New Music Player to Spread Files Wirelessly

PontifexPrimus writes "A new P2P / media player project could allow mobile music devices to automatically transfer media files from other players running the same software. While there seems to be a certain risk (mislabeling files, creating intentionally corrupt songs) there also seems to be a huge potential to this idea (get on the subway to work and when you arrive there your available music has doubled). Of course, this also is a nightmarish scenario for the RIAA-like organizations, especially since such swapping occurs without active user participation, in a drive-by way."

double entendre

[User 956]

And by "Spread Files Wirelessly", they mean viruses wirelessly.

Eastern Standard Tribe

[DoorFrame]

This sounds like an element from the plot of Cory Doctrow's Eastern Standard Tribe [craphound.com] where all users of a highway system will be able to access each others music as long as they're on the same road at the same time, a real information superhighway.

if they were ubiquitous

[victorvodka]

If these things were widespread and of sufficient density, they could form their own peer-to-peer grid networks capable of sending any sort of information, untraceably. It would be its own internet, the way the internet was first envisioned. Information would finally be completely free. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Time Warner/RIAA/NSA!

Who really thinks this is a great idea?

[ItMustBeEsoteric]

Illegal content? Copyright infringement? All "without user participation," but I would say that since people can download from you on P2P apps, without active participation, you could draw a precedent from that to apply to this: having shared, copyrighted music on a device that allows (forces?) others to download it simply by being in your vicinity is clearly a violation.

Of course, the second this moves from simply audio to pictures and/or video, you could wind up with other illegal content (i.e. child porn) on your player, just by walking by someone with a similiar device who so-happens to be a pervert.

Great idea here, people.

strong free speech implications

[argoff]

This just proves the point that it all comes down to a battle between copyrights and free speech rights. After all this technology could just as easially be used to dissemate political information. At a fundamental level, there is no inherent difference between free speech content and copyright content.

Re:double entendre

[TeacherOfHeroes]

This could be a really neat way to model how real human viruses spread through casual contact. Create a file that reports back to a central tracking station and watch it go.

If its built into an mp3 phone you could even track its location, since the CDC already wants your cell phone number [slashdot.org] and cell phones are now being used to track you [slashdot.org]

opens up a whole new arena for spammers

[mrycar]

Make Millions of dollars sharing information. Call 1-800-sir-spama to get into this multi-level advertising oppostunity.

Do you want to get paid to attend parties, movies, and rock concerts? Maybe you are into exercise? How about making money on your way to work? If you sign up today, those hours of congested traffic and annoying public transportation experience start making you money.

All you need to do is download our "music" everyday from our service onto your AD-pod and it will do the rest. It will share all of the its content with anyone who passes by, making you money in return.

Our technology works by attaching ads to snippets of popular music and sharing those ads with those around you. Our ads give full credit to the artists and records label and get our messgaes out to the masses.

Sign up today

Wireless Usenet

[hey]

I think it would be cool if it was a wireless Usenet. Usenet uses a flood algorithm. In the olde days you could sent mail thru it.

Remote Mount?

[nurb432]

If you live in an area that has free wireless, i would imagine you could mount your drive at home, and have virtually unlmited space on your PDA.

They are gonna get sued.

[sbaker]

There is a good argument for P2P systems in general in that there are MANY uses for them other than stealing music - and yet many P2P systems have been taken down by hoards of ravening *AA lawyers. But it's quite a bit harder to come up with ways in which this device could be used legally. It's a music player - so people aren't likely to be using it for copying photos they've taken or software they've written - such as is the case with P2P on the Internet. How many people do you think you'll just naturally happen to bump into who:

a) Have a compatible player...and...
b) Have OpenSourced music on offer...and...
c) Actually want to recommend it to you.

I would be quite utterly amazed if I got one interesting and legal track in a year of use.

Furthermore, if the owners of these machines don't actively send the files, it's likely that there is a good case for suing the manufacturers for causing copyrights to be breached.

They are gonna get their asses sued unless they weigh this thing down with so much in the way of DRM that it'll be useless in practice.

The article links to the manufacturer says that this is for sending "Recommendations" - so perhaps it is intended that one only ships a short recommendation in the form of a brief clip.

Another possibility is that you'd have to be signed up to a music service based on the 'subscription' model...in that case, this is music you could just have easily downloaded for yourself - so the 'recommendation' thing would really be the only reason to use it.

Ad Hoc Networks

[kalel666]

Imagine some kind and generous soul buying these, and then leaving them in public places. Subway stations, parks, coffee houses, etc. Presuming you could hide them or otherwise make them conspicuous, you could have a repository of music from anyone nearby. Over time it would update and grow, reflecting a gestalt of what music is popular in that particular neighborhood/location. Would be kind of cool, actually.

Re:No Thanks..

[Kadin2048]

Well the player -- at least an iPod-style one -- ought to have a pretty good idea of your tastes, since the file metadata contains playcount, rating (one to five stars) and genre. Assuming you actually use the rating feature and set the genre correctly, I think it would be pretty straightforward to only retrieve music that's somewhat similar to what you enjoy.

Here's what I'd want on such a player: 25% of the space would just be for my music, and the other 75% would be a cache of music taken from other players, constantly refreshed whenever it "talked" to a player whose owner had tastes similar to mine. When listening to music I'd have the option to move it into my permanent collection, dump it immediately, or do nothing. Music would be slowly expired from the public portion of the player, oldest first, as it got full. That way you wouldn't get it clogged up with music that might not be your style anymore.

Of course if you shared a music player with anyone else, it would probably get very confused.

I think you're all a little

[Anonymous Coward]

too worried about possible problems. For all we know it may be possible to write little script bots which only accept predefined artists or types of media files. For example, if the hard drives were big enough, it could be possible to update your 'want' list to a season of Scrubs. In that case, on your way home from work you may just stumble across some people which combined have all the eps you want. OR, you might be on the lookout for a certain album, can't find it in the shops, ebay, emule, or as a torrent, and just happen to pick it up as that hot chick whizzes past you in the huge shopping complex in the city. Who knows, you might even be able to send and receive a digital e-card at the same time.

If the above is possible, W00t!!

Re:Push vs pull

[legirons]

"Seriously...would YOU allow your hardware to accept random files from random people on the street?"

Absolutely -- it was a central feature of Konspire2B, which I still think is one of the most elegant/efficient transportion methods for various types of data. Kind of like a bittorrent/TV-station mix, where the users help out with bandwidth. Or like multicast except that it actually works on the internet.

Use wireless aswell as the internet for connections, and it becomes even more robust, with better availability, bandwidth, etc. That will be useful with video blogs, web and software (subscribe to this channel for wiki video news, software updates or slashdot stories from someone who's plugged-into a landline more recently than you, but check the sender's signature) as well as the obvious copyright-infringing uses. So maybe it has elements of a mesh network too. Some useful privacy aspects too (no ISP involved)

As you say, you need to be sure that your computer can handle malformed files safely (whether video, image, html, etc) and the client needs to be provably secure.

So software that can play an MPEG (etc.) without getting a virus is a prerequisite for systems like this. I think such software is probably needed anyway, even if you don't accept content from "unknown" sources.