Topic: aTagger cease and desist (Read 24474 times)

@l@n · « **on:** February 27, 2006, 06:38:12 pm »

I received the following email today. Needless to say I won't be continuing development of aTagger.

Later... @l@n

Quote

Alan,

It appears that your product, aTagger, is using copyrighted information from the All Media Guide database. While we appreciate the fact that you like our data, you are infringing on our copyright by scrapping this data without the proper license. While we would not like to take further action, I must request that you cease and desist from using AMG data within your product or apply (and pay) for a license to use it in such a way. Please respond with your plan of action before March 15th, 2006.

Thanks,
Chris

Chris McCleary

Corporate Counsel

Direct: (734) 887-8117
Fax: (734) 827-2491

1168 Oak Valley Dr.
Ann Arbor, MI 48108

allmediaguide.com

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #1 on:** February 27, 2006, 06:52:08 pm »

datdude · « **Reply #2 on:** February 27, 2006, 08:59:16 pm »

Quote from: LisaRCT on February 27, 2006, 08:29:19 pm

sorry @l@n, it was a wonderful plugin, and your work is greatly appreciated.

Yes Allan, thanks a bunch

R.I.P. aTagger

LonWar · « **Reply #3 on:** February 28, 2006, 12:04:26 pm »

Quote from: datdude on February 27, 2006, 08:59:16 pm

Yes Allan, thanks a bunch

R.I.P. aTagger

All of your HARD work was and Is GREATLY appreciated....

KingSparta · « **Reply #4 on:** February 28, 2006, 12:52:52 pm »

I would respond with your plan of action before March 15th, 2006.

I figured this would happen sooner or later thats why I did not continue to work on it my self.

jgreen · « **Reply #5 on:** February 28, 2006, 01:42:08 pm »

Like Kingo says, you should write this guy and assure him that you have no intention of continuing development or encouraging use, barring an express license. Clearly you nor anyone had any idea this would be viewed by AMG as infringement. These guys sound more or less reasonable, and I don't think they're out to stir up trouble with their most loyal members.

Along that line, you might just ask him what's involved in getting a license. You're delivering eyeballs here, which has value to them, presumably. He says "pay" for a license, but what does that mean? You've shown so much ingenuity with your plugin, would AMG be interested in feeding ads through it? This hassle-filled episode just might turn out to be your opportunity to take it all to the next level.

LonWar · « **Reply #6 on:** February 28, 2006, 02:12:57 pm »

I would pay a fee for this....

marko · « **Reply #7 on:** February 28, 2006, 02:33:19 pm »

Quote from: imjustagamer on February 28, 2006, 02:12:57 pm

I would pay a fee for this....

ditto.

jreen and ijag:
This had been my very first thought on hearing the news too.
How much for a liscence?
and
Could we as users, raise that much?

fwiw. I would rather pay than receive adverts.

Deivit · « **Reply #8 on:** February 28, 2006, 02:58:11 pm »

Count me in too

LonWar · « **Reply #9 on:** February 28, 2006, 04:49:16 pm »

Quote from: marko on February 28, 2006, 02:33:19 pm

ditto.

jreen and ijag:
This had been my very first thought on hearing the news too.
How much for a liscence?
and
Could we as users, raise that much?

fwiw. I would rather pay than receive adverts.

I did a quick search and can not find any info on there FAQ... Maybe Alan will read this and ask AMG....
Another thing I was thinking was to modify atagger to grab the info from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
They seem to have GREAT info....

KingSparta · « **Reply #10 on:** February 28, 2006, 05:46:54 pm »

I contacted AMG before, i think it was like $3,000 or $5,000 a month to use there data.

Thats when I found out they were looking for people using there data.

That was why they changed there site in the first place.

LonWar · « **Reply #11 on:** February 28, 2006, 08:14:10 pm »

Quote from: KingSparta on February 28, 2006, 05:46:54 pm

I contacted AMG before, i think it was like $3,000 or $5,000 a month to use there data.

Alrighty then..... I can learn to grab data manually.

I wonder if you can modify it to get info from the wiki.....

datdude · « **Reply #12 on:** March 01, 2006, 12:59:05 am »

Quote from: imjustagamer on February 28, 2006, 08:14:10 pm

Alrighty then..... I can learn to grab data manually.

I wonder if you can modify it to get info from the wiki.....

