In an effort to reduce the potential liability, and to find an
acceptable solution, to the song-samples directory on the
techno.stanford.edu site, I have created a new mailing list for
discussion about this topic, and the subject of online redistribution
of copyrighted music in general. I think I have a solution which will
eliminate our liability and make everyone happy, and I'd like to
discuss it in a forum separate from idm. It's called, creatively
enough, "webmusic", and will live on techno.stanford.edu like idm and
sfraves and their sister lists.
I haven't subscribe anyone by default, so if you want on, send
a message to majordomo@techno.stanford.edu with the command
subscribe webmusic
and you'll be added automatically. After about a week, I will send my
proposition to the list, and we can debate it for awhile, making it
more robust, and then get to work on it. I will be posting this
announcement on comp.infosystems.www (where a similar discussion has
been going on) and on alt.music.techno in a little bit.
Also, as part of reducing our liability in this situation, I
will be removing the song-samples directory from techno in one week.
I am giving advance warning so you can grab the samples you haven't
heard yet if you want. This includes the DJ sets which are up. Any
songs which have been uploaded or approved by the artists or labels
will be left up, however, and as we get permission, we will put them
back up one by one or resample some of them. (I'm actually not
removing them, just taking them off the site). I still haven't
resolved what to do with the DJ sets, but hopefully that's an issue we
can talk about on webmusic. I may announce the closing of the
song-samples directory on alt.music.techno, but I'm not sure it'd be
worth the potential bandwidth hosage.
I apologize for what appears to be "cold feet" in this
situation, but our access to the machine at stanford may be
in jeopardy, and I think my proposal will help clear the air
in this case.
Thanks....
Brian