROM drives and computers are not "marketed for the primary purpose" of making digital audio copies, so they don't fit the law. You must also use blanks that are for the express purpose of copying music. They must also contain the SCMS (serial copy management system) that prevents you from making copies of copies. Source disks must be originals in these devices. Obviously, these controls do not exist on CDROM drives or computers.
There is a tax on these devices and blanks that is distributed out to the artists as royalties based on their popularity, etc. That's the crux of the issue - CD-ROM drives are not marketed as primarily CD copying devices, nor are computers and they do not contain the record copyright controls. But these set top boxes have only one real function, and there is a additional tax levied on them in the U.S. to legitimize their use.
Find a copy of the law here. [virtualrecordings.com]
Section 1001 defines a "digital audio recording device" as: "Any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use ...".
Section 1008 says "No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the non-commercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog music recordings."
Heh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm the president of a huge club on campus, and I know many, many people. NO ONE has CDs. No one.
We do, however, have two OC-3s and a T-3...
Here is why I buy CD's (Score:5, Interesting)
l: It's not illegal.
2: A hard drive crash doesnt erase my collection. Burned cd's, backups, what have you get scratched, and aren't reliable. My factory made cd's will last much longer.
3: I can legally rip them at a high-bitrate in whatever the common format is.
4: A lot of my collection is indie / small label punk, these bands probably make less than I do, stealing their cds instead of buying really does affect them.
5: The main reason I buy cds is that when I rip them, there are no pops, none of my tracks are cut short, there are no duplicates, and the tags are 100% correct. I can put them in a database, and magically all the songs by the same artist end up together. When you buy cds, you get much better quality.
If I do use an MP3 service, it is just to see if a cd I'm thinking about buying is any good. I generally use Limewire, and store what I download in a seperate folder away from my collection, so I can easily delete it.
The RIAA does some stupid things, but I still think it is worth the money to actually buy the CD, and I view boycotts as one of the most in-effective tools to combat the RIAA. I think a well-written letter will do so much more than 1% of the population boycotting cds.
Re:Here is why I buy CD's (Score:3, Informative)
Ha ha ha, not likely. I no longer carry original cds around because they get scratched way too quickly. When I get a cd it gets ripped to my computer and I make a copy. On average a cd (copied or not) lasts about 10-12 months in my car before it becomes unplayable (this is also partly my fault since I no longer attempt to put cds back into
Not for $16 (Score:5, Funny)
I buy from BMG Music Club, which has monthly sales, and if you buy during those sales, you get CD's for just under $7 each.
That's a decent deal, and I find I'm willing to buy 6-10 at a time for those prices.
But for $16, Brittany better give me a BJ and agree to not talk when I'm around.
Re:Here is why I buy CD's (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is why we download music:
1. Contrary to popular belief, downloading music (pirated or not) is NOT illegal. Since all you have to rely on is the NAME of the file you are downloading, you can claim negligence. Hey, how are we supposed to know if the song is pirated or not? What if we live in a cave? Brittney Spears, who?
2. Backing up mp3s (ogg, whatever) is cheaper than backing up CDs. (And you're going to backup your CDs anyway unless the RIAA intends to reimburse you for your scratched CDs.)
3. If we like the music, we'll "legally" rip the song at a high-bitrate in whatever format we like from another source (ie. library CDs, friends, used CD stores, etc.).
4. A lot of indie bands release their music for free online, [audiolunchbox.com] because they dont have enough $$ to distribute CDs. Sometimes they'll print their music on real CDs (not mp3 burns), but only if the demand comes. Hence, a better business model than printing 400,000 Cds, driving around to every CD store and FM radio station and risking a load of $$ if noone is interested in your music. Sometimes the artist is from another country and not on the radio, so no luck in finding the CD here. You can try to buy CDs for your favorite indie, but if it exists it will probably only be an mp3 cd. Sometimes if you ask the artist you can find out if a REAL CD will be released, but only if the demand is there.
