You are not alone with your wish to listen to your music independently of your audio CD. People all over the world are ripping their CDs and converting it into a different format. Everybody makes the same experience: The most time consuming part in this process is the input of the CD data. So some smart people had the idea, that it would be much more efficient, if only one person would do this for every CD and the rest could just fetch the CD data and save the typing work.
That's what freedb is, a free database where audio CD rippers can input/upload the infos of a CD so that everybody else can download this information rather than typing it into the computer each by themselfs. Note, we are only talking text here: CD title, artist, song names etc., not the audio file itself.
So is it legal and save to use?
Yes, it should be legal, but I am not a lawyer. However, nobody can prevent you from issuing the CD information which is openly available on the CD anyhow. And better, without the the CD the info is more or less pointless, so no damage can be done to the artists or the audio companies. You can obtain all the information anyhow by strolling through a CD shop, physically or online.
Save to use? Well, for retrieving the CD information, you do not need to reveal any personal data yourself. There are freedb mirrors in many countries and you can even download the database to work off-line. (Be warned, now in early 2005 it is already a 370 MB tar.bz2 file!). You are asked to setup a mail address to fetch data, but this can be a faked one. I would actually recommend this, to ensure that your mail address is not accidentally be slipped to public and you are ending up getting lot's of spam mail. The initiator of the service claim they will not track or store your data (so why asking for it anyhow??) and then, many mirrors are in the hands of trusted institutions.
In kaudiocreator you have to actively check a box to enable smtp (sending of an address) and you can specify a different (faked) address to use with freedb other than the one the system is set up with. The way the configuration is designed, it seems, that the email address is not used when retrieving data from the server. (But I am not the programmer, haven't checked the code.)
However, to be able to give feedback the initiators of freedb ask that in case you submit data (about a new, not yet listed CD or a correction of an existing entry) you should do so with a valid email address. It's a great service, so respect this wish in case you want to and have something to contribute! There shouldn't be anything to worry beside the fact that your mail address might fall into the wrong hands and you receive (more) spam. (You may just not want to use your 'best' address). Please read carefully the corresponding FAQ and How-To's at freedb.org if you think you have a CD which data has not yet been submitted to the database.
There are mirrors of the master database in many countries. When you set up kaudiocreator to use freedb, please use the mirror nearest to you. This saves bandwith on the net and balances the load between the servers.
Visit freedb.org to get an up-to-date list of mirrors for online retrieval of CD information every time you rip a CD or to download the full database or (usually monthly created) updates of the database.
Oh, how does it work?
Well due to some magic a (not so) unique ID is automatically generated from the CD data when it is entered/present in the drive. That might be the number of tracks and their length and/or other things. See freedb.org for more information. Funny enough but unfortunately, the created ID does not seem to be unique for each CD. So sometimes a CD has to be sorted into a wrong category, out of the 11 defined by freedb, because there is already a CD with the same key in the database for the correct category. For backward compatibility they don't want to change the key generation. However, that should be only exceptional. :-) Check freedb.org for the categories before submitting. For instance the category rock holds pop and rap CDs as well, as there does not exist a category pop or rap.
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