Gracenote Sues Roxio Over Switch to Free Song Database

macsforever2001 writes: "Those l00z3rs at Gracenote are suing Roxio because they switched to freedb from CDDB. I think I will buy Toast 5 just to support them." Gracenote's press release is informative. Apparently their claims include one that switching to freedb is "violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by offering products that circumvent Gracenote's technological measures to obtain access to an unauthorized derivative of the CDDB copyrighted database."

Even better; stop routing packets to them...

Hell folks, we control the routers when you really think about it. Perhaps a "do not route to Gracenote" week will humble the fucks a bit. This can be done via firewall or routers so let's do it 60's style instead of bitching on Slashdot...

I'm Torqued at Gracenote

I'm the author of XfreeCD [brianlane.com], a free CD player for Linux. At the time I developed the program I was under the impression that the CDDB database, and the CDs that I contributed were going to remain freely accessable to anyone and everyone. I went through their extensive testing program so that I could support submitting CD track info.

Now that they have closed access to the database, can I request that all the submissions from XfreeCD be removed from the database? I'd certainly like to do so. My program is under GPL, and so is any data that it generates (if that's possible -- Hell, I wrote it, so I say so) must be accessable to anyone who wants it.

Brian Lane
Homepage [brianlane.com]

PS. XfreeCD hasn't been updated recently, and probbly doesn't work with newer kernels or GTK+ versions. I'll fix this when I have the time.

Chutzpah

The most telling part of that press release was a comment from Dave Marglin, General Counsel for Gracenote: "We spent a great deal of time, energy and money developing the CDDB Music Recognition Service."

I'm sure everyone who ever contributed info to the CDDB prior to the Gracenote buyout will be happy to join with me in offering a hearty "FUCK YOU !! " to Marglin, and everyone else at Gracenote.

Re:ms

Technological countermeasures? What the ring-tailed-rambling fuck is Graceless smoking, and can I have some?

Prediction: Roxio asks the judge to throw it out as a frivolous lawsuit, and he does...

Fervent hope: ...but not before bitch-slapping Graceless into the next millennium with punitive damages. This suit isn't merely frivolous, it's malicious. Were I the judge, I'd do as much research as possible to see if I could also add words like "barratry", "malicious", and "RICO" into said millennial bitchslap, and I'd tell Graceless to get the fuck out of my courtroom and never come back until they'd acquired some clue, to say nothing of some manners.

I'd go a step further: I'd instruct my bailiff(s) to chase the plaintiff and their lawyers out of the room, out of the courthouse, and down the street, hitting them over the head all the while with the largest dildo I could find. Maybe it's just me, but that seems fair.

hmm...

let's sue gracenote for stealing the information that we have all given them to create their db in the first place...

Hollywood of monkeysvsrobots.com [monkeysvsrobots.com]

The REALLY Insidious Part

If Gracenote wins this lawsuit, it sets up a very interesting, and dangerous precedent for using the DMCA. What it suggests is that ANY competitor to ANY company in ANY field can be sued similarly.

Think about it. Say I have a company that sells word-processing software (eg, Microsoft). This lawsuit would suggest that I could sue another company (eg. AbiSoft or Corel) for providing a service that directly circumvents my (Microsoft's) methods of copy protecting. Or say I have a company that sells CPUs (eg, Intel). Say another company provides the exact same, drop-in replacement service (eg, AMD). This lawsuit would suggest that Intel can sue AMD for providing a method of circumventing Intel's copy-restriction methods.

What this lawsuit basically says is that the DMCA can be used to prevent people from using competing products - especially if the competing products are free! But regardless of the price...

FreeDB is a separate entity from Gracenote, uses it's own database and it's own servers. In all respects, FreeDB is merely a competing company. According to the DMCA, is competition a federal crime now?

Perhaps the sticking point is that FreeDB is a "free" alternative. However, this suggests that hostels and homeless shelters can be sued by, for example, Hilton, because the homeless shelters provide a free replacement for Hilton's services.

This, is truly creepy.

Re:Getting stuff for free

This could set a rather disturbing prescedent...

If I go to a CD store (Let's say Borders, for sake of argument) with a pad and a pen (or a palm), and physically write down the album title, artist, track titles, copyright date, publisher, etc... what I've done is perfectly legal (although I might get some weird looks while I'm doing it) because this information is publically available.

Is my list on my pad considered a database? It could be. (a very crude, rudimentary one, but a database nonetheless) If I'd done it on a palm, I'd certainly consider it a database.

