iLounge

1

The questionnaire is too long…over 50 Qs (if you count the ones requiring multiple answers).

Posted by WilliamC in Philippines on March 7, 2005 at 10:02 AM (PST)

2

I could personally not care less that Gracenote knows what CDs I load into my PC.  Some people are a little too paranoid.

Posted by pickme on March 7, 2005 at 10:05 AM (PST)

3

Let companies get away with spying on you without telling you? Lets’ see where THAT heads…

But as long as people are informed, and as long as GN is telling the truth about not KEEPING most of the info, I don’t mind, personally.

Posted by Nagromme on March 7, 2005 at 10:18 AM (PST)

4

What do you mean “Spying” - Let’s not forget that Grace note is providing us a service, and we are the ones who initiate this anonymous connection .  I beleive you can turn this off in iTunes if you are not interested in it, but then you’d have to type all the info in yourself, so let’s see how long that lasts.

If Gracenote wants to keep statistical info on what people are listening to in exchange for this very valuable service, so what.  What’s so personal, or invasive about someone knowing what kind of music I listen to—I listen to just about anything but Country Music - Country sucks!

There, I’ve outted myself.  Ooo, I feel so naked…..

Posted by pickme on March 7, 2005 at 11:42 AM (PST)

5

I don’t care if anybody knows what CD’s I put in my computer, either, but what bothers me is that they were less than clearly open about it and event though THIS data is not information I care if anyone knows, who knows what all else may be leaving your computer without your knowledge, too?

Posted by jinzo-ningen on March 7, 2005 at 1:56 PM (PST)

6

I think that this abuse can be used to our advantage. you want to effect the music industry, just use gracenote on artist you like. they’ll (maybe) get the message.

Posted by tumblingwall in u.s. on March 7, 2005 at 2:16 PM (PST)

7

Gracenote is an evil company.  They basically built their company out of theft - they took the community created CDDB database and made it proprietary.  At one point, the entire database was freely available via FTP, but Gracenote hid the information away and started charging developers for access to it.

Do a little research of Gracenote, then decide if you care that they are monitoring your CD ripping activities.

http://news.com.com/Access+denied+A+copyright+battle/2009-1023_3-258109.html
http://www.cam.org/~cwatson/freedb/freedb_history.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/cddb
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/wiki.pl?GeneralFAQ

Posted by foopod on March 7, 2005 at 7:28 PM (PST)

8

Foopoo, just curious, do you still use their services in iTunes?
-dj

Posted by djfeld01 on March 8, 2005 at 6:17 AM (PST)

9

I don’t use iTunes, so no, I don’t use Gracenote’s service.  Any application that I use to rip CDs (primarily EAC) supports FreeDB.

Posted by foopod on March 8, 2005 at 8:59 AM (PST)

10

Foopod is right - dodginess and shady ethics is built into the corporate DNA of GraceNote since Day 1. If Apple had any balls at all or wanted to support open systems it would use FreeDB instead of Gracenote’s proprietary system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracenote
CDDB was invented by Ti Kan and Steve Sherf. The source code was released under the GNU General Public License, and thus many people submitted CD information believing that the contributions, too, would remain freely available to others. Later, however, the project was sold and the license conditions were changed to include certain terms that have threatened many programmers in a way they couldn’t accept: If you want to access CDDB, you are not allowed to access any other CDDB-like database (such as FreeDB)

In 2002, Gracenote sued its former licensee, Musicmatch, for breach of contract and patent violations. Musicmatch filed a counter-suit against Gracenote. The Northern District Court in California ruled on August 26, 2004 in favor of Musicmatch. The ruling found that Musicmatch’s CDDB replacement service does not violate Gracenote’s patents. The court also found significant evidence that Gracenote may have obtained its patents fraudulently.

Posted by Demosthenes on March 8, 2005 at 12:56 PM (PST)