Squinted.net opened

A new Finnish service called squinted.net has just been opened for any and all Creative Commons or Public Domain -licensed music and media. Very good, and all the best to them! There's not much content, but they have teamed up with Loca Records, so something might be happening there...

However, in order for something like that to be useful (because whatever you may think of the record companies, they do weed out a lot of crap), some sort of preferences/recommendation system might be needed. For example, personal, public, top-10 lists, which one could subscribe to using RSS or browse on the web... People get a lot of music based on recommendations from a trusted friend (or other source), simply because searching through all the available music is impossible. You could spend all your life browsing through the iTunes music library, and not find your favourite music...

(From a thread from net.nyt which contained a bunch of interesting links, though the discussion is pretty much hashing the same old issues that have been heard many times.)

Update: There's a wonderful article on How Copyright Could Be Killing the Culture in the Globe and the Mail

It's enough of a legal rigmarole to make underfunded filmmakers simply avoid using archival clips altogether or to remove footage that they shot themselves that might include someone singing a popular hit or even Happy Birthday to You (a copyrighted song).

It also means that films like Eyes on the Prize, made in a less restrictive era of copyright rules, can simply fade away if the task of renewing copyrights becomes too difficult or costly.

These are exactly the reasons why things like Creative Commons are so important, and why the copyright terms should be shortened to something sane, say 50 years.



Comments

I hope they get to do something along the lines of mikseri.net which is a very popular Teosto-free music source. However the biggest difference with Mikseri.net is their lack of (or on the contrary too cautious) understanding of copyrights.

They allow individuals to download music for their own use from the website but do not allow it to be distributed freely to enable more people to listen to good music - now where's the point in that? I e-mailed them about CC licences, but they never got back to me.

I hope people begin using Squinted with the same passion, but unfortunately Mikseri.net is already very popular and the amount of traffic helps a lot of newborn artists surface.

--Antti, 18-Jan-2005

I think competition is a good thing...

(BTW, I modified your comment to have a direct URL to mikseri.net, so people can find it easier.)

--JanneJalkanen, 18-Jan-2005

Competition is definitely a good thing in this area of culture. Somebody ought to teach Teosto about these things as well, I think they're just pawns in the big game.

Ja kiitos :)

--Antti, 18-Jan-2005


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