Misplaced Pages

Talk:Gracenote

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Fatandhappy (talk | contribs) at 15:38, 1 December 2006 (→External Links: GPL is applicable for data according to the GNU). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 15:38, 1 December 2006 by Fatandhappy (talk | contribs) (→External Links: GPL is applicable for data according to the GNU)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

Archives

/Archive1


POV Edits by Sooahs

I reverted the article back to the last version made by Euchiasmus. user:Sooahs, a Gracenote employee, has made large deletions which skew the article's POV to benefit the company. If there are specific factual discrepancies with the article, please discuss in the talk page. I agree with the protection of this page. Employees of the company should not edit directly, but should make comments on the discussion page. Fatandhappy 22:05, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of factual accuracy, the current article is biased in its overall structure because of emphasis. See my talk page entry above (under "Compromise") for examples from the first paragraph of POV. Sooah's first paragraph (which you reverted) was closer to NPOV than the current one, although some later paragraphs had more POV than is appropriate. Can you please explain what was POV about at least Sooah's first paragraph? By the way, why are you reverting changes, rather than trying to improve them? I understand that you feel that any contribution by a Gracenote employee is suspect, but are blanket reversions really the best response? Please take another look at "Working Towards NPOV" in Misplaced Pages:Etiquette and rethink your approach to this article. Isotropy 02:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for being civil, and for acknowledging Sooah's version of the article had significant POV issues. The reason I reverted the article to the the version immediately prior to Sooah's version is simply because Sooah had reverted the entire article to the version Sooah originally rewrote (in its entirety) previously. As you noted, blanket reversions are not the best response, especially by someone who may be biased, such as an employee of the company that is the subject of the article. I merely reverted to the version that others had been editing before Sooahs reverted to the October 26th version. Personally, I have tried to avoid editing the article since user:Scherf, another Gracenote employee, left me a note on my user talk page two times which I felt to be a personal attack, as well as offensive and insulting. Other, non-Gracenote employee Wikipedians may edit this article at will and remove any POV, if in fact there is any POV issue. Wholesale reversions by employees of the company are not appropriate, and this has been noted several times by a number of users. Please ask that Sooahs (and others at Gracenote) read Misplaced Pages:Etiquette and other Misplaced Pages policy pages at the office when you meet. Additionally, can you please note where any factual errors occur in the article? It would make it easier to note these errors so that others may edit to correct the discrepancies. The "structure" of the article is something evolved over a period of years and through the efforts of number of Misplaced Pages editors, viewing Gracenote from the outside - the way that Misplaced Pages funtions best. Fatandhappy 12:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Is it OK for Gracenote Employees to Edit ONUnicorn's Sample Page?

Because that would really improve the climate around here, and give us a way to make our point without pissing people off.Isotropy 02:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

That's one reason why I started it; but I didn't think anyone had paid any attention to my comment at all. ~ ONUnicorn 14:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
I reverted Scherf's reversion to the latest Voice of All version. Scherf had reverted the entire article back to an old version posted by Sooahs. This is frustrating since a Gracenote employee (founder?) made the revisions immediately after Voice of All unprotected the page. SteveSmurf 00:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Agreed, this is frustrating. Just reverted the article to fix user:Scherf's revisionism which deleted most of the original article and replaced with POV a company press-release type of article. User:Scherf has been requested numerous times to point out the inaccuracies in the article, but has yet to do so. I am at a loss to identify the vandalism to which Scherf refers. Fatandhappy 15:59, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I'm not interested in a Gracenote page that has numerous factual errors, and contains gratuitous negativity. Fatandhappy can say all he/she/it wants about being civil and how blanket reversions are bad. That does not explain why Fatandhappy and others have continually reverted all text anyone adds here to correct errors in a supported way, but just doesn't happen to be negative. They are determined to keep negative text in place simply because they are detractors of Gracenote. It makes little sense for Gracenote employees to be barred from posting here when people from the opposite extreme (much more extreme in the negative than Gracenote supporters have been in the positive) are free to perpetuate negative commentary at will. I do not accept that as valid Misplaced Pages policy, and the guidelines clearly support my view. As long as people with negative POV problems continue to post here, I am obliged to do the same. To Fatandhappy: Pay all the lip service to the rules that you like, Fatandhappy, but you have consistently reverted things that were supported with links to facts, while in your comments claiming they were not. You have also reverted corrections to logical impossibilities, also while inexplicably claiming they were unsupported. I have filed a request for mediation for the Gracenote article with you listed as one of the requested participants, and you posted negative comments to the discussion in an apparent attempt to scuttle the mediation. You have shown that you cannot edit the Gracenote article in good faith, and your apparent rejection of mediation is further evidence that you are not interested in being impartial. You should recuse yourself from further editing of this page, as should Kenta and others who have engaged in negative, nonfactual editing. If you are truly impartial, how about adding links to Gracenote in all of the competitor pages you and others have injected here? And put those links at the top of the link list, instead of links to their own websites, like you have done here. Also, remove all mention of those competitors' products by name (or at all) like you have done here. How about consolidating all of the AMG pages into one page, especially the ones devoted to entire products alone? How about listing all of the legal actions they have been involved in, especially the ones they started and the ones they lost. AMG has had its share, which is how it got its reputation for shady acquisition of data. Look it up if you are really, truly interested in impartiality. And once you have done all of these things, then you will have shown your impartiality (but not necessarily your ability to deal in facts). Until then, please cut the facade you are trying to put up here in the discussion. At least I am not hiding who I am and what my goals are. Steve Scherf 02:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
And that is the issue. Misplaced Pages is not a free advertising service for your company. If you don;t like the criticism, tough. It has sources. If you've got an issue with that, you should be filing complaints against the websites that the statements originate from, not the people who are quoting them here to provide a balanced article. As for some bias, personally, I had no idea what gracenote was when I first came here. The article is only 'overly negative' in your biased eyes. You may find it hard to take criticism, but tough, this is an encyclopedia that provides ALL VERIFIABLE POINTS OF VIEW, not just a corporate endorsed point of view about their product. As for competitors being mentioned, the only way you could possibly be concerned about it is if it was stealing potential business away when people view the article, meaning that you are using it as an advert which Wiki is not. As an encyclopedia, we are supposed to provide links to related subjects in a 'if you found this interesting, you may also be interested in reading about' kind of fashion. The Kinslayer 10:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I wouldn't give a rat's you-know-what about criticism here, if it were only factual. I have pointed out numerous inconsistencies here, but nobody seems to care. They prefer the negative "facts" over the "positive" facts, because, gee, we don't want these Gracenote people to benefit from this page... Here's a little something for you to think about. We don't care about advertising, and this is hardly the place we'd go if we wanted to advertise. The reputation of Misplaced Pages would quash any such desire anyway, even if it were something we wanted. What we DO want is something that does not spread misinformation about Gracenote, which this page does. When we have people coming to us asking, "I thought XYZ, but it says something else on Misplaced Pages", it's a problem. And as a person who seems interested in the quality and improvement of Misplaced Pages, I would think that you would be interested in fixing those things. The text you and others keep putting up, apparently only because, god forbid, my text shouldn't stand no matter what, is CHOCK FULL of errors and logical inconsistencies. For example, why, oh why, does this statement continue to persist in your edit: "commercialization of CDDB by Gracenote also caused friction with its former licensees"? I have said here at least once that this statement makes no sense, because before the commercialization of CDDB there were no licensees - how could there have been?! So how could commercializing CDDB have angered these nonexistent licensees?! Come to your senses. You are reacting emotionally to the fact that some person with a perceived POV bias is posting, and you are inexplicably willing to blindly accept obviously broken text as a result of that emotional response. USE YOUR BRAIN. I would rather not spend even a millisecond more here fighting with you people, but there seems to be nobody willing to actually check up on the factual issues here. I am perplexed why links to things that have been proven to be incomplete and misleading, such as the link to the "summarization" on Becker's page, continue to persist in your edits. I am guessing that you are not a lawyer and do not understand (or have not even bothered to read) the 7 legal documents we provided links to, but if you spend the time to understand them (or to have a lawyer explain them to you) you will see what I mean. What about the statement that large licensees like Microsoft dropped Gracenote? Where is that statement supported anywhere on the web? Did you read the Wired article linked to from the page? How about the full transcript of the Wired interview also linked to? If you had read those, you would understand that Microsoft was never a licensee, so the claim that they dropped Gracenote is totally impossible and false. Microsoft initially used third parties (who in turn used a wide variety of data sources, sometimes their own hand-entered data), not CDDB/Gracenote for its "Deluxe CD Player" product. And when they stopped supporting that application and rolled out Windows Media Player with CD lookup support, they used their own service. And in the same statement it talks about MusicMatch no longer using Gracenote. Never mind that MusicMatch is now Yahoo, and Yahoo is a Gracenote licensee; so that statement is misleading at best, because they are now, in effect, a licensee. Perhaps that statement is meant to be historical, but that's already discussed in the legal section, and they no longer exist as a company. I could go on, but as I've said before, I don't have all day and there is an error in just about every other sentence. You people are CLUELESS on this topic, and as a result are spreading misinformation in a manner unjustly harmful to Gracenote, and indirectly to Misplaced Pages as well. You may not care about the former, but you should care about the latter. Spend some time looking at the facts and see if perhaps the version supported by msooahs, myself and a few others here (whom I do not actually know) might have a bit of wisdom for you. You might also pay a bit of attention to the overall tone and impartiality, because the version you have been pushing has worse POV problems than the one I support. Look back in the discussion here a bit and you will see that the intro text we support was judged by at least one editor here to be more neutral than the one you and Fatandhappy have been pushing. Also, if you spend a little time looking way back in the edit history, you will see blanket reversions by the people you're supporting, with misleading and irrelevant comments, way before this edit war started. It didn't matter if edits were small or large, nor did it matter if they were supported with links to supporting information, they would revert it with misleading statements of "unverifiable". Fatandhappy is the king of falsely crying "unverifiable", and it's the bad faith actions of this and other editors that has led to the problems here. Before you or others cast your lot with them, why not think about what I've said here a bit first? Steve Scherf 22:01, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Controversy

