What if your digital assistant could battle rap? That may sound far-fetched, but Gil Weinberg, a music technologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has adapted a musical robot called Shimon to compose lyrics and perform in real time. From a report: That means it can engage in rap "conversations" with humans, and maybe even help them compose their own lyrics. Shimon, which was intentionally designed to sound machinelike (listen here), is meant to be a one-of-a-kind musical collaborator -- or an inhuman rap-battle opponent. Computer-generated music dates back to the 1950s, when early computers used algorithms to compose melodies. Modern robots can use machine learning to ad-lib on instruments including the flute and drums. One such machine was an earlier version of Shimon, which could play the marimba and sing. The recently updated robot looks the same; it still consists of a ball-shaped "head," with saucy movable eyebrows above visor-covered eyes, perched at the end of a mechanical arm. But now Weinberg claims Shimon is the first improvising robot to foray into rap, with its distinct stylistic features that pose unique programming challenges.

The crowning glory of rap lies in the lyrics. On top of semantic content, the words need to adhere to an aesthetically pleasing beat and rhythm, all while delivering multiple layers of poetic complexity. In a recent paper, published in the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computational Creativity 2020, Weinberg's research team outlines the technical advances that brought a rapping Shimon to life. When Shimon battle raps, software converts its human opponent's spoken lyrics into text. The robot's system identifies keywords from this, and generates new lyrics based on several custom data sets of words that Shimon has been trained on (using deep-learning models). These data sets can come from any text: the work of Lil Wayne, JAY-Z or other rappers; lyrics from other genres; or even nonmusical literary works. Imagine how Shakespeare or Jane Austen might sound if they rapped; Shimon could simulate that for you.

Joshua Topolsky, writing at Input Mag: Movies are, by their very nature, good. Movies are one of the best things to have happened to the human race, probably ranking right up there in the top 5 with eating, sex, indoor plumbing, and music. We've probably all had formative experiences in one way or another around movies, and for many of us those experiences took place in a classic multiplex, surrounded by other like-minded film fans. But over the last two decades or so, the movie-going experience has been degraded by turns, both in terms of the physical reality of packing hundreds of people into a shared experience with a world of increasing distractions, and in the quality of the "blockbuster" fare being peddled by studios. This pandemic has made us all take a long, hard look at what has really been working for humanity and what hasn't, and I think the theater experience -- at least the massive, multi-screen one we've been living with -- might be dying at just the right time.

There are myriad contributors to this realization. For me, it starts with the basic reality that a truly epic film-watching experience can now be had in your house, with all the big-screen bombast and overwhelming audio that theaters have long touted as their domain alone. A fairly cheap, big-screen 4K TV, and an accompanying surround sound setup will put you right back in the theater recliner, except you have full control over the experience. Whether that means being able to pause for bathroom and snack breaks, having the option to just switch the film if you don't like what you're seeing, or being able to return to something over a period of time, watching at home can not only be as good as watching in a theater -- it can be better.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Music Business Worldwide: According to a document published last week, Daniel Ek's company is seeking a patent for its "Plagiarism Risk Detector And Interface" technology, which pertains to "Methods, systems and computer program products..for testing a lead sheet for plagiarism." As explained in the filing -- and as our songwriter/musician readers will already know -- a "lead sheet" is a type of music score or musical notation for songs denoting their melody, chords and sometimes lyrics or additional notes. Spotify's invention would allow for a lead sheet to be fed through the platform's "plagiarism detector," which would then, "having been trained on a plurality of preexisting encoded lead sheets," immediately compare the composition in question to all other songs stored in its database.

A set of messages would then be displayed -- describing a detected level of plagiarism regarding "a plurality of elements" such as a chord sequence, melodic fragments, harmony, etc. of a song. The AI software would also potentially calculate "a similarity value" of the song in question vs. other songs in the Spotify lead sheet library. These technology could work the other way around, too, says Spotify's filing, reassuring a songwriter that "the melodic fragment [of your song] appears to be completely new." One particularly interesting element of this is that it would take place in near-real time, allowing a songwriter or composer to tweak elements of their work to avoid infringement before they (and/or their record label) spent the big bucks on recording a final version. Spotify's filing adds that "in some embodiments a link to the media content item that might be infringed (e.g., a track of an album) is provided so that a [songwriter] can quickly... listen to the potentially plagiarized work."