5. the main reason for downloading is not to to fulfill your deepest orgasmic audiophile desires, but to test the water. We know CD quality is better, but why pay for something you've never heard, or for an album which has only one song you like? Or sometimes you can find out what the music sounds like in different countries, like say the DJ/Techno/Rave scene in UK (as opposed to the crap they call DJ here in the US).
Re:Here is why I buy CD's (Score:4, Insightful)
2: I own between 500-600 cd's
Sooo. At $20 average cd price, and choosing the lower of the range you gave, $20*500 = $10,000. Ok, let's be REALLY conservative and say they were only $15 each. $15*500 = $7500. AND, you claim you are a student.
So, either you are bullshitting, or you are admitting to everyone here that you are from a family that is very very rich. Either way, your opinion is clearly from teh point of view of a very very small minority.
I view boycotts as one of the most in-effective tools to combat the RIAA.
Did you see their profits plummet? I think the boycott is working quite well. I can't believe you seriously suggest writting a LETTER to them. Give me a break. These are the same people who were convicted of price fixing by the US government. The prices are STILL high, and only seem to be goin higher.
Boycotting CD sales is the only way to combat the RIAA. Copying the songs only give the RIAA more excuses to justify their absurdly high prices. I have not bought a single RIAA affiliated CD in the past 3-4 years, and I urge everyone here to do the same. The only way to get through to these people is by hurting their bottom line. When they cannot afford their Ferraries anymore they might start to listen.
Re:Here is why I buy CD's (Score:3, Informative)
So let's say the collection took 6 years to build up (starting at 15 years old is not unreasonable), that would make it about 300 dollars a year, or around 30 dollars a week. Not entirely impossible for even an enterprising minimum wage worker.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here is why I buy CD's (Score:4, Interesting)
Most songs just aren't worth $1 per song, especially for a lossy, low-bitrate, DRM-encrusted file. And that's before the major labels try to hike the price up [arstechnica.com].
Every previous change in standard formats has been an increase in audio quality and/or consistency.
- Examples:
- Vinyl was prone to scratches; 8-tracks weren't.
- Cassettes were an evolution in tape technology (and, iirc, CrO2 was higher quality too).
- CDs brought the consistency and durability of optical digital media to music.
MP3 just doesn't add anything. It's a lossy encoding of the CD audio, it's easily destroyed by virii, worms, and particularly nasty windows crashes (other OSes are unfortunately statistically insignificant in the end user market). AAC doesn't either. It's got all those risks, plus DRM out of the box. I haven't heard of anything else of comparable or better quality being used for music sales.Re:Here is why I buy CD's (Score:3, Insightful)
(a) it is, in fact, the RIAA that has them pissed off
(b) while the RIAA is ridiculously greedy and deceitful, nobody is entitled to just get free music whenever they want
(c) the RIAA should be blamed for 'taking' (inaccurate, sorry, but for lack of a better word) artists' money, not for 'being squares' or whatever and trying to protect the music they make money off of
Re:Heh.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Same here... I personally (well, between my own collection and my SO's) have over 500, though I haven't bought all that many in the last few years, due to the RIAA's antics. All of my close friends have at least 100 or so; I have one FOAF, who does semi-professional remixing (like for local DJs), with literally 10k+ CDs - His collection occupies a full room, with a few thousand of his "favorites" in floor-to-c
Re:Good idea but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good idea but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good idea but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good idea but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good idea but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good idea but... (Score:3, Informative)
What bothers me is that the program StationRipper [ratajik.com] claims it can record up to 300 streams at one time, when a usual 512k DSL connection is limited to 4 CD quality streams (128k mp3)...
Re:Good idea but... (Score:4, Insightful)
And here I thought that you could just connect to the station, record the bytes of the stream to a file as they comes, and later cut the file to individual songs (with possible human intervention).
I didn't realize that you would need to keep on connecting and cutting connection and then parsing the resulting buffers together, when there was so much easier and more reliable solution.
But you must be correct, because you got modded informative. Moderators wouldn't be moderating comments up without both reading and understanding them, no would they ?