I have removed the part about losing Microsoft as a customer as I could not find anything in Google searches or Google news. Please do not place it back until you have a verifiable source. While I do not know exactly why their is an edit war going on, I'm going to step in and try and help clean things up. I'm here at the request of nobody and do not favor any side. Although, adding information without sources or proof will not help you. --Simonkoldyk 22:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

External Links

I have removed external links to any competitor, they are fine for talking about them in the article; but, it should be kept to a minimum. See Coca-Cola and Pepsi for an example both talk about each other in article which is fine; but, no mention in external links. --Simonkoldyk 22:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

GPL

Thank you for stepping in. Note that I just removed a link put in by one of the more controversial editors here. It was a selective link from the wayback machine that contained incorrect text that was corrected in a later version of the page. That link is at this wayback machine link, or any later page in the wayback machine. Ti Kan never released the data under the GPL, and he asked for the page to be corrected when he noticed the error. The page was corrected in 1998 about the time of the archive link above. For proof that the database was not released under the GPL, see the oldest extant version of the archive (circa 1994): The accompanying README file and The archive itself. Note that every entry has a copyright notice at the top that says (with varying year, of course):

xmcd 1.0 CD database file
Copyright (C) 1993 Ti Kan

Download the archive and look for yourself if you like. Also download later ones if you like, and you'll see the same thing. This is not the GNU Public License. This is a standard copyright notice. Note that the archive contains no other copyright information. So it's pretty clearly not released under the GPL, which has a very long and distinct document that must be included with the product. Lastly, as anyone with familiarity with the GPL can tell you, you cannot license data under the GPL. It only applies to source code, so the data could not have been legally GPLed, regardless. The GNU Free Documentation License might have been applicable, but it did not exist yet. One last note. Until the day Escient acquired CDDB, the database was wholly owned by Ti Kan, as can be seen in the copyright notice. There was no official CDDB organization until minutes before CDDB was legally acquired. Also, Ti Kan did not run the website, as you can see from the original wayback machine link. It was run by and copyright Steve Scherf, and any error in the text on the page is irrelevant because only Ti Kan would have had the right to release the data under some other license than the one in the database archive package. Steve Scherf 21:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I have replaced the archive.org links, deleted by Scherf, to the original cddb website, and added text to explain why the gpl notice that was on the cddb website for more than a year caused confusion for many users who assumed that the whole service was free. Scherf or other Gracenote employees, please do not selectively delete inconvenient information and make excuses about this issue regarding the gpl, since freedb has been licensed under the gpl for years as well, with no issues that you discuss. Also, please note that the link to the readme file that is posted is undated and could have been changed at any time. If you would like this included, please find one that is dated. Fatandhappy 22:34, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
As the GPL was up for quite a while, it should be included in the article. Its not like it was a week or something it was a year and previous versions of that page also include that information. Although I have deleted the sentance about people being mad about it becoming a private company due to no sources. --Simonkoldyk 22:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay so I found this dated Nov 10th 1997. I'm currently looking for other sources that can verify this. Although I think the confusion should still be written in the article; but, not quite in a way to say that is was ever licensed under the GPL. Steve and Fatandhappy, I would ask that you do not edit this part unless you discuss your changes here first.--Simonkoldyk 23:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay I also found this for year 1996 and 1997; while, it does say copyright you Steve, it includes a GPL license and discusses that in the help file. --Simonkoldyk 23:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Simonkoldyk, please look at my text above. It has a link to the database itself. The "cddbd" link you refer to above is not the database. That is a link to the CDDB software, which is completely different. There is no dispute that it was GPLed, that's clear. Please look at the database link and you'll see that it's something entirely different. As for fatandhappy's claim that freedb has licensed the data under the GPL: you can attach whatever license you want to anything. You can tape a copy of the GPL to your pet fish and nobody's going to stop you. However, that does not mean you can actually GPL your fish by doing this. This is part of the reason why the GNU organization came up with their documentation license. So your argument is fallacious. In addition, if you simply go to the ftp.x.org page and scroll down you will see the timestamps next to the CDDB database and readme files. You cannot fake the timestamp. Are you accusing the people at ftp.x.org of changing things out and resetting the timestamps, just for me? Or are you accusing someone of somehow breaking in and changing dates on files? I find your attitude that we are somehow capable of things like this very very tiresome. And I'm getting tired of your apparent need to hurt Gracenote any way you can. But if you are determined to continue digging and digging for anything you can, at least cut the inuendo WRT dishonesty. I think it was you (forgive me if I'm mistaken) who questioned the validity of the legal documents on our website. That kind of appalling attitude is oh so tiresome and inappropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scherf (talk • contribs)

