Library Access to Music Project
A project by Keith Winstein and Joshua Mandel and funded by the MIT/Microsoft iCampus alliance, LAMP is a free music library for MIT students.
Using LAMP
Using your computer, you go to the LAMP website, where you select the songs you want to listen to.
Then, LAMP assigns you a channel (e.g. Channel 63). You turn on your MIT-Cable-connected television, and change it to that channel, and you hear the music you want.
Legal Significance
One key advantage of LAMP, in addition to its being free for its users, is the fact that any music you want is in theory available on it. Since MIT Cable is an analog transmission, copyright law is more lax about who you have to get permission from to broadcast over it.
For example, if I want to transmit a copy of "... Baby One More Time", written by Max Martin and performed by Britney Spears, I could do this one of two ways: with an analog transmission or a digital transmission. With an analog transmission, I only need to get permission from BMG, whereas if I want a digital transmission, I have to get Ms. Spears' permission as well.
This is problematic for songs by artists such as The Beatles. Their label, Apple Corps, basically doesn't let anyone transmit their music digitally, which is why you can't find it on iTunes, for example. However, you can listen to The Beatles on LAMP, since LAMP doesn't require Apple Corps's permission.
For analog transmission, almost all the licenses you need can be acquired from BMG, ASCAP, and SESAC.
Another legal difficulty of LAMP involved making copies of the songs that needed to be played. It's not entirely clear that ripping a CD into MP3 and keeping it on your computer is legal.
Initially, MIT purchased audio from Loudeye, Inc., in MP3 form. However, the day of LAMP's initial launch, MIT was informed that Loudeye didn't actually have the necessary licenses to make these MP3s that they then sold to MIT. Without music, LAMP could not function! So it went on a hiatus of about a year, until something else was devised.
LAMP in its current incarnation requires someone to purchase a physical CD and place it in a CD jukebox, where it is then turned into an MP3. However, you can't just rip MP3s willy-nilly and still remain compliant with the law -- so LAMP takes advantage of the "ephemeral recording" provision of copyright law.
This provision states that you can make a "transmission program" so long as it is designed to be played back as a whole, in sequence. LAMP currently uses 30-minute "transmission programs" made up of six songs each, typically.
Technical Info
LAMP is appropriately built of LAMP technologies. That is to say, it runs on GNU/Linux machines, uses an Apache webserver, a MySQL database, and Perl and PHP. Portions of the software are also written in C.