Yeah they are only in it for the huge deals and don't care about the actual music lovers, other than trying to lead us in with their flashy whizzy woos. Their site was much better before the change, alot easier to use and a few features that went away.

DJ_Hazelwood · « **Reply #13 on:** March 01, 2006, 01:42:23 am »

@l@n, sorry to hear that

iCamp · « **Reply #14 on:** March 01, 2006, 08:58:58 pm »

Damn. aTagger is by far my favorite music tool. I'm going to miss your work @l@n.

I really like the idea of scraping the data from wiki resources. That's free (as info should be) and will not have any legal issues. Please consider the wiki option before giving up.

@l@n · « **Reply #15 on:** March 02, 2006, 04:05:29 pm »

How are you guys looking up album data on wikipedia? Is it in any "constant" format that could be programatically parsed?

Thanks... @l@n

LonWar · « **Reply #16 on:** March 02, 2006, 08:55:21 pm »

I'm pretty sure there is.... THere are a few plugins that if you enter a band, it opens wiki on that page.... Works for albums as well...

I'm no programmer, so I am not sure what it is that you would need,

datdude · « **Reply #17 on:** March 02, 2006, 10:27:54 pm »

basically something that is consistent every time like 'album:' if every time that shows up on a static page, the parser would search for that string and would then take the info following that and consider it the name of the album. However if this does not appear all the time or 'album:' appears and actually is not the album name following it but something else completely different, then you can get into problems.

The problem with wikipedia is that I think album pages are listed differently based upon who created it. I don't think it is easy to know which pages are consdered album pages and which are not. Us human beings can figure it out by browsing it over, but a machine would be much harder

I'm sure there is an algorithm out there that could figure this out, but would take a lot more than atagger which was tuned exactly for amg whichis very consistent in it's page layouts.

@l@n, does that sound about right?

rebootjac · « **Reply #18 on:** March 03, 2006, 01:41:24 am »

hmm.. I'm saddened by that letter you received. I'm a pretty newcomer to the world that is mc but I'm no stranger to your wonderful plugin. Predominantly, the styles scraping was very useful! However, don't give up hope as there are plenty of other resources to grab data from. What about using something like www.freedb.org or www.discogs.com? My reasoning is that freedb is well free and is used by lots of programs. I also believe that freedb could get you that consistent data format you need for your plugin.

Discogs would be a great alternative on the other hand to amg because while it does need a license to use their data (I think) it would probably be cheaper and more easier to scrape due to how discogs uses xml for its format (pretty sure)

So, as some famous person first coined it.. there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Hope it helps

schmoose · « **Reply #19 on:** March 03, 2006, 02:09:05 am »

since it's impossible to get the same sort of structure and numerous categories of info (styles, moods, born/formed, etc.) that AMG provides, what if the plugin just grabbed the artist page and album page. if more than one match is found, the user can preview and choose the correct one. I always preferred the much more informative biographies on wikipedia than on AMG anyway.

iCamp · « **Reply #20 on:** March 04, 2006, 11:10:19 am »

Based upon a how static the info is it looks like http://www.discogs.com might be the best bet. Wiki's genres are all screwed up anyway. Disogs generes are more in line with what you find at AMG.

KingSparta · « **Reply #21 on:** March 04, 2006, 12:15:23 pm »

Quote

might be the best

Yes maybe, the off the wall DJ's pages kind of suck however (not much info)

Craig · « **Reply #22 on:** March 04, 2006, 01:18:40 pm »

Quote from: @l@n on February 27, 2006, 06:38:12 pm

you are infringing on our copyright by scrapping this data without the proper license.

Can't you get them on a technicality? you're scraping the data not scrapping it

Craig

GHammer · « **Reply #23 on:** March 04, 2006, 01:23:37 pm »

Quote from: Craig on March 04, 2006, 01:18:40 pm

Can't you get them on a technicality? you're scraping the data not scrapping it

Craig

I'm sure they'd be much more attentive to detail in the court filings...

The GodFather had the same thing from them. He left the structure in place and users write plugins for this or that. I've had no problem as I still a single user and TGF shows the site in its viewer while running the scripts.

Shelly · « **Reply #24 on:** March 04, 2006, 09:30:48 pm »

This is a huge letdown for us end-users and for you, after all the time and energy you've invested. This really makes me angry, as it's not as though you're competing with an application offered by AMG. I'd certainly be willing to pay a small monthly fee to them for grabbing rights. Maybe, it's worth a try to negotiate something realistic.

