[DMCA-Activists] NY Times Supports Distributed Search Engines

[Seth Johnson]

(From Slashdot.  NY Times article text pasted below.  -- Seth)

> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/10/1626232

NYT Promotes File Sharing

Posted by michael on Friday September 10, @01:08PM

from the all-i-need-to-know-i-learned-in-kindergarten dept.

aisaac [1] writes "An article in today's NYT comments
intelligently on filesharing [2]. Key points: downloading music
is not illegal, peer-to-peer enables this useful and legal
activity, and a list of good places to find good music online
(including the American Memory Collection [3] at the Library of
Congress [4]. The Induce Act [5] is briefly mentioned without
analysis, but the article does not mention that some of the Act's
sponsors [6] and cosponsors [7] have expressed a willingness to
consider ammendments to restrict the application of the Act.
(This according to a letter I received from Senator Sarbanes
[8].) Let's keep the pressure on!" A Congress call-in day is
being organized [9].

[1] mailto:address@hidden
[2]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/arts/music/10INTE.html?pagewanted=print
[3] http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/audio.html
[4] http://memory.loc.gov/
[5] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.2560:
[6] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:s.02560:
[7] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:SN02560:@@@P
[8] http://sarbanes.senate.gov/
[9] http://www.savebetamax.org/


---


> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/arts/music/10INTE.html?pagewanted=print


September 10, 2004

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK 

No Fears: Laptop D.J.'s Have a Feast

By JON PARELES

DOWNLOADING music from the Internet is not illegal. Plenty of
music available online is not just free but also easily
available, legal and — most important — worth hearing.

That fact may come as a surprise after highly publicized lawsuits
by the Recording Industry Association of America, representing
major labels, against fans using peer-to-peer programs like
Grokster and EDonkey to collect music on the Web. But the fine
print of those lawsuits makes clear that fans are being sued not
for downloading but for unauthorized distribution: leaving music
in a shared folder for other peer-to-peer users to take. As
copyright holders, the labels have the exclusive legal right to
distribute the music recorded for them, even if technology now
makes that right nearly impossible to enforce.

Recording companies have tried and failed to shut down
decentralized file-sharing networks the way they closed the
original Napster. (That name is now being used for a
paid-download service.) 

Courts have ruled that the services can continue because they are
also used to exchange material that does not infringe on
recording-company copyrights. At the same time, a bill before
Congress, the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004,
seeks to restrict the way file-sharing programs are constructed.

While the recording business litigates and lobbies over music
being given away online, countless musicians are taking advantage
of the Internet to get their music heard. They are betting that
if they give away a song or two, they will build audiences,
promote live shows and sell more recordings.

As with the rest of the free content on the Internet, there's no
guaranteed quality control. Lucas Gonze, whose webjay.org lets
music fans post playlists that connect to free music and video,
describes free Internet music as "a flea market the size of
Valhalla."

The first place to look for free music online is at musicians'
own sites. Many performers, from Bob Dylan (www.bobdylan.com) to
the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (www.yeahyeahyeahs.com), post hard-to-find
songs for listening: some as free downloads, some as streaming
audio (which can be recorded with a free program like StepVoice
at www.stepvoice.com). A next place to look is the labels,
particularly independent rock and electronic labels like Matador
(www.matadorrecords .com/music/mp3s.html), Vagrant (www.vagrant
.com/vagrant/audio/audio.jsp), Barsuk (www.barsuk .com), Saddle
Creek (www.saddle-creek.com) or Tigerbeat6
(www.tigerbeat6.com/html/catalogue.htm).

Many public radio stations also maintain music archives for
streaming or downloading. Among them are the classical-music
station WNYC (www .wnyc.org) and eclectic stations like WFMU in
Jersey City (www.wfmu.org) and KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif.
(www.kcrw.org), all of which have troves of live performances.
MTV (at www.mtv.com) presents an entire album each week as an
audio stream.

Following is a selection of sites offering free music online.
Most of them are best used with a either a broadband connection
or nearly infinite patience. While major-label recordings are
largely (but not entirely) off limits, there's more than enough
available music to satisfy every listener.

