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The Future of Music from the Cube Posts
Well, whaddya know. My long search for an embeddable music player that will allow you to create playlists and will also be accepted by LJ has finally paid off.
Truth to tell, I'm kind of relieved about this. There have been several emails over the past two months which have made me increasingly wary about offering MP3s for download (the most recent was a most interesting email regarding my post on Marshall Crenshaw — and no, it was not anyone associated with the artist). It appears my Music from the Cube posts have popped up on too many people's radar outside of LJ-land and off my FList.
While no one has threatened legal action (yet), I suspect the day is coming when someone will.
As a result, I have to start considering a limited set of options (in order of preference):
Using Imeem to embed a playlist helps me avoid making any of those choices. Number one: There's no chance in hell I'll get dinged for violating any laws since it's streaming media that I (in theory) own. Two: I'll be able to (in theory) provide the entire CD for your listening pleasure.
Now, I'll still offer MP3s for download for mixes and soundtracks, so there's no plans to change that at all. I think if worst comes to worst, I can argue fair use in that case (Can someone familiar with the DMCA let me know if that's the case?). However, if I've got all these Music from the Cube posts with live downloads on top of a various mixes that expire after 30 to 60 days...ummmm...that's gonna be hard to explain away.
Anyway, I'm throwing up a test embedded paylist. Let me know what y'all think:
Truth to tell, I'm kind of relieved about this. There have been several emails over the past two months which have made me increasingly wary about offering MP3s for download (the most recent was a most interesting email regarding my post on Marshall Crenshaw — and no, it was not anyone associated with the artist). It appears my Music from the Cube posts have popped up on too many people's radar outside of LJ-land and off my FList.
While no one has threatened legal action (yet), I suspect the day is coming when someone will.
As a result, I have to start considering a limited set of options (in order of preference):
- Start friends-locking my Music from the Cube posts
- Create a friends-only community where I Am Queen providing all the posts and the downloads
- Stop the Music from the Cube posts altogether
Using Imeem to embed a playlist helps me avoid making any of those choices. Number one: There's no chance in hell I'll get dinged for violating any laws since it's streaming media that I (in theory) own. Two: I'll be able to (in theory) provide the entire CD for your listening pleasure.
Now, I'll still offer MP3s for download for mixes and soundtracks, so there's no plans to change that at all. I think if worst comes to worst, I can argue fair use in that case (Can someone familiar with the DMCA let me know if that's the case?). However, if I've got all these Music from the Cube posts with live downloads on top of a various mixes that expire after 30 to 60 days...ummmm...that's gonna be hard to explain away.
Anyway, I'm throwing up a test embedded paylist. Let me know what y'all think:
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It's actually rather stupid in a lot of ways, especially if all you're doing is offering a limited number tracks. There's no consideration made for "fair use" (I would argue offering samples as part of an overall CD review should be considered "fair use").
In any case, I'm actually torn. I don't want to switch to a streaming option, since all things being equal, I prefer the downloading option (I believe that Savefile is 60 days). I may not switch over to streaming right away and may hold tough for a little while longer on the downloads.
However, I've gotten some emails from people who aren't on LJ who've found The Music from the Cube posts who are not on LJ and are not affiliated with LJ in any way. None of the emails are threatening in any way, by the way. But it makes me nervous, especially since one recent email pointed me to an artists' official board where my review of that artists' work was being discussed.
It's a little nerve wracking, and a good hard reminder that (yet again) that there's a few more people than I think accessing my public posts.
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The downloads, quite frankly, I wouldn't do them like you do, not unless the music's in the public domain, or you have permission to make the music available. It's all very complicated, since you're not making the music available, but rather some company is (whoever's behind YouSendIt, etc.), and who knows where the servers are, etc., etc.
I dunno. Lawyers are scary. :)
Anyhow, I think that if you added a counter to your site, you'd be surprised at the number of hits you get. :)
P.S.
Have you seen the Buffy comic?
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It makes my head hurt.
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Streaming the files is safer, legally speaking.
Like I said, all things being equal, I'd rather do downloads because there's minimal administration on my part to do that that. Using streaming actually requires a little bit more work.
