Washington Post On File Sharers vs Record Cos.

[JackSpratts]

By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer

The first time Travis Daub got "spoofed," he figured faulty software was to blame. Hoping to sample the new album by Moby, he downloaded one of its songs, "We Are All Made of Stars," from the Web site LimeWire.com. But what wound up on his hard drive wasn't what he expected.

"It was just 20 seconds of the song, repeated over and over," says Daub, a 26-year-old design director who lives in Arlington. "At first I thought it was a glitch. Then I realized someone had posted this on purpose."

The identity of that someone is a mystery -- Moby's label and management team say it wasn't them. But in recent weeks, scads of "spoof" files have been anonymously posted to the hugely popular sites where music fans illegally trade songs online. Spoofs are typically nothing more than repetitive loops or snippets filled with crackle and hiss, and thousands are now unwittingly downloaded every day from file-sharing services, like Kazaa and Morpheus, that sprang up after Napster's demise.

Record labels are reluctant to discuss spoofing, but their trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America, has called it a legitimate way to combat piracy. And at least one company acknowledges that it has been hired to distribute spoofs, although it won't say by whom.

All of this suggests that the dummy files are part of a second front in the record industry's war against illegal music copying. For years, the fight focused on Web sites and their owners. Now it's starting to focus on the fans themselves.

"It just doesn't work," said David Bowie, whose latest album, "Heathen," was released protection-free. "I mean, what's the point?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002Aug20.html

[MagicMorpheus]

I must be lucky. I haven't downloaded any fake files.

[Kris404]

I haven't been that lucky Almost all the Top-40 tracks these days are 'spoofed' in one way or the other.

Recently, I wanted to 'sample' 'A Thousand Miles' by Vanessa Carlton and downloaded a 320kbps track. Guess what? It was mono and so were the rest in other bitrates too. The files by themselves are stereo but the channels have been downmixed and hence no stereo seperation giving them that AM radio feel.

Imagine the plight of dial-up users..

[Merijn]

Originally posted by Kris404
I haven't been that lucky Almost all the Top-40 tracks these days are 'spoofed' in one way or the other.

Luckily, most of the top-40 songs suck donkey ass where I live so I don't download them

[/b]
Recently, I wanted to 'sample' 'A Thousand Miles' by Vanessa Carlton and downloaded a 320kbps track. Guess what? It was mono and so were the rest in other bitrates too. The files by themselves are stereo but the channels have been downmixed and hence no stereo seperation giving them that AM radio feel.

Imagine the plight of dial-up users.. [/b]

Being a part-time dial-up user (when I'm not on the university 10mbit I have a single ISDN line), I can say it took me only two tries to get that exact song. The first was 128 kbit, the second one 160 kbit. I deleted the 128 kbit one because the bad quality was oozing from it. Go for files that lots of users have and aren't insane high quality (or seem that way). 128 kbit is most popular, 160/192 usually 5 times less, but still available.

[dead_frog]

The industry counters that even if fans don't like their buying options, swiping songs isn't justified. "If I wanted to buy pants and the store will only sell it as part of a suit, I'm not allowed to steal the pants just because I'm [ticked] off," says the RIAA's Rosen.

lol! You gotta hand it to her, that's a good one. But here we go again, laying the blame on the consumer.

[JackSpratts]

"The industry counters that even if fans don't like their buying options, swiping songs isn't justified. 'If I wanted to buy pants and the store will only sell it as part of a suit, I'm not allowed to steal the pants just because I'm [ticked] off,' says the RIAA's Rosen.

Originally posted by dead_frog
lol! You gotta hand it to her, that's a good one.

doubly funny (pathetic really). to begin with, if you copy the pants - the store still has them doesn't it? her comment is truly bizarre because most of the studios, movies and record labels were founded by "rag trade" immigrants who ripped off the latest clothing fashions by copying and selling them cheaply to people who couldn't afford the originals - in a practice that continues to this day known as "knockoffs". nobody, and i mean nobody, thinks of that as immoral or illegal, it's the backbone of a healthy multi-billion dollar worldwide fashion industry. if designers tried to uphold "copyrights" on their frocks there'd be blood running down the gutters of seventh avenue. meanwhile, no one on any site i participate in ever advocates selling their d/ls. it just isn't done. she's so off here that rosen should be ashamed of herself. again.

- js.

[MagicMorpheus]

Originally posted by JackSpratts

doubly funny (pathetic really). to begin with, if you copy the pants - the store still has them doesn't it? her comment is truly bizarre because most of the studios, movies and record labels were founded by "rag trade" immigrants who ripped off the latest clothing fashions by copying and selling them cheaply to people who couldn't afford the originals - in a practice that continues to this day known as "knockoffs". nobody, and i mean nobody, thinks of that as immoral or illegal, it's the backbone of a healthy multi-billion dollar worldwide fashion industry. if designers tried to uphold "copyrights" on their frocks there'd be blood running down the gutters of seventh avenue.

Never thought of it that way.

[Drakonix]

I wanted to buy pants and the store will only sell it as part of a suit, I'm not allowed to steal the pants just because I'm [ticked] off

Rosen left out the rest of the analogy - If the store won't sell the pants separately, I can go to another store that will sell me the same pants separately and at a discounted price. Clothing stores (and most other businesses) can't (legally) fix prices.

When the labels and RIAA have a stranglehold monopoly on the music industry, we don't have a "buy elsewhere" option do we?

Gee - I just don't understand why she left that part out

[MagicMorpheus]

Originally posted by Drakonix


Rosen left out the rest of the analogy - If the store won't sell the pants separately, I can go to another store that will sell me the same pants separately and at a discounted price. Clothing stores (and most other businesses) can't (legally) fix prices.

When the labels and RIAA have a stranglehold monopoly on the music industry, we don't have a "buy elsewhere" option do we?

Gee - I just don't understand why she left that part out

True, True.

[assorted]

if the labels simply want to prevent me from downloading the latest crap pop release they are shoving down my throat then they can be my guest.

but of course, they also went after audiogalaxy; which was doing a semi-decent job of blocking that same top 40. guess top 40 is simply what they can realistically "spoof".

if you get your prerleases from IRC you won't have this problem anyway