A Copyfighter’s Musings

A prediction of mine actually came true for once.  David Card has the full run down - stepping up the competition with Rhapsody, Napster is offering free streaming of its entire catalog.  Every song can be listened to 5 times.  You can access the service through the client software, but you can also use their website with a Flash app that works on Linux and Mac. However, the web streams are of lower quality and every three songs there’s a short advertisement.  Another downside: unlike Rhapsody, Napster has apparently not made its subscription service available via its website. (I’m not sure why this would be, given the flash interface should work just fine for that too - but the site still says “PC Only, Windows XP/2000 ….”)

Napster is also imitating Rhapsody’s linking tools with Napster Links and adding some community features called Narchives. What’s more, they have apparently started an affiliate program where they give you a kickback for placing ads and Napster Links that lead to purchases or subscriptions.

Though Napster’s website is still messy and the Flash interface isn’t great, this could be a pretty big deal.  Allowing full streams radically improves the try-before-you-buy, music discovery experience.  It also will greatly enhance peer recommendations. Want to tell your friends about the great band that’s coming to town?  How about music blogging?  Napster Links can help you to introduce others to music.

But Napster has made a big mistake by not allowing Mac and Linux subscribers - they can’t convert those users from the free streamers to paying customers.

Filed by Derek Slater at 4:03 pm under General news
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In response to the RIAA’s irrational lawsuit campaign against the tens of millions of American P2P users, EFF set up a petition asking Congress to stop the madness and support ways for artists to get paid without fans getting sued. We’re now close to our goal of 100,000 signatures, and, with your help, we hope to surpass it by a longshot and deliver the petition to Congress.

After over 18,000 lawsuits and counting, file sharing has continued to increase rapidly. Meanwhile, music fans, like 12 year-old Brittany LaHara, college student Cassi Hunt, and parent of five Cecilia Gonzalez, are being forced to pay thousands of dollars they do not have to settle RIAA-member lawsuits, and many other innocent individuals are being caught in the crossfire.

But resistance to this shameful crusade is growing. Just this week, many top Canadian musical artists, including Barenaked Ladies and Avril Lavigne, called the lawsuits “destructive and hypocritical,” and a court threw out a lawsuit against 14 year-old Brittany Chan.

It’s time for Congress to join the chorus of opposition and stop kowtowing to the content cartel. Sign the petition, and donate to EFF to support a better way forward.

(Cross posted at Deep Links)

Filed by Derek Slater at 8:24 pm under Big Ideas
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According to DesignTechnica,
Philips has patented a “technology … [that] would prevent users from
changing channels to avoid watching television commercials as well as
prevent viewers from fast-forwarding through recorded advertisements.”

Why would Philips invent such an absurd restriction when it will
never be voluntarily licensed? After all, in a competitive market,
technology companies who adopt Philips’ patented system will be shunned
by customers; no one wants a device that says, “Now improved — blocks
changing channels during commercials!”

Perhaps Philips believes that, at some point in the future,
Hollywood might push for a government mandate forcing technology
companies to incorporate anti-skipping technology. If that happens,
this patent could be the federally-set standard, and tech creators
would have to pay Philips every time they want to sell a new device.

Instead of wasting its time with this anti-user opportunism, Philips
should focus on building technologies that satisfy its customers.

(Cross posted at Deep Links)

Filed by Derek Slater at 9:51 pm under General news
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This weekend, I’ll be speaking at FreeCulture.org’s National Summit in Swarthmore, PA.  The lineup of speakers also includes Professor Lessig, Alex Curtis from Public Knowledge, Holmes Wilson from Downhill Battle, and many more.  More information here.

Filed by Derek Slater at 8:17 pm under General news
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David Berlind seems to be changing his tune on Sun’s DReaM.  As usual, Cory comes to the rescue, savaging the initiative and explaining why “open” DRM is a sham.  Tim Lee is also on the case.

It’s also worth remembering that there have been plenty of consortia planning to “solve” the interoperability problems caused by DRM, as it if were just a matter of getting enough companies in the same room together.  Thus far, they haven’t come up with much, so why would we expect Sun’s plan to be any different?

Filed by Derek Slater at 6:55 pm under General news
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Tim Lee, who continues to be on a roll over at TLF, writes about how Hollywood’s new Moviebeam service will force consumers to throw out their current, perfectly HD capable devices and buy restricted ones.  Meanwhile, Ed Felten has started a series of posts on the culprit: HDCP (and HDMI).

See also my recent post, “This Is how Hollywood Thanks its Best Customers.”

Filed by Derek Slater at 11:35 am under Big Ideas
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Much has already been written about major movie studios’ recently agreeing to sell downloads on Movielink and CinemaNow with remarkably high price points and ridiculous DRM restrictions. Buyer beware – these services are misleading about how little you’ll get to do with your media.

For instance, CinemaNow’s “How It Works” page says:



“Anywhere”? Read the fine print further down the page:

Movielink lets you burn to DVD, but those DVDs can only be played on a computer, not your home theater system’s DVD player.  And that’s just the tip of the movie store DRM iceberg.

As usual with DRM, the customer is always wrong.

Filed by Derek Slater at 1:39 am under General news
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If you read me through Bloglines, you probably haven’t seen a post in quite some time - at least, they haven’t been showing up in my aggregator, even though I’ve been posting all the while. The problem seems to be fixed now.  Hopefully this blog will soon be moving to new blogging software and better server in the near future. Stay tuned.

Filed by Derek Slater at 5:14 pm under General news
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As the recording industry’s doom and gloom rhetoric continues in the face of ever increasing file sharing, the RIAA’s own statistics [PDF] tell a much different story. Wired’s Chris Anderson examined the recently published 2005 sales stats and found that “2005 may have been more profitable than 2004.” While CD sales continued to decline, online and mobile sales made up the difference.

The obvious lesson: the more the record industry focuses on giving fans what they want and embraces digital distribution, the more its profits will increase. Better services, not futile lawsuits and technological restrictions, provide the best way forward. If it can already halt declines through today’s online services, imagine how much more the industry would make if it got serious about competing with free by dropping the DRM and radically expanding the available catalogs. Indeed, there’s a veritable pot of gold waiting for the industry if only it would stop turning its back on the vast majority of online downloading and provide fans a way to continue file sharing legally.

Here’s hoping the RIAA takes this lesson to heart.

(This confirms my analysis at the mid-point of 2005.)

[Cross posted at EFF Deep Links]

Filed by Derek Slater at 5:45 pm under General news
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