Free Legal Downloading

[yeahwho]

SpiralFrog (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-08-29-spiralfrog_x.htm) is a new service which should be online soon. It is being brought about by Universal Studios which so far has budgeted over $10 million dollars. The hook is you can download for free but it you'll have to wade through advertising which will sort of make it like commercial TV, except no fast forward button.

Also it is only compatible WMA. Apple iPod is not compatible. Also the song you download will not be able to be replicated, copied or transferred to any other format than the one you originally downloaded it on.

I'm going to give it a shot. I think it will be hugely popular, all you have to do is open a window and nab a song.

What do you all think?

[The Notorious LOL]

people are actually concerned about the legal reprocussions of illegal downloading? Even if the RIAA did tag you, it requires a quick several formats of your hard drive and they basically have no proof to prosecute.

[yeahwho]

Downloading will never stop I'm sure of that, it's easy enough in todays climate, but eventually it will become so cumbersome with newer releases that illegal downloads of new material will be a bigger hassle than a few ads.

I have no problem with this idea of ads and songs. It's been that way ever since radio hit the airwaves. I'm not sure if the downloaded song has an imbedded ad in it though. Or any sort of tracking capabilities. Somebody somewhere is planning on making some big dollars from this though, and Wall Street acted accordingly, Apple lost a few points today on the stock exchange.

[Miho Mingu]

It sounds promising. I would just like to preview complete songs, in a legal fashion. I don't care about copying or saving it, even. What I don't like is when artists give you 30 minute or 1 minute samples. Why not offer the whole album to preview? If it's a good enough album, more people will go out and shell out cash for it. That's always been on my mind, concerning albums.

[EN[i]GMA]

people are actually concerned about the legal reprocussions of illegal downloading? Even if the RIAA did tag you, it requires a quick several formats of your hard drive and they basically have no proof to prosecute.

Well, that's something they could nab you for; destroying evidence.

Really, the RIAA has no case against you. They just have a screenshot of your screenname on a file sharing service, matched with your IP.

That isn't proof of anything though.

[Waus]

I dunno, downloading is pretty easy as is. If they try to up the copy-protection all they're doing is giving the real hardcore coders a challenge, most people just get the trickle down freebies from that kind of thing.

Any kind of legal download is still subpar to the illegal kind. WMA's, m4a, whatever, none of it compares to a few high bitrate mp3s or some FLACs. I don't think that thing will take off, and even if it has some success it won't compare to iTunes store for total downloads.

[Miho Mingu]

It all depends on the intent. If you believe in supporting the deserving artists, by buying their albums, then this service could be perfect, but if you prefer downloading high quality MP3 group releases, then this wouldn't be for you. And yeah, the WMA format is bad, but for the sake of previewing, it doesn't matter much. At least not to me.

[kaiser soze]

hmmm...what about the possibility of spyware or adware?