I've had my player for a week and I love it. I have a few minor quibbles and suggestions, but my one major gripe is that I can't download files back to my computer from the player.

I saw this question addressed by Empeg somewhere - I can't remember where - and it was just dismissed by referring to vague "legal" reasons. I'm not a lawyer, but it I can't imagine what legal reasons those might be. The player is just a removable mass storage device, like any other. The makers of removable hard drives, Jazz drives, CD-R burners, and so on don't place any restrictions on their products, and it's just as easy to use one of those for transferring MP3 files. There's no legal reason you can't copy your (legally owned) MP3 files to nay one of the many other removable mass-storage devices on the market - why does Empeg think the player is any different? What's the difference between the player and any other such device? You don't see them putting artificial limitations on their products.

The "legal" argument just doesn't cut it. I'm rather annoyed by this - I paid quite a lot of money for the player, and it has an extremely useful potential function that I could make great use of. It irritates me that for no valid technical reason, I'm prevented from using a huge portion of the functionality. I'm not a (very good) programmer, but it seems that enabling downloads from the player would be less than trivial.

Sure, one of the big reasons for removing this restriction is for music transfer, but there are other reasons. For all the money I spent on the player, it's pretty irritating to think that I may have to spend even more money to buy a device to do something which I could easily do with the player, were it not for silly and unnecessary restrictions. There are many, many occaisions where it would be extremely useful to be able to use to the player to move files of many kinds - not just MP3's - around. Since I already have the hookups installed at home and office, the player is the perfect substitute for a stack of floppy disks, and would enable me to easily move large files back and forth. Why not put that latest cool game demo on the player so I can take it home?

And, of course, it's a royal pain in the ass to have to keep two separate music archives. Like many people, I imagine, I spend some time at work ripping, encoding, and tagging MP3s, and some time doing it at home. One of the nice side-effects of this is that I have the music available for listening on my hard drive without necessarily having to get the player from the car. But due to this artificial restriction, I only have half my music library available at any time. If I'm at home and I want to listen to a particular song I encoded at work, I'm out of luck unless I want to go out to the car, bring the player in, and hook up all the connections. This also makes backups a much bigger pain (since I would have to buy two separate backup devices).

In short, the restriction on copying files down form the player is completely unnecessary and prevents me from using an extremely nice side-benefit of having spent all that money on the player. There's no legal reason for it. And, Empeg, if you really feel you must be needlessly paranoid about MP3s, then simply have the software check the file fingerprint for MP3s, block those only, and let us at least transfer files of other kinds. But that would be a major unnecessary kludge.

Empeg guys, you are very cool and make a great product. But given the zillion other mass storage devices on the market which don't have this limitation, the restriction is completely unnecessary and short-changes your customers in a very big way. Instead of quietly restricting things while mumbling the magic words "legal issues", you should have the data-transport ability of the player listed as a major selling point.

The legal reasons *do* cut it. It's how Diamond got off the RIAA charge with the Rio player - you couldn't get music off it digitally, hence it didn't need to comply with the AHRA.

The position we take is the same as people like Hango with their PJB, Diamond with all their players (of course, with 3rd party software you can copy stuff off - just as you can with the empeg), etc. The device is NOT the same as a Zip disk or other computer storage as the empeg is first and foremost a music playback device, not a storage device.

We have to be *very* careful. We can't afford to get sued, so we do our best to avoid it. We may add facilities for storage of non-tune files on the unit at some point, though it isn't in the 1.1 list.

Hugo

Plans for third party tools to gets the files off the empeg exist, and there are apparently a few pieces of software out there already that will help assist in doing this (albeit, they require you to know your way around Linux, or have some really good instructions).

For empeg's case, I personally think it is a wise move to leave getting the files off in the hands of third party developers. Not only does it get the RIAA off of their back, it also lets them use the development time for more important features that go into what the empeg car was primarily designed for... playing music.