KingSparta · « **Reply #25 on:** March 05, 2006, 03:36:52 am »

Quote

Maybe, it's worth a try to negotiate something realistic.

$3,000 Is realistic to them

Tab · « **Reply #26 on:** March 13, 2006, 08:28:08 pm »

Hi

Is it possible to write a series of data grabs for several formats, either all from one source or covering several different sites?

Tab

Nolonemo · « **Reply #27 on:** April 19, 2006, 06:32:20 pm »

Quote from: Shelly on March 04, 2006, 09:30:48 pm

This is a huge letdown for us end-users and for you, after all the time and energy you've invested. This really makes me angry, as it's not as though you're competing with an application offered by AMG. I'd certainly be willing to pay a small monthly fee to them for grabbing rights. Maybe, it's worth a try to negotiate something realistic.

I see AMG's point. Before I discovered atagger, I was getting the bios and reviews for my tags by going to the site, searching the artist and finding the album and cutting and pasting. So, from my actions, AMG was getting site hits (more hits = more they can charge advertisers). My switching over to atagger cost them money.

Even so, it's a pity, atagger was my favorite plugin....

vbclown · « **Reply #28 on:** April 30, 2006, 04:42:01 pm »

Well I don't have anything to do with AMG, but did a fair amount of business with them quite a while ago (over 10 years). I also ran one of their largest competitors back in the day.

I can tell you that the creators of AMG are first and foremost music lovers, who are in the business more for the access to great music that they enjoy, than to make a buck. That being said, they do have a right to be paid for their hard work, and they have gone through one or more corporate owners in the past several years, that are certainly more financially focused. (last I heard, they were owned by Alliance Entertainment, a large music distributor).

This plug-in did make their data less valuable to their corporate clients. Why would an on-line music retailer pay AMG $1000's to license this data, if the stores customers can already get access to all the data for free.

However, I'd say that your plug-in DOES make their data more valuable, in that it gives end-users access to their data in a way that's usefull to the end-users. In-short, AMG or one of it's business partners should buy your plug-in and sell it with a reasonably priced data subscription.

I presume you've already replied to them and told them that you don't intend to infringe on their copyrights. The lawyer wrote you a pretty nice C&D letter, you might consider contacting him again and asking if he could put you in touch with a Biz Dev person at AMG. See if they might have any interest in paying you for the plug-in, rather than you paying them for the data.

Just my $0.02.

KingSparta · « **Reply #29 on:** April 30, 2006, 05:22:56 pm »

I Think they should release there own software\Plug-in i am sure some users to include my self would pay for the data like users do with Mood Logic's Software.

Alex B · « **Reply #30 on:** April 30, 2006, 05:59:24 pm »

Actually, from my European point of view, I don't understand how aTagger was illegal. It just accessed a freely available web site like any other web browser. According to the quoted letter Alan has made no license agreement with AMG so he has not violated terms of an agreement.

AFAIK, there are no laws that define what kind of browser programs can be used for accessing public servers unless the programs are intended to harm the servers. All browsers have functions for saving browsed content locally. As well MS Internet Explorer and scripts could be used for that. Also, Alan did not redistribute or sell the information or get any other kind of profit from the freely available AMG data.

JimH · « **Reply #31 on:** April 30, 2006, 06:36:29 pm »

Quote from: KingSparta on April 30, 2006, 05:22:56 pm

I Think they should release there own software\Plug-in i am sure some users to include my self would pay for the data like users do with Mood Logic's Software.

Interesting you should say that. Suppose MC could access Gracenote/and/or/AMG. What's that worth?

Tab · « **Reply #32 on:** April 30, 2006, 07:00:24 pm »

I gather 'cease and desist' is somewhat out of place wording too, used for added effect primarily. But I'm not a US lawyer, so cease and desist from taking my word on that one.

There is naturally a big difference between what may be defendable in court and how much hassle and expense most end users are wiling to deal with. If your points about it not infriging are correct, that and FUD will be the key decider for most hobbyists.

Tab

LonWar · « **Reply #33 on:** April 30, 2006, 07:19:59 pm »

Quote from: JimH on April 30, 2006, 06:36:29 pm

Interesting you should say that. Suppose MC could access Gracenote/and/or/AMG. What's that worth?

The AMG data might be worth something, But I can already get CDDB on other free rippers.

