2:59

Following up on this, by the 29th of September I received an email from the “SONY BMG CD Technologies Settlement Administrator” with links to my Dead 60s and Thelonious Monk downloads. From a technical perspective, the links to the downloads are hidden behind a CGI script that takes a hashed key parameter. The hash is generated per claim, per item, and attached to some timeout rules. In the email I was informed the site would be accessible for either 180 days or for 3 days following my first download. I recall looking at the links at work, and only got around to attempting the downloads tonight. Lo and behold:

We are sorry but these files have expired. According to our records, you first downloaded your files more than 3 days ago or your download limit of 3 has been reached.

Sony’s not making this particularly easy. I assume that by visiting the site a few days ago (I don’t recall downloading anything yet) I must have triggered this 3 day timer. I’ve emailed the good CD Technologies Settlement Administrator to see if we can clear this up. It’s entirely possible that I clicked something any set this in motion, so while I won’t jump to the conclusion that they screwed up I will declare them entirely over-paranoid.

The second link seemed to work. The Essential Thelonious Monk was a set of seemingly standard MP3 files. I’m not an audiophile by any means and I have a hard time distinguishing between CD and anything higher than 192 VBR files, but it was disappointing to see these encoded as 128 kbps. I recall 128 kilobytes was the predominant bitrate in the early days of the original Napster, but with disc space and broadband as cheap as they are these days there’s really no reason to put up with the horribly compressed sound. The encoder they used was LAME 3.96, if that interests you.

(At least they didn’t go for their failed proprietary format, of which I can’t recall the name. It was something like ATARAC3 or ATTRAC3. ANTATTACK3 maybe. I was coerced into helping someone set up a Sony MD player some years back and the bewildering process still haunts my dreams.)

As for DRM, there doesn’t appear to be anything obvious attached to the files. There was no explicit license info nor did I have any problem playing the songs on different computers, operating systems or media players. Blunder avoided.

As for my $8.40, it’s due in 3 to 6 weeks. Let’s hope the cheque doesn’t expire if I don’t cash it in 3 days.