If getting files off of your empeg is your only gripe with the player, at least have some patience and deal with some of the talented people that work with the player already. The ability to do it will come, just not from empeg. Give credit to the empeg car because it does very well what it was designed to do (or so I'm told ). Bi-directional file transfer is not a necessary design goal for a "player", so cut empeg some slack.

Kureg

In short, the restriction on copying files down form the player is completely unnecessary and prevents me from using an extremely nice side-benefit of having spent all that money on the player. There's no legal reason for it

Yeah, we're paranoid beaurocrats who have carried out no research into this issue, I guess we don't even have a solictor (laywer) to advise us, and obviously we don't know what we're doing in our primary line of business.

Rob

PS. You're wrong!
PPS. I had a hard day!

I'm not wrong - the issue hasn't been settled in court. Diamond settled out of court, so the issue hasn't been actually decided from a legal perspective. Like you, other companies are simply following suit out of caution. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if this were taken to a high enough court, the truth would eventually win out - that there's essentially no difference between an Empeg player and a removable hard drive, at least not from the perspective of moving music files around.

If you want to say "the issue is unclear, but we can't afford to be the first ones to fight this battle", that's one thing, and I can understand it from a business perspective. But from a legal perspective, it's not at all certain how this would play out. Naturally your solicitors told you "don't do it" - it's easy for them to say, and solicitors always err on the side of paranoid caution rather than risk the slightest problem. They can't get in any trouble telling you not to do it, but if they told you it was find, and you got in trouble, then they might be liable. You aren't actually naive enough to believe that solicitors always put their client's best interests before their own, areyou?

If you want to say "the issue is unclear, but we can't afford to be the first ones to fight this battle", that's one thing, and I can understand it from a business perspective.

Which is exactly what they're saying, and that's all it really came down to the last time we hashed through this on the BBS.

___________
Tony Fabris

*We* know we could claim the empeg is more of a general purpose computer than a rio and would probably be exempt, yes. "Legal reasons" means we've been advised not to allow this functionality, just to be safe.

Whether or not the truth would actually "win out" (truth has a very unfirm grip on the law), "legal reasons" means we're not about to lie down in front of the train and see if it stops like it should do in the eyes of all right-minded people. Did Diamond settle out of court? I don't remember that bit - that would have required (a) Diamond giving in on their claims (they didn't) or (b) The RIAA backing down (they didn't). I'm pretty sure there was a ruling of some sort, though how definitive it was I can't remember now...

Surely *you're* not naive enough to think that if a solicitor thought they could get you into trouble, and obviously (as your solicitor) then be hired to get you out of it, the thought wouldn't cross their mind to land you in it? ;)

Hugo

damn, and we made rob's day even harder ....

Nils


I know all that, but at some time at some place their will be the "thin red line" that the lawyers shoudn't cross...

If Diamond thought it unwise to "take it to a high enough court" I'm not sure why you think we should. An agreement was made which effectively gave Diamond a victory over the RIAA (who REALLY wanted the Rio off the market), and the consequences of that have no real commercial impact on MP3 hardware vendors.

We're not interested in making a file transportation device, we're digital audio developers and people buy our products for their audio capabilities. Some hackers buy the product for wider applications, and that's cool because they'll have no difficulty working around any restrictions.

You say you have no problem with this restriction because you can see the commercial reasoning behind it, but your original post suggested that you had great problems - in fact you were angry with us over this. You can't have it both ways.

Either way, I think we know our business well, and I think we know how to run our business well. I guess all companies are told by clients what they should or should not do, and successful companies take notice. With regard to this issue, the feedback has been that clients understand our position, and someone else will get around to writing the downloader. With a readily accessible unix shell and the source code for our transfer protocols (with lots of useful USB/Ethernet libraries) what more could you need?

Rob

I would like to see file transfers as a feature on the empeg too. However, I would rather see money invested in new features for future downloads rather than investing in lawyers to defend the company from making an avoidable mistake. Yes, the customers definetly understand your position (empeg).

Alex Lear

Jeez guys and gals, installing a FTP server app on the empeg has got to be a piece of cake... I wish I knew Linux better, I'd do it myself.

Aren't there any Linux dudes out there that could post a "how to" for us?

How are the mp3 files stored on the empeg? Are they named something cryptic or is that part easy too?

- Jon

Jeez guys and gals, installing a FTP server app on the empeg has got to be a piece of cake... I wish I knew Linux better, I'd do it myself.

Installing and configuring a Debian image onto the empeg is not a trivial task. It took me a few days to get mine up and running, and I have been following Linux OS development since 0.0.59.

Aren't there any Linux dudes out there that could post a "how to" for us?

There is a Developers site at http://www.empeg.mars.org that explains most of what you need to do to get a Debian image up and running on the empeg, so you can install things such as ftp, http, ssh, etc.

How are the mp3 files stored on the empeg? Are they named something cryptic or is that part easy too?

The filenames are changed when stored on the empeg. They are stored as "xxy" where xx is the hex FID (I believe) and y is either 0 for the song data or 1 for the tag data (song name, etc).

bobo wrote a wrapper script that goes through the "cryptic" files and parses out the title and filename and creates a symbolic link tree to the original files, essentially restoring the filenames for ease of transfer. I lost the original link, but here is the script:

#!/bin/sh
# bobo's dirty wrapper script
# u15097@hs-harz.de

# target dir for symlinks:
target="/drive0/mp3s"

files=`ls -1 *0`

for i in $files
 do
  fidname=$(echo $i | sed s/.$/1/)
  mp3name=$i
  album=$(cat $fidname | grep -i source= | sed s/source=//i)
  title=$(cat $fidname | grep -i title= | sed s/title=//i)
  artist=$(cat $fidname | grep -i artist= | sed s/artist=//i)
  if !(test -d "$target/$artist - $album/"); then
    mkdir "$target/$artist - $album/"
  fi
  verz=$(pwd)
  echo "creating symlink: /$artist - $album/$title.mp3"
  ln  "$verz/$mp3name" "$target/$artist - $album/$title.mp3" -s
done

Just so you know, I use my empeg as a filestore. I can go to "quit" on the main menu and it will boot up my debian image, mount up my drives properly, and start inetd running so I can ftp/telnet to the empeg over the ethernet.

So it IS possible, it just takes some work. :)

(O|||||O)

So it IS possible, it just takes some work. :)


Is it possible for someone to create an application (or whatever) to do this easily for people like me that are rookies when it comes to Linux?

Or, besides the developer site, could someone put up a step-by-step guide to doing it the hard way?

Alex Lear

Kureg, if you could do this in such a way that it supports the Mk1/USB and can run under Windows, I will personally buy you a drink.

Not because I want to copy MP3s off of the Empeg (not necessary for me), but because I want to use the Empeg as a multigigabtye work->home file taxi.

___________
Tony Fabris

First, I'd like to say that though the tone of my first post was a little heated, I'm not down on the Empeg guys. Sure, I'd really like to see the feature, and I may disagree about about the legal issues, but I'm just very disappointed that it's not there, I'm not angry. Empeg has done a great job and I think they're really cool guys who work hard making Cool Geek Toys for me. I could never have hard feelings about anyone who does that! It's espcially extra-cool that they spend time on this board and answer questions. So, Dedicated Toymakers, lest I had annoyed you, I do apologize. Chalk it up to overenthusiasm, unreasonable expectations, or whatever.

That being said, I still think the battle could be won. OK, I agree, Empeg is a pretty small company without large financial resources, so I accept the argument that they can't afford to risk being the test case.

From a "features" point of view, I understand that you make audio equipment and not storage devices, but it's not as if the feature would require any engineering changes or even many software changes. I'm not an expert in the field, but from my limited knowledge it seems that it woudl be pretty trivial to add the functionality.

So, I understand your position. I don't agree with it 100%, but for The Time Being at least, I can live without the feature. It sure would be nice to have, and I really hope to see it someday, but better an in-car MP3 player without file-transfer features than none at all.

With that, I should also note that serial may not be fast enough to handle this without streaming/resampling.... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

May very well be a design goal too. Umm, IceCast comes to mind...

Kureg

That being said, I still think the battle could be won. OK, I agree, Empeg is a pretty small company without large financial resources, so I accept the argument that they can't afford to risk being the test case.

I also think the battle could probably be won. Catch 22 is that it would cost millions (possibly more than total empeg's capital), and if lost, the company is dead. Besides, I am not sure how investors would look at that, and all this because of a feature far from the main empeg's purpose and (relatively) easily achievable without involment on empeg's side

You know, their is Croatian saying difficult to traslate given this censoring software and my limited English, but here it is: It easy to beat [stinging weed - nettle?] with other guy's member.

From a "features" point of view, I understand that you make audio equipment and not storage devices, but it's not as if the feature would require any engineering changes or even many software changes. I'm not an expert in the field, but from my limited knowledge it seems that it woudl be pretty trivial to add the functionality.

The point was that empeg is not storage device, so the argument that other storage device manufacturers don't attempt any anti-piracy measures does not apply. And yes, as you can see from the discussion, a solution with materialize in a month or two...

There is really no need for heated discussions here (we had, let me see, about GPL, in-car visuals, copying, a slight recent one about UI features... anything else?). It is easy to resolve things with guys@empeg nicely.

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Saying "The Empeg Player isn't a mass storage device" is fairly silly, if you ask me. That's what it primarily is - a removable mass storage device. It happens to have a lot of extra cool features and electronics, but in computer terms, it's definitely a mass storage device. It's designed for one fairly specific purpose, yes, but at its heart it's a place to store and retrieve data, and nothing about the design prevents it from storing data other than digital audio. One could buy a second docking station, wipe the software, and have a very expensive but more-or-less standard removable/dockable hard drive.

None of which is to say that it isn't a wonderful gadget - it is. But it's definitely a removable mass storage device.

Saying "The Empeg Player isn't a mass storage device" is fairly silly, if you ask me. That's what it primarily is - a removable mass storage device. It happens to have a lot of extra cool features and electronics, but in computer terms, it's definitely a mass storage device. It's designed for one fairly specific purpose, yes, but at its heart it's a place to store and retrieve data, and nothing about the design prevents it from storing data other than digital audio. One could buy a second docking station, wipe the software, and have a very expensive but more-or-less standard removable/dockable hard drive.


Yes, and one could wipe software from a CRAY and have an intersting sculpture. Yet, while export of sculptures to, say, China is not restricted, export of CRAYs is (or rather was, RIP, more or less). Try to imagine weight of your arguments at a court of law.

To give you a more realistic example: I think you would agree that empeg is intrinsicaly a computer, but that its intended use is to serve as in-car audio equipment. No amount of arguing with our customs officials made them clasify as general purpose computer (0% due), but ICE component (8% due). When I insisted it is just computer, with a CPU, memory, some general purpose and some specialized I/O etc, they replied "My dear sir, so are modern TV sets, washing machines and cars, and still, we have separate tax categories for them."

In short, don't confuse technical reasoning with legal one.

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Well, Bonzi, that "import tax" and categorisation of import goods are just leftovers from our old Balkan country. One thing that you could have done is to get the Empeg installed outside Croatia, and keep quiet on the border. Do you really think that average customs officer would notice what you have in the dashboard ?

On the other hand, why not to have that functionality, if we can have it. Also, if it is a though job for Empeg Ltd. to do it because of legal reasons, why don't they leave a clue for third party developers to do it ? It is only a matter of time that somebody will do it. I'll definatly try if I can get some timeout of my regular work...

regards
Darko

PS
Koja je to stara hrvatska izreka ?
;-)

mk2, amber/green, s/n 080000317

Well, Bonzi, that "import tax" and categorisation of import goods are just leftovers from our old Balkan country. One thing that you could have done is to get the Empeg installed outside Croatia, and keep quiet on the border. Do you really think that average customs officer would notice what you have in the dashboard ?