KingSparta · « **Reply #34 on:** April 30, 2006, 07:59:23 pm »

Quote from: JimH on April 30, 2006, 06:36:29 pm

Interesting you should say that. Suppose MC could access Gracenote/and/or/AMG. What's that worth?

I Paid Mood Logic 20,000 Tags Worth so that was $29.95X2=$59.90

I think the more access to data to tag the better and some users would pay for the data (like me) if i needed it to complete the data tags on the media file.

Quote

ORDERING: 10000 song activation credits for the MoodLogic Service
Your purchase from MoodLogic is guaranteed to be safe and secure by Transact-Secure™.

TOTAL AMOUNT
(California residents
will pay sales tax): $29.95

mesue · « **Reply #35 on:** April 30, 2006, 09:22:29 pm »

Quote from: Alex B on April 30, 2006, 05:59:24 pm

I don't understand how aTagger was illegal. It just accessed a freely available web site like any other web browser. According to the quoted letter Alan has made no license agreement with AMG so he has not violated terms of an agreement.

Most commercial web sites do have a terms of use or terms of service. The AMG Terms of Service clearly state, "You may not scrape or otherwise copy our Material without permission." In fact, if you read the full terms of service, any one of us who manually browse their pages, and copy/paste the information into Media Center are in violation of their terms. @l@n was just an easy target because his program was made publicly available.

That said, I am bummed that he can no longer distribute his program. It was very helpful in filling some missing tags in my music collection. But, as someone who makes a living from a Web site, I can see the other side of the issue too. If I found someone with a program that scraped the content from my site, I'd sic the lawyers on them too.

Alex B · « **Reply #36 on:** May 01, 2006, 08:37:26 am »

Quote from: mesue on April 30, 2006, 09:22:29 pm

Most commercial web sites do have a terms of use or terms of service. The AMG Terms of Service clearly state, "You may not scrape or otherwise copy our Material without permission." In fact, if you read the full terms of service, any one of us who manually browse their pages, and copy/paste the information into Media Center are in violation of their terms. @l@n was just an easy target because his program was made publicly available.

Actually, I have read AMG's terms of service, but I am not convinced.

Is there a US law that says that anyone who accesses a public server through Internet must read, agree and thus automatically make a legal agreement with the server owner (or other copyright holder) if any kind of more or less legally valid terms happen to be available in some format somewhere on the particular server? Such a law would need to also define exactly how the servers must be constructed and how the accessing computer systems must be able to receive and display such terms.

Also, I don't think the service provider can legally limit (without making a valid bilateral agreement) how the user can store the accessed information if the information is freely available. The lawmakers would first need to exactly define which kind of computers, programs, network protocols, cache memories, storage systems, etc are legal and exclude everything else. If the user is not actually distributing or publishing the copyrighted content, a copyright infringement is not happening. The user is obviously allowed to transmit that immaterial data in its electronic form from the server system to a local receiver (otherwise any kind of access would not be possible).

Actually, no downloaded content really exists unless it is interpreted and used. Nothing is physically transferred between the computers. Electrons do not physically travel from place A to place B. They just push each other. A local computer only registers changes in the electricity. If the user is allowed to interpret and see the data then the user is allowed to do so.

KingSparta · « **Reply #37 on:** May 01, 2006, 09:12:46 am »

Does JRiver Have A Term Of Use I did not see one.

How Does This Effect Google Do they not copy Content Info And Save It to there own hard drives For There Business? (This Now Includes Books Too).

If Google can do it and it is allowed by AMG does that make all content allowed cached by Google Usable As a user sees fit?

mesue · « **Reply #38 on:** May 01, 2006, 08:50:29 pm »

Alex: I'm certainly no lawyer, but I think it is convered under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). But whether it is or isn't, the way I see it is like this… Much of US law depends on whether a precedent has been set. I have no idea whether someone has ever been sued for violating the terms of use on a Web site, but who has the bigger resources here, AMG or Joe User? Most likely Joe User doesn't have the resources to put it to the test and find out. Remember, the burden of proof is on the defendant.

KingSparta: Content publishers have an easy way of opting out of the Google cache if they want to. Also, Google has been sued over their caching and it was ruled as fair use, so here we have a precedent. (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004344.php)

Kid_Squid · « **Reply #39 on:** May 08, 2006, 12:03:13 pm »

Have any of the developers out there taken a look at this?