Epitonic

The first and best place to look for any band with an independent
recording is www.epitonic.com, a superbly organized site that is
likely to have music from nearly everyone heard on college radio.
It includes not only downloadable songs but also biographical
information and links for hundreds of acts, grouped under genres
and subgenres. And it has an invaluable "Similar Artists" feature
that can direct fans of one band to dozens of potential new
favorites. Within Epitonic's huge roster is at least a song or
two from some major-label acts, among them the New York band
Secret Machines, the Texas band Sparta and the English bands
Radiohead and Spiritualized. But independent bands like Bright
Eyes or Godspeed You Black Emperor are every bit as good.

Webjay

At www.webjay.org, music fans share their Web finds with the
world. There's no music on the site, just lists of links that
allow users either to play entire lists or to download items
directly one by one; it also includes links to videos and news
sound bites. Webjay is something like the lists submitted by
customers at www .amazon.com, but with connections to the music
itself. As such, it's only as good as the widely varied skills of
its contributors, and its links aren't always dependable. But it
is a way for musical obsessives like bigwavedave to share his
fondness for garage-rock or for OddioKatya to point listeners
toward a wide assortment of Brazilian songs.

Furthurnet

Before the Internet became ubiquitous, the Grateful Dead's fans
built up their own network to exchange concert recordings, a
network that expanded as other jam bands sprang up. The logical
extension of the process is Furthurnet (www.furthurnet .com). It
is a peer-to-peer network that trades only recordings of bands
that encourage listeners to record concerts: not just the Dead
but Phish, Gov't Mule, Dave Matthews Band, Los Lobos, Wilco and
David Byrne as well. Users need to install a program available on
the Web site. Most of the available concert recordings don't use
MP3 files, but a better quality audio format, SHN, which also
requires some software installation. It's easy; information on
the site explains all the technicalities.

Another connection for jam bands is www.etree.org, which points
listeners toward recordings stored online and is equally
fastidious about high fidelity. Meanwhile, concert recordings of
all sorts, from vintage 1960's bootlegs to music only a few days
old, have been traded at www.sharingthegroove.org, although the
site is currently undergoing maintenance.

The Library of Congress

Through the years, tax dollars have supported researchers like
Alan Lomax on excursions to collect music from every nook and
cranny and tradition they could discover across the United
States. The Library of Congress has made a considerable amount
available free online. A place to start is the American Memory
Collection (http://memory .loc.gov/ammem/audio.html), with fiddle
tunes, American Indian music, border music from the Rio Grande,
Dust Bowl songs and more.

Folkways Records

In 1987, the Smithsonian Institution bought the catalog of
Folkways Records, which had set out to document every sound in
the world and continues to support projects like a 20-disc
collection of Indonesian music. Many of the Folkways recordings
can be heard on the Web at www .folkways.si.edu, from "Classical
Music of Iran" to "Creole Music of Suriname" to "Music of
Indonesia Vol. 1: Songs Before Dawn."

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive (www. .archive.org) has set out to preserve
material that might otherwise disappear from the Internet,
including Web pages, documents, books and video clips as well as
audio, and it includes a Live Music Archive with more than 10,000
concerts via etree.org. Most are from jam bands, but there is
plenty to choose from. (More than a million people have
downloaded Grateful Dead music from the archive.) The archive
also includes an assortment of other audio under All Collections,
which has 131 songs from 78-r.p.m. discs, and more than 3,000
songs on what it calls netlabels, most of them releasing
electronic music. Try the exotica-tinged selections from
Monotonik.

Iuma

The Internet Underground Music Archive (www.iuma.org) was a
pioneer of free Internet music. It was founded in 1993 as a place
for musicians to post their own music online, and it just keeps
on expanding. Unfortunately, it is both overwhelming and
overwhelmed; finding a good song requires extraordinary luck, and
downloading it will take a while. Like the other send-it-yourself
sites noted here, Iuma can make a user appreciate what record
company scouts do.