Now, I take this database of publically available information, and type it into/upload it to my computer, and import it into a MySQL database.

I've still done nothing wrong. I've gone and gathered publically available information, and I'm storing it in an easily searchable format.

Now, I make a web interface to search it. I can now go to this webpage and search for any artist, album title, publisher, track title, etc... and get any matches that might be in my database.

Still nothing wrong - all I've done is add an access method.

Well, I decide that as complete as my listing of CDs is, it doesn't include every CD out there (Borders could have been out of a certain album, or might not carry foreign CDs). So, I make a web interface to allow other people to add the information from the CDs in their collection (or that they've gained in a similar method, going to their local CD shop, and gathering information). I publicize my database on a few mailing lists, my website, Slashdot, etc... and people come to my site, and add their collections.

Pretty soon, the DB is rather large, and a lot of people are using it.

Now, Gracenote would like to say that what I've done is wrong. That people can come to my site and get CD info for free, whereas people would have to pay to get it from Gracenote.

I made mine using publically accessible information, and grew it with information from the public. Nothing in my database couldn't be obtained for free by visiting the appropriate cd store, or contacting the appropriate CD publisher.

Gracenote acquired a similar, open project, and closed it up. Does that somehow give them a monopoly on publically available information? I don't think it does.

I'd say this wouldn't hold up in court, and could EASILY be thrown out. I'd agree that it's main purpose was to damage Roxio's reputation, and possibly deplete their resources to the point that they could not stay in business. I'd even go so far as to say that Gracenote KNOWS they have no chance of winning in court - this is a rather ludicrous lawsuit.

Otherwise, disseminating publically available information for free becomes a crime.

Conceivably, it could be considered illegal for me to tell my friend the title of track 1 on a given CD - as Gracenote sells that information, and me giving it for free would be "wrong".

Complete bull.

Two-faced.

It's our valuable intellectual property that's underlying all this."

valuable intellectual property largely built for free, by volounteers donating their time to enter track listings. Don't you get a warm fuzzy feeling adding to the CDDB?

Re:Two-faced.

It was originally designed by Ti Kan, the guy who wrote xmcd - the first CDDB-supporting CD player.

The server software was written by someone called Blue Moon Software (IIRC), and at some stage was at least available-source. You could also download the whole database up to a certain point in time, originally so that you could run a local mirror (it was an entirely volounteer effort).

They became Gracenote about 18 months ago, coinciding with requiring license agreements and branding (Powered by...) from anyone using their database. It was in Slashdot at the time...

dcma doesn't apply here

i'm not sure about the patent issues; they may very well be (legally, not morally) valid, but this is not copyright violation. freedb is using their own server with their own entries. if freedb were to let users query gracenote's actual entries through a freedb server, then it might be considerable under the dmca, but not as it stands.

Tell 'em what you think

Gracenote contacts [gracenote.com].

But do it nicely. Try not to sound like a raving lunatic.

Talking points:

Much of the data, and the interface, were at one point publicly available, so they can claim no proprietary rights.

You would be willing to support them if they offered better service than competitors, but these attacks on competitors make you have serious doubts about continuing to use their services.

Etc...

Re:(picks jaw up off the floor)

You are somewhat incorrect. The CDDB.com database was a community project at one time. During that time the CDDB server and database were made available for regular mirroring. When CDDB.com went private, freeDB.org opened up using the latest unencumbered version of the DB and server. Now they have added more to theirs.

If, in fact, CDDB.com has a patent on the CDDB process, they illegally subverted prior art. You cannot patent a process which is obvious. The REASON this is obvious is because the CDDB protocol (the generation of unique ids) was part of the redbook specification. On top of that they patented a process that was already implemented in software that was released freely, not covered under patents or encumbered licenses.

CDDB.com would like for all the work that the original group did, go away. But it won't, it can't, and they don't have a way to stop it.

Re:Freedb .. cddb .. etc

Freedb have in effect written their own version of cddb with the same interfaces, and Roxio are using their existing technology to access freedb.

This post shows a lack of knowledge of the history of CDDB. CDDB started out as free started out as a way for xmcd (which is GPLed) to recognize the CD that you were palying. CDDB grew into its own separathe project used by many CD players and rippers. The database grew large through the work of thousands of listeners who entered the data for CDs. Then CDDB's developers decided that they could make money off of CDDB, so they formed a company. Then they sold out to Escient bought CDDB [slashdot.org]. Escient then started to turn the database against the users. First, they required programs using the database display their logo [slashdot.org]. This behavior precipitated the start of a free CDDB [slashdot.org] work alike database, which eventually became called FreeDB [slashdot.org].

