Case: Free Music on Port 80: Shoreline: copyright issues

Let's look closely at a new agora, which is the Greek word for marketplace or place of popular assembly. How are electronic agoras examples of the effects of new media on marketing processes and organizational structures?

driving forces	restraining forces
bits	atoms
access to information	control of information
abundant resources	scarce resources
distributed network	centralized network
open marketing	traditional 4P marketing
new media peer-to-peer webs	old media conglomerates
service - long-term customer value	profits - short-term shareholder value

This is the end of the music business as we know it, but the beginning of the musician business (And even, with luck, ... the audience business.) because this technology will let any musician get his musical message out to millions of people. ...

While scarcity may increase the value of physical goods, such as CD's, the opposite applies to information. In a dematerialized information economy, there is an equally strong relationship between familiarity and value.

For some reason, humans absolutely require music, and they were providing for the material needs of musicians for tens of thousands of years before copyright law, just as they will do so for tens of thousands of years after this brief and anomalous period has been forgotten.

[These] programs ... let you go around the central hub. They turn your PC into both a client and server. They'll create a true Web by allowing users to easily connect directly to each other.

Spawn of Napster
By Hane C. Lee and Michael Learmonth
Industry Standard, May 1, 2000

The site's fate may rest on recently filed copyright-infringement suits. But demand for free music-sharing has hatched alternatives.

At the heart of two music recording industry trials is whether digital piracy will make people stop buying CDs. As the judge prepares to rule on the first of the lawsuits, statistics show that people are buying more albums than ever.

MP3.com on Wednesday halted access to major-label music for users of the company's controversial my.mp3.com service as MP3.com and the recording industry continued to try to settle the industry's copyright infringement lawsuit against the company.

We need systems like Gnutella and Freenet. They are not only legitimate objects for research, but solutions to certain technical problems arising on the Internet. When did we start to fear the future so much that we subject such innovations to calumny?

The RIAA has started a war, without seeing that the war has already been lost. There is too much technology, too many hungry music fans, and too many computer programmers. ...

As much as I believe the RIAA is fighting to preserve their income from copyrights, they are also fighting to limit the amount of music you have easy access to. They don't have control over the market like they have had for the past 50 years, and are losing more control over the industry each day.

Gnutella and Freenet represent a new step in distributed information systems. Each is a system for searching for information; each returns information without telling you where it came from. They are innovative in the areas of distributed information storage, information retrieval, and network architecture. But they differ significantly in both goals and implementation.

Here's a business model for the 21st century: Develop a product. Promote the heck out of it with a generous marketing budget, and wait for it to catch on (it will be easier if you're selling something really cool to begin with).

Then, when your customers get truly excited about the product -- they're starting fan clubs, telling other people about your product, evangelizing in the streets, sharing information and collectibles related to your product -- then, and only then, make your final move: Sue their pants off.

Napster University: File Swapping and the Future of Entertainment
by Webnoize, May 15, 2000

57% of college students surveyed are at least weekly users of Napster. ...

47% of college students are spending more time on the Internet than one year ago, and digital music is becoming a regular part of that experience.

63% are spending more time listening to downloaded music than one year ago.

Entertainers and companies that sell entertainment need to recognize that a new world has emerged. (That may well apply to the news business, too, by the way.) This evolution won't be fun at first, because the technology thwarts the current business model and we'll all have to come up with new ways to make a living.

She compiled the definitive guide for indie music labels on how to put out a record. Now she runs a coalition to protect independent artists. Jenny Toomey is fighting the good fight on Capitol Hill.

Digital music company riffage.com acquires 1500 Records, and becomes the first, true online music label.

First an indie rock legend with band Tsunami, Jenny Toomey now runs the Coalition for the Future of Music. She steps up to the mic to talk about artists' rights and the effect of the digital age on the independent music scene.

Gigabeat

A music experience on the web that will have you doing pirouettes around the room, shouting, "At last!! Someone GETS it!!"

By combining audio signal processing, next-generation data mining, and dynamic data visualization, we're able to find, filter and arrange music more effectively than ever before.

Exciting, precocious web site seeks co-conspirator for stimulating market dominance and frequent walks to the bank.

Online music is hot, and getting hotter by the second. But if you run an Internet portal, a music content site, or an online retail site, you're probably spending most of your time building your brand and driving traffic to your site. Heck, once you've also eaten a meal or two, watered your plants and gotten your standard 3 hours of sleep, there's no time left to develop cutting-edge technology!

That's where we come in.

We provide our partners with music search and filtering services that are customizable to their site interface. And our technology is scalable, so it is prepared to keep pace with the growing popularity of digital music. We give our partners the best tools for music discovery, and then we work together to create a better experience for the end user.

Gnutella

The home of Gnutella! You can get software for connecting, search and download files, get help from other users in the forums, and hear the latest on file sharing news all in one place.

