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Monday, September 15, 2008

Another Public Service Announcement

I'm still interested in what you have to say on yesterday's post, so I'll be checking the comments there.  But in the mean time, several people emailed me last week to ask about the whole ringtone thing (technical questions as well as the whole legal/ethical thing regarding using copyrighted music on your phone).  I'm nothing if not a giver.

So here's the deal:

First and foremost, let me say for the record that I am neither a legal scholar nor a halachic authority on this subject so please realize I am simply thinking out loud and sharing my opinion. 

There is no indication that any of the web sites out there selling ringtones have paid the copyright owners for the use of their music.  This doesn't mean they haven't done so... maybe they have.  But assuming that they have not, I actually have a big problem paying for something when none of the money is going to the artist and/or owner of the copyright.

Regarding the free ringtone sites, I have less of a problem with this since the ringtones are simply small snippets of songs that, assuming you think enough of one of them to have it as your 'ring', you probably own the song/album as well. 

Related to my last point, the two sites I am about to tell you about actually have tools that allow you to use your own music collection (for which you've presumably already paid good money) to create ringtones in a variety of formats.  If you buy the album from a store or iTunes, I feel like you should be able to listen to any part of it you want... including from your cell phone when it rings.

An excellent free site that includes tools for editing a song down to a ringtone is http://www.zedge.net/ .  They don't charge for any of the ringtones people have already created there, and if you don't find what you are looking for you can use your own music collection to create that perfectly unique ringtone for your phone.  They even have some neat sound-effect ringtones... one in particular is such a high fequency that it makes my dogs howl.   BTW, they also have lots of free backgrounds, themes and screen-savers for your phone as well.

If your phone doesn't support MP3 ringtones (as mine doesn't), don't give up hope.  Once you have found or created your perfect MP3 ringtone over at Zedge, simply save it to your computer and then go to http://www.free-ringtones.ie/ .  This site is also a free ringtone site but is very poorly organized.  The reason I've shared the link is that at the top of the page there are two very useful online tools which allow you to convert MP3 ringtones to either WAV or AMR formats (whichever your older phone supports).  They also have a so-so tutorial for techno-Luddites like moi.

FYI, at present I am using the Beatles 'Twist and Shout' for my ringtone (I didn't feel like antagonizing Zahava with the Punjabi tune).

Oh, and like I said... feel free to weigh in on yesterday's post. 

Posted by David Bogner on September 15, 2008 | Permalink

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at last a dog update!

Posted by: asher | Sep 15, 2008 12:25:45 PM

my blog's email fills up daily with spam, and you get fan mail about your ring tones? כל הכבוד

Posted by: Lion of Zion | Sep 16, 2008 8:19:22 AM

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