This new Kim Dotcom service

Just been reading about the new Mega service from Kim Dotcom, in which anyone can upload files of any nature into the cloud...but because they're encrypted before reaching Mega, and only you have the key (which of course you can share with others), it apparently absolves Mega of any legal responsibility should people use the service for, oh I don't know, illegally distributing copyrighted material. 

The trendy tech blogs are hailing it as an "end to copyright" and think it's watertight. At last, all of those greedy capitalist artists who apparently don't deserve a return on their hard work, will be forced to give their recordings away for free. 

Are they nuts or do they have a point? Personally I think it will get shut down. People will be sharing those links and keys to distribute music and movies on websites and forums, and the copyright holders will be working 24/7 to compile lists of links which contain evidence of wrongdoing....and of course once the pedophiles start using it to distribute filth, the Feds will be on it like a shot. Can't see it lasting more than a year, given that the Feds are already on KD's back. 

He got away with Megaupload for YEARS and when they finally did shut it down it wasn't because of any copyright stuff (apparently). It was because of some fraud charges for something he did years ago and they seized his assets including Megaupload. At least that's what I read when it happened.

I didn't follow the case closely but the powers that be had really been trying to nail him for a long time on the copyright stuff but it wasn't sticking. I think it had something to do with him setting up shop in New Zealand and because of that he was outside of some jurisdiction boundaries. It ended up being like when Capone got nailed for tax evasion. Maybe they figured out how to toss on the copyright stuff after the fact or maybe the NZ gov got pressured enough to change their laws to deal with that angle. The dude's kind of a slippery scumbag. He'll get away with this for longer than one might think. He wouldn't bother otherwise.

And yeah it scared the pee out of some of the smaller outfits. It's all about a solid DMCA policy. Youtube has far more copyrighted material kicking around than those other sites but they get away with it because a) Google and b) a good avenue for copyright infringement complaints.

I think the copyright advocates need to try some new ideas. I'd like to see some kind of royalty based system for streaming like radio. View = cash to the copyright holder. The hosts make their money from ad views. Proper downloads should still be treated as they are though... paid for by the downloader. Like purchasing a hard copy.

Meh... it's another contentious debate where the fringe on both sides acting like lunatics overlook the obvious and rational solutions while everyone in the middle get jerked around.

A friend of mine recommended spotify when it first came out. I checked it out briefly and it's definitely cool. I listen to so little music these days (weird I know) though I usually just use youtube if I'm feeling like rocking out. Lots of great stuff on there and due to my affection of live performances vs studio stuff I can always find nice little treats to satiate my needs that aren't necessarily available elsewhere. Not sure the legality of that but I leave that up to google. Not like I have any cash to blow on records these days anyway... which sucks. :-/

Never download though. That's my personal moral line... but there are so many shades of gray when it comes to this type of thing.

Did you hear about Lars Ulrich and the dude from Napster starting a bromance recently? lol 

Apparently Lars now realizes he didn't understand what was going on and has admitted the error of his ways... which to me translates into he knows he can cash in on the technology.

There are also dudes who adjust the pitch of tunes slightly to get around copyright issues. I have no idea how that's supposed make things alright but I've seen a lot of it. Makes me laugh. 

I think that's because YT has a way of detecting a songs audio against a database..my daughter has tried to upload vids where the backing track has been a chart single and it's been immediately pulled, even though the song wasn't named.

jamesg1213


I think that's because YT has a way of detecting a songs audio against a database..my daughter has tried to upload vids where the backing track has been a chart single and it's been immediately pulled, even though the song wasn't named.

Yeah - the technology they have to detect copyrighted songs is really quite clever, although pitch adjustments can get round it. You can also get around copyrighted movie detection by having some kind of moving marquee at the bottom of the screen. I presume that how the algorithms work is that the music companies have scanned their entire catalog and created a quick "fingerprint" of each song based on measurements of waveform peaks taken at certain intervals. I'm guessing they wouldn't have to take many values in order to create a unique fingerprint. They do the same with movies, although the values will be taken from the picture instead of the audio (or maybe both). Then, when you upload a video to YouTube, it takes a fingerprint of it and checks it against the entire database of copyrighted fingerprints, using some super-fast search algorithm. Matches are found very quickly. 


I once uploaded a 5 second clip of Columbo to YouTube and it was immediately flagged as copyrighted content. 


The same technology is used in the phone app Shazam to determine track & artist names from the audio. It's amazing, when I hear a song I like in a store or coffee shop, I just open Shazam, press the button, wait a couple of seconds, and it tells me the track name, artist, album etc with link to buy it if I want. Once again, technology is amazing 

Rain


One of my big concerns about digital media - both legal and illegal - is the lack of credits and information. 

You can buy a band's entire catalog, it's likely that w/o some research, you'll never know who worked on those records - who wrote the songs, the name of the engineer, guest musicians. A cover version may even not be identified as such. 

I spend hours of my youth reading the liner notes in records - that's how we used to find new bands, even before they hit the big time. 

Heck, we knew even the name of the guy who did the frickin' drawings for Maiden (Derek Riggs). Nowadays, we probably wouldn't even know the name of the guys in the band - unless they ended up in the news for doing something outrageous.


