How Would They Know My Music is (or isn’t) Legal?



An article surfaced today in an Australian newspaper regarding Australian customs officials being asked by the U.S. State Department to participate in checking traveler’s iPods and laptops for pirated music.

My question is, how would they know if it was pirated or not? Supposedly they were looking for “large quantities of commercial music.” Er. What does large mean? I’ve got 4,122 songs on my iPod. For every single one of those songs I either have the commercial CD that it came from, or purchased it legally through iTunes. But if I’m being checked in customs, I won’t have the physical CD’s on my person to back up what is on the iPod.

How could customs make a decision about whether or not the music was pirated? It’s mine, I bought it. But how would they know that, and how would I prove it while standing in customs? At this point, it is not illegal to upload my own CD’s to my iPod. But if I do, and I’m traveling outside of the country with my iPod, and I putting myself at risk?

Scary thought.


Yahoo Refunds are On The Way



Anyone who bought music through Yahoo’s Launch service have the option of receiving either a refund, or non-DRM’d copies of any music they bought while the service was running.

Yahoo got it right, although this could cost them, financially. As Techdirt editor Mike Masnick said today, “that’s what the company gets for agreeing to a DRM’d solution in the first place, rather than trusting its instincts and telling the labels to ditch the DRM years ago.” Masnick is right; this is a pretty obvious example of why DRM shouldn’t be attached to purchased music in the first place.

I almost wish I had some Yahoo Launch music to get refunded. But I’m not much on downloading. I still buy CD’s (yes, I hear the collective gasp of horror from GeekNews readers). Of course, I don’t buy CD’s new most of the time, I buy them used at library sales and on half.com or even eBay. Yes, I have an iPod loaded with at least 4,000 songs, but those all came from CD’s that I own and so when my iTunes crashes or my iPod dies I can still recreate my playlists if I have to. That, and sometimes I just like the quality that I get from the CD version of the music. MP3’s are great, but there is certainly loss of quality in such compressed formats.

I’m glad to see Yahoo doing the right thing for its customers. I am as surprised as everyone else, though, that they would take this step. More times than not we seem to get abused and used by the system and big companies that don’t really care about its customers. It’s a refreshing change, that’s for sure.


GNC-2008-07-29 #395 On the road and Guess what I forgot!



In the Heartland of America short show tonight but full of tech as always. Some amazing resources in tonights show. I talk about needing a checklist to manage my gear packout.

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Show Notes:
NASA Images!!!!
10 Practical Cell Phone Tips
FCC on Comcast
A Brain the Re-Wires Simply Amazing!!
Foreclosure Tips
High Tech Lifestyle Expensive
Virgin Galactic New Roll Out
WhiteKnightTwo Simply Amazing
Dell Patch for Nvidia Cards
Tools Used at LifeHacker
Steve Jobs Goes Off
Cuil
Verizon FIOS 100 HD Channels
More Yahoo Doom and Gloom
BrandStreaming
10 Million for Mogulus
Home Chemistry
Zune Dude switches Camps
Staying Fit Delays Alzheimers
Canadian Band Protest Canadian DMCA

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Dell’s Growing Strong – Hints of an Axim Phone?



Michael Dell talked with GigaOM the other day about what’s happening with the company. In the interview, he talks about how Dell is growing, Cloud Computing, the Laptop Market and if they are getting into the Smart phone market.

Michael says they are seeing a strong turn since he took back the CEO spot a year and a half ago. Sales are up 9% and profit is up 4% and continuing (stock is up 23%). Dell made 7 acquisitions in 2007 which will add to the increase. Michael pointed out that the Laptop market demands thinner and faster while all markets are pushing security and services.

Dell also talks about “Cloud Computing”, which right now Dell is contributing with, but there is some indication that Dell will be working on hardware that will get them more involved in this concept.

This is what he told OM Malik the other day:

We have identified five big opportunities. When I say big, I’m talking about $5 billion to $10 billion each in terms of scale opportunities. They are the consumer business, mobile computers, emerging countries, enterprise, and small/medium business. We have reorganized the company around these key priorities.

