MiShare lets you swap files between iPods
The MiShare is a matchbox-sized $100 Linux appliance that interfaces between two iPods and allows you to transfer files back and forth between them. This'd be great for bands that want to share their work with people who show up at gigs, and for sharing your CC-licensed music with friends at school or work. It's pre-order only now, alas.
Link (via Gizmodo)
We want miShare to be both simple and powerful. Just attach two iPods, slide miShare's on-switch to music, video or photo, and press miShare's only button. You decide whether you copy the song or video that was last played through to its end, or a pre-defined photo folder. Give the miShare button a longer press (three seconds) and it will copy a collection of files. miShare uses the On-The-Go playlist for multiple songs—just create an On-The-Go playlist on the source iPod by selecting by song, artist, album, or even playlist.
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The main problem with this is that if the files get copied to the ipod database, they'll disappear when you sync up back to the itunes library. Alternately they could be copied as files to the disk, but then they can't be played on the ipod until you get home, import the files to itunes, and sync. It could do both, but that wastes disk space, and is still a pain in the ipod. This is the primary reason why ipods suck, and you should switch the open source firmware of rockbox if your ipod is compatible.
In fact, this has been the main stumbling block to my super-good idea for bands selling music at gigs (feel free to implement this idea if you want). I go to a gig, see a band I like, want the album. But really, I don't have any need nor space for the CD. I just want the songs on my portable jukebox (iRiver H340 running rockbox), and later on my PC. Imagine if the merch stall had a little box I could jack into, hand over some coin, and voila, I can listen to the album on the way home. The box need not be much bigger than a cassette tape - just needs a CPU, some flash to hold a small linux distro, some more flash to hold the mp3 of the albums, and a number of usb sockets (connected to a variety of different USB endings - mini-USB, and those horrible proprietary apple things). Plugging in a device auto-mounts it, copies the album, unmounts it, and flashes a light to indicate it's done. Bands get more distribution with less costs. The only thing stopping it being useful is the aforementioned stupid apple restrictions.
Oh well, back to dreaming...
[q]The main problem with this is that if the files get copied to the ipod database, they'll disappear when you sync up back to the itunes library.[/q]
Not if you're using a different library manager. Like Amarok.
I don't think the typical iPod owner would find it a good idea to buy a $100 device that allows you to swap music (in a cumbersome way, you have to create a playlist first) and does nothing else. I can see how it makes more sense in the band situation -- it's the band who bring the device, and they have a suitable playlist already prepared.
However, I'm not sure whether that would really be such a great idea. If I was at a gig and the band offered some goodies, but only for owners of iPods with the appropriate priprietary plug, I would be quite pissed off and never buy tickets for / media from them again.
On the other hand, pretty much every device with flash memory, be it a camera, a music player, or a simple memory stick, can exchange data via the USB mass storage protocol; either you plug it into a USB port directly, or it comes with a cheap adaptor cable. Gadgets for facilitating computer-less data exchange in this way have been available for ages; they're smaller and cheaper than the MiShare. Apparently iPods are somewhat crippled and can't join that party?
So, if a band offered the generic solution that is compatible with pretty much everything, plus the MiShare for iPod users, that would be totally OK. However, it would still be much, much easier to just hand out a download URL. They could print it on the tickets for the event and have the download up for, say, a week, starting with the gig. (Or maybe shortly after the gig, if they make a live recording available.)
Btw., Cory, why would someone want to share only CC-licensed music with the MiShare?
Ironically a device like this was the subject of an April Fools on Thinkgeek about 2 years ago under the name "iCopulate". And yeah, any other iPod handler apart from iTunes will give you the option to at least reimport your music from it if it's missing in some shape or form. I've seen Amarok do it and Winamp does it as well with the Ml_pod plugin. Don't know about Macs but it's more than possible.
Apple will probably break this in the next iPod firmware update it will enforce on us.
I am seriously looking at installing Rockbox and taking control of the device I paid for!
