After a decade fighting to stop illegal file-sharing, the music industry will give fans today what they have always wanted: an unlimited supply of free and legal songs. With CD sales in free fall and legal downloads yet to fill the gap, the music industry has reluctantly embraced the file-sharing technology that threatened to destroy it. Qtrax, a digital service announced today, promises a catalogue of more than 25 million songs that users can download to keep, free and with no limit on the number of tracks. The service has been endorsed by the very same record companies - including EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music – that have chased file-sharers through the courts in a doomed attempt to prevent piracy. The gamble is that fans will put up with a limited amount of advertising around the Qtrax website’s jukebox in return for authorised use of almost every song available. The service will use the “peer-to-peer” network, which contains not just hit songs but rarities and live tracks from the world’s leading artists.
Nor is a lack of compatibility with the iPod player expected to put fans off. Apple is unlikely to allow tracks downloaded from its rival to be compatible with iPods, but, while the iPod is the most popular music player, it has not succeeded in dominating the market: sales of the iPod account for 50 million out of 130 million total digital player sales. Qtrax has also spoken of an “iPod solution”, to be announced in April. Qtrax files contain Digital Rights Management software, allowing the company to see how many times a song has been downloaded and played. Artists, record companies and publishers will be paid in proportion to the popularity of their music, while also taking a cut of advertising revenues. The Qtrax team, which spent five years working on the system, promised a “game-changing” intervention in the declining recorded music market when the service was presented at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes.
View: Full Story @ The Times Online
A service that lets you pay a monthly subscription for unlimited access to a huge database of music or movies is nice. But without DRM, it would be total copying chaos. You don't own the content, so if you quit paying the monthly subscription then it's not yours to access.
A service that lets you pay a monthly subscription for unlimited access to a huge database of music or movies is nice. But without DRM, it would be total copying chaos. You don't own the content, so if you quit paying the monthly subscription then it's not yours to access.
The situation where DRM causes a failure... I buy a device... oh wait it doesnt work with that device... buy another device it works with... something else comes out... sign up for that service... oh wait these devices dont work... need yet another one... for DRM to work... we need... standardization! something apple and MS do not seem willing to do with each other...
A service that lets you pay a monthly subscription for unlimited access to a huge database of music or movies is nice. But without DRM, it would be total copying chaos. You don't own the content, so if you quit paying the monthly subscription then it's not yours to access.
Incorrect. DRM is a flawed implementation of a cryptosystem. DRM, by its very design, cannot succeed.
Now, if you mean to say that DRM can be "good enough" to prevent casual piracy by people without the knowledge or time to break it, then that is a plausible outcome. However, DRM cannot make something uncopyable. Schneier said it best: "Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet."
DRM for rentals? Assuming video rentals, all one needs to do is either get a binary dump from the video driver or write a virtual video driver that writes to disk. VMWare or another virtual-machine application may be very good for this. Failing that, use a video capture device with VGA-in from the PC's VGA port. Granted, DVI or HDMI with HDCP might be trickier, but HDCP has already been broken, so even a captured encrypted video stream can be decrypted.
Assuming audio rentals, there are a million ways to do it that are only a google away.
DRM is a misguided attempt to control what people can do with their own computers and the sooner cryptanalysts and crackers can destroy widely-used DRM systems, the better.
Granted, but remember that for any given copyrighted work, the crippling/value-reduction/Fair-Use Denial mechanism only needs to be broken once. As soon as a digital copy of a copyrighted work is repaired to its proper working order after having previously been infected with DRM, the resulting clean file can be spread far and wide.
While people capable of liberating media from the infectious, vile clutches of DRM are few and far between, it only takes few and far between to keep the media liberated.
What remains to be seen is how the trend away from crippling and toward watermark-branding will be answered by the market. I can see people being much warmer to watermarked (branded, tagged, Big-Brothered, Auschwitz-tattooed (oh, ****, did I just Godwin this thread?)) MP3s than they were to DRMed WMA/AAC/RA files, but there was that fiasco with Apple accidentally embedding people's credit card numbers, in plaintext, in the hex info of the file.
Mind you, none of this is of direct personal issue to me as my only digital purchases are of files that already have no watermark or other encumberments. I otherwise just rip everything from physical media.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,...ed=networkfront
The deal may not be as close as stated in the Times... Its hard to tell which news is correct.
On their homepage it says "No adware".... that contradicts the news article.
On their homepage it says "No adware".... that contradicts the news article.
Gotta differenciate Adware and just simple ads in the delivery program
On their homepage it says "No adware".... that contradicts the news article.
Gotta differenciate Adware and just simple ads in the delivery program
If a program is supported by ads, then it's adware. Regardless of complexity or if the ads are tailored(or not) in any way.
It is well defined. The one that you described would be malware or a trojan, if it does indeed install programs later _without_ user authority.