Re:Good idea but... (Score:4, Informative)
They send you a stream. Instead of writing it to
Re:Good idea but... (Score:4, Funny)
Tim
Re:Good idea but... (Score:3, Informative)
Just make sure... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just make sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
The one time I let it rip a channel for an entire day and ended up with every song being useless, unless I play it back in the same order DI did, as a good 3 second shift occured in every song compared to the ID3 tag being broadcast... pain in the ass!
Re:Just make sure... (Score:3, Interesting)
When congress was trying to get web radio to pay royalties, my favorite station was acting funny. So i setup a box to rip the entire library. took a week, but I got 6 gigs of music, none identical.
Now when i hit random play my radio station comes back on the air.
just for the RIAA, I have been buying the songs slowly through second stores. You won't ever see my money.
Re:Just make sure... (Score:3, Interesting)
radiolover for the mac allows you to shift the cutoff point by whatever amount to rectify this situation. I'm sure there are comparable solutions on other platforms.
Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
For DI.FM's MP# streams, it would be ID3.
My parents used to do this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:5, Insightful)
Analog copies aren't as lossy as they used to be, especially when you're recording a source that did most of its travelling digitally until the last moment.
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they DID care. That is why a royalty is paid to record companies for every blank tape sold. To compensate them for the copying people did at home.
How much of those royalties do the artists see? (Score:3, Interesting)
Slightly OT: I have a friend who's an upcoming musician and he paid a company to get his stuff on iTunes. He's had 4-5 paid downloads already but hasn't seen a dime.
Re:How much of those royalties do the artists see? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:5, Interesting)
"CD's? Bah... Who needs 'em! They cost twice as much as the cassettes and LP's, and you've got to be some kind of music nut if you think you can actually hear that much of a difference. Besides that, you're just going to end up making a tape of it anyway so you can play it in your car."
Ah... Them memories... <sigh>
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:3, Informative)
I think it had to do with the tape material. Ferrous Oxide (Type I?), Silver Oxide (Type II?), and some other expensive metal (Type IV?)
My type of high quality recording back then involved a mono tape recorder. It was a 6 button one with a pause button. I placed the condenser mic 8 inches in front of the stereo radio speaker (in FM mono mode) and positioned the mic element halfway between the center and edge of the large speaker element for best quali
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:4, Interesting)
And yes, I have a cassette deck next to my computer, hooked up to my sound card's line out. My car is getting kinda older, so it doesn't have a CD player - never bothered to get one. I record MP3s from the computer onto the cassette deck, so I can use it in the car. I use Type II cassettes - I was too cheap to buy the Type IV 10-15 years ago, whenever it was that I last bought one. I've just reused them over the years, taping over old radio songs, and tossing them when they wear out.
Type I and Type II have a drastically different frequency response. Type IV is only slightly better than the Type II, in my opinion.
Hmmmm... maybe I should consider building a Line In for my car cassette deck, so I can hook my portable MP3 player directly into it.
Dave
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:3, Insightful)
I just use an FM transmitter from the CD/mp3 player to the radio. Not great quality, but it works, especially in a noisy pickup truck.
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:5, Informative)
Mini jack to tape adapters only cost about $3 for a cheap one.
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:5, Informative)
Type II - Better sound than Type II. Good for stuff you just wanted to listen to in the car.
Type IV - Metal tapes. Good enough to tape an album and listen to in your home stereo. Expensive, so you had to wait for sales.
I seem to remember
Type III - Chrome tapes. Good enough for most stuff, but tended to be noisier too.
This is all from 25 years ago, so its a bit tough to remember everything.
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:3, Funny)
Uh, dude, he's 'retro-quoting' from ... hmm .. late 80s or early 90s. Notice the quotation marks. That's the sort of stuff we used to say ..
Type III tapes (Score:3, Informative)
There was a Type III tape, namely FerriChrome. FeCr was to deliver the best of Type I [ferric oxide] and Type II [chrome], but died an early death as it didn't. They were on sale only in the early 1970s, AFAIK.
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:3, Interesting)
You just have to love the RIAA's arguments. Remember the anti piracy bit they had on the beginnning of video movies. In Australia it went like this:
"Have you ever owned or rented a movie that wasn't quite right... poor sound and picture quality... " (I can't remember the rest).