Spotify's $100 million-plus Anchor acquisition is seemingly paying off. From a report: In data released today as part of its annual Wrapped look-back on the year, the company says Anchor, which makes podcast creation software, powered 80 percent of new podcasts on Spotify this year, meaning the software contributed more than 1 million shows to Spotify's catalog in 2020 alone. Overall, Anchor powers 70 percent of Spotify's total podcast catalog, or around 1.3 million out of over 1.9 million shows. People also seem to be listening to that content. Spotify says Anchor shows account for more consumption, in terms of time spent listening, than any other third-party podcast hosting or distribution provider on its platform. (Not counting shows owned or operated by Spotify.) This sounds surprising, at least to me, especially given that big networks like NPR, The New York Times, and Wondery all put their shows on Spotify. But Mike Mignano, head of podcast mission at Spotify, says the data point speaks to the large global podcasting ecosystem that people might not know exists. With more than a million Anchor shows on the platform, listening time adds up fast, even if some shows only have a small group of dedicated fans.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Rifle fire, hurried footsteps and distant explosions. The rat-a-tat of a firefight. Cars mangled from grenades. The young man was transfixed. It could have been any day in Kabul, where targeted assassinations, terrorist attacks and wanton violence have become routine, and the city often feels as if it is under siege. But for Safiullah Sharifi, his behind firmly planted on a dusty stoop in the Qala-e Fatullah neighborhood, the death and destruction unfurled on his phone, held landscape-style in his hands. "On Friday I play from early morning to around 4 p.m.," said Mr. Sharifi, 20, with a sly grin, as if he knew he was detailing the outline of an addiction to a passer-by. His left hand is tattooed with a skull in a jester's hat, a grim image offset by his lanky and not-quite-old-enough demeanor. "Almost every night, it's 8 p.m. to 3 a.m."

The game is called PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds, but to its millions of players worldwide, no matter the language, it's referred to as PUBG (pronounced pub-gee). It's violent. And it's becoming widely played across Afghanistan, almost as an escape from reality as the 19-year-old war grinds on. In the game, the player drops onto a large piece of terrain, finds weapons and equipment and kills everyone, all of whom are other people playing the game against each other. Victory translates to being the last person or team standing. Which makes its growing popularity in Afghanistan peculiar since that can eerily almost describe the state of the war -- despite ongoing peace negotiations in Qatar.

Even as ending that war seems ever more elusive, Afghan lawmakers are trying to ban PUBG, arguing that it promotes violence and distracts the young from their schoolwork. But Mr. Sharifi laughed at the mention of the proposed ban, knowing he could circumvent it easily with software on his phone. He said he uses the game to communicate with friends and sometimes talks to girls who also play it. That is a remarkable feat on its own since only in the last several years have Afghanistan's cell networks become capable of delivering the kind of data needed to play a game like PUBG, let alone communicate with people concurrently. Gaming centers became popular in Kabul in the years after the 2001 United States invasion, which reversed the Taliban's ban on entertainment including video games and music. But PUBG and other mobile games are usurping these staples because they are downloadable on a smartphone, and free, in a country where 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

According to a new study published in the journal Computers In Human Behavior, smartphone users initiate 89% of the interactions, with only 11% initiated by a notification. "This is at odds with previous academic literature and news reports which commonly claim that smartphone notifications are ruining your life, ruining productivity, and so on," reports PsychNewsDaily. From the report: "The perceived disruptiveness of smartphones is not mainly driven by external notifications," the study's authors write, "but by an urge of the user to interact with their phone that seems to occur in an almost automatic manner, just as a smoker would light a cigarette." [...] The researchers explain that many users felt compelled to check their phones even when they had switched off notifications. "Seeing this has made me realize that I don't even remember picking it up," one of the subjects said in a subsequent interview with the study's authors. The study also found that the average duration of a smartphone interaction was 64 seconds. About 50% of the interactions were 23 seconds or less.

The most common activity users engaged in when using their phones was checking WhatsApp, which accounted for 22% of interactions. [...] The second most common interaction, at 17% of the total, was a "lock screen check," which means briefly unlocking the phone to check for new notifications. In third place was interacting with Instagram (16%). Facebook and Facebook messenger together accounted for 13% of the interactions, e-mail for 6%, web browsing 4%, music 3%, Snapchat 2%, and photos 2%. Phone calls -- these devices are phones, after all -- only comprised about 1% of the interactions.

The participants generally considered e-mail notifications the most important. Likewise, they largely considered group chats a "source of distress," and found most group-chat messages unimportant. Smartphone interactions were longer when users were alone versus with others, and were also longer at home versus at work. Likewise, these interactions were shorter when participants received notifications, compared to when they "self-disrupt." This indicates that smartphone use is more purposeful when users receive notifications, and more "distraction-seeking" when they check their phones themselves. The researchers also found that the scrolling features on apps like Instagram and Facebook led to the longest interactions.

Intel has pulled the plug on one of its most ambitious AR/VR projects to date: The company quietly shut down Intel Studios, a 10,000-square-foot volumetric capture stage in Los Angeles, last month. The facility had been heralded as the world's largest capture stage of its kind, and was used to record music videos for Reggie Watts and K-pop band NCT 127, among others. From a report: Intel confirmed the closure in a statement sent to Protocol: "We're proud of the impact Intel Studios has made in the industry and its role in growing the immersive entertainment category. Although we are closing Intel Studios due to business conditions, we look forward to where the entertainment industry moves in the future." The chipmaker opened its Intel Studios facility in early 2018. At the center of the facility was a massive dome-shaped green-screen stage with more than 100 8K cameras, capable of recording the action from all angles. The resulting visual data could be used to create 3D holograms for AR experiences, as well as immersive 3D VR videos.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A team of academics has detailed this week novel research that converted a smart vacuum cleaner into a microphone capable of recording nearby conversations. Named LidarPhone, the technique works by taking the vacuum's built-in LiDAR laser-based navigational component and converting it into a laser microphone. [...] They tested the LidarPhone attack with various objects, by varying the distance between the robot and the object, and the distance between the sound origin and the object. Tests focused on recovering numerical values, which the research team said they managed to recover with a 90% accuracy. But academics said the technique could also be used to identify speakers based on gender or even determine their political orientation from the music played during news shows, captured by the vacuum's LiDAR.

But while the LidarPhone attack sounds like a gross invasion of privacy, users need not panic for the time being. This type of attack revolves around many prerequisites that most attacks won't bother. There are far easier ways of spying on users than overwriting a vacuum's firmware to control its laser navigation system, such as tricking the user on installing malware on their phone. The LidarPhone attack is merely novel academic research that can be used to bolster the security and design of future smart vacuum robots. In fact, the research team's main recommended countermeasure for smart vacuum cleaning robot makers is to shut down the LiDAR component if it's not rotating. Additional details about the research are available in a research paper titled "Spying with Your Robot Vacuum Cleaner: Eavesdropping via Lidar Sensors."

YouTube claims to be the world's biggest jukebox -- and now it wants to wring more ad dollars from the platform's music fans. From a report: The video giant is launching 15-second audio ads, the first format designed to reach YouTube users who listen to music or podcasts ambiently (i.e., in the background). YouTube also is introducing the ability for advertisers make buys across dynamic music lineups, including the Top 100 charts by country and collections of channels in popular genres such as Latin, K-pop, country, rap and hip-hop. Marketers also can buy ads targeted by moods or interests like fitness or relaxation/meditation. YouTube expects the moves to boost ad revenue it generates from music on the platform, which includes over 70 million official tracks plus remixes, live performances, covers and other music content. And it stands to put YouTube in more head-to-head competition with Spotify, which has been selling audio-only ads and offering targeting by music genres for years.

Lyor Cohen, global head of music for YouTube, positioned the new ad push as "trying to help artists in the industry earn more revenue from ads -- period." YouTube's focus on increasing advertising revenue for music content ultimately benefits its record label partners and their artists, he said. "Subscription revenue is important, and now [music companies] understand the advertising opportunity," said Cohen. "They love that we're building muscle on both sides."

GitHub has reinstated today the youtube-dl open-source project, a Python library that lets users download the source audio and video files behind YouTube videos. From a report: GitHub, a code-hosting repository, had previously removed the library from its portal after it received a controversial DMCA takedown request from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on October 23. In a DMCA takedown letter, RIAA argued that the library was being used to "circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube" and to allow users to "reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings [...] without authorization." RIAA also noted that the project's source code "expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works." More specifically, RIAA used Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to claim that the youtube-dl library was breaking copyright by providing a tool to circumvent copyrighted material -- even if the youtube-dl library didn't contain copyright-infringing code itself.

But in a blog post today, GitHub said the library did not actually break Section 1201 of the DMCA, citing a letter it received from Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers, who to take up the youtube-dl project's case. In the letter, the EFF team explained that Google does not have any technical measures in place to prevent the download of its videos -- all of which need to be made freely available to all kinds of apps, browsers, smart TVs, and more. Hence, EFF lawyers argued that the library could never be taken down under Section 1201 of the DMCA since the library doesn't actually circumvent any sort of copyright protection system in the first place.

"The Radiophonic Workshop has always broken new sonic ground, from the Doctor Who theme to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Now they're at it again — this time using the internet as a musical instrument," reports the Guardian.

"The band includes composers from the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which created soundtracks for most BBC shows from the 60s to the 90s and influenced generations of musicians from Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield to Aphex Twin, Orbital and Mary Epworth..." A performance of Latency will take place at a special online event on 22 November using a technique inspired by lockdown Zoom calls... The internet has an unpredictable natural lag, or latency, caused by the milliseconds it takes for electrical signals from one computer to reach another, as anyone using Zoom has experienced. The trick that Bob Earland and Paddy Kingsland discovered was that they could extend the internet's delay from a few milliseconds into several seconds. Instead of trying to play at the same time, the Radiophonic Workshop will play one after another — in sequence, rather than in parallel.

"We had the bright idea of using that latency to make a loop of music," Earland said. "The sound gets sent to someone, and they add to it, and it keeps going round. So you're not relying on everyone being on the same clock..." Workshop member Peter Howell, who is also a lecturer in film and TV music, said: "It does feel like live playing, it's just that every person has a little bubble of time in which they're playing live."

The performance comes the day before 23 November, the anniversary of the first transmission of Doctor Who in 1963 which is also Delia Derbyshire Day, in honour of the Radiophonic Workshop's leading light, who created the sound of the show's famous theme tune.

Wednesday Twitch warned its users to delete any videos containing copyrighted music. PC Gamer reports on what happened next: Since October, Twitch has been deleting significant quantities of videos over copyright claims, leaving the affected streamers with no way to respond or issue counter-claims. Twitch eventually explained that the number of DMCA notifications it receives from major record labels has surged, going from "fewer than 50" each year to "thousands" beginning in May. The recommendation offered to streamers was to play games with the music muted, which obviously isn't great advice when it comes to rhythm games, or games that don't have the option to mute music separately from other audio. Meanwhile, some streamers have had videos muted due to sound effects, with claims coming via automated content recognition software Audible Magic. These claims can be contested, but it's still frustrating for those affected by content ID software that can't tell the difference between copyrighted audio and the noise of a grandfather clock chiming in a horror game.

In response, streamers have been protesting by playing games with the sound off completely to highlight the absurdity of the situation, some using the hashtag #DMCAsoundoff. Watching Rocksmith players grunt or silently nod along to songs nobody can hear highlights the problem while still entertaining their viewers, as does hearing them improvise their own the sound effects for games like Resident Evil 2.
Polygon argues it's "alarming that these are the lengths players are going to in order to try and protest Twitch's policy..." But they also applauded the creativity of the protesters It's a surprising look at the transformative nature of streaming. When players are forced to play in dead silence, people still tune in and watch. Even while complying with copyright law to the absolute letter, each stream is different, and each act of protest feels wholly unique.

Twitch recently posted a long statement in response to the controversy, writing: "Your frustration and confusion with recent music-related copyright issues is completely justified. Things can — and should — be better for creators than they have been recently. We should have developed more sophisticated and user-friendly tools long ago. To all the creators who lost their community's best moments, we're sorry. This shouldn't have happened."