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i think its a mistake for artists / record companies to be so restrictive because i consider it all to be free publicity. there may be some who are downloading & not buying but generally speaking they are not buying because they don't have the money / wouldn't have bought it in the first place / would borrow a copy from a friend
also i think your posts shouldn't be dangerous as you don't have the whole cd up & especially since you have links to get the music legally. but anywho this embedded player thingy works nicely. you always have such lovely programs to check out. it makes my techie geek happy (btw the collecterz software is wonderful & i am happily scanning & cataloging everything in sight)
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As for filesharing, there's a reason why most of the those comms on LJ are locked down to "friends-only." I'm not entirely comfortable with the legal environment for something like Music from the Cube, especially now that I know links to those posts have a habit of getting around the Web.
While streaming is not my first choice for something like this, it's certainly a safer choice.
Glad you like Collecterz. Now that is a very handy program to have. :-)
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(Anonymous) 2007-04-06 11:57 am (UTC)(link)no subject
- The "fair use" exception does not allow you to provide copies to others, even if you don't profit from it. Lending someone your CD is fine, but giving someone a copy of your tracks is not. So, your "mixes and soundtracks" plan would still be illegal distribution. But, honestly, that kind of distribution is kind of like speeding: a few folks get caught, but the number of people who do it is far too large to catch even a significant percentage of them.
- Be careful of broadcasting. There is a decision recently made regarding royalties, retroactive to 1/1/06, which absolutely hammers on-line broadcasting. If the decision holds, the custom-made broadcast channels, like the one you are setting up through imeem, would be a thing of the past. Check out http://www.savethestreams.org/ for more info.
- One option would be to provide 30 second samples of the tracks, rather than the whole thing. That's already been established as fair use for sites that sell or review music, because it's enough to give people an idea of what the track sounds like, but not something that would substitute for the possible purchase of the track. Of course, that's probably way more trouble than it's worth.
My purely personal, non-binding and in-no-way professional opinion? If the goal is to share music among your on-line friends, I would keep offering complete tracks for download and just F-lock the posts. That seems like the easiest solution. If the goal is to provide reviews for the general public, I would go with your streaming solution for now, with a backup plan in case those sites are shut down due to royalty concerns.
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b) Regarding DMCA, there's the question whether you circumvented any kind of copy protection in order to get the music online, i.e. converting protected (hah!) files to .mp3, or disabling cd-based copy protection, such as Sony's rootkit.
c) Regarding Fair Use, while you *are* posting non-profit, you're usually posting what, 3, 4 full songs per album? This may violate $107, paragraph 3 of the copyright law. (Link (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107))
Also, due to your extremely open audience, it may be argued that you also violate paragraph 4 by hurting the sales of CDs. (For example, someone is looking for only one song on the album. If he dl's it from you, you're hurting the value of the cp'ed work.)`or for critical reasons for an extremely small group of people; even if you get problems, the amount in dispute would be set *much* lower. (It would still be extremely compared to European standards.)
d)The problem is that your copyright law has no exemption for private copy, i.e. even if you flock the whole thing, it would still be a violation. However, if you flock it, a) the probability of you getting problems is near zero, and b) you could probably argue more successfully that you're using the songs either for advertising (something I'd take a statement on, if necessary; if I'd never heard Stiff Little Finger on Music from the Cube, I'd never bought the album.)
My personal and professional opinion (please, bear in mind that legal issues were only about 10-12 hours of my curriculum [Okay, I aced the exam on that lecture], so even though I study business computer sciences, my word is far from canon) would be to f'lock the MftC-posts. Broadcasting would lead to other problems (such as the need for a broadcasting license, or taking care that the audio stream couldn't be captured.), which is why this probably wouldn't work, not if people from the RIAA were really out to get you.
By the way, may I apply for a MftC-friendship?
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TobeWolf's "Of Keys and Kryptonite," a crossover with Smallville, is set several years after NFA and reflects recent developments in the Smallville universe. That said Tobewolf makes it very easy to get into the story with just enough information about characters that I rarely see and not enough information to bog it down.
Xander comes across particularly well as the man I always believed the boy could become.
The story is achieved at Twisting the Hellmouth and can be accessed at Toby's LJ. I really think you would enjoy it.
pgavigan
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I don't know what to tell you about your DLs getting spread around. That's frustrating. I hope you get a system figured out.