"If I was at a gig and the band offered some goodies, but only for owners of iPods with the appropriate priprietary plug, I would be quite pissed off and never buy tickets for / media from them again."
Woah! Pretty harsh on the hypothetical band there. They were only trying to spread a little hypothetical love.
Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of when I saw this little gem was Jennifer Connelly in "Requeim for a Dream"? Is that bad? :-)
I'd like to see the gadget that makes you think of Rosario Dawson in Clerks II :-)
(Btw., it's Requiem.)
"Btw., Cory, why would someone want to share only CC-licensed music with the MiShare?"
Because it's unethical, illegal and doesn't respect the wishes of the artist who hasn't CC-licensed his/her music to share/copy their music.
That's why.
This is a great idea, and one that (as usual) the open source community really led the way on. iPodLinux, a Linux ditro for ipods, has had a module which allows iPod to iPod copying through a firewire cable.
Of course, this commercial device is much more graceful, but I wonder how much its creation was helped by the innovations of open source iPod hackers.
Lastly, there are many artists who don't offer their music under a CC license (e.g. because they have a contract with a label that prevents them from doing so), but still wish that their fans share their music with their friends. Recently I attempted to release press photos under a CC-by license and was told that I can't do that, because no one in the business knows what a CC license is -- so when you see my pictures on my web site, you can see that you may remix and redistribute them, but if you see them in a magazine, you only get the standard copyright notice. Sometimes you just have to go to the source, an iTunes download won't always tell the whole story.
So if it's not against the wishes of the artist to share the file (of course, that's not always the case, not by far), and it's not illegal (it never is illegal in the case of a simple MP3 - no DRM), it can hardly be unethical.
Nex, what are you talking about? Copying an mp3 is copying, period. That's what copyright means -- the right to copy. "Owning" the file is irrelevant; you have to own the copyright or have permission (or a fair use defense) in order to copy it legally, no matter whose devices are involved. The wishes of the artist are also irrelevant unless the artist is also the copyright holder.
But yes, ethics are indeed a separate issue.
Umm, couldn't a band just use a laptop and a bunch of assorted cables (they're not gonna get far touring without a guy who has a box full of assorted cables for plugging random things together) to connect ANY storage device their fans may have?
regarding to the 1st post of selling mp3-albums on concerts:
this will 100% not work. at the end of a concert (this is when about 80% of the sales happen) you have hundreds of sweating customers blocking the merch booth and maybe 10-15 seconds per person to satisfy them.
you surely will agree that handing out a physical copy of a cd is done much faster than the process of clearing up with fans
what the cost are,
which player model will work,
how it will work,
what they can do with their copy,
how the process is done,
who controls it,
how long it will take,
let alone the situations the whole SNAFUs - and it will. I work at concerts and I know, that everything that needs more than five words to sell it (put it on, drink from it, listen to it) is not worth selling it. why not selling 128 mbyte SD cards?
duskiboy (xcuse my bad english)
"This'd be great for bands that want to share their work with people who show up at gigs, and for sharing your CC-licensed music with friends at school or work."
Yeah it'd also be great for just sharing whatever the hell you like, regardless.
Vik: There are third-party applications (like Senuti) that work very well for copying music from the iPod's database to your computer. It's a great way of restoring your data after a crash.
Nex: It is indeed illegal to copy a copyrighted MP3 from a device owned by one person to a device owned by another. If you're saying "Hey, listen to this" while you're standing right there, and delete the file immediately afterward, nobody is likely to care. But if you leave a copy of a copyrighted MP3 on your buddy's iPod or computer when you leave, then you've broken a law that existed long before the DMCA.
Copying it from a device you own to another device you own may be illegal, in some hair-splitting sense, but nobody will ever be prosecuted for it — that's how iPods work normally.
Dan Wineman (#12) and Jere7my (#16): Thanks for pointing this out to me. Where I come from, it is legal to make a few copies of, say, a CD for friends, as long as it is not for commercial gain (you may not charge money, not even for the blank media) and strictly private. There's a fee included in the price of blank media to compensate for private copying. I'd always assumed that the situation was the same in the US; isn't this what the Audio Home Recording Act is all about?