Despite the statement, Twitch has yet to provide concrete solutions for the ongoing problem, and the platform has yet to address the issue of in-game audio triggering the DMCA process (besides a suggestion to mute in-game audio.)

In a Wall Street Journal article comparing Apple's HomePod Mini against the competition, a Google spokesperson hinted that the company is working on integrating its Chromecast streaming devices and Nest Audio speakers. The Verge reports: Being able to combine a streaming platform with a smart phone speaker makes a lot of sense for these companies. After all, customers already have all the hardware in their living room -- why not repurpose those speakers to improve the sound of your Netflix movies? Plus, there's the added bonus of inciting customers to stay within a company's ecosystem. You're more likely to buy a HomePod mini if it works with the Apple TV you already have. The ability to link smart speakers to streaming boxes is also something that both Apple and Amazon already offer.

Google's plans are extremely vague for now -- The Wall Street Journal makes no mention of which devices the company is looking to link together, when the feature will arrive, or what sort of use cases it's looking to achieve. But with Google increasingly looking to push users toward its smart home devices, making them all work better together just makes good sense.

An anonymous reader shares a column: Google Music is dead, and with it one of the few remaining connections I have to the company that doesn't feel like a gun to my head. The service, now merged haphazardly with YouTube Music, recalled the early days of Google, when they sometimes just made cool internet things. It made it nearly a decade, though -- pretty impressive for a one of their products. I'll just say it up front: I'm a lifelong music pirate. Oh yes, I've reformed in recent years, but I've got a huge library of tracks that I've cultivated for decades and don't plan to abandon any time soon (likewise you can pry Winamp from my cold, dead hands). So when Google announced back in 2011 I could stream it all to myself for free, it sounded too good to be true. And indeed it was a relic of the old Google, which was quite simply all about taking things that are difficult to do yourself (find things online, set up a new email address, collaborate on a spreadsheet) and make them easier. Google Music -- as we'll call it despite it having gone through several branding changes before the final indignity of being merged into another, worse service as a presumably short-lived tab -- was not first to the music-streaming or downloading world by a long shot, but its promise of being able to upload your old music files and access them anywhere as if they were emails or documents was a surprisingly generous one. Generous not just in that it was providing server space for 20,000 songs (!) for free and the infrastructure for serving those songs where you went, but in its acknowledgement of other models of owning media. It didn't judge you for having 20,000 MP3s -- they weren't subjected to some kind of legitimacy check, and they didn't report you to the RIAA for having them, though they certainly could have. No, Google Music's free media locker was the company, or at least a quorum of the product team, announcing that they get it: not everyone does everything the same way, and not everyone is ready to embrace whatever business model tech companies decide makes sense. (Notably it has shifted several times more since then.)

In a lengthy blog post, Twitch told streamers that they must stop playing recorded music on their streams (unless it's officially licensed) and that "if you haven't already, you should review your historical VODs and Clips that may have music in them and delete any archives that might." Variety reports: The Amazon-owned live-streaming platform also claimed that it is "actively speaking with the major record labels about potential approaches to additional licenses that would be appropriate for the Twitch service." However, the company also said that the "current constructs for licenses" that record labels have with other services (which typically take a cut of revenue from creators for payment to record labels) "make less sense for Twitch." "We're open-minded to new structures that could work for Twitch's unique service, but we must be clear that they may take some time to materialize or may never happen at all," the company said in the blog.

Twitch's music-copyright communique comes after several major U.S. music organizations -- including the RIAA, the Recording Academy, the National Music Publishers Association, the Music Managers Forum, the American Association of Independent Music and SAG-AFTRA -- sent a letter last month to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (copying Twitch CEO Emmet Shear). The letter, among other things, accused Twitch of "allowing and enabling its streamers to use our respective members' music without authorization, in violation of Twitch's music guidelines." Twitch said it was caught off guard by the music industry's crackdown on unlicensed music on its service. According to the company, starting this May, reps for music companies began sending thousands of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) copyright-takedown notices targeted at users' archived content, "mostly for snippets of tracks in years-old clips." Before then, Twitch said, it received fewer than 50 music-related DMCA notifications per year.

