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One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

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Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#101

Post by guptaneil »

warfangle wrote: post #87
llambda wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that a third party is providing the service doesn't necessarily mean that the process as a whole is legit, in the same way that taking a PDF of a book to FedEx Kinko's to print doesn't make the copy legit, in the same way that buying a Windows upgrade to upgrade your old pirated Windows doesn't make the resulting license legit. Except that once you use iTunes Match, the resulting audio files are legally lice…

And if Apple or this service is de-legitimized through Apple going out of business and shutting it down in a decade or two (hey, it could happen) - or due to licensing disputes down the line with the record companies. Well.. Hope you backed up the original files. That's a good question, actually: If you keep the old files around, and five years from now cancel the subscription.. ultimately it's likely you've paid muc…

All songs from iTunes are DRM-free, so they will continue working even if you cancel the service.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#102

Post by sil3ntmac »

mdasen wrote: post #22
sil3ntmac wrote: post #19

Are the mp3s going to be in the cloud? Or on my hard drive? ... because it seems like it would be trivial to "spoof" an mp3 for downloading (take a random mp3, perhaps cut to the correct length, add the correct id3 tags and tell iTunes Match to download it).

I'm guessing that they're going to use an audio hash to look at the file and determine what song it is. It's probably more reliable than using ID3 tags which might get mixed up (especially around remixes, live versions, or just generally missing information). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function#Finding_similar_r...

Ah, right, that makes sense. Well then someone should put together a rainbow table of collisions with actual songs, haha.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#103

Post by pyre »

premchai21 wrote: post #96
pyre wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> flac amounts to a digital copy of the physical CD So long as your CD doesn't include any square waves, you're golden.

> So long as your CD doesn't include any square waves, you're golden. Could you explain what you mean by this? Are you referring to certain patterns that fall within standard Redbook audio parameters that FLAC then fails to encode properly? Or perhaps to characteristics of CDs or CD playback equipment that are difficult to duplicate on modern-day computers? I can imagine something like preëmphasis being problematic s…

I mentioned square waves specifically because I remember reading an article a couple of years ago about how going WAV -> FLAC -> WAV on 'unnatural' waves like sawtooth or square waves failed to come back out exactly alike. It was just a little sarcasm on my part. IIRC the article was on HN so I expected people to pick up on that.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#104

Post by FaceKicker »

nkassis wrote: post #70
_delirium wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the audio hash & protocol gets reverse-engineered, though, it'll make filesharing very quick--- instead of having to trade mp3s, you can just email your friend a list of hashes.

I'm not sure how that would work, for the hash to be the same you would need the original song right? If they use sha1 or something like that how are you going to go from hash to song?

I doubt they would use an exact hash like SHA-1 though. It wouldn't allow for variations in bitrate, slight length differences due to cutting off beginning/end of the song's fade out/fade in, etc.

I could imagine people figuring out the minimal bitrate that would produce a matching fingerprint (perhaps 64 kbps or even smaller) and sharing music that way.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#105

Post by astrange »

pyre wrote: post #103
premchai21 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So long as your CD doesn't include any square waves, you're golden. Could you explain what you mean by this? Are you referring to certain patterns that fall within standard Redbook audio parameters that FLAC then fails to encode properly? Or perhaps to characteristics of CDs or CD playback equipment that are difficult to duplicate on modern-day computers? I can imagine something like preëmphasis being problematic s…

I mentioned square waves specifically because I remember reading an article a couple of years ago about how going WAV -> FLAC -> WAV on 'unnatural' waves like sawtooth or square waves failed to come back out exactly alike. It was just a little sarcasm on my part. IIRC the article was on HN so I expected people to pick up on that.

That would be an encoder bug. I seriously doubt it still exists.

Re: One More Thing: ‘iTunes Match’ Will Upgrade Your Ripped Music For $24.99 A Year

#106

Post by count »

barrkel wrote: post #94
nkassis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be like presuming guilt, you don't have to prove those mp3s are legal they have to prove that you stole them. Also having mp3s isn't the same as distributing mp3s. tptacek is right I believe. As far as I understand it, every p2p case has been about distribution or suspicion of distribution (make available argument). And they have to have a reason to come scan your computer. Hence why I won't be using this "s…

In a civil prosecution (which is how copyright violation ought normally be handled, particularly at the individual consumer level) the burden of proof is usually only "the balance of probabilities" (i.e. more likely to be true than not be true), not "beyond a reasonable doubt". (Of course, media companies would prefer that the government pass laws, pay for and implement the job of enforcing media company contracts, a…

That brings up a very interesting point - copyright lawsuits are currently civil affairs, and require a much lower burden of proof. The 'Industry' is pushing for it to become a felony, which would squarely sit it 'beyond a reasonable doubt' territory. My understanding is their current cases are full of little holes like this - would making it a felony actually make it easier for people to get away without convictions?
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