Sounding off: MP3 heading for mainstream?
By Marc Saltzman
March 26, 1998
Web posted at: 3:42 PM EST (1542 GMT)
(CNN)
-- The war continues to rage between the omnipotent U.S. recording industry
and the thousands of pirates over the issue of MP3 encoding, usage,
and distribution. Chances are, music fans that spend time surfing the
Web or hanging out on IRC have found themselves caught in the middle
of this heated legal -- and moral -- debate. But if this is the first
you've heard of MP3s, then listen up, because this technology is making
serious waves in the digital ocean we call the Internet, and is changing
the face of music distribution, as we know it.
Developed a few years back in Germany at the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
Research Institute, MP3s, or MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) 1 layer
3 audio, is a compression technique used in audio coding that is capable
of shrinking musical information from a compact disc by a factor of
12, without losing any noticeable sound quality.
In plain English, MP3s are near CD-quality music files you can download
and play on your computer by using one of the many free MP3 players
found on the Internet. A five-minute pop song uncompressed would be
about 50 megabytes (in .WAV format, for example) but when applying MP3
compression, the size reduces to approximately 4 megabytes. Therefore,
downloading a song would only take a few minutes even on a 28.8 modem.
A faster connection, such as ISDN or cable modems, means the songs can
be streamed so it can be heard immediately as it is downloading to the
hard disk.
Now, here's where the legal issue saunters in.
The latest craze on the World Wide Web, IRC, FTP, and Hotline, is
to download and/or trade copy-written MP3 songs or albums, entirely
for free. For instance, it's quite easy to find the newest Pearl Jam
album "Yield" in its entirety, various versions of Madonna's new single,
Sarah McLachlan's popular "Sweet Surrender," plus many other official
releases and live or studio bootleg recordings. Needless to say, reproducing
and distributing copyrighted sound recordings without authorization
is a violation of federal copyright laws.
There are MP3 search engines that let you select a song name or artist,
then direct you to the corresponding Web site or FTP archive. Or, with
a valid credit card, you can purchase custom-made CDs chock full of
MP3s -- over 150 songs per disc to be exact -- for about the price of
a regular CD. Furthermore, portable
MP3 players exist, with more in the works.
Playing
music on your PC or Mac may not sound like a viable threat to record
companies, but consider that most computers have sound cards and speakers
and plenty of people work or play in front of their computer for extended
periods of time. Why purchase the full retail CD when you can hear the
entire album (or only the songs you want), in CD-quality, for free?
This is the question that troubles the recording industry, and subsequently,
music labels have taken a stand by sending threatening letters to Webmasters
demanding immediate closure of their sites and in some cases, they have
taken MP3 pirates to court -- and won.
Frank Creighton, VP and associate director of anti-piracy at the Recording
Industry Association of America confirms the RIAA hasn't been able to
put a lost-dollar figure on MP3s yet, but it is considered a very serious
crime that threatens the recording industry.
"Downloading an MP3 is no different that walking into a record store,
putting a CD in your pocket, and walking out without paying." Creighton
says. "There is no easy solution here. We need all the players in the
industry to stand together -- record labels, hardware and software engineers
and ISPs -- so we can heighten the public awareness of its illegality,
enforce the law and find new technology to try to help combat this piracy."
Some of this "new technology" includes possible ways of encrypting
music CDs so it's harder to copy them in a digital format that can be
placed on the Internet.
In rebuttal, many of the so-called "MP3 evangelists" charge the music
industry for over-inflating the price of a retail CD and go so far to
argue that the music industry itself is to blame for MP3 piracy.
Michael
Robertson, newswriter for MP3.com, says that "while CD prices continue
to rise, the music industry seems oblivious to customer outcries for
alternatives."
"Unfortunately, with U.S. profits predicted to hit $3 billion in 1998,
the industry has little motivation to change," he says.
In response to the specific copyright infringement of artists and
labels, some college students interviewed via e-mail seem to mirror
Robertson's position.
"If labels like Sony, Geffen, or Capitol think that all of us can
afford to pay $17 a CD for one or two good songs, they've got another
thing coming." says one anonymous 25-year-old male. "I'd rather download
the songs I want for free off the Net and pay a friend five dollars
to burn it onto a CD for me. Just cut out the middle man."
Other headlines at MP3.com include "Pay for the music, not some fat
guy in a Lexus" and "Free Music and the Fall of Record Companies."
"The majority of the consumers are naive as to what goes into the
price of a CD," RIAA's Creighton says. "There are artists, engineers,
lawyers, studio musicians, touring. Only the top 15 percent of the music
industry makes money, while the other 85 percent loses money."
While
both sides battle it out, some key players in this once-underground
but now-booming industry take a more neutral stand. Such is the case
with Dmitry Boldyrev, one of the developers at Nullsoft, creators of
the most popular MP3 players, WinAmp and MacAmp.
"MP3 encoded songs are absolutely legal. Some people use them to distribute
copyrighted music on the Net, but not everyone," says Boldyrev. "At
this point I'd like to refer you to www.kosmic.org for free MP3 music
they have been releasing lately."
Game developers have also caught on to MP3s' high sound quality and
relatively small size for use in computer and console games, while other
companies are demonstrating the abilities of their audio products by
employing MP3 technology with their keyboards, synthesizers, and drum
machine product lineup.
A new audio compression technology is rolling out, dubbed MPEG-2 AACs,
or Advanced Audio Coding. It is a new MPEG audio format that allows
for files half the size of MP3 with the same quality. AT&T's a2b system
is employing AACs, but AT&T has taken tremendous security precautions
so the songs won't play without a specific license key and "digital
signature" so the songs you pay to download to a PC can only be played
on that particular PC.
Can the recording industry, through the RIAA, close down MP3 sites
for good? Will pirates find a way to access AAC technology? What about
this new MP4 format in the works?
As "convergence" becomes more of a reality and less of a catch phrase,
music copyright violations will continue to escalate, especially with
better compression, recordable DVD-ROMs, and cable modems. It will not
be an easy fight, but the Internet has opened the floodgates to piracy,
and the RIAA will try to dam the waters to protect the interests and
future of the recording industry.