When I read the article on puntoinformatico about it, it seemed to me a nice idea..
A service to make a virtual audiotape. A personal webpage with streaming, to upload a compilation of 12 mp3 audio files, to listen to them as we were used to do in the past with the old audiotape in our cars.
Nice. It's a way to share different musical taste. To discover new authors and new tunes. And it's ok to listen to music while browsing the internet or doing else (for the ones with broadband, of course).
But then I start wondering about the copyright issue. I'd like to open an account, but this issue scares me..
I look at the terms of service and I suddenly see the trick: by accepting the TOS you also confirm that you have the right to let muxtape use the tunes. Even if the service works in streaming rather than with download, it can still be considered file sharing (distinction between streaming and download is thinner than what supposed), and with such note the author free himself from possible issues dropping all the responsibilities over the user...
I decide to open an account but using only sid files, which are basically the soundtracks of the old commodore64 games, something that I like a lot..
Sid files cause less traoubles: they're not the product but a part of it, the games, which being 15-20 years old are definitely no longer economically productive, and in many cases they've also been free from copyright.
So I go on in converting the files to stereo and then to mp3 format.
Sadly I haven't DSL and the l'upload is long and boring, but since I'm online many hours every day and I'm rarely using all my bandwidth, I thought that uploading a couple of files per day in background, while doing else, I'd have done it all in a week or so, without even noticing it.
I upload the 1st 2 files and all goes fine..
Then a problem: files bigger than 10mb aren't accepted, but some of my sid files (like Parallax by Martin Galway and DarkSide by Wally Beben) are longer than 10 minutes, so I'm forced to downgrade the compression quality to get smaller files.
I upload the new files.. and anything seems fine.
Nope.
I try them. Streaming comes obviously in chunks, but I can still ear that the latest files are played faster.
I send an email to the author waiting for info before to go on uploading more files.
But after 15 days still nothing..
Then I change way: I upload only an excerpt of the whole tune, making in this way smaller files withoutthe need to downgrade the quality..
I do so.
After some days my muxtape is finally ready!
Today I open the author's blog and what do I find?
A mess [1].
On a series of upgraded and reupgraded news the authors informs about a supposed non authorized access to the server, which was in fact only an accident, and about the temporarily disconnection of the server itself for checking/fixing purposes, and about many files overwritten (overwritten?!) successfully recovered via backup, but which have lost title and author info which should have been manually reentered, and then contraddicted again with the big news that even with TWO backup systems some files have been lost ..
Obviously about my 12 files (which were right in the unlucky group) only 2 were left..
So I decide to drop anything.
And here it is. I was right going to bet about it: I can't find a delete-account option..
boh..
y.