I guess it's all part of the disposable culture. But as an audio geek, it bothers me to no end. I like to know who worked on an album w/o having to hunt down the info, I like to see people credited.

Isn't that information sometimes stored in the meta tags? 


It doesn't bother me so much....when I'm listening to music I usually have a browser handy nearby and I just Google for the info. In fact I'll often sit and read the band's website and Wikipedia page as I'm listening to a new album. 

Beepster

jamesg1213


I think that's because YT has a way of detecting a songs audio against a database..my daughter has tried to upload vids where the backing track has been a chart single and it's been immediately pulled, even though the song wasn't named.

That is freaky. Imagine how much creating and maintaining that kind of tech costs. There really has to be a better way. :-/

I think it's actually quite quick and cheap, using the method I mentioned above. Every record company has their entire collection digitized anyway, so it's a simple matter to scan the whole collection quickly to make a database of audio fingerprints. I guess they then make those fingerprints available to whomever needs to check against them, via a simple API. 

I feel the need to confess that I've been a music lover all my life, yet I rarely ever knew who the band members really were...  Same thing with lyrics, I usually didn't play attention to them either.  For me, it was more of a selfish audio pleasure and, quite frankly, for whatever reason, I found a lot of the artwork and lyrics embarrasing.  I'm sure it definitely had to do with how I was brought up (an only child by older parents - who were 34 & 36 when they had me - their morals and discipline were from an older generation).  I had, by far, the cleanest bedroom of anyone I knew yet my Mom would still come in when she thought it needed even more straightening up and say "I bet your friend's rooms don't look like this!"  Well, she was right, only not in the way she would imagine!

A cleverly encrypted file sharing service (torrent site) where only the user obtains the decryption key and along with terms of use; this apparently removes copyright responsibility from Kim.... but will see how this all pans out in the near future. 

craigb


I feel the need to confess that I've been a music lover all my life, yet I rarely ever knew who the band members really were...  Same thing with lyrics, I usually didn't play attention to them either.  For me, it was more of a selfish audio pleasure and, quite frankly, for whatever reason, I found a lot of the artwork and lyrics embarrasing.  I'm sure it definitely had to do with how I was brought up (an only child by older parents - who were 34 & 36 when they had me - their morals and discipline were from an older generation).  I had, by far, the cleanest bedroom of anyone I knew yet my Mom would still come in when she thought it needed even more straightening up and say "I bet your friend's rooms don't look like this!"  Well, she was right, only not in the way she would imagine!

I was completely obsessed by it all..I got this book when I was 14;






..and the follow-up 'NME Book of Rock 2' ..I just lapped up all the band biogs, the line-ups, the instruments they played, who produced it, the chronological list of albums..it just fascinated me. Still does really.


It would have a section for each band and their current line-up, set out thus;

As music producers you can no longer allow yourselves to think, "I am going to be able to sell and capitalize on my music, as if it the year 2000, or 1995, or 1985, or 1942.

You have to think, "I am a producer, in a content creation and sharing world."  You have to realize, that in the music bizz as we used to know it, we wanted people to buy our content.  In todays world, "people are going to share your content, like it or not."  You have to find a way for content sharing to work for you.  

You can **** and moan all you want otherwise.

jamesg1213


Excellent point Rain. I guess the sad fact is that both music and the graphic arts are now devalued currencies.

Mix mag just had a lengthy article about this. IIRC someone is trying to start a consolidated "credits" database (similar to Wikipediatrics).

sharke

craigb


I feel the need to confess that I've been a music lover all my life, yet I rarely ever knew who the band members really were...  Same thing with lyrics, I usually didn't play attention to them either.  For me, it was more of a selfish audio pleasure and, quite frankly, for whatever reason, I found a lot of the artwork and lyrics embarrasing.  I'm sure it definitely had to do with how I was brought up (an only child by older parents - who were 34 & 36 when they had me - their morals and discipline were from an older generation).  I had, by far, the cleanest bedroom of anyone I knew yet my Mom would still come in when she thought it needed even more straightening up and say "I bet your friend's rooms don't look like this!"  Well, she was right, only not in the way she would imagine!

I'm the same to be honest....I'm ashamed to say I rarely pay attention to lyrics, unless they're very clearly sung and/or obviously clever or insightful in some way (and usually that's only because someone else has point it out to me). From a kid, I heard lyrics as nothing more than a humanely articulated melody. It usually leads to embarrassment when I try to sing along with other people. I generally have a pretty screwed up idea of what the lyrics are. There are some exceptions - for instance Nic Jones singing the old folk song Little Musgrave, it's such gripping storytelling that I cannot help but follow along. 

Lyrics mattered to me for as long as I struggled to learn english. Once I got comfortable enough w/ the language, I realized that the bulk of them were pretty poor, w/ some noticeable exceptions of course. Gems like:

Bang your head against the stage, 
Like you never did before, 
Make it ring,  make it bleed, 
Make it really sore, 
In a frenzied madness, 
With your leather and your spikes, 
Heads are bobbing all around, 
It's hot as Hell tonight.

Not. ;)


But from that point on, I ceased paying attention, pretty much.