They argued against copying back then because the quality was reduced and would "harm" their reputation as the viewers enjoyment was reduced.
Nowdays, they argue against c
Re:My parents used to do this (Score:3, Interesting)
They should be afraid because their business model has not changed over the past decades. I want more content for my $.
I recently purchased a CD for $12 that came with a live concert on DVD. I think this is a great idea. I doubt that the larger labels would do this because they could sell the two items seperately and make more $.
Are you listening RIAA? I am happy to spend my money but want more content.
How would the RIAA respond? (Score:4, Insightful)
Expect "internet radio" to disappear (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Expect "internet radio" to disappear (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Expect "internet radio" to disappear (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Expect "internet radio" to disappear (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Expect "internet radio" to disappear (Score:3, Informative)
home taping (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:home taping (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing was that no matter how good a system you had, a home recording never beat store bought.
Re:home taping (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it isn't. The really scary thing for the recording industry isn't just that you can make a high quality copy, but that you can redistribute high quality copies with great ease. How many tapes or CDs can you make for friends before it feels like a lousy job? Even if you're willing, how many friends can you possibly have? On the othe
Satellite Radio XM PCR (Score:5, Interesting)
streamripper (Score:5, Informative)
How about this from the article itself (Score:5, Interesting)
"Well, some of the comments are a bit misleading. It's not clear just how mainstream this technology really is, and it's certainly not nearly as user friendly for users as basic file sharing applications. The idea is that it records songs directly from streaming radio stations (though, right now, it looks like only certain kinds of streaming radio stations work with the software). Also, copying a song off the radio (which is this basically equivalent to) often involves a lower quality offering with songs cutting into each other, DJs talking over the music and other radio-related reasons why it's not the same as getting a full track. "
I used to tape of the radio too, and ended up knowing songs as ending with 'And that was Vanilla Ice on 2KBY7 with the HOT Ice, Ice Baby... Keep rockin' dude... yeaaah'.*
It's not the same as a pure track... plus, as it says... crap quality.
* No, I didn't actually have any Vanilla Ice tracks on tape... no... really.
The obvious answer (Score:4, Insightful)
As stupidly as possible, just like normal.
Keys to the kingdom for $9.95?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
$9.95 a month to Real Rhapsody will get you access to Real's entire library of 500,000ish songs in Real's streaming format, and $9.95 a month to the new Napster will get you access to Napster's library of 500,000ish songs in Windows Media format. In both cases, they've yet to establish a limit as to how many streams you can get per month.
Clearly, there's a rather gaping hole if you're able to save either of those sets of streams into any non-DRMed format.
Re:Keys to the kingdom for $9.95?!? (Score:5, Informative)
What I dont want to hear in my stream rips.. (Score:4, Funny)
Stream ripping easy does it with your friend Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Start alsamixer
Set the capture source to "wave"
Jack up the "wave capture" setting
Capture the stream (or anything currently playing in fact) from /dev/dsp
Just think people have been bitching and moaning about the truly staggering number of ALSA settings for SB-Lives!, now see how it's useful?
Except (Score:4, Informative)
De-mucking songs? (Score:3, Interesting)
However, couldn't software recognize the same song being played repeatedly by a station... and then identify the actual layers within the overlaps by what's found in all instances. In the end, it could take 8 hours of music in, and give back the 25 or so songs the station played more than once nice and clean.
Ohh... would the RIAA hate that. No distribution, just the recording of a legal broadcast.
Winamp - ml_www (Score:5, Interesting)
All you need is a Winamp running with the plug-in, and someone--probably someone you trust--drops in your IP in a browser and one of these two windows pops up [flet.ch], depending on which template you're using. You can download the newest versions here [chrisdsmith.com].
There's a sourceforge project [sourceforge.net] going on for the plug-in, but they haven't really brought that site up to speed yet. Most of the progress is in this Winamp Forums thread [winamp.com], with some occasional updates on Winamp Unlimited [inthegray.com].
