I don't think an 'authortative' source is necessarily bad. It is a bad when
a company like Escient comes in and starts dicating the rules of the game
and trying to push their brand on everyone. There is no question about it,
that's bad.
However, the current plan for the CD Index is to be mirrorred worldwide with
the data belonging to the public. This in essence makes it impossible for
any one party to 'sell-out' and give a corporation control over the data.
> I'm a lot less concerned about having multiple IDs point to the same file
> than I am about having to go to "one true location" for getting an ID.
> After all, we already have same-CDs that have different IDs, so the
> database needs to be able to store multiple IDs per user-level object.
> Which is trivial.
I agree, but you need to consider the sheer volume of data that will be
created in this process. When a batch of CDs is mastered and pressed you may
get one new ID for 100,000 CDs. That growth is manageable. However, when you
start recoding IDs for *every* single MP3 that people rip, you're going to
be recording thousands of new IDs every day. Your data load is going to grow
significantly without any appreciable benefits.
Not to mention privacy issues -- this would make every MP3 have a unique ID.
Since the data will be publicly available, I would hate to see people misuse
the data. For instance, if the RIAA started snooping the data and trying to
track down pirates based on the ids of the MP3s that would be *really* bad.
> That might even be useful. A file ripped with a certain encoder at a
> certain bit rate will be distinct from a file ripped completely
differently.
Yup, but what practical application does that have?
--ruaok Freezerburn! All else is only icing. -- Soul Coughing
Robert Kaye -- robert nospam at moon.eorbit.net http://moon.eorbit.net/~robert