News

The Genie in the Bottle

Whether Napster survives its legal battle or not will be nothing less than irrelevant for anonymous, widespread file sharing across the internet. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it's not going back in.

By Ben Nahorney

A revolution is underway in the way people listen to music, and at the heart of the battle is a program called Napster. What makes Napster, as well as other MP3 file sharing programs, so different from traditional means of gathering and listening to music is that it gives people the ability to find any song they want through a simple search and download it on the spot. Traditional musical formats, such as radio and compact discs, could be seeing the end of their dominance in the music industry.

This revolution hasn't occurred without controversy. Napster has forced the music industry to sit up and take notice, particularly because of the issue of copyright laws. Sued by the leading companies in the industry and its lobby, Napster is now entwined in a legal fight for its survival. But will programs such as Napster be squashed by the reigning powers of the music industry or will MP3 file sharing technology change the way we listen to music?

File sharing is not a new technology. Since the advent of the computer file itself, they have been shared between computers, even on the most primitive of networks. An activity as common as downloading a web page is a form of file sharing; the files from the page are copied and then stored in a temporary folder while you view the web page.

MP3 technology is also nothing new. In 1988, the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG for short) was founded to establish a file format that could decrease the size of video and audio files to workable sizes. In 1992, the MPEG organization released their first video and audio file format, called MPEG-1. In the mid-1990s, after a number of updates and revisions to the MPEG format, the MPEG organization released a standard called MPEG Audio Layer III (MP3 for short) - a format specifically created for digital audio.

After the format was released, software programmers began developing programs that made it possible to copy compact disks and store them as MP3s on a computer hard drive. It was only a matter of time before someone devised an online system for swapping MP3 files between computers. Many computer users began allowing other people to download MP3s from their computers, but finding songs was often a time consuming process.

MP3 search engines followed thereafter, but in January of 1999, MP3 file sharing took off like never before. A freshman at Northeastern University named Shawn Fanning programmed an MP3 search engine which he called Napster. Napster combined the convenience of a search engine with an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) program. This made the program enormously popular with online music fans, allowing them to talk with one another while exchanging files. After marking up over 300,000 downloads from CNet's Download.com, Fanning formed a company around his program in July of 1999. The number of Napster users has exploded since then, currently boasting over 4.9 million users.

However, the popularity of Napster grew amid controversy. In December of 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit against Napster, claiming that the program facilitated "contributory and vicarious copyright infringement" by allowing users to download copyrighted material without the permission of the artists or the copyright holders.

Napster has countered these claims by arguing that the program does not store or distribute copyrighted material, but only allows users to search for MP3 files. The downloading of the songs occurs through a direct connection between the users - not through Napster.

Napster has cited two federal laws in its defense: first, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 states that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) cannot be held responsible for illegal activity committed over their networks. Napster also cites the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, which set aside protections for online software, literature and music. The DMCA also sets aside liability protection for ISPs - protection that Napster argues it has a right to.

A number of recording artists have joined into the Napster debate over the last few months; musicians such as Metallica and Dr. Dre have forced Napster to ban users who have downloaded their music without their permission. Both artist have argued that because they never gave consent to give out their music for free, Napster is facilitating piracy.

In an interview with ABC News, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich compared the differences of the file sharing currently taking place over Napster to Metallica's early days when they encouraged fans to trade demos of the band's music.

"It is very simple," Ulrich said. "When we sat down and started trading our early demos, we were the ones that mailed them out. We were the ones that initiated it... It wasn't somebody else who sat there and took my demo tape and against my free will decided to start trading it with everybody."

Other artists have come out in support of file sharing technology, viewing Napster and similar programs as the inevitable future of music distribution.

Chuck D, leader of rap group Public Enemy and founder of Rapstation.com, looks at file sharing programs as a revolution in the way the music industry operates. Chuck D made the following points in a letter to the New York Times:

1. The day of the one-dimensional, naive artist is over...

2. 95% of all music will be free, at least for a period...

3. The whole financial structure of the entertainment business is in the process of getting redefined.

4. NAPSTER has turned music into baseball cards and the consumer base of kids are leading the pack, ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT MUSIC.

5. With a million artists joining a new way of getting music across the world via the MP-3 and internet, new ways of artists making money will eventually be discovered or rediscovered

6. As in kindergarten, everyone will be re-taught how to share...

7. NAPSTER, MP3, downloaded music and sharing is the 'new radio for the O-DEC'...old school artists, get over the fact and adapt...

Citing frustration with the record industