CD-ROM music

[dmr@plan9.att.com dmr@plan9.att.com]

 ... what happened to the music?

To explain and expand a bit: a group next door to us has
algorithms that do compression of audio signals using
ideas collectively known as PAC (perceptual audio coding).
They are able to take (e.g.) 44KHz CD stereo and compress
it by a factor of about 12 with virtually no perceptive
loss.  Ken Thompson and Sean Dorward helped them with
code-smashing and system design to make the algorithms
more practical in use.  This work was independent of Plan 9.

Our hope was that the Plan 9 release would not only advertise
this technology (on behalf of the acoustics folk next door)
but also provide added play-value to Plan 9 by including
not only the whole Plan 9 distribution, but also several
hours of CD-quality music on the one CD-ROM.

The two problems that developed were that the people who
want to sell or license the PAC technology began to
feel uneasy about releasing the algorithms, and also
that the lawyers began to feel uneasy about getting
into music publishing.  All the material we had
did come with letters saying "I release this,"
but they began to think about what would happen
if someone else came along and said "You didn't have
rights to release it, it's my tune."

We were disappointed at the time, but as things worked
out it's probably just as well.  We spent enough time
working intellectual-property issues on our own turf
without taking the battle onto others'.  (My favorite
example: Rob is on good terms with the guy who owns
the rights to the Ed Wood films, including Plan 9 From
Outer Space.  It turned out his rights didn't quite
include using movie publicity stills to advertise
operating systems.  To use a picture of Bela Lugosi
in conjunction with Plan 9™ the operating system,
we would have to negotiate with Lugosi's estate.
How much time should one spend on this?)

Speaking of play-value, has anyone gotten themselves far enough
out of VGA hell to try the sky catalog or the geographic/road
databases?

	Dennis