While this was happening, Escient (later called Gracenote), became more and more predatory. They require programs to not allow use of FreeDB [slashdot.org] and they've teamed with Napster to identify copyrighted tracks [slashdot.org].

Gracenote isn't simply trying to protect their software, they trying to take back what the original CDDB developers gave. And they're trying to make money off of us poor fools who helped them populate the CDDB database.

So, I say support FreeDB and anyone who fights Gracenote.

--
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations ...

(picks jaw up off the floor)

So let me get this straight: You seized control of a user-generated database, locked the users out of it, forced them to create their own truly free database, and are now suing any company smart enough to realize that supporting the free alternative is a better long-term solution than being dependent on your lame system? The mind boggles.

And how exactly is freedb a derivative of CDDB? As far as I know everything's been re-entered from scratch into it; there's never been a public copy of CDDB available to have been somehow copied by the freedb folks. I'm not even touching the issue of how CDDB's collection of user-provided track info (contributed under the reasonable assumption that CDDB wouldn't do anything this asinine (Heck, a few years back I couldn't even imagine anything this asinine)) could possibly give them status to sue over the CDDB -- that way lies much teeth grinding and throwing stuff at my coworkers.

On the bright side, I've got an idea who Microsoft can acquire the next time they need to get more arrogance in-house :)

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

New lawsuit

Intel sues AMD for circumventing their ability to make money from selling x86 processors. Microsoft sues Linus T. for circumventing their licensing agreements designed to protect their OS sales... Marvel sues Penny Arcade for providing free comics that take away from their sales... Ford sues feet for providing free transportation... Phillips sues the sun for providing free light and disrupting their lightbulb sales... Et cetera Et cetera Etc...

Re:ms

Kind of like Microsoft and Linux. MS is a monopoly, until you put Linux in the picture.

Microsoft still holds monopoly positions, even with Linux in the picture. Having a monopoly doesn't mean not having any competitors at all. It means having an overwhelming market share. Microsoft has over 90% of both the desktop OS market and the office suite market. Even though there are competitors to them in both areas, they still have monopoly powers and use them in ways that are in my opinion both unethical and illegal.

Microsoft would like to redefine the word "Monopoly" in such a way as to make it such a narrow term that it doesn't apply to them, but we shouldn't let them do it. We also shouldn't let them get away with redefining "innovation" and other words the way that they do.

What it comes down to with CDDB vs freedb is that Gracenote is trying to use patent law as a way to try to get a legal monopoly and actually exclude anyone else from being able to compete with them at all. This is actually worse in some ways than what Microsoft usually does. Let's hope that Microsoft doesn't add this dirty trick to their playbook... they already have just about every other one in there... :-(

So wouldn't CDDB be confinded to the same laws of using their monopoly to snuff the competition?

You'd certainly hope that was true... But it is starting to look like Microsoft is going to get off with little more than a slap on the wrist... not because they didn't honestly lose their case, but just because the judge said too much.

I think that if Microsoft can get away with blatant violations of anti-trust law as they aparently are going to, then I am afraid it will be like declaring it open season for every other company to start playing dirty all the time. That is a bad thing for everyone.

Maybe this is a Good Thing

Perhaps we should be thankful that Gracenote is threatening Roxio with this moronic lawsuit. Why? Because it adds further evidence that the DMCA is easily abused and should be overturned.

It's similar to the Princeton/SDMI affair [slashdot.org]: by using the law to restrict speech, the RIAA have created a situation where it will be very easy to turn the tide of legislative and legal opinion against the DMCA.

So a few more boneheaded lawsuits like this and we stand a good chance of getting the DMCA overturned. It's a shame that in the meanwhile the people and the courts have to suffer while the lawyers get rich (note; I have no anti-lawter bias, as both my parents are lawyers).

That's precious.

Shopping elsewhere is now a circumvention, eh?

--

Re:Just like the phonebook...

Actually you're allowed to copy the phonebook in its entirety. In fact most phonebooks are just a complete rip off of the regular phonebooks. (If you don't believe me check for errors, they'll be similar. And check when you get the alternative phone books, it's always 2 or 3 months after the regular one.)

