Category: Streaming and Multi-Media

RIAA: We must not allow any use, let alone fair use

Mindjack – Will Digital Radio Be Napsterized? by J.D. Lasica
From the article:
The Recording Industry Association of America has discovered that digital radio broadcasts can be copied and redistributed over the Internet.
The horror.
And so the RIAA, the music business’s trade and lobbying group, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to step in and impose an “audio broadcast flag” on certain forms of digital radio.

Clear Channel using patent to keep bands from selling concert CDs

“>RollingStone.com
Another example of patent abuse.
From the story:
Artists net about ten dollars for every twenty- to twenty-five-dollar concert CD that’s sold, no matter which company they use. But with Clear Channel pushing to eliminate competition, many fear there will be less money and fewer opportunities to sell live discs. “It’s one more step toward massive control and consolidation of Clear Channel’s corporate agenda,” says String Cheese Incident manager Mike Luba, who feuded with Clear Channel last year after promoters blocked the band from using CD-burning equipment.

More evidence of video based networks turning to Flash

Streamingmedia.com: Flash Powers Comcast.net’s Innovative Video Browser
The interface is a bit funky but the review is glowing. Sounds a lot like what a dot bomb company I was working for a few years back was trying to develop. I would like to see Flash open up a bit more and see some better authoring tools but it does seem as though they got some things right with the video streaming. All in all, pretty interesting, too bad it is the same content that can be found on TV.

No need for Napster when you can just grab the songs from a stream

Replay Music
Although I have appreciated this type of functionality in software such as FreeAmp, I am not sure that I like this as a commercial product. Not only does it add fuel to the music industry’s assault on online music services it deals a major blow to streamers who don’t encrypt their streams (allowing greater player and platform choice) or do it just for fun without any hope of profit.
From the site:
Just play music from your favorite online radio station or streaming music service, and every song is saved on your PC as a high quality MP3 file, automatically tagged with the artist and song title, and perfectly separated into individual tracks.

The joy of statistics – Music sales actually up

RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter
The labels manipulate the numbers showing declining sales as a result of peer-to-peer file sharing. In truth, there are other reasons for the numbers and music sales at stores are actually up.
From the article:
Now here’s where things get interesting: The RIAA forecast a 7 percent decline in recorded music sales for 2004, but data from market research outfit Soundscan, which measures point-of-purchase sales, shows a 10 percent increase in music sales when comparing the first quarter of 2004 to the first quarter of 2003…

The empty black cube

On Tele-absence
Elliott has a nice write up on the concept and ideas behind Tele-absence (the opposite of Tele-Presence, something I have been spending the majority of my time on).
From the site:
I recently, along with Anees Assali, created a large black cube that sits motionless and visually impenetrable in a gallery space. Beyond its simple physical structure, the cube is also a web server with a fixed address. When viewers choose to visit the web site broadcast from the cube, they see a live video stream of its interior, which is empty. The cube does nothing other than serve up an empty space

mini GNU/Linux distro for the Via EPIA boards

freepia
Yea! Now I will have something to do with my M-10000 once my thesis is done ;-)
From the site:
Freepia is a small GNU/Linux distribution designed to run on Via Epia-M Mainboards. It currently runs on the M-9000 and M-10000 (ezra and nehemiah cpu) but with some modifications like kernel and X11 modules it should run on others too. (if someone has get it running on other Epia¥s let me know). The main motivation behind this project is to build a full featured, low noise media box to play movies/mp3s/images etc. For this it uses freevo but in the future there maybe support for others like mythtv or vdr.