Well, webpages are not software. So they cannot be called "adware". They are however, ad-supported. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Adware programs will definitely use data for marketing research, whether in-house or not. They may or may not tailor the adverts according to the user's use of said adverts and the software.
If any of these gather _personal_ data (or data that can be attributed to a single user), then it becomes spyware, whether the user knows of its presence or not.
Both adware and spyware _can_ be perfectly legitimate, if the user is informed on installation. And all software can be removed through conventional add/remove methods.
However, spyware is usually delivered by exploits. Or by click-happy users (still a legitimate contract however).
People should not worry about true adware, the name has become twisted through misuse.
it looks like the RIAA will now have an enemy of epic proportions
Qtrax backtracks on claims of music label deals
Labels back away from Qtrax
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080128/music_nm/qtrax_music_dc
Qtrax said late on Sunday, "We are in discussion with Warner Music Group to ensure that the service is licensed and we hope to reach an agreement shortly."
A source close to Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, told Reuters it also did not have a deal with Qtrax but discussions were continuing.
The Los Angeles Times also reported on Sunday that EMI Group executives said it had not agreed terms with Qtrax.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the second largest music company, was not immediately available.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080128/music_nm/qtrax_music_dc
QTrax seems to be all over the place i think i'll steer clear
http://www.zakeh.com/2008/01/29/qtrax/
I don't know why people think it's going to be a failure. If they can close deals with the labels, I think it'll be a huge success. The only DRM is having to actually use the QTrax program if you want to listen to said music on your computer - a small price to pay to stop the RIAA from coming after you, I'd say, and a huge step in the right direction.
-Spenser
Edit: my bad, it seems Napster has now upped the bit rate to 192kb/s.. still not as high as I'd like and if I was planning on burning it to CD then I'd be wanting some FLAC in case I ever wanted to rip it again in the future.
Last edited by mattm591 on 28 Jan 2008 - 17:16
How about you slag it off after you have tried it out?
How about you slag it off after you have tried it out?
If the only place I can play the music at is on my system only then it's no use to me...
"Sales of the iPod account for 50 million out of 130 million total digital player sales"
Are they serious? Apple's sold over 130 million iPods. If anything, iPods account for 130 million out of 150 million digital player sales.
Music fans around the world faced confusion today as it was announced they would be able to download unlimited, free songs without breaking the law.
A revamped online file-sharing service had vowed to offer a catalogue of 30million free songs that are compatible with iPods, but record labels have denied they had granted permission to share the songs.
Qtrax, which makes its debut today, is the latest online music venture counting on the lure of free songs to draw in music fans.
The key to their revolutionary venture was thought to be advertising, which they hope will pay the bills, namely record company licensing fees.
The New York-based service was among several peer-to-peer file-sharing applications that emerged following the shutdown of Napster, the pioneer service that enabled millions to illegally copy songs stored in other computers.
But Warner Music said it had not authorised the use of its tracks by Qtrax - and later Universal Music Group and EMI followed suit, saying they did not have licensing deals with Qtrax and discussions were continuing.
Justin Kazmark, a spokesman for New York-based Qtrax, has declined to comment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7213112.stm
a pity its not true, apparently.
Just an FYI...
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article...+out/article.do
it died before it had died anyways...
this just speeded it up
Glassed Silver:mac
PlaysForSure. Windows wma format.
iTunes AAC only plays on ipod and itunes.
DRM is anti-consumer cause the point of buying things is you can do what you want with it cause it's your hard earned money but DRM is basically the recording/phonographic industry saying "yea, you can give us tons of money but you can only loan our material and use it a specific way or just tough luck"
There's no way DRM good or can be lived with, it's in no way feesible in this modern world it's not the future of music it's not the future of anything it's the stranglehold on peoples freedom to do what they wish and how they wish to go about doing it. DRM is the spawn of a capitalistic burden money hungry corporate jacket wearing tosser, end of story.
If you bought a car and could only drive down streets and roads, not avenues, crests, drives, etc you'd not be happy would you and it would cause massive protest. music is no different.
Last edited by Digix on 29 Jan 2008 - 02:04
Just a minor nitpick but AAC is an open standard and has nothing to do with Apple. The versions locked to iTunes have Apple's proprietary DRM added on top of the AAC. These files have the extension of m4p instead of m4a, but if I remember correctly Apple has dropped DRM from their iTunes store.
anyway, it can't access anything right now, maybe because of massive queries to their servers. will try it gain tomorrow and see what is like...
Isn't that the very definition of adware? Any program that is ad supported.
Isn't that the very definition of adware? Any program that is ad supported.
Nope.
i'm staying away...
Loving the "Oracle Application Server" home page and very funny that it tells you what their admin user name is. hehe part of the hacking job is done for ya.. haha
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