So what's the difference (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't really see much of a difference here. It's not the downloading that the *AA have been getting people for it's the sharing. If you leached only the *AA would let you do it to your hearts content.
If someone is legally broadcasting that's basically the same as someone legally sharing a file unlike illegally broadcasting content which is the same as someone sharing a file they don't have distribution rights to. Legally it's the same to put out a stream you don't have rights to or put share out a file you don't have rights to.
Everybody gets wrapped up in the "download" portion and unfortunately get screwed because they've only paid attention to download instead of upload. Maybe if the fined P2P users had been worrying about uploading instead of downloading they wouldn't be getting fined.
Cognitive dissonance (Score:3, Insightful)
bad pun (Score:4, Funny)
How about "Having halfway crossed the legal hurdles, stream ripping still has quite an upriver swim before it becomes mainstream"
Or maybe "Stream ripping, while not quite the open floodgates that bittorrent is, is gaining in popularity..."
Or, if you don't like it, "Stream ripping may soon come under the guns of the RIAA and have nowhere to go but downstream."
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
re: depending on how you read the law... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly what was said about Napster, look at how long that lasted. I think its a bit of a pipe dream to believe that there will be a legal way to acquire large amounts of copyrighted music for free w/o the consent of the copyright holder.
And on the off chance it was legal to do this you can be sure that Congress would put a stop to it pretty fast.
Re: depending on how you read the law... (Score:4, Informative)
Well, UK and EU copyright law allows an exception for "time shifting" on domestic premises (i.e. video recording a television broadcast for playback later).
It doesn't state whether the time shifting copy could only be used once, but it's implied, and generally the copyright exceptions are subject to an overridding berne three step test that the exception is limited to acts that do not prejudice the right holder. This means that although the exceptions are available, if you abuse them in aggregate then it could be a problem.
However, theoretically, you could set up stream ripper to rip from thousands of stations, and only play back the song once at a later date, then delete it. Effectively, a music PVR. This would - in my interpretation - entirely justified under UK CDPA 1988 and the other EU national copyright laws that were harmonised in the late 1990s.
Broadcasters: Turn off crossfading (Score:5, Insightful)
I was doing this for a while. I streamed in about 15 niche stations that played the kind of music I liked, and got a lot of music. The error rate was fairly high, and I ended up with a lot of duplicates, but I found a lot of good music, and filled in some gaps in my collection.
Depending on What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Notice the small change in the quoted text. And it's still 100% true.
This is not like the cat in the box where you cannot ever know if it's dead or alive till you open the box and discover it's dead/alive.
With this law once you discover it is illegal, it's been illegal since you started doing it. So it's a bad plan to do it on the basis that you don't know if its illegal or not.
Using a new legit tech for piracy only hurts it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now here we are saying Internet radio is good, legitimate fair use; and then we use it for piracy.
Just like how Apple tried to be relaxed with their AAC DRM, but people just had to crack it. Sure, ther e are valid reasons for this, but once again people will use a valid, legal technology for piracy and ruin it for the rest of us.
Re:Using a new legit tech for piracy only hurts it (Score:3, Interesting)
They aren't; they are going after some users of some P2P systems. P2P is a very wide area- with lots of protocols- most of the internet is P2P- the IP protocol itself is P2P. USENET especially is P2P.
Because its used mostly for piracy.
No; well maybe. But that's not necessarily true for all P2P or for all time. For example Skype [skype.com] is P2P, but there's presumably little or no piracy going on there.
Tired old formula (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone imediatly when to Gnutella-net. Since Gnutella net was not centralized it could not be shut down. But the problem was, not being centralized meant that propagating search querries was ridiculously expensive in bandwidth, thus it was a slight pain in the ass.
Then we were worried that they would start sueing individuals, so someone developed free net that would use everyone else as a proxy to hide the origionating IP, thus the IP you see is not that of the person downloading the file. This would have worked but was damn stupid as far as wasting bandwith for anonymity.
the RIAA held off while on individual lawsuits, freenet never took off, now that the lawsuits are becoming a problem again we come up with stupid solution 'B', this streaming data client.