Twitch said it analyzed DMCA notifications received from the end of May through mid-October and found that more than 99% of them were for tracks that streamers were playing in the background of their stream. Twitch apologized to creators for the angst the DMCA takedowns have caused, noting that a warning email it sent to many last month about the videos deleted from their accounts "didn't include all the information that you'd typically get in a DMCA notification." "We could have developed more sophisticated, user-friendly tools a while ago. That we didn't is on us," it said. "And we could have provided creators with a longer time period to address their VOD and Clip libraries -- that was a miss as well. We're truly sorry for these mistakes, and we'll do better."

Ticketmaster is planning to check the coronavirus vaccination status of concert-goers prior to shows once a treatment is approved. The New York Post reports: The ticketing giant plans to have customers use their cellphones to verify their inoculation or whether they've tested negative for the virus within a 24- to 72-hour window, according to the exclusive report. The plan, which is still being ironed out, will utilize three separate components, including the California-based company's digital ticketing app, third-party health information firms like CLEAR Health Pass and testing/vaccination distributors like Labcorp or CVS Minute Clinic.

Ticketmaster will reportedly not store or access medical records under the plan. If approved, fans would need to verify that they've either already been vaccinated or have tested negative as recently as 24 hours prior to the show. Concert-goers would then instruct a lab to send over test results to companies like CLEAR Health Pass or IBM's Digital Health Pass, which would verify the fan's status to Ticketmaster. Anyone who tests positive or doesn't get screened won't be granted access to the event venue, Billboard reported. The digital ticketing app will also eliminate the need for paper tickets and can be prohibited from being resold, according to the report. Further reading: Billboard

Artificial intelligence is being used to create new songs seemingly performed by Frank Sinatra and other dead stars. 'Deepfakes' are cute tricks -- but they could change pop for ever. From a report: "It's Christmas time! It's hot tub time!" sings Frank Sinatra. At least, it sounds like him. With an easy swing, cheery bonhomie, and understated brass and string flourishes, this could just about pass as some long lost Sinatra demo. Even the voice -- that rich tone once described as "all legato and regrets" -- is eerily familiar, even if it does lurch between keys and, at times, sounds as if it was recorded at the bottom of a swimming pool. The song in question not a genuine track, but a convincing fake created by "research and deployment company" OpenAI, whose Jukebox project uses artificial intelligence to generate music, complete with lyrics, in a variety of genres and artist styles. Along with Sinatra, they've done what are known as "deepfakes" of Katy Perry, Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel, 2Pac, Celine Dion and more. Having trained the model using 1.2m songs scraped from the web, complete with the corresponding lyrics and metadata, it can output raw audio several minutes long based on whatever you feed it. Input, say, Queen or Dolly Parton or Mozart, and you'll get an approximation out the other end.

"As a piece of engineering, it's really impressive," says Dr Matthew Yee-King, an electronic musician, researcher and academic at Goldsmiths. (OpenAI declined to be interviewed.) "They break down an audio signal into a set of lexemes of music -- a dictionary if you like -- at three different layers of time, giving you a set of core fragments that is sufficient to reconstruct the music that was fed in. The algorithm can then rearrange these fragments, based on the stimulus you input. So, give it some Ella Fitzgerald for example, and it will find and piece together the relevant bits of the 'dictionary' to create something in her musical space." Admirable as the technical achievement is, there's something horrifying about some of the samples, particularly those of artists who have long since died -- sad ghosts lost in the machine, mumbling banal cliches. "The screams of the damned" reads one comment below that Sinatra sample; "SOUNDS FUCKING DEMONIC" reads another. We're down in the Uncanny Valley. Deepfake music is set to have wide-ranging ramifications for the music industry as more companies apply algorithms to music. Google's Magenta Project -- billed as "exploring machine learning as a tool in the creative process" -- has developed several open source APIs that allow composition using entirely new, machine-generated sounds, or human-AI co-creations. Numerous startups, such as Amper Music, produce custom, AI-generated music for media content, complete with global copyright. Even Spotify is dabbling; its AI research group is led by Francois Pachet, former head of Sony Music's computer science lab.

While the RIAA has objected to a tool for downloading online videos, EFF senior activist Elliot Harmon responds with this question. "Who died and put them in charge of YouTube?"

