Day: July 30, 2003

A couple months ago I wrote about installing Movable Type on my laptop to do some personal knowledge management. Movable Type might be a great weblogging tool, but it really didn’t work well for what I was trying to use (largely because it wasn’t designed to).

So today I downloaded and installed SnipSnap, a Wiki/Weblog tool. That was more like it.

I wouldn’t use one to manage a web site, but I love the way that a Wiki turns the browser into a sort of canvas for adding and connecting information.

In response to my previous post about problems with Buy Music, Greg Pierce points out this ArsTechnica article pointing out that BuyMusic.Com is even worse than I had originally thought.

Apple did the smart thing and negotiated the same rights deal with the various companies it dealt with. On the one hand, this has meant that its music store doesn’t include some artists. BuyMusic negotiated different rights deals with different companies in order to increase the number of tracks it could sell, but also making it ridiculously complex for users to track exactly what they’re getting for their money,

different songs/albums carry different use restrictions. Using DRM, publishers can put limitations on how many times you can download a file, burn it to a CD, and put it on a SDMI-compliant player. Browsing around I found that most songs/albums had unlimited burns and player transfers, with one (initial download). But if you want to buy the latest album by Audioslave, be prepared to put up with only 5 burns and 5 transfers. Some music can’t be burned or transferred to a player at all!

Not only would that be a nightmare to track, but come on — I can only transfer some tracks to a portable device a limited number of times. How stupid is that restriction?

As ArsTechnica points out, the whole BuyMusic moniker borders is deceptive since you can’t actually buy any music from the site. Instead, as its user agreement puts it,

All downloaded Content is sublicensed to End Users and not sold, notwithstanding use of the terms “sell,” “purchase,” “order,” or “buy” on the Site or this Agreement.

That sounds like a Monty Python routine.

CNN has a story on the obvious way to route around the RIAA lawsuits against Napster, Kazaa, etc. — smaller, private file sharing networks.

These private file-swapping networks have surfaced just as the music industry has been granted dozens of subpoenas seeking the names of those who trade copyrighted material on popular services such as Kazaa, Imesh, and Gnutella.

The private networks are open to smaller groups of perhaps 20 to 30 people who liberally share music, television shows, movies and computer programs. Members of such networks believe they can avoid legal consequences because their identities and actions are masked with the same technology used to protect online credit card transactions.

Why not just take this idea a step further? A 200mb external hard drive goes for about $330 or less these days. Find five or 6 friends, put up $60 or $70 apiece, have someone partition the hard drive into separate areas for each individual, and then mail the hard drive across the country from one friend to the next.

Much higher bandwidth (this would be an excellent way to deal with large video files), more files, nobody sniffing packets looking for illegal activities. What’s not to love?

Apparently BuyMusic.Com is a less than enjoyable experience,

First problem. After you buy an album, you need to download it. Sure, I knew that. What I didn’t know is that you have to download EACH SONG INDIVIDUALLY. One click per song. With two large sized albums with many songs on it – it can be just a LITTLE annoying.

Ok. We’re compromising, right? I’ll suck it up and deal.

After all the songs downloaded, I tried to play them. Second problem. Before each song plays – it has to download and verify your license. You can’t mulitple select a bunch and do this. You need to do this before EACH SONG will play. [Edited to add: “Verifing your license” means another window pops up that asks for your buymusic login and password… you enter it… it thinks awhile… it thinks some more… Then it comes back and says click “play” to actually play the song…]

Gee, why don’t they just make you install a dongle to your PC while they’re at it. Then again, these are the same folks who thought they’d attract me to their service by taking out full page ads featuring loser/wife beater Tommy Lee.

I have no idea whether or not BuyMusic.Com is a useful service. Every time I try to visit their home page I get a message saying,

In order to take full advantage of BuyMusic.com’s offerings you must be on a Windows Operating System using Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher.