Feurio Questions & Answers - General questions
on Feurio:
Implementation CDDB2? / CDDB vs. FreeDb
Question: I have read about CDDB2
- when will CDDB2 be supported by Feurio!?
Question: Why can't I transfer any
CDs to the CDDB database?
Question: Should I use CDDB or FreeDb?
Answer:
Short explanation: CDDB and FreeDb
are Internet-based databases which contain information on CDs (CD- and track
titles); these databases can queried automatically. This means that after inserting
a CD, the CDDB or FreeDb database is queried; if the CD is present in the database,
the information is transferred from the database so that the CD and track titles
are displayed correctly.- CDDB:
a) Name of the protocol used for querying the CDs and transferring
the CD data.
b) Name of the first CD database: The "CDDB database" was initially run privately;
in the meantime the name has been bought up by a company and continues to run
commercially!
You will find more information on the CDDB database on the CDDB-Homepage: http://www.cddb.com
- CDDB2:
The operators of the CDDB database have introduced a new protocol
(CDDB. This protocol has several advantages to offer in comparison to the "old"
CDDB protocol (e.g. the transfer of special characters, more database fields..).
Unfortunately the operators of the CDDB2 database have demanded that authors
who want to use the CDDB2 in their programs have to sign a "License Agreement"
which among other things prohibits the use of other databases and requires the
payment of license fees. See below for details!
- FreeDb:
The FreeDb database is a free database which has been set up
"in opposition" to the commercial CDDB database strongly tied to license conditions.
The FreeDb database also uses CDDB protocol and can thus be used by every CDDB
capable program. The FreeDb database can be used without registration and without
paying license fees.
You will find more information on the FreeDb database on the FreeDb-Homepage:
http://www.freedb.org
The disadvantage of FreeDb is that currently the FreeDb database contains less
CDs that the CDDB databases - this should however change in future.
CDDB2 is currently not supported due to the unacceptable conditions
of use demanded by the CDDB operators.
CDDB2 will not be supported by Feurio! until the CDDB operators
change their conditions of use.
Please write a short note directly to the CDDB operators: info@cddb.com.
Details of our criticism of the CDDB2 conditions of use:
- Registration necessary (Data protection):
To use the CDDB2 database, EVERY user has to register directly
in the database first and provide some details.
First of all this takes time and secondly, although the operator assures you
that he won't pass the data on - who can check up on him?
The "old" CDDB database or FreeDb database in contrast can be used "spontaneously",
i.e. without registration procedure.
- Sole use ("You should recognize no other God than me"):
To use the CDDB2 database, the software developer has to sign
a license agreement in which he undertakes NOT to use ANY other CD database.
We could just about accept the idea of not being allowed to use several databases
at once, if necessary - but on asking, we were NOT even allowed to change Feurio!
so that only one database can be used. Our offer of deciding on which database
to use during installation or even to produce two different versions of Feurio!
was not found to be acceptable.
Our offer to develop an (extra downloadable) "CDDB2-Plugin" for Feurio! which
would have then automatically have deactivated access to other databases was
not accepted either.
In our opinion this is even worse abuse of a monopoly position that the "tactics"
Microsoft get up to!
We can not accept that in this instance the user is to be robbed of his freedom
to decide which database to use!
- License fees:
Another SIGNIFICANT problem for us is that WE are to pay license
fees for us to support CDDB2 with Feurio! - and that depending on the number
of users which use CDDB2 with Feurio!!
Although the license fee per version is relatively small, this lump-sum fee for
us is of course not acceptable - it would mean that for every test version of
Feurio! installed anywhere in the world , we would have to pay license fees to
the CDDB2 operator, this would probably mean extremely high fees -so it is just
not acceptable for us.
In response to our criticism the CDDB2 operators answered that we should just
freeze the CDDB2 query in the unregistered test version and only authorize the
query for registered versions - this is not acceptable to us either!
The philosophy behind Feurio! is that the "Test version" can be tested without
limit - we don't want to offer "Crippleware" with limited capabilities! The test
version is there to convey a COMPLETE impression of the high performance Feurio!
has to offer!
If necessary we would have agreed to only offer CDDB2 in the registered Feurio!
version if the "normal" Feurio! version would have been allowed to query the
FreeDb database - but the CDDB operators wouldn't let us do that either - we
would have to completely deactivate the database query for the unregistered version,
i.e. remove a function which already exists without substitution - this is not
acceptable.
Our suggestion of only using the registered Feurio! versions as a basis for license
payments was not accepted either - as mentioned above we would have to pay for
ALL Feurio! installations!
The CDDB2 operators could also NOT explain to us what we are to do in the case
of pirate copy versions / serial numbers - it is obvious that we can not avoid
pirate copies being made of Feurio! serial numbers or even code generators being
published - this can never be avoided.
This would have the strange effect that we would have to pay fees for all pirate
copies of Feurio! installed anywhere. This would really be ridiculous!
The CDDB2 operators assure us that "measures" have been taken to avoid such a
thing happening - but they didn't want to give us any details until we signed
the contract. (a business policy we can only describe as being untrustworthy
- sign the contract first and get the exact facts afterwards.)
We have conducted a lengthy e-mail exchange with the CDDB operators on this and
gives reasons for our criticism in detail.
To conclude the discussion we received the following mail:
We don't allow people to use Free DB and you can't use CDDB1
and CDDB2.
These are the choices you need to make.
CDDB2 plugin and NO CDDB without plugin
CDDB2 all the time
no CDDB at all
All these possibilities are unacceptable to us for the above mentioned reasons.
It is particularly unacceptable for us that users are not to be able to choose
between different databases- in our opinion this is even worse than the things
Microsoft gets up to.
As a result of this we suggested to the operators that we offer, CDDB2 as a "Plugin"
for Feurio!, i.e. the "normal" Feurio! uses cddb / freedb, and when the CDDB2
plugin is installed, access to FreeDb would be deactivated.
This was not acceptable to the CDDB operators.
So we then even offered to ask the user during installation which database is
to be used.
We also offered to build in a block in the database which would prevent the transfer
of data from the CDDB2 database to the FreeDb database - unfortunately none of
these suggestions were accepted.
For this reason we have been forced to decide not to implement
cddb2 in Feurio! (for now).
If you want CDDB2 to be implemented in Feurio!, write to the cddb2 operators
and demand that these unacceptable conditions of use be changed!
We could live with individual conditions set out - even with license fees - but
not with all of them together!
At the moment it is only possible to use the CDDB1 protocol to query the CDDB
database (i.e. currently you can choose between CDDB and FreeDb). The CDDB1 protocol
is however going to be deactivated by the CDDB operators at an unknown point
in time!
Based on the statement above, it is to be expected that the CDDB operators will
soon "lock out" Feurio! completely, i.e. use of the CDDB1 protocol will also
be blocked. In this case it will only be possible to use FreeDb then.
Therefore we recommend that all users only use the FreeDb
database from now on!
CDDB-Submits (Sending CD data to the
CDDB database):
When using CDDB1 protocol, CDDB-Submits are unfortunately not possible; the CDDB
database does not accept submits from Feurio! nicht, as we have not accepted
the CDDB conditions of use.
See also:
Questions and Answers - General questions on Feurio!
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