CD profits

    Just sayin'.

RIAA Metadata

    Did anyone else notice the warning from Amazon that record companies are (once again) inserting metadata identification info into the MP3 downloads you buy there?

    I'm not sure what the ramifications are; I'm sure there will be some articles on it in the coming weeks.  Personally, I buy very little MP3 music from Amazon, so its effect, whatever it is, on me is minimal.  Most of my music acquisitions are from Freegal, used-CD stores, and LP conversions.

RIP - LimeWire

Born : 29 May 2000

Died : 27 October 2010

. It is with a heavy heart and a not-so-heavy yawn that we bid adieu to LimeWire today. A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction against the file-sharing network, the results of a 4-year (!) trial. LimeWire now joins entities such as Grokster, Napster, SuprNova, Pirate Bay, and MiniNova in that great P2P Neighborhood in the sky. You can read the Daily Telegraph's article on it here. . The article's claim of "50 million users per month" seems overblown to me. LimeWire was my first experience with P2P, but that was a long time ago. It wasn't too long before the site became so infested with viruses that only a naive 12-year-old or a master hacker would risk downloading anything from it. I am neither. . I also could never quite get past the sneaking suspicion that the site was actually a proxy spy-site for the RIAA. I mean really, guys. Why would you develop a feature that forced you to show your whole music library to anyone and everyone? Could things get any more convenient for the brownshirt thugs from the RIAA when they came a-trolling? . So while we're minorly bummed that another file-swapping site has been squashed, I was frankly surprised that it was still even around. Vaya con Dios, LimeWire. Sadly, I barely remember you.

LP-Swapping

Sad to say, the RIAA has been on a roll lately, shutting down a lot of the music file-swapping sites. And the ones that still remain are infested with viruses. . Which is kind of a good thing for me, since most of the music I like goes back to the days of vinyl, and I am set up to convert LP's to MP3 files, then burn them to CD's. And with about 3,000 albums, there's no shortage of music to convert.