Darko, virtually all countries have import duties on some goods. Also, most have some form of sales tax, VAT or something like that. But, my point was not that; what i wanted to stress out is that if RIAA lawyers ask the court to find that empeg is an audio device, not a computer or storage device, the court would probably do just that.

BTW, I considered going to Cambridge to pick up my empeg and have it installed by Dominic and his crew, have a beer with guys@empeg and generally enjoy myself. I would have to pay their VAT (17%) in that case, but fun factor and guaranteed competent installation would more than compensate for that. However, I could not spare enough time for that.

On the other hand, why not to have that functionality, if we can have it. Also, if it is a though job for Empeg Ltd. to do it because of legal reasons, why don't they leave a clue for third party developers to do it ? It is only a matter of time that somebody will do it. I'll definatly try if I can get some timeout of my regular work...

The whole point is that empeg cannot afford to risk and make it empeg standard feature. Every Unix half-literate will manage to install ftp server on empeg. Heck, it is even enough to put ther ftp client, connect via serial, and copy the stuff (probably after making reasonably-named symlinks). I was just asking people to stop pestering guys@empeg to risk their company by making it part of 'official' funcionality.

I translated the saying. In original it is 'Lako je tudjim po koprivama mlatiti' (ili 'gloginje otresati' ili neka druga od mnogih verzija).

BTW, what's your regular work?

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

virtually all countries have import duties on some goods. Also, most have some form of sales tax, VAT or something like that

Of course that all countries have import duties, but most of them do not categorise products for different tax bands (unless it is a military equipment ). I've been importing all sorts of things for my personal use from USA, and all I've paid here in UK is a VAT on that.

I was just asking people to stop pestering guys@empeg to risk their company by making it part of 'official' functionality.

I do agree to this 100%.

BTW, what's your regular work?

Regular work is working as an independent software consultant. It is mainly object oriented analysis and design, with VA Smalltalk as an implementation language, Although, I've been working on VA Java for the last 10 months. Java sucks, but it seems to be a flavour of the year in UK. The problem is that I haven't touched Unix for about six years, and now I'll try to make it up with Linux...

PS
Next time you are in UK, give me a call, so we can go for a beer (more than one)...


Darko Dojin
mk2, 12Gb, amber&green, s/n 080000317

The SSI NEO 25 portable MP3 player: http://www.ssiamerica.com/ does allow you to use it as a storeage device to read to and write from.

No scruples here about being able to copy and from, or re-distribute music here; wonder how long it will take before SSI will be legally challenged.

I'm thinking of buying one (before RIAA comes down on them like a ton of bricks), although it's primary goal in my case would just be to play music.

SSI also do a car player, by the way; extensively discussed in one of the threads at ICE.


Cas

I suspect that the reason people aren't doing it is that the people who have the ability to do this easily, just don't care at all. I know I don't. So, if there's no incentive, there won't be any work. It isn't that it's particularly difficult.

Fly me to the moon...

No scruples here about being able to copy and from, or re-distribute music here; wonder how long it will take before SSI will be legally challenged

OK, let them try and prove RIAA requests are without merit. empeg then can use it.

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Regular work is working as an independent software consultant. It is mainly object oriented analysis and design, with VA Smalltalk as an implementation language, Although, I've been working on VA Java for the last 10 months. Java sucks, but it seems to be a flavour of the year in UK. The problem is that I haven't touched Unix for about six years, and now I'll try to make it up with Linux...

Nice to see somebody actually doing serious OO work. I have played with Smalltalk some 10 years ago, but my company now mostly uses app dev toolkit called Panther and various middleware packages to develop banking software. We also use more or less classical Structured Analysis and other various mostly James Martin inspired methods. Pretty boring...

Next time you are in UK, give me a call, so we can go for a beer (more than one)...

It's a deal!

Cheers!


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green