Semantic Descriptors To Help The Hunt For Music

Currently under development by the SIMAC project, it is a major leap forward in the application of semantics to audio content, allowing songs to be described not just by artist, title and genre but by their actual musical properties such as rhythm, timbre, harmony, structure and instrumentation.

Linking a Device to a Gadget That's Wired to a Gizmo - New York Times

That battleground for things like who makes the biggest flat-screen TV with the highest-definition picture was, of course, in full force at the show. But it is now only one of two battlegrounds. The other - call it branded ubiquity - is about who controls the interaction between the consumer and that gadget and, more and more, all the other gadgets in the house as they become interconnected.

The FCC at CES

When the question of copyright and DRM came up, Martin was similarly hands-off. "I have always tried to stay away from pushing any one kind of control," he said, noting the FCC would need congressional action to act in that area. He did say that "those investing in content" should have "some way of ensuring a return."

Slashdot | Microsoft Deal Limits Verizon MP3 Phones

It turns out that the ability to play MP3s still exists but only because the software first converts it to the WMA format. This conversion, however, is not available for phones on Mac or Linux, leaving these customers unable to play MP3s.

edublogs: File-sharing, social software and the law

Suppose the mainstream media, fed up with the buzz bloggers keep getting and with bloggers criticizing their stories, decided to exact revenge. They initiate a vigorous copyright enforcement strategy, launching a barrage of lawsuits against bloggers as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has done to music file sharers. What would happen?

The blogosphere would be in for some tough times I bet.

Legitimate music downloading enjoys dream week | Tech News on ZDNet

There was so much legitimate downloading in the final week of 2005 that it recalled the impossible tallies research firms used in the late 1990s to dazzle venture capitalists and scare the daylights out of major-label executives.

Wired News: Diary of an Expat Downloader

Sure, illegally downloaded sitcoms, homemade pizza and piles of Nicorette gum hardly qualify for Ernest Hemingway liver-braising debauchment. Thanks to recent crackdowns on Euro downloaders, though, our get-togethers have that tinge of sin associated with expat journalists.

--Ari