Sunday, September 14, 2003

Recording industry wears the black hat in MP3 fight [The Morning Call]

The Morning Call, September 14, 2003
The girl, who resides in a housing project with her family, reportedly settled with the RIAA for $2,000. The RIAA offered "amnesty" to those who turn themselves in for intellectual property law violation, agreeing that a notarized, signed contract and a promise of deleted MP3s will protect them from future subpoenas. They do not, however, guarantee protection from lawsuits brought by individual artists who may seek to recoup losses, nor do they promise to keep the amnesty list from angry songwriters, artists and labels. In other words, the amnesty offer may be little more than an attempt to bait more file-sharers into paying for the music they have downloaded for free.

To make up for years of ignorance to burgeoning technology, the Recording Industry Association of America has subpoenaed everyone—major universities, individual users with "too many" files ... and a 12-year-old girl in New York City. It says they are violating intellectual property laws.

The girl, who resides in a housing project with her family, reportedly settled with the RIAA for $2,000. The RIAA offered "amnesty" to those who turn themselves in for intellectual property law violation, agreeing that a notarized, signed contract and a promise of deleted MP3s will protect them from future subpoenas. They do not, however, guarantee protection from lawsuits brought by individual artists who may seek to recoup losses, nor do they promise to keep the amnesty list from angry songwriters, artists and labels. In other words, the amnesty offer may be little more than an attempt to bait more file-sharers into paying for the music they have downloaded for free.

Internet-savvy teenagers have been trading music online since the early 1990s through FTP servers, a system that allows users to grant permission to other users to log directly into their files. It wasn't until Napster became the vogue in 1999, (a user-friendly file- sharing program that helped users unfamiliar with the technology of the FTP server), that file sharing became an epidemic. Why head to the mall and pay $15 for a CD when you can type "Britney Spears" into a box and see every track on her latest album and previous albums fill the screen before you?

A CD-R, the blank CD onto which file-sharers burn their music, costs about 34 cents. The music comes free. With this popular new network and user-friendly search capabilities, the allowances of America's teenagers suddenly went a lot further when it came to music. You didn't need to know anything about the technology -- you just needed a computer, a keyboard, a mouse and free space on your hard drive.

It took the RIAA years to realize that people were getting their major label artists for free via the information superhighway. In 2001, after a long legal battle, Napster fell to the giant, shut down its network and agreed to pay damages to labels and songwriters. But as strikes against Napster increased and its downfall became clearly inevitable, other peer-to-peer (or P2P) programs developed. Kazaa, Morpheus and Audiogalaxy allowed users to access music directories of any user willing to share and download files directly from another user. P2P filled Napster's place. But the RIAA made no attempt to stop it, and now, two years later, they seek to recoup their losses with a vengeance.

The subpoenas, the threats and the promises of amnesty are little more than heavy-handed tactics commissioned by an organization seeking to protect the financial interests of major labels, not in the interest of musicians. They want to fine offenders anywhere from $7,000 to $150,000 per song. Yes, file sharing is a violation of copyright law, making users digital music pirates. They are, in effect, stealing. But the punishments for intellectual theft are not simply excessive; they are preposterous. "Last time I stole a CD from a music store," one user remarks, "I didn't need to pay a $1.5 million fine for getting caught."

The RIAA rests on the assumption that it is losing money because of file sharing. But the money-losing argument rests on the assumption that musical pirates would have bought the CD in the first place. At $17 apiece from most major labels, this is simply not the case. Only one label so far, Universal, has realized that exorbitant pricing of plastic and CDs may have something to do with the decline in sales. They have lower their CD prices to $13. But their efforts to assuage a dissatisfied public may have come too late.

File sharing is not unique to the United States. However, not a single association in another part of the world has acted with the same fervor as the RIAA. Of course, no nation has as stringent copyright laws as does the United States. While RIAA scare tactics may put an end to the free music phenomenon on the mainstream, it will not end in the bigger picture. As the industry goes after P2P users, it doesn't realize that those in the know are going underground in rebellion and will continue to do so every time the RIAA catches on to a new technology.

Until the American recording industry embraces the technology, they will always be a few megabytes behind the pioneers of the digital frontier. And as long as the RIAA attempts to make examples of college students and 12-year-old girls, they—not the file-sharers—will seem like the criminals to the American public.

Jessica Hemerly of New Tripoli is a recent graduate of New York University and is working for the National Review.

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