He asks the question in a new video "explainer" on the controversy, and argues in a new piece at EFF.org that the youtube-dl tool "doesn't infringe on any RIAA copyrights." RIAA's argument relies on a different section of the DMCA, Section 1201. DMCA 1201 says that it's illegal to bypass a digital lock in order to access or modify a copyrighted work. Copyright holders have argued that it's a violation of DMCA 1201 to bypass DRM even if you're doing it for completely lawful purposes; for example, if you're downloading a video on YouTube for the purpose of using it in a way that's protected by fair use. (And thanks to the way that copyright law has been globalized via trade agreements, similar laws exist in many other jurisdictions too.) RIAA argues that since youtube-dl could be used to download music owned by RIAA-member labels, no one should be able to use the tool, even for completely lawful purposes.

This is an egregious abuse of the notice-and-takedown system, which is intended to resolve disputes over allegedly infringing material online. Again, youtube-dl doesn't use RIAA-member labels' music in any way. The makers of youtube-dl simply shared information with the public about how to perform a certain task — one with many completely lawful applications.
Harmon wants to hear from people using youtube-dl for lawful purposes. And he also links to an earlier EFF piece arguing that DMCA 1201 "is incredibly broad, apparently allowing rightsholders to legally harass any 'trafficker' in code that lets users re-take control of their devices from DRM locks..."

And EFF's concern over DMCA 1201 has been ongoing: DMCA 1201 has been loaded with terrible implications for innovation and free expression since the day it was passed. For many years, EFF documented these issues in our "Unintended Consequences" series; we continue to organize and lobby for temporary exemptions to its provisions for the purposes of cellphone unlocking, restoring vintage videogames and similar fair uses, as well as file and defend lawsuits in the United States to try and mitigate its damage. We look forward to the day when it is no longer part of U.S. law.

But due to the WIPO Copyright Treaty, the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions infest much of the world's jurisdictions too, including the European Union via the Information Society Directive 2001/29/EC.

Two weeks ago the RIAA asked GitHub to remove the open-source stream-ripper software youtube-dl. This request wasn't well-received by developers, many of whom retaliated by posting copies of the code. Yesterday, things went from bad to worse when a user with the name 'FuckTheRIAA' uploaded three MP3s of the songs the RIAA mentioned in its takedown notice. TorrentFreak reports: A few hours ago we spotted a new GitHub user named 'FuckTheRIAA' who uploaded a copy of youtube-dl as well as a 'FuckTheRIAA' repository that includes three songs. These songs from Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, and Icona Pop, were not chosen randomly. The same tracks were mentioned in the RIAA's original takedown request, as the YouTube videos were highlighted in the youtube-dl code.

This is yet another example that shows how the RIAA's takedown request has actually made things worse for the music group, at least for now. After nearly a day the three MP3 files are still available on GitHub. [I]t seems likely that it will send another DMCA takedown request to remove the tracks from GitHub. Whether the RIAA will also file takedown notices to remove all of the new youtube-dl forks has yet to be seen. For now, its takedown efforts have only made things worse, so they may let things cool down for a while first while exploring other options.

On Monday, Spotify announced a new initiative that offers artists the chance to pay their way into automated recommendations. Gizmodo reports: In a carefully worded blog post, Spotify is framing its latest move as a test that will give artists more "input" into the recommendation algorithms that populate personalized playlists with fresh tracks. The company writes that its algorithms take "into account thousands of types of signals: what you're listening to and when, which songs you're adding to your playlists, the listening habits of people who have similar tastes, and much more." Today, Spotify is adding a new signal to the mix: $$$.

Artists uploading new tracks to Spotify will be able to choose "music that's a priority for them" and in exchange for accepting a "promotional recording royalty rate," Spotify's algorithms might just bless them with exposure. The company isn't making promises, it's only offering an opportunity. There's no guarantee of placement in playlists and the reduced royalty rate is only applied to songs that end up being served through the new recommendation system. What is a "promotional recording royalty rate," exactly? [A] spokesperson for the service told the Verge that they aren't making the rate public while it's in testing and Spotify will "calibrate to make sure that the widest group of artists and labels can find success."