The program's near-perfect anonymity strikes at the very heart of the Internet's most troubling issues.

Gnutella is hardly six weeks old but has already become the stuff of Internet legend. The software was released by an America Online subsidiary for one day on March 14, then quickly removed. An ad-hoc band of developers has since reverse-engineered the software and is continuing development of it. The program is at its core a simple way of trading files, including pirated copyrighted material, without requiring participants to connect with any central computer. This means that, unlike its music-swap-meet cousin Napster, it's virtually impossible to stop.

You see, that's just the point. No government, no industry, no company, can thwart the most basic of instincts of the human spirit. That being complete and total FREEDOM!

As soon as an online music-trading service gets big enough to be useful, it's doomed.

FreeNet

Freenet is a near-perfect anarchy.

Freenet is free software designed to ensure true freedom of communication over the Internet. It allows anybody to publish and read information with complete anonymity. Nobody controls Freenet, not even its creators, meaning that the system is not vulnerable to manipulation or shutdown.

How will Freenet make money? It won't. According to their Web site, they have no intention of making money. Now, that's dangerous. A competitor or the government can't put them out of business if they have no business. Among Freenet's features:

It will be virtually impossible to forcibly remove a piece of information from Freenet.

Both authors and readers of information stored on this system may remain anonymous if they wish.

Information will be distributed throughout the Freenet network in such a way that it is difficult to determine where information is being stored.

Anyone can publish information: they don't need to buy a domain name, or even a permanent Internet connection.

Availability of information will increase in proportion to the demand for that information.
Information will move from parts of the Internet where it is in low demand to areas where demand is greater.

Many companies seem to believe that they have a natural right to profit, and that anything that might prevent them from making a profit must be against the law.

We describe Freenet, an adaptive peer-to-peer network application that permits the publication, replication, and retrieval of data while protecting the anonymity of both authors and readers. Freenet operates as a network of identical nodes that collectively pool their storage space to store data files and cooperate to route requests to the most likely physical location of data. No broadcast search or centralized location index is employed. Files are referred to in a location-independent manner, and are dynamically replicated in locations near requestors and deleted from locations where there is no interest. It is infeasible to discover the true origin or destination of a file passing through the network, and difficult for a node operator to determine or be held responsible for the actual physical contents of her own node.

up and coming

Share your favorite music, videos, and even your most embarrassing photos with users all around the wired world. Find other users who share your vibe, and add them to your hotlist for quicker access to their file collection. Share and share alike � we're all friends here.

How will Scour make money? Advertising and selling marketing data about users. Thus their policies are very important. How do they handle privacy and copyright?

What will Scour do and not do with your personal information ... how Scour handles copyright infringement complaints ... procedures for handling repeat copyright infringement offenders ... instructions on how to submit claims of copyright infringement.

Define files that you want others to be able to download (multi-media, source files, homework, home made videos and ALL kinds of files) directly from your desktop without needing to set up your own site or upload your files to a server.

iMesh is all about empowering users and enabling communities to more productively interact on the Internet. iMesh truly allows you to fully benefit from the "user-power" by easily bringing to your fingertips the combined force of the desktops of the Internet users.

Search the millions of shared files on other desktops and easily and reliably download them with the patent-pending iMesh technology.

With iMesh you can contact other users with similar topics of interest and create sharing groups with these users, get the most updated information from them and find the most popular files that other users are sharing.

Streaming MP3 music stations ... customized for each listener. ... For the ultimate in customization, listeners can collect tracks and create their own stations from WiredPlanet's growing library of high-quality, licensed music. These "MyStations" can be shared with friends or broadcast to all other listeners.

How will Wired Planet make money? Selling digital downloads and CDs. Advertising and co-branding deals with record labels to include merchandising and setup fees.

They'll give you 3 gigabytes of storage space in MyLocker. You can listen to the mixes in other people's Lockers.

search for files, download them, organize them into collections and share them with others; supports most video and image formats

Finding a steady stream of amazing, timely relevant documents of any description is a simple matter of dropping some "seed" files onto the folder. Thereafter, the folder will fill with a steady load of related files gathered from every corner of the Internet -- think of it as TiVo for the 'Net. OpenCola Folders use a combination of machine intelligence, human decisions gathered from across the OpenCola network, and direct user feedback to continuously improve their results and adjust to their users' changing tastes.


issues and policies for exploring webs


Customhouse concepts and buzzwords	Charthouse trends and currents	Boardwalk people and communities
Lighthouse information and research	Shoreline issues and policies	Docks systems and processes


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modified: February 20, 2002 by Douglas Anderson http://RicciStreet.net/port80/shoreline/casefreemusic.htm

Case Study: Free Music

Gigabeat

Gnutella

FreeNet

up and coming