Full Text of Article MEK mentioned. It's funny, like techno, it uses
_analog_ technology. Heh.
-m
The New York Times , Oct 27, 2003 pC1 col 03 (23 col in)
With Cable TV at M.I.T., Who Needs Napster ?(Business/Financial
Desk)(the Libraries Access to Music Project) John Schwartz.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2003 The New York Times Company
Two students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have
developed a system for sharing music within their campus community
that they say can avoid the copyright battles that have pitted the
music industry against many customers.
The students, Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel, drew the idea for their
campus-wide network from a blend of libraries and from radio. Their
effort, the Libraries Access to Music Project, which is backed by
M.I.T. and financed by research money from the Microsoft Corporation,
will provide music from some 3,500 CD's through a novel source: the
university's cable television network.
The students say the system, which they plan to officially announce
today, falls within the time-honored licensing and royalty system
under which the music industry allows broadcasters and others to play
recordings for a public audience. Major music industry groups are
reserving comment, while some legal experts say the M.I.T. system
mainly demonstrates how unwieldy copyright laws have become. A novel
approach to serving up music on demand from one of the nation's
leading technical institutions is only fitting, admirers of the
project say. The music industry's woes started on college campuses,
where fast Internet connections and a population of music lovers with
time on their hands sparked a file-sharing revolution.
''It's kind of brilliant,'' said Mike Godwin, the senior technology
counsel at Public Knowledge, a policy group in Washington that
focuses on intellectual property issues. If the legal theories hold
up, he said, ''they've sidestepped the stonewall that the music
companies have tried to put up between campus users and music
sharing.''
Hal Abelson, a professor of computer science and engineering at
M.I.T., called the system an imaginative approach that reflected the
problem-solving sensibility of engineering at the university.
''Everybody has gotten so wedged into entrenched positions that
listening to music has to have something to do with file sharing,''
he said. The students' project shows ''it doesn't have to be that way
at all.''
Mr. Winstein, a graduate student in electrical engineering and
computer science, described the result as ''a new kind of library.''
He said he hoped it would be a legal alternative to file trading that
infringes copyrights. ''We certainly hope,'' he said, ''that by
having access to all this music immediately, on demand, any time you
want, students would be less likely to break the law.'''
While listening to music through a television might seem odd, it is
crucial to the M.I.T. plan. The quirk in the law that makes the
system legal, Mr. Winstein said, has much to do with the difference
between digital and analog technology. The advent of the digital age,
with the possibility of perfect copies spread around the world with
the click of a mouse, has spurred the entertainment industry to push
for stronger restrictions on the distribution of digital works, and
to be reluctant to license their recording catalogues to permit the
distribution of music over the Internet.
So the M.I.T. system, using the analog campus cable system, simply
bypasses the Internet and digital distribution, and takes advantage
of the relatively less-restrictive licensing that the industry makes
available to radio stations and others for the analog transmission.
The university, like many educational institutions, already has
blanket licenses for the seemingly old-fashioned analog transmission
of music from the organizations that represent the performance
rights, including the American Society of Composers, Authors and
Publishers or Ascap, the Broadcast Music Inc. or B.M.I., and Sesac,
formerly the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers.
If that back-to-the-future solution seems overly complicated, blame
copyright law and not M.I.T., said Jonathan Zittrain, who teaches
Internet law at Harvard and is a director of the university's Berkman
Center for Internet and Society. The most significant thing about the
M.I.T. plan, he said, is just how complicated it has to be to fit
within the odd boundaries of copyright law.
''It's almost an act of performance art,'' Mr. Zittrain said. Mr.
Winstein, he said, has ''arrayed the gerbils under the hood so it
appears to meet the statutory requirement'' -- and has shown how
badly the system of copyright needs sensible revamping.
Representatives of the recording industry, including the Recording
Industry Association of America, Ascap and B.M.I., either declined to
comment or did not return calls seeking comment.
Although the M.I.T. music could still be recorded by students and
shared on the Internet, Professor Abelson said that the situation
would be no different from recording songs from conventional FM
broadcasts. The system provides music quality that listeners say is
not quite as good as a CD on a home stereo but is better than FM
radio.
M.I.T. students, faculty and staff can choose from 16 channels of
music and can schedule 80-minute blocks of time to control a channel.
The high-tech D.J. can select, rewind or fast-forward the songs via
an Internet-based control panel. Mr. Winstein and Mr. Mandel created
the collection of CD's after polling students.
Mr. Winstein said that the equipment cost about $10,000, and the
music, which was bought through a company that provides music on hard
drives for the radio industry, for about $25,000. Mr. Winstein said
they were making the software available to other colleges.
Students have been using a test version for months, and Mr. Winstein
said the system was still evolving. The prototype, for example, shows
the name of the person who is programming whatever 80-minute block of
music is playing. Mr. Winstein said he once received an e-mail
message from a fellow student complimenting him on his choice of
music (Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 8) and telling him ''I'd like to
get to know you better.'' She signed the note, ''Sex depraved
freshman.''
Mr. Winstein, who has a girlfriend, politely declined the offer, and
said he realized that he might need to add a feature that would let
users control the system anonymously.
Article CJ109248020
At 7:30 PM -0600 11/3/03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
WITH CABLE TV AT M.I.T., WHO NEEDS NAPSTER?
By John Schwartz, New York Times, Oct. 27, 2003
Two students at the M.I.T. have developed a system for sharing music within
their campus community that they say can avoid the copyright battles that
have pitted the music industry against many customers. The students, Keith
Winstein and Josh Mandel, drew the idea for their campus-wide network from
a blend of libraries and from radio. Their effort, the Libraries Access to
Music Project, which is backed by M.I.T. and financed by research money
from the Microsoft Corporation, will provide music from some 3,500 CD's
through a novel source: the university's cable television network. The
students say the system falls within the time-honored licensing and royalty
system under which the music industry allows broadcasters and others to
play recordings for a public audience.
Major music industry groups are reserving comment, while some legal experts
say the M.I.T. system mainly demonstrates how unwieldy copyright laws have
become. The music industry's woes started on college campuses, where fast
Internet connections and a population of music lovers with time on their
hands sparked a file-sharing revolution. "It's kind of brilliant," said
Mike Godwin, the senior technology counsel at Public Knowledge, a policy
group in Washington that focuses on intellectual property issues. If the
legal theories hold up, he said, "they've sidestepped the stonewall that
the music companies have tried to put up between campus users and music
sharing."