Thank you for that clarification, makes sense. --Simonkoldyk 00:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

FYI, I was just revisiting my previous paragraph, and I realize it's not necessarily clear who I was addressing. I was addressing Simonkoldyk until the "as for fatandhappy...", after which I was addressing fatandhappy. Sorry, I don't want to seem like I was addressing the wrong person's statement. That was kind of a weird and sudden transition. Steve Scherf 06:29, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Simonkoldyk, thank you very much for helping out here; your fair-mindedness is highly appreciated. Mr. Scherf, you seem to be saying that data cannot be GPL'd, however, according to the GNU (the people who maintain the GPL), "The GNU GPL can be used for general data which is not software, as long as one can determine what the definition of "source code" refers to in the particular case." Do you somehow have better information about the GPL than the GNU? No license is perfect, but the GPL can in fact be used for data. Freedb claims that the entire database is GPL'd and has done so for years without challenge. Furthermore, you seem to be implying that the GNU Free Documentation License was created as a kind of solution to a fictional deficiency in the GPL regarding data. Referring to the same GNU site, however, reveals that the FDL is a "license intended for use on copylefted free documentation. We plan to adopt it for all GNU manuals. It is also suitable for other kinds of useful works (such as textbooks and dictionaries, for instance). Its applicability is not limited to textual works ("books")." Are you trying to insinuate that the database is some kind of "book" or "manual"? Finally, I find it interesting that you, on the one hand, claim that Ti Kan owned the database by virtue of his copyright notice which was hidden away in each database file, not clearly visible to anyone except a person who digs into them. Then, on the other hand you deny the applicability of the GPL for the database even though the GPL is in fact applicable to a database and was clearly posted for a long period of time on the website you created with Mr. Kan's blessing. The fact that the GPL was mentioned on original CDDB website for more than a year did in fact lead many contributors and software developers to believe that the database was intended to be open and free forever - a major reason for the controversy once the data was pulled down and locked away by your sale of the cddb. Fatandhappy 15:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

More questionable content

Simonoldyk, can you (and anyone else who wants to) please examine the documents at the Gracenote legal page. These are court documents related to the musicmatch case, and they show that the statement linked to at the Manatt website is incorrect and misleading. The link to the Manatt website points to the CV of one of the lawyers for musicmatch (Becker), and in that CV he claims that musicmatch and Gracenote settled the case after musicmatch obtained a summary judgement. This statement is shown to be false by the legal documents above. In the "order to vacate", the court reversed the summary judgement, and in the "Ruling Re Inequitable Conduct" the court found that Gracenote did not obtain its patents fraudulently. It has been argued here that simply because Becker is a lawyer it must be true. Clearly, the documents show that what Becker's CV says is not true, and is at best misleading and at worst just plain dissembling. That link should be removed from the article.