Garageband

Hopefuls face Darwinian competition at www.garageband.com, where
musicians are encouraged to rate 30 songs before submitting one
of their own (or pay a $19.99 fee instead) and other listeners
are also assigned tracks to rate. The songs that rise to the top
of the charts have a chance to be heard on Garageband's radio
outlets or collected on its compilation albums. Garageband
demands original songs, not cover versions, and its top-rated
ones tend to sound more professional, if not always more
distinctive, than those at other mass upload sites.

CNet

The computer experts at CNet include an extensive selection of
music among their software downloads at
http://music.download.com. A vast bulk of the music is submitted
by musicians themselves, so there are a lot of derivative sounds
to wade through, but the well-organized site also includes
worthwhile bands as Editor's Picks, currently including Dios and
Ex Models.

Vitaminic

A huge site based in England, www.vitaminic.co.uk, offers tens of
thousands of aspiring bands and a smattering of better-known
acts, although brand-name bands like Franz Ferdinand tend to
offer only streaming audio rather than downloads. But the site is
well organized and also includes video clips from the likes of
Nick Cave.

BeSonic

A European site where musicians can place their songs online, www

.besonic.com has a slightly more international perspective than
the other newcomer sites. Rankings and recommendations help
visitors sift the material. Registration is required for
downloading.

Pure Volume

More than 76,000 songs are available at yet another site for
aspiring musicians, www.purevolume.com, which is strongly
weighted toward rock. To winnow the site, try the Pure Picks
column or look under the category Music for Top Artists (Signed).

DMusic

Musicians can also post their own songs on DMusic (www.dmusic
.com). It helps users wade through more than 17,000 acts — an
overwhelming majority categorized as alternative or rock — by
listing DM Picks and by having users give songs a thumbs-up or
thumbs-down and append comments. As with Iuma, most are amateur
submissions, with plenty of jokes, but there are some enjoyable
tracks scattered among the picks.

Smart-Music

Dance-music experimenters dominate at www.smart-music.net, a
selective site that draws its downloadable MP3's from
hard-to-find small labels. Dipping into the genres and subgenres
of electronica, Smart-Music has about 300 songs available from
(relatively) well-known groups like Mouse on Mars and Zero 7 as
well as basement laptop obsessives, and a high percentage of them
turn out to be worthwhile.

Ragga-Jungle

Slow, deep reggae bass lines are the foundation for whole
families of dance music represented at www.ragga-jungle.com. It's
an outlet for amateur and professional producers and toasters
(rappers), and the downloadable songs, available free after
registration, include echoey dub-reggae vamps, sparse dance-hall
productions and frenetic jungle tracks. Each track has ratings
and comments, and quick streaming allows users to sample tracks
before committing to a download. Contender for best title: "A
Waste of Half an Hour of My Life, and Four Minutes of Yours" by
the Archangel. 

Classic Cat

With so much classical music in the public domain, it's a
surprise that there aren't more free downloadable sites offering
it, although the length of classical compositions can make them
inconvenient to download. At www.classiccat.net, it's possible to
search by composer, from Monteverdi to Messiaen. The selection is
spotty and links don't always work, but it's a start.

Asian Classical

Need some Indonesian gamelan music? On the Internet at www
.asianclassicalmp3.org, a dedicated collector of Asian music has
transferred recordings from cassettes to downloadable MP3's. The
site includes music from nine countries, including 28 minutes of
gamelan music from Java.

Iraqi Music

The straightforwardly named www.iraqimusic.com is a resource for
both the classical Iraqi improvisations called maqams and more
recent Iraqi recordings based on traditional (and thus
noncopyrighted) songs. "Sister Sites" provides links to other
sites with Middle Eastern music.

Trama

A Brazilian record label, Trama (www.tramavirtual.com), offers
about 10,000 MP3's, primarily from local Brazilian bands. The
site is in Portuguese and requires users to sign up, but after
that, it is fairly easy to navigate. "Baixar" means download.

Micromusic

The Internet is home to countless obsessives. The ones gathered
at www.micromusic.net make their electronic music from the sounds
of the first primitive video games. Proud of what they can
generate from eight-bit gizmos, they have placed hundreds of
blipping, buzzing ditties online, garnering the attention of
Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols' manager, among others.
Registration is required, but it's a modest inconvenience on the
way to tunes like "How Bleep Is My Love."