If not, I would be interested to know what the AHRA is actually good for. Also, you're allowed to record stuff from TV and radio to tape/CD-R/DVD-R, right? The result would be a copy of a copyrighted work ... aren't you allowed to pass that on to a colleague? Is that significantly different from buying a CD and lending a copy to that friend of yours who is so unreliable that you don't want him to borrow originals?
This is strictly about the legal situation ... as Dan said, ethics are something else entirely. That is, it makes a difference whether a certain act is never prosecuted in practice, or whether there is a law that says it never can be prosecuted.
Nex: As I understand it, it's legal to use writable media to make a backup of copyrighted material, for your own personal use, but passing them on to others is a no-no in the US.
The legal decisions on all this are kind of a rats' nest, but I think you'd be fine lending a VHS copy of a show to your colleague, but in trouble if you kept your own VHS copy and gave him or her a duplicate (where "trouble" = "nothing will happen to you, but it's technically illegal"). If you end up with two copies in the possession of two people, it's illegal (again, as I understand it). Showing your copy to a roomful of people might get you into trouble for a different reason (it might be a "public performance") — though there are extensions to fair use for educational purposes.
(If the Betamax suit had gone the other way, even making backups and time-shifting might be illegal today — and of course the DMCA has made it illegal to back up anything with DRM.)
I don't really understand the justification of the surcharge on blank media, unless it's to compensate the media companies for lost revenues due to illegal copying. Certainly it didn't mean to imply that copying CDs for your buddies is legal. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the surcharge is no longer applied to most newer blank media (like DVD-Rs), and was only ever applied to so-called "music" CD-Rs, which were really just regular CD-Rs that cost more (and perhaps worked in those stereo component CD burners?).
Duskiboy: I see your point, but most gigs I go to are a lot smaller than you describe, and the audience aren't generally in as much of a hurry. A small flash drive would certainly work, but would cost more than producing a CD, and you can't listen to it on the way home. One of the rationales for this is to lower production costs for small bands. 100Megs should only take a few seconds to copy over usb2.0, and a small flyer/brochure explaining technical details and legalities would cut down time too. The other obvious alternative is a 'download ticket' with a URL and code, but this costs both the band and the consumer money for bandwidth (I like in the backwaters of Australia where the internets are still expensive). And you can't listen to it on the bus home.
One more vowel and Nintendo would be up their asses.
That's a pretty damn intuitive idea, though. Well done.
port to port!
Vik said:
The main problem with this is that if the files get copied to the ipod database, they'll disappear when you sync up back to the itunes library.
This is only true if the user in question has their ipod set to automatically sync the itunes library. That may be the default, but most people I know choose the "manually manage music" option so they can do things like manage more than one ipod on the same computer or copy files to their ipod from more than one computer. The latter case is what people will be doing here, and they'd need to change their options to support it if they haven't done so already.
Of course, if your solution is "don't use an ipod," then this thread isn't very useful to you -- it's obviously about an ipod-specific accessory. Funny how that works.
Do you also comment on threads about vinyl-only releases, making sure everyone knows they are incompatible with your car's CD player?
Your idea of a simple device which can achieve this same result across multiple mp3 player platforms is admirable in theory, but inherently unworkable unless some sort of unified mp3 player standard comes into broad use. Until then, the device would need to use a myriad of potential hookups, work with a broad array of formatting and file management solutions, and somehow still be compact, simpler to use, and more resilient than a laptop with a shoebox full of cables and adaptors.
It's not an open platform, but the ipod is the closest we have to this standard right now. Maybe that will change at some point, but we're not there yet.
))<>((
(http://www.meandyoumovie.com/ , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQoJo81lujk)
Anyways, many people think that the fee does impy the legality of private copying, because an action that is illegal and never should be performed in the first place cannot be taxed. That would be like having a shoplifting tax on backpacks.
So, it seems like the only thing we know for sure is that everywhere it's a legal rat's nest with large grey areas :-/