Maybe this could add back in some of the features a Tagger was known for?

http://www.moodlogic.com/developers.html

MrC · « **Reply #40 on:** May 09, 2006, 01:33:04 pm »

Quote from: mesue on May 01, 2006, 08:50:29 pm

...but who has the bigger resources here, AMG or Joe User? Most likely Joe User doesn't have the resources to put it to the test and find out. Remember, the burden of proof is on the defendant.

MeSue, this is right on target - unless one is willing to put up the money to defend a postion, the risk/reward ratio is just too high for most Joe User's. Most folks taking the "go for it" position have no idea of the exposure, risk and expense involved with defending such a position (it is also interesting to note that such folks have *no* exposure themselves!). The legal costs can bankrupt the average Joe User. My wife is an IP attorney, and I routinely see the resulting costs and penatlies associated with such copywrite or patent infringment.

xenaudio · « **Reply #41 on:** May 09, 2006, 03:43:52 pm »

Quote from: @l@n on February 27, 2006, 06:38:12 pm

I received the following email today. Needless to say I won't be continuing development of aTagger.

I'm a little late in the game in regarding this announcement, if I weren't sorrounded by people...I'd break down and cry. Literally.

aTagger was the best thing to happen, it helped me tagged all of my 40,000+ mp3 files where everything looks beautiful in MC when it comes to sorting via styles/genre/ratings/etc/etc.

Now that I'm ready to start tagging some more cd's that I bought, how do I go about this now? How are you guys doing it? Do I actually have to start *gasps* doing it manually? I read all the replies above but is there any other solutions or is this the end of paradise?

And Alan, thanks for the best darn plugin ever, it was good while it lasted.

xenaudio · « **Reply #42 on:** May 09, 2006, 03:49:26 pm »

Quote from: JimH on April 30, 2006, 06:36:29 pm

Interesting you should say that. Suppose MC could access Gracenote/and/or/AMG. What's that worth?

If MC could actually access the information from AMG (allmusic.com)..... I'd actually pay for that service! I'm so used to having things done automatically for me.

It's one thing to tag mp3 files from CDDB (and etc) but another experience to have tons of relevant informations added to the mp3 files. It really changes how I listen to my vast music collection and helps me choose what I want to listen to at the moment.

runemail · « **Reply #43 on:** May 13, 2006, 11:10:32 am »

Quote from: JimH on April 30, 2006, 06:36:29 pm

Interesting you should say that. Suppose MC could access Gracenote/and/or/AMG. What's that worth?

Gracenote: 0$
AMG: up to 40$ for a nice plugin that works well with MC and let me batch-grab and save data in tags, and keep my collection in sync with AMG data. Maybe grab coverart from several sites like amazon and ratyourmusic. This could also be a standalone product?

KingSparta · « **Reply #44 on:** May 13, 2006, 11:54:24 am »

Quote from: Kid_Squid on May 08, 2006, 12:03:13 pm

Have any of the developers out there taken a look at this?

Maybe this could add back in some of the features a Tagger was known for?

http://www.moodlogic.com/developers.html

You would need access to digital fingerprinting.

morrison · « **Reply #45 on:** September 16, 2006, 08:29:09 pm »

discogs.com its real alternative..

http://help.discogs.com/wiki/SocialContract

lazersgm · « **Reply #46 on:** September 23, 2006, 04:12:05 pm »

loss of this plug in will most likely mean i will not buy this software. however if someone could make a plugin to use http://www.gracenote.com/music/ i think that would be great. i have another media player that uses this that is free ware while it is in beta and this media lookup works great. so please someone get a plug in to work with jriver and this service. thanks

sunemesys · « **Reply #47 on:** October 01, 2006, 04:58:52 pm »

You could really use discogs.com. It seems to have a structure that can be parsed easily. Or amazon just for cover art and track list (with the possibility to choose among different amazon servers (amazon.com, amazon.de ...)
When i was using mediamonkey i've found almost every cover arts with its info finder and it use amazon

datdude · « **Reply #48 on:** December 09, 2006, 11:46:09 pm »

Did anyone see this: http://www.gracenote.com/music/corporate/FAQs.html/faqset=what/page=3.

It looks like if you make a plugin for MC it would be free to use their service?

KingSparta · « **Reply #49 on:** December 10, 2006, 09:42:16 am »

Quote

It looks like if you make a plugin for MC it would be free to use their service?

I Know

But what do you do with the information once you get it?

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: aTagger cease and desist (Read 24474 times)