Also note that the court ruled that musicmatch was found to be in violation of contract with Gracenote (I don't recall exactly where this is mentioned in the documents - if you can't find it, I can have someone check). So, musicmatch lost the inequitable conduct trial, their summary judgements were overturned, and they were found to be in violation of at least part of their contract with Gracenote. The lawsuit section of the Gracenote article is obviously just completely wrong, and should either be very carefully crafted by someone who understands legal documents and procedures, or it should be stricken completely. I question the need for such detail, especially in light of the fact that no competitors have similar sections. And, as someone noted here, even the Microsoft article has nothing like this at all. The fact that most of the Gracenote article consists of legal junk, not to mention other negative stuff, seems quite unbalanced. Take a look at the All Music Guide page. There is no mention of legal issues, though they have lost multiple lawsuits against people from whom they (allegedly, I suppose) stole data from. They have a far older and lengthier legal history than Gracenote, but you don't see squat about it.

In addition, the lawsuit section claims:

Until the Musicmatch case, Gracenote attempted to aggressively use its patents in an attempt to enforce a monopoly in commercial CD indentification services. The inability of Gracenote to enforce its patent in the Musicmatch case opened the market for competition, and a growing global group of companies continue to enter media identification and metadata marketplace.

This is supposition, and is not supported by any links that I can see here. It's just plain untrue, in any case. There were plenty of competitors at that time in 2004: freedb was founded in 1999, musicbrainz shortly thereafter, All Music Guide (which is a very old company compared to Gracenote) also offered a competing product, YADB which was started in 2002 by JRiver, and so on. The fact is, there was lots of competition before the 2004 court decision, a fact we knew very well. This statement in the article erroneously implies that this court case somehow proved the invalidity of Gracenote's patents and opened up the entire field for competition, which is obviously untrue. Even if it were true that the case somehow knocked down the patents in question, Gracenote has no less than eight patents regarding the technology (see the USPTO website for a listing); only some of those patents were even in play during the trial, so even if some had been found invalid there are more that would have remained roadblocks to anyone trying to replicate Gracenote's business.

Also, the statement that Gracenote "...attempted to aggressively use its patents in an attempt to enforce a monopoly..." is not an impartial statement. Patents are, by definition, a legal monopoly in a specific area, and stating it like this is intended to vilify Gracenote. Further, if one actually were to read Gracenote's patents, you would see that in no way would they bar anyone from entering the CD identification business. CD identification was around way before Gracenote ever existed (see the full text of the recent Wired interview for details on the history of CD identification), and could therefore not be patented. Gracenote's patents only cover additional methods that either aid in identification or are used after a CD has been identified. Nothing about the Gracenote patents would ever stop someone from starting their own CD recognition service, unless they tried to implement these patented additional methods themselves.

In any case the quoted statement is repetetive (lots of attempted attempts), and identification is misspelled. Steve Scherf 00:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's more text that needs attention:

  • The service quickly outgrew Scherf's ability to host and a larger server, hosting facilities...

This is wrong. The service was always hosted out of a large number of sites external to us, see the wayback machine archive and click on the "server sites" link. You will see lots of servers outside of the one we had feeding them. I fed them through a phone line, then simple ISDN, with no trouble. There was no need for "larger server, hosting facilities" etc. What Graham Toal offered was a home for the website. Steve Scherf 00:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


The statement:

  • In 1998, the service was purchased by Escient, a high-tech venture firm

is incorrect. Escient was not a venture firm. They were a high end consumer electronics manufacturer. See Escient if you question that. Steve Scherf 00:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The statement:

  • At some point the code for xmcd was modified to append copyright notices to all submissions. How visible or open this was to contributors remains a matter of debate.

is incorrect. See the database archive link I provided above. It proves that copyrights were being inserted from the beginning (1993) if you believe the header information. If you do not, then the 1994 timestamp on the archive itself still predates the CDDB service by a longshot. The simple fact is that XMCD did this from the practical beginning, and most definitely before the CDDB service ever existed. If you still don't believe me, then download the xmcd player source code from the ftp.x.org page that also has the database, and look at the file ac_dbprog.c on line 679, and you will see this: 

       /* File header */
       fprintf(fp, "# xmcd %s CD database file\n", VERSION);
       fprintf(fp, "# Copyright (C) 1994 Ti Kan\n");

This is proof that xmcd inserted the copyright from at least version 1.1, released in 1994, way before the CDDB service existed. I'm almost certain it was in 1.0 as well, but the question seems moot. I think you can now erase the "matter of debate" from the Gracenote article. Steve Scherf 00:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I've gone through the other concerns you have and edited them appropriately, if you have still concerns on those or others have concerns (please prove WP:V when replying). The musicmatch case I will have to take some more time to read before I'm able to side with anyone. --Simonkoldyk 00:41, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


Here are more:

This statement:

  • The xmcd player was developed by Ti Kan, and had the ability to store and recognize CDs from a database included with the application.

