Ian C Rogers is one of the masterminds behind yahoo's new file-sharing-music-drm-thing-a-ma-bob. He has this Blog Entry where:

I thought I'd give you (friends, family, fellow geeks) the real story, human to human, on why you should (or shouldn't) use the new Yahoo! Music Engine.

Except, that it reads like marketing fluff. It is by all means possible that he is just excited about a new product launch. And he does have quite the reputation, in fact, he can't stop talking about it...

FWIW, my name is Ian Rogers. I used to work with Beastie Boys, for their record label Grand Royal, at Nullsoft (where Justin and Tom made Winamp, SHOUTcast, and Gnutella), and most recently had a very small company called Mediacode with my main man Rob Lord (who started IUMA and brought Nullsoft up with Justin).We sold Mediacode to Yahoo! in Dec 2003 and Y! has had us in a cave ever since building the Yahoo! Music Engine and some other stuff we can't tell you about yet.

But down to the reason you're reading this. I'm asking you to ditch Windows Media Player (aka WiMP, sorry John, Mark), Winamp (pour out a little liquor), iTunes (sorry Chris and Steve G), MusicMatch (apologies to my new brothers and sisters), Rhapsody (you were my first for-pay love, ya tramp), and Napster (THROW ANOTHER STACK OF BENJAMINS ON THE FIRE!), and use Yahoo! Music Engine instead. (If you're using Foobar2000, keep on, brother man, I ain't going to war with y'all purists.)

Right okay okay okay. You're beating me over the head with your Old School Hip Street Credibility. The rest of it is basically market-droid-speak.

This blog entry seems to be nothing but advertising. Maybe there is nothing wrong with that, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth. It's like hearing about people who are paid to loudly discuss a product or people paid to pump up a product in chat rooms and web forums.

Maybe I'll sort out my thoughts about this later. But for now.. Ugh. Time for the mouthwash.

BoingBoing got to it first. (This is not surprising. They basically either are, or know in as in face-to-face-know, many EFF, and Creative Commons, and probably Downhill Battle heavies)

BlogTorrent is hella cool. If you have a PHP enabled webserver, which isn't too hard to find, or make happen (especially if you Got Root, apt-get install php4) just download and install, and bam. Distributed filesharing HOOOOO!

I haven't had a chance to really browse the code-base to see how reasonable it is. Lets face it, large swathes of PHP code out there is an an abomination, and I have written a few doozies myself. But maybe I'll get a chance to take a peek, and report back.

The cool thing about BlogTorrent is that it also proves a GUI front end for windows users. They have plans to make a mac version go. And someone out there will make a Linux version I'm sure.

Enough already, what does it do?

Just click on upload, and uploading a file to the tracker is as easy as that. Clickity Click Barba Trick! Downloading is even easier. There is of course, .torrents available, but there is also an easy download for the torrent-challenged-unwashed-proletariat-masses.

It isn't the fastest script in the world, but it is workable. The biggest problem is that installing it isn't as easy as one might think. I tried just installing it and going, but ran into problems when trying to execute the windows installer portion of the thing. This could be caused by a separate bandwidth issue I was running into earlier.

This is just so freaking hella-cool. This is open source at its finest. A bunch of scripts in one open source language (Bit Torrent / Python, right?) installed via an open source installer (NSIS), that connects to an open source webserver (apache, but really, it doesn't have to be), with another open source language helping the serving (php). Standing on the shoulders of a giant, on the shoulders of a giant, on the shoulders ... (An infinite regress of acrobatic behemoths!)

It would be cool to have semi-open sharing communities, that is, groups of artists et. all having their work available on a BlogTorrent. The collaborative power is really quite something. And of course, who says it all has to be on the level...

I have an example site up for all-ya-all. Here it is. Don't horribly abuse it.

(On a different note: I can't spell "seperate", but I can spell "proletariat")

Here is the next piece of Ammunition in the copyright-info-war. Except this piece of filesharing goodness goes beyond the Gnutella concept, and attempts to Protect your Privacy using some interesting Ant inspired A Life Goodness.

From a post on Orkut.....Awhile ago, in the WarDriving Thread, Ian had asked me:I'm interested. If (copyright violation is) not theft, what do you call Copyright violation?To which, the only answer is: Copyright violation.Trying to call it theft is a petty attempt to reframe the debate. Is copyright violation morally/ethically wrong? Yes. Is it theft? Hell no.As mentioned on the war-driving thread, in order for something to be theft, you have to deprive someone of an item. A classic argument is that by copying a work, you deprive the artist of the profits they would have made if you purchased that work. The real question is, would that artist have really made that money? I don't know the numbers, but my guess is that 60%-80% of the time, the answer would be no. (I can only go on personal experience, but I have heard, plenty of times, from plenty of friends, the phrase "I liked it so much, I bought the Album")The debate about P2P, File Sharing, and Copyright violation is not about protecting the rights of artists, it is about protecting the means of distribution. If it was really about protecting the artists, we would hear more about the over-seas CD duplication houses, where REAL piracy is going on. (These guys will copy an entire CD, and turn around and sell it)All one has to do is look at what kind of laws the Recording and Movie Industries are trying to get enacted.In Canada, we pay a levy (It's like a tax, but instead of paying for -- you know, important stuff, like health care and our roads, it goes straight to a business) on every blank tape, CD, and DVD. So wait a second, you used 10 CD's to backup your important data on your Hard-Drive? Some of your money for those blank CD's went to the CPCC (Canadian Private Copying Collective) Apparently, of the $56 million dollars or so that we have paid into this Borglike entity, only $6 Million have gone to actual Artists.You want to bet how much of that went to Celine fucking dion or Randy fucking bachman?

And south of the border... According to Wired News "A draft bill recently circulated among members of the House judiciary committee would make it much easier for the Justice Department to pursue criminal prosecutions against file sharers by lowering the burden of proof. The bill, obtained Thursday by Wired News, also would seek penalties of fines and prison time of up to ten years for file sharing."Does this seem reasonable to you? If I steal 10 movies from the blockbuster, would they put me away for 10 years? I know we aren't American, but bear with me, their policies are important to our own politics."Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah, you might recognize the name (parens mine)) said the operators of P2P networks are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography. With these 'human shields,' the P2P companies are trying to ransom the entertainment industries into accepting their networks as a distribution channel and source of revenue."Does this even sound reasonable? I mean COME ON. Don't get fooled. This is not about protecting the rights of the artists. This is about protecting the monopoly of the distributors.So in short, No, it's not theft, and no, downloading something from Kazaa will NOT finance al-Quida .All one has to do is read the antics of the RIAA and the MPAA, and you'll see what is going on. Hey, have you watched a movie recently? You know, with the whiny set designer talking about how piracy is putting him out of a job. Give me a break. This from an industry that just a few years ago was rocked with scandals, about movies that rake in millions and millions of dollars, but apparently, made no money.I could go on and on. Suffice to say, I am sick and tired of getting bent over, while the big media companies don't even spit, let alone use Vaseline. So when my friends come over, I encourage them to make use of their legal right to make a copy for personal use. Who said Disobedience had to be Civil?