You cannot collect names otherwise. Think about it, where is a complete, public-domain copy of the list of number available? No where and the SBC's, QWests, and Verizons of the world have no interest in publishing such a thing. Feist v. Rural Telephone Service Company gave Feist permission and legal protection to COPY the other's phonebook, regardless of the others objections. There was simply nothing they could do. Since a phonebook cannot be copyrighted, there is nothing to prevent the direct copy, (minus the intro and conclusion material, which is copyrighted.) Read this [oreilly.com] to get more information.

But either way this is not an issue in this case, because both databases were generated independantly and not a copied, since CDDB did everything to prevent a copy of their free and open database from the start.

Re:Chutzpah

Consider it done [24.42.105.140].

Godwin's Law

> This is a brilliant (dumbshit) move on Gracenote's part. Why, with all the attention
> they've paid to fairness and equitable behavior in the past (screwing CDDB users), you
> can be sure that this is a case of Gracenote spending time trying to uphold a piece of
> legislation that is necessary and supports freedom, equality, and ethical behavior (for
> Nazis).

I invoke Godwin's law. You lose.

---

Re:Roxio's response

"Gracenote has apparently made this claim in a weak and ineffective attempt to damage Roxio's reputation."

True, it is pretty weak and ineffective attempt to damange their reputation Roxio does a far better job [theregister.co.uk] damaging their own reputation...

Copyright is invalid

You cannot copyright a database. Their copyright will not hold up if challenged in court. Copyright is only valid for "creative works of original authorship." No logic ordering of items can be copyrighted. Databases, recipies and phonebooks are all uncopyrightable.

If you don't believe me see FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE CO., INC. The Supreme Court ruled "Alphabetical listings of names, accompanied by towns and telephone numbers, in telephone book white pages held not copyrightable; thus, nonconsensual copying of listings held not to infringe on copyright."

I've heard that before

That's the same argument my former ISP [infinetivity.com] used to justify discontinuing my service when they got a letter from the MPAA and "discovered" that I was running my own webserver.

They said I was violating their terms of service [infinetivity.com], but see if you can find anything prohibiting or even mentioning servers for DSL users. The owner called me up at home and insinuated I was trying to "get away with something" by running my own server instead of paying them for hosting. So, with that twisted logic, they decided to bill me for 18 months of web hosting I didn't ask for or recieve. I called a lawyer.

Here's my documentation [underwhelm.org] on the issue, and, needless to say, if you're in MN, avoid this place.

The moral of the story is because this is a capitalist country, it is a crime to avail yourself of a free service if someone is willing to charge you for it.

Re:ms

No, it's even dumber than you think: > Intel sues AMD for circumventing their ability to make money from selling x86 processors.

No, Intel suing Compaq for selling CPUs with AMD in them.

> Microsoft sues Linus T. for circumventing their licensing agreements designed to protect their OS sales...

No, MSFT suing Slackware for giving Linux away.

> Marvel sues Penny Arcade for providing free comics that take away from their sales...

No, Marvel suing you for reading Penny Arcade.

> Ford sues feet for providing free transportation...

No, Ford suing your local shoe store for selling Nike.

> Phillips sues the sun for providing free light and disrupting their lightbulb sales...

No, Phillips suing you for installing a sunroof.

> Et cetera Etc...

Bottom line: If Gracenote asserts ownership of the database, they should be suing freedb, not Roxio.

But they can't, of course, because they don't own freedb database. They only own the Graceless database.

Unless Roxio had a contract with Graceless to use their DB, suing Roxio for switching to a competitor doesn't make sense. (And even if they did, the suit would be for breach of contract, not a DMCA charge.)

DMCA doesn't enter into it. This is a business decision, made by one company, to stop using a for-pay product, and to start using a not-for-pay product.

Technological countermeasures? What the ring-tailed-rambling fuck is Graceless smoking, and can I have some?

Prediction: Roxio asks the judge to throw it out as a frivolous lawsuit, and he does...

Fervent hope: ...but not before bitch-slapping Graceless into the next millennium with punitive damages. This suit isn't merely frivolous, it's malicious. Were I the judge, I'd do as much research as possible to see if I could also add words like "barratry", "malicious", and "RICO" into said millennial bitchslap, and I'd tell Graceless to get the fuck out of my courtroom and never come back until they'd acquired some clue, to say nothing of some manners.

In related YAPS (Yet Another Patent Suit) News

In late breaking news today Sesame Street's Count ha filed a class action patent lawsuit against the world claiming that people from all walks of life are infringing on his works.

"While counting to one two, I teach kids how to learn to make it in life, yet these kids turned around and made programs which have made more money than I have. What happened to due process?" stated the Count.

So what's at stake here? Its simple numbers via ways of 0's and 1's combined constructed together form marvelous works earning companies millions. The Count is claiming patents on the numbers one and zero, which would give him sole ownership of the internet as we know it.

Employees of IBM, Sun, Microsoft, and other heavy hitters have released brief statements claiming to have never watched Sesame Street.

Stay Tuned

Re:Getting stuff for free

You're just fine doing everything that you mentioned above. The catch is that Gracenote holds a patent on generating a unique key for the database. The whole reason why CDDB and freeDB are so cool isn't that they have big lists of song titles it's that your album is recognised when you put it into your CD drive and the correct information is downloaded.

________________________

Re:(picks jaw up off the floor)

And how exactly is freedb a derivative of CDDB? As far as I know everything's been re-entered from scratch into it; there's never been a public copy of CDDB available to have been somehow copied by the freedb folks.

At issue here isn't the actual data. It's the fact that Gracenote has a patent on the CDDB technology. The slashdot discussion on the topic of the patent is located here [slashdot.org], complete with all the usual /. I'm gonna patent breathing vindictive.

While Gracenote's behavior in general is pretty sleasy and just generally ugly, they did develop a cool technology and freeDB is just a rip off of that technology. That's still not much of an excuse for acting like this though.

________________________

Re:Getting stuff for free

So while they didn't pay for the information, they did pay for the infrastructure.

Which (as you note) doesn't make this lawsuit any more legitimate; they're complaining that Roxio isn't using their infrastructure.

And they did develop the database for free; it was originally a GPLed server app that you could download (along with the complete database for use in local mirrors). Escient/Gracenote then bought it and closed it up.

As much as I dislike Amazon's one-click patent and so on, I must admit that they've done much better things with IMDB than Gracenote has with CDDB.

Come to think of it, doesn't this give us some reason to donate funds to freedb?

Yes indeed. There doesn't seem to be any donation info on freedb.org that I can find, though.

Re:Getting stuff for free

No, he's right... Sort of.

What they really mean is "Roxio is trying to get for free what other companies are paying *us* for (and we got for free in the first place)."

--
Too stupid to live.

The real issue - copyrighted databases

The real issue - is why are they allowed to copyright their database? It's just a collection of publicly available information. It is not a creative work. If this database weren't copyrighted they wouldn't be able to use the DMCA at all.

So an example of why this is insidious... the human genome is supposed to be free for mankind to use... but what do you want to be the database that holds the information about the entire sequence will be copyrighted by someone? And anyone who tries to provide a free version will be DMCA'd to death?

Collections of facts don't qualify as expression to me. Especially just a giant list of cds. Can I copyright my grocery list? How is that different? People will pay to access a database if it provides a worthwhile service. If there is an equivalent database being maintained by volunteers, there is no utility gained by paying the commercial enterprise. And especially when the cddb began as a community volunteer effort, the company that emerged to take it over has no grounds to complain when new volunteers emerge to replace the community service that had previously existed. There was obviously community interest in this before (leading to cddb) and there is still obviously community interest - if this company failed to realize that and based their business plans on the community just abandoning the project (with no particular reason to believe this to be the case) then they deserve the ultimate Darwinian punishment.

Hmm....

You know, this really irks me. They (Gracenote) posted the whole spec and everything you need to write a app that would read and write from the CDDB. I even had downloaded intending to code a player in VB that used it. Now, if that was patented technology, then why were he specs on the web for all to see??? Makes no sense to me! Also, they make it sound like the paid hundreds of monkeys to put cd's in their drives and type in thousands of entries! Those monkeys were us! We did all of the work, all they did was write the DB code and documented how to write a client. Did gracenote ever release their own product using cddb?? Not the last time I checked!

Also something else....

Why are they suing Roxio? They should be suing the Free DB folks if they are infringing on the patent. The reason their are suing Roxio is that if competing GPL'd software infringes on a trademark, who do you sue?? The webpage owners? The developers? The hosting company? There's no money in suing the developers. They have none, or it would be very hard to find everyone. Roxio is an easy target who has money. Also, Gracenote kind of reminds me of Apple in this situation. Suing everyone for no apparent reason after they shot themselves in the foot. Well, I dunno if Apple shot their foot, but they still like to sue or threaten everyone who has something or uses something that even looks like theirs.

