LinuxPlanet: The StartX Files: A Strong Lack of Grace

"...It gets better, of course. Assuming you have figured out a way to create software and distribute it without garnering any source of revenue at all, something I don't think even the staunchest FSF advocates could do, you can get permission to access the CDDB data free-of-charge. There just is one, tiny, little catch: you can't let your application access any other online music database, such as FreeDB or CDIndex."

"This exclusivity clause, which is present in both the commercial and noncommercial licenses, is the salt rubbed in the wounds of anyone who ever contributed to the original CDDB database. You can figure out why the clause is there, of course: Gracenote does not want end-users to populate their local CD information databases with CDDB information, and then turn around and access something like FreeDB and upload the information there. And they want the end-user tied to their database so they can start delivering specialized content to those users on behalf of their partners."

"Again, not bad for a formerly public database."

Complete Story

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• About.com: Free Rip and Encode(Jan 06, 2001)
• Rawmeat: Review of CD Players(Dec 10, 2000)