bandnet.org Forums

I've been busy recently adding new features to the site.

Firstly, two new forums have been added on request of msp. One is for selling and trading gear, such as guitars, pedals and amps, and the other for gear reviews. I hope these will be useful once things pick up (unintentional pun, sorry).

I've redesigned the file page. Rather than one thin column everything is now in two columns. This should make it easier for people to see everything on the page without having to scroll down so far, as well as making it look neater.

You can now comment on and rate files. Go to the information page of any file and there will be a box to post your comments in. There is also a drop down menu for rating files.

It is now possible to select a license for a file when you upload it. We currently have a selection of Creative Commons licenses that allow you to choose what you want to allow people to do with your files. You can request for new licenses to be added in our feature requests forum.

Licenses cannot be changed once the file has been uploaded as some files are modified to embed license information. Having several different versions of a file will reduce the chances of it being found on a filesharing network. However, some file types are not changed and others, such as MP3 files, have their tag information ignored when producing an identifier so changing licenses for these files may be possible in the future.

Other changes include several bug fixes and minor cosmetic changes.

Uhm, is this really necessary? I'm not really delighted by idea of having this system change my files, especially changing the hash of my files (where this applies). I think this should be optional and the user must have the option to have his files be treated as "untouchably holy", so that hashes get preserved.

As far as I noticed, OGG files are not being changed, though. To which files does this apply?

If you read the technical specs on the Creative Commons website, it does say that license information should be embedded.

See these pages:
http://creativecommons.org/technology/embedding
http://creativecommons.org/technology/ogg
http://creativecommons.org/technology/mp3

I thought most people probably wouldn't have the knowledge, or care mostly, to modify the files themselves. I guess I can add a checkbox to turn off metadata embedding, yeh. On by default, of course.

Check the latest file you uploaded.

Mmh, ok, yes I agree that embedding is a good idea, by itself. I should go and read that entire website when I get some time.

The problem with changing the hash is that if I've already shared the file on p2p, and then upload it here, it won't find/use the existing sources. And since my files are somewhat less famous and distributed than the latest hollywood movies (), it's a good thing to try to have only one version of the file out there. So I might want to embed license information myself and not have the file changed after that.

I checked my latest OGGs and I didn't see anything.

So a checkbox defaulting to 'on' would be great. You can even hide it or make it a "For experts only; No, don't touch the red button!"