Basically, our file sharing clients will get worse and worse, and it will boil down to asking ourselves "do I really want to get this song in a shoddy quality, with skips and pops/waste a half hour in failed attempts to get it, or is it easier to just buy the song online legally?
And in fact, this is the way it should work. There will always be free clients and you will always be able to pirate music, it just a question how much of a pain in the ass it will be, and whether or not you value your time and quality of music over your money.
If the RIAA was smart(they aren't), they would lower the price of song downloads to 20 cents (an artist usually makes 10 cents per song on each cd), no one would bother wading through all the fake songs on Kazaa and most people would flock to the pay sites.
$1-$2 a songs? ppppttttt. . . Pirating methods don't suck that much . . yet.
GOD damnit! (Score:4, Funny)
[puff puff]
I'm sorry for yelling. But you guys may have just ruined this by giving it this new audience.
I said it yesterday... (Score:3, Funny)
The best part is the horrible or wonderful (depending on your view) irony of it: Screwed by their own bought-and-paid-for legislation. Geeks the world over will roll on the floor laughing their asses off!
Re:I said it yesterday... (Score:4, Informative)
For Mac Users... (Score:5, Informative)
amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
This is all stupid (no offence) (Score:3, Insightful)
However, as my wife pointed out, the point of saving the streams becomes moot, since I can always switch on the iTunes stream anyway - why duplicate the commercial free radio station? Good point. (On the other hand, the internet station *does* include rare vinyl tracks that are out of distribution, which you can't buy anywhere, and which are very difficult, if not impossible to find on P2P, so there is some value to stream ripping.)
This seems to be a similar situation to digital TV. The BBC plays commercial free movies at DVD quality. I click record on my EyeTV 400 PVR, and get DVD quality movies. Great again. Love it. However, the irony does not escape me that this makes the BBC the biggest faciliator of "pirated" movies around. It also makes me question the difference between digital TV recording and the olden days of VCR recording movies. What's the difference? The quality is better.
However, I'm getting quite used to the high quality of the movies, and to be frank, beyond my obsessive collecting and quality control obsessions, it really doesn't make a damned bit of difference. I can't share them on the internet cuz they are too big (1.4GB-4GB). My friends don't have computers for entertainment centres, so the movies I record are as useless to them as a copy-protected music disc, ie. a coaster. And besides, no one seems to think the value of a movie is nearly as high as the people selling them.
So what's changed? Ripping streams is like recording radio shows to cassettes. Hard disk recording digital TV is basically the same as using a VHS deck to record analog TV. The big difference is the quality is better. And...? That's about it.
The only people digital media would seem to help are commercial pirates, who with digital media can now make better counterfeit copies - and yet the RIAA/Hollywood doesn't seem to be doing much about them. (Hollywood themselves are responsible for the majority of movies in the wild anyway.) Greedy? Certainly. Insane? Possibly. The only thing worse than greedy insane people are the ones with enough money to buy polititions, high priced lawyers, and too much cocaine.
Still, it will be fun to tell the grandkids about it. (I was a student during the era of photocopy hysteria, so I've already got a sense of how ridiculous and incredible this is going to seem in the future.
"But wouldn't photocopying a book cost more than buying the book?"
"Yes, Virginia. It seems fear and uncertainty drive people to extreme forms of irrational thinking and behavior."
Did anybody consider (Score:3, Interesting)
A smart app could figure not only when the songs change, but OCR the picture to try and parse the artist, album and track info.
Esound is your friend (Score:3, Informative)
1. RealPlayer
2. 'esdmon'
3. cron
4. 'oggenc'
Here's my personal bash script to get these guys to work together and save the stream to an Ogg Vorbis file:
---
#!/bin/bash
DISPLAY=roy:0
export DISPLAY
datestamp=`date +%D%T | sed s+/++g | sed s+:++g`
esdmon | oggenc --raw -o
----
Make the assumption that the
Yeah, yeah, yeah... I'm sure someone out there could do it better, but this should get some people started.
The RIAA has anticipated this (Score:3, Informative)
They argue that ripping programs to individual songs is illegal because it is "librarying" - which is NOT a legitimate fair use. Rest assured, they will come after it.
I just signed up for allofmp3.com (Score:4, Informative)
There's an interesting thread here [ipodlounge.com] about it, scroll down to the one that starts "OK, here's the scoop on allofmp3.com" by ronross.
$.01/MB is about what I think is fair for online music, you like $.99/track great, I don't, I like $.05/track. If I thought artists deserve to live like rock stars I'd send them parts of every paycheck, or buy them coke, but I don't. If a musician makes more a year than I do for what is obviously less work then they can't complain.
The URL again where you can legally get tons of good quality music for $.01/MB is www.allofmp3.com [allofmp3.com]
The English button is at the top left, FYI.
Oh, and by the way, I welcome all flames/spam/etc to my personal email address kgb@submarinefund.com [mailto]
Re:I just signed up for allofmp3.com (Score:4, Informative)
The artists do not get paid; you know that, but it's not neccecarily obvious to others. Some of the music is sourced from a single bought CD, most is sourced from downloaded MP3s. The Online Encoding Exclusive tracks are all CD sourced; the others are at best 320Kbit MP3 sources - yes, all the non-Exclusive OE tracks are being transcoded, not encoded from the original.
Yes, it's legal for them to operate the service because they are complying with Russian law.
However, it is not neccecarily legal for you to USE the service. The situation seems analogous to buying stolen goods when you know they are stolen. It's not exactly analogous from a legal POV, though. I don't know the exact position of US law, but piracy law in the UK and much of Europe counts the party receiving the copy as liable as well as the party making the copy. I consulted an intellectual property lawyer and was assured that yes, under UK law, usage of allofmp3 is definately illegal, though it might be treated leniently given that someone who's not really clued in might believe that the site is a legitimate music seller.
Coverage of P2P lawsuits in the US suggests that US law does not consider the recipient of a copy liable, which would probably make it legal to use allofmp3, but IANAL and my lawyer friend doesn't know US law well enough.
Home recording laws an exception to copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, as people on
Doing this legally, with artist support (Score:3, Informative)
The funniest thing I've read in a long time (Score:5, Funny)
Umm... ok. That's exactly the iron-clad legal guarantee I was looking for!
Suddenly I lost all sympathy for him (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where the problems lie. Stop trying to go public with services/sharing/selling. You are stealing from somebody.
Kids copy a few tracks off the radio, or from their friend's CD, and no-one cares that much. It's what we've had for decades, and we can all live quite happilly thank-you.
As soon as someone starts distributing en masse to the world at large - to people they don't really know - the balance tips.
We have a balance between how much hassle/loss of quality we'll endure for free music. The record industry has a balance between how much hassle it is to track/sue people against how well organised they are, and how widely they're distributing their stuff.
Re:cant see why i'd want this (Score:3, Insightful)
No, there aren't, because P2P by its nature requires each peer to know the address of the other peers.. and "anonymous" networks like Freenet are hopeless for music (so slow & poor content). You may be getting confused by blocklists which prevent certain address ranges connecting with your P2P client.
Re:cant see why i'd want this (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, there are p2p applications that do prevent tracing. There's MUTE [sourceforge.net], which seems to have promise, although it's not particularly well documented. There's also GNUnet [gnu.org] , which seems to be really intelligently designed, but I have no idea how well it works in practice, I don't think it's ready for mainstream use yet. And of course, freenet [sourceforge.net] with FROST [sourceforge.net] , but it's as slow and unreliable as the rest of freenet.
Ultimately, I think we can all agree that anonymous internet, especially filesharing, is coming and is going to render the RIAA's efforts useless.
As far as stream ripping, however, I think the idea was just that you could leech mp3s all day long and make a collection of whatever the stream is playing, not as an anonymous way of getting specific mp3s you want.
Re:How the industry will respond. (Score:3, Informative)
Um, how exactly does one poke an ear out? Isn't that like using a shovel to remove a hole?
Re:How the industry will respond. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What's the equivalent for movies? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What's the equivalent for movies? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Questions: No record? Legal? (Score:3, Informative)
Betamax case. Time shifting.