Engadget reported that Michael Dell started hinting on a Dell Smart Phone. This is a rumor that has surfaced since Smart Phones started gaining steam. I looked through this article, and the one on Business Week, but only found that Dell is “certainly looking at the whole smartphone category, but I wouldn’t expect anything anytime soon”. He did mention that he could not disclose any plans on if they would work with Google Android or Symbian OS.


Gannett “Gets It,” When Will the Networks?



So, Gannett Media has invested $10M in Mogulus. Apparently, Gannett understands the power and usefulness of not only live-streaming, but video uploading in general. Gannett is best known for owning a lot of media, including USAToday and a ton of local news stations (including one in my local market). Gannett gets it. They know that investment in live-streaming could actually cut their bottom line later, when live-streaming is used for traditional media and news coverage (no satellite uplink needed to feed to the news station).

Since many of us get our news on the web instead of through television, this can only be good. I’m one of those that sits in front of the computer all day and watching breaking news reports as they come out (it’s a hobby…I’m a nerd, what can I say). I like to see things up to the minute, and I like to see new news every time I visit a site, rather than the same story that was posted nine days ago and is no longer relevant.

How long before the networks get it too? They are missing out on amazing opportunities, and instead filling our televisions (and their online broadcast equivalents) with things like Nancy Grace and showbiz news and yesterday’s sports reports. Gannett is a powerhouse of media ownership; maybe they can convince the networks to start down a different path. We don’t want to watch everything on the boob-tube. Sometimes we want to watch it at our desks, in a hotel room, or in the office.


Congress Needs to Keep Their Hands off Libraries



First this morning I read an article about how libraries, once frightened of how the Internet would wreak havoc on visitorship, have seen a huge upturn in use over the last several years, primarily due to visitor’s use of the Internet. Libraries are teaching classes on internet usage, providing computer access for patrons, allowing free wi-fi access for their visitors with laptops, and increasing their inventory of DVD’s, CD’s, and audio books. Turns out the Internet was good for libraries after all. Who knew?

Then I read about Republican Representative Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois, who has submitted a bill to congress to ban the use of Facebook and MySpace by children in public libraries without parental consent. Like we need to turn our librarians into the Internet police.

Of course librarians don’t want to have anything to do with policing their patrons; ultimately, libraries and librarians are on the side of Freedom of Speech at all costs. Whenever Homeland Security, the FBI, the police, or any other governmental agency has attempted to reduce library patrons’ free speech rights, libraries have fought back with the most comprehensive and powerful weapon known to man: knowledge. In other words, they’ve stood their ground when it comes to free speech rights for library patrons, and will not be backing down any time soon.

Certainly Representative Kirk can find something a little more worthy to do with his time. Why is it we do not let parents take on the job of policing their children on the Internet? That is their job, after all, and certainly not the domain of librarians across the country.


Blu-Ray beware



China’s answer to next generation optical discs has fnally had its first production line opened and earned itself a new name. CBHD (China Blue High-definition Disc) was developed in China by Shanghai United Optical Disc. It has some advantages over BluRay, mainly in the cost area. It is cheaper to license, and less than one third the cost to gear up a factory to produce them.

The disadvantage they have is the same one HD-DVD ended up with, they have no support from any of the major hollywood studios. This may be less of an impediment to getting a footprint in Asia though. I am sure that a large number of the Chinese movie makers will have no problems with writing to this standard. I am also sure that there will be a burgeoning trade in porting high definition movies to this standard within Asia, despite the illegality of that practice.

Given that the war for the next disc standard will be fought in the PC rather than the home theatre there is still a lot of questions to be answered about how well either product is going to work as a data standard. I would suggest that BluRay will likely have inbuilt restrictions to the way we can record HD content to it, regardless of whether it is fair use or not. If CBHD will allow us to record in HD to it and play it back in any device that might be enough to grab it some marketshare when these discs become mainstream.