Is not true. The database never shipped with xmcd. It was always a separate package. This is shown by the links to ftp.x.org above. The xmcd-1.1 package is at this link, while the database package is at this different link. That's because they are separate packages. It doesn't make sense to bundle something big like the database with the smaller xmcd package, and they are released on very different schedules and with different licenses. This became especially true as the database grew in size. So it is not true to say that the database was included with the application. Steve Scherf 02:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


Sorry, should have also included this statement in the preceding comment:

  • The database within the xmcd application is the original CDDB.

This also isn't true, if it means to say that the database came with the xmcd application. In any case, I do not understand the point this sentence is trying to make. Should probably be removed or corrected/clarified. Steve Scherf 02:46, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


In this sentence:

  • In 1998, the service was purchased by Escient, a consumer electronics manufactorer...

manufacturer is spelled incorrectly.

This statement:

  • CDDB was then spun out of Escient in July of 2000 and renamed Gracenote...

is incorrect. CDDB was spun out of Escient well before it was renamed. Note that the press release says nothing about CDDB being spun out at that time, so this statement is unsupported.

This:

  • The maneuver was and remains controversial, because the CDDB database was and is...

is very awkward language - was and is, was and remains.

But the larger sentence:

  • The maneuver was and remains controversial, because the CDDB database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by thousands of individual users, who received no compensation for their work.

First of all, there is no justification provided for this opinion. I see no source. Second, users do receive compensation. CDDB is and has always been essentially quid pro quo. Users all benefit because they can look up thousands of albums, yet never have to submit anything. But even those that do submit data still receive compensation for what they've done in the form of 1000:1 (or usually even more for the average user) lookups against CDDB versus how many submissions they submit to the database. This is little different from sites like myspace that thrive off pages built by users.

This statement:

  • The xmcd program itself was an open-source

is redundant. It is already stated plainly in the previous section. Also, the past tense here makes it sound like xmcd is no longer open source, which is not the case. See the xmcd home page.

This statement that was adjusted earlier today:

  • and many listing contributors assumed that the database was free as well due to the GPL notice on the cddb.com website's download page and support page. The website was modified in 1998 immediately before the sale to Escient to state that the database is the "property" of CDDB.

has several issues. First, the website was not modified immediately before the sale. It was modified months in advance. The wayback machine has no samples between Feb 15, 1998 and May 06, 1998, so you cannot tell exactly when it was updated from just this. My recollection was late Feb, but I'm not sure it matters. It was somewhere between Feb and early May, according to the wayback machine, but the sale happened over three months later in August, 1998. So the statement that the website was modified imediately prior to the sale is incorrect, and further, seems to imply some sort of sneakiness that was obviously not there if it happened three to seven months before. So this statement should be removed. More importantly, saying that "contributors assumed the database was free due to the GPL notice on the website" may be the case, but there are also implications here which I believe to be unfair, in light of a three to seven month window between the correction and the sale. Finally, if you read the answer to the last question in the unabridged Wired interview, you will see that the database was actually physically removed in February, so the unavailability of the database for download should have been very plain to anyone who actually tried to download it. What time window is enough so that people's assumptions aren't worthy of listing here, I must ask? Also note in the same interview that all of the data ever submitted up to and even well beyond that point is still available for download (it can be found in a variety of places, including ). However, above all, the data is still free. No user has ever paid Gracenote a dime to access the database. Ever. Nor will they. Just download iTunes for the price of zero dollars and cents, stick in a CD, and watch it hit Gracenote without taking any money from you. So the statement about contributors assuming the database was free, but implying it's not, needs removal or clear qualification. The database up to that point is downloadable and access to the database is still free. No "listing contributor" has ever been charged or denied access to the database. Steve Scherf 03:49, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Simonkoldyk, I apologize for the length here. I am going through line by line addressing the most straightforward errors and POV issues, so I have a way to go. Expect more in the near future. I will then follow with more overarching concerns on each section, if any. Steve Scherf 03:53, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem, just try and make appropriate sections for different topics so that it is easier to read. --Simonkoldyk 05:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Category: