don't support the RIAA: use freeDB instead of CDDB

from a friend (Tom Jennings):

"When you rip a CD on iTunes, it gets the artist/disc/song names
from the database at Gracenote.

Gracenote is a terrible company; they originally ran the old
user-contributed CDDB (free, open) database for a number of
years, in the 1990's, then commercialized it, to a large amount
of outrage. They went on to become yet another litiguous music
corporation, partner with RIAA, and all that.

(The database that Gracenote literally banks on was created
by users ripping CDs and typing in artist/song titles;
I and thousands of people did dozens or more. Gracenote
then transformed this into the commercial system they have
now.)

And clearly, when you rip a CD, and import it into iTunes,
they certainly track your music and CD usage.

There is, however, a free and open CD database, freeDB, run on
open source software, support anti-software-patent efforts,
and are largely on the right side of things.

Don't take my word for it; google gracenote, riaa, musicbrainz,
lawsuit, etc.


And you can easily make iTunes use freeDB instead of gracenote
with this simple hack:


MAKE iTunes USE FREEDB INSTEAD OF HORRIBLE GRACENOTE:

In system file /etc/hosts (a plain ASCII text file) add the
following single line of text line anywhere in the file:


64.71.163.204 cddb.cddb.org


/etc/hosts is a shortcut address lookup file; when OS X looks
for the IP address of cddb.cddb.org, the CD database, it will
get the address of the freeDB database instead. Clean, neat,
simple, reversible.

Further, you can easily add to the database, for CDs not yet
in it (as per the spirit of the original user-contributed CDDB).

Check out their website at http://www.freedb.org.