Re:Freedb .. cddb .. etc

The key difference, though, is that not only do Gracenote and freedb work similarly, but also they rely on the same fundamental algorithm [freedb.org] for taking the contents table on the CD and generating the 64-bit unique disc IDs which are used as keys into their respective databases. Granted, the algorithm isn't exactly rocket science, but it looks like it was Gracenote who came up with it first.

(Now, if Gracenote had only patented the algorithm... :) )

my plan [gospelcom.net]

Re:Freedb .. cddb .. etc

Oops-- and, as someone pointed out [slashdot.org], it looks like they did. Why this should mean they want to go after Roxio about it, though, is beyond me.
my plan [gospelcom.net]

Roxio's response

Roxio has posted a (very brief) response [roxio.com] to the lawsuit.

M

my plan [gospelcom.net]

Re:hmm...

"let's sue gracenote for stealing the information that we have all given them to create their db in the first place... "
Ummm.. you GAVE them that information, they can do whatever they want with it. Sure it's mean and nasty, but that's the way to world works. We should have thought about it before giving it away.
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\ =\

Sueing the wrong company

In the version of its software released since the licensing agreement expired, Roxio directs users to an alternative music recognition database operated by an open-source group called Freedb.org, which Gracenote says illegally uses its database technology.

If they believe the database infringes then shouldn't they be suing the freedb.org people?


=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\ =\

You mean...

...you're upset because someone's trying to make a profit off of something you made without compensating you for it? Almost like... Napster?

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

ms

"There are 1,800 commercial licensees of ours who pay to access our database, including AOL, RealNetworks and MusicMatch," said Dave Marglin, general counsel for Berkeley, Calif.-based Gracenote. "Roxio is trying to get for free what other people pay for. It's our valuable intellectual property that's underlying all this."

If they win, I bet M$ tries to use this argument against linux..

CDDB was initially GPL

That said, it seems to me that this case hinges on CDDB proving that freedb have simply copied their database.

The CDDB database was originally released under the GNU General Public License. The FreeDB people originally seeded FreeDB with a snapshot of CDDB from back when it was under the GPL. Because there is no language in the GPL allowing an author to revoke it unilaterally, FreeDB is in the clear copyright-wise.

Of course, nothing you see on Slashdot is legal advice.

Gracenote has patented CDDB

The lawsuit claims that Roxio is infringing on Gracenote's patents

Any conforming implementation of the CDDB protocol will infringe Gracenote's patent [slashdot.org] on hashing a CD's table of contents. Look at U.S. Patent 6,061,680 [delphion.com] and foreign counterparts. (N.B.: Legalese 'record' != vinyl. 'Record' is short for 'phonorecord,' a copy of a sound recording.) This patent is on shaky ground, as it was filed in July 16, 1999, when a working CDDB system (i.e. prior art) was presumably already in wide public use.

Best line in the story

Roxio is trying to get for free what other people pay for....said Dave Marglin, general counsel for Berkeley, Calif.-based Gracenote

OK, there's several ways I could go here, so I'll just list them all and let you all decide:

1. Yeah! Shame on Roxio for having the business sense to use publicly available material to get an advantage over others! That's un-American!

2. Translation: Someone has discovered that our entire business is based on publicly available information that anyone with enough time and resources could obtain and organize. Our best hope to defuse this situation is to desperately attempt to associate this with Napster as much as possible.

3. Competition? What, me worry?

I had some interaction with the CDDB people...

...and detested them utterly.

I was wanting to write a Java client to their CDDB. Well, they made this impossible in MULTIPLE ways. First, in order to get a look at their API (just the documentation, not even the libraries!) I needed to sign a *16-page* document that enjoined me to do all sorts of ridiculous things like never switch to a competitor's product.

Now, their original interface, CDDB-1, was a simple and reasonable socket interface. Even though all the clients I'd seen were using their CDDB-1 API, they would not allow documentation for this out under any circumstances, instead forcing new users to use CDDB-2, a DCOM(!) interface.

When I asked them how I was supposed to use this DCOM interface from Java and my Linux Cobalt server, they said I should be using a professional server (which I took to mean Windows) to do my work. When I indicated that I wasn't going to migrate to a Windows server, could I please see the CDDB-1 documentation, they ceased to reply to me.

I was completely disgusted with them and can't imagine ever doing business with such people.