Archive for September, 2007

P2P legally losing ground

Published by
KwangErn Liew
at September 20, 2007 in General. 1 

Update: About time that IFPI shutdown eDonkey servers in Germany, France and Netherlands right after the incident below.

For years P2P networks and site owners have suffered judgements from courts. As we thought things are growing brightly when iTunes, YouTube, Veoh, Mp3Tunes, etc. are looming to make P2P legal, here comes the German government cracking down on the ED2K network (original). I completely agree with cracking down on piracy, but under the banner of facilitators??

If I understood correctly, what it means is, sites and/or applications that allow a user to transfer files can be liable for copyright infringement due to its technical nature. An example would be MSN file sharing feature that allows users to transfer media files to another is in effect under copyright infringement! Many (web) applications we see this day facilitates such illegal file-sharing. Where and how do they draw the line?

At least it’s not as bad as America, where a company can sue you for using keyword tags.

Last.fm does fingerprinting…for…

Published by
KwangErn Liew
at September 5, 2007 in Media. 1 

Quite interesting that Last.fm is entering the fingerprinting game.

They seem to flat out rejected MusicIP’s technology, surprising in a way. I had expected them to work closely to create a huge movement. In my humble opinion, Last.fm can be the missing piece to create an amazing trinity with MusicIP and MusicBrainz. MusicIP and MusicBrainz have been known in working quite closely together with Picards and in the financial area. We all know what sort of direction MusicBrainz is moving towards and their strong dedication towards creating the industry standard for music data coherency. With Last.fm in the picture, the trio can continue to push the music industry in varying angles - each on/at their best.

Even so, moving away from MusicBrainz doesn’t help much in the long term. With two separate systems, technically speaking, you would need to create a complex bridge to create some sort of a harmony, which isn’t guarantee and it’s an additional workload.

According to Russ Garrett, MusicDNS is a closed proprietary system (source), though MusicIP’s website states otherwise as it’s an open source. I would agree that if Russ is referring to its cost from its commercial use. Sounds like they couldn’t strike a deal just as MusicBrainz did?

The Last.fm Fingerprinter

The released software sucks. It shows that whoever the application designer is isn’t really do a good job. Sure, it’s just a start, but if they are coming out strong against the industry, then play a good leader.

They also advocate about open source yet have no support for OGG or FLAC when released. I’d give them credit for saying it’ll be there in the future, but not impressed at all.

It has no value for the users in any sense. It just fingerprints and sends the data off to Last.fm. No more no less, so far. And what’s the different between using MusicBrainz’s technology and this? MusicBrainz is far better at the current stage.

My take

Sure, Last.fm have the user base, and may be different from MusicBrainz’s, but so far nothing has justified the arrogant-type attitude of replicating the service. It seems to me that Last.fm just do whatever they want for whatever reason we shall see…

Knowing that they do have the brightest people in the industry, they can pretty much do whatever they want and however they want. Reminds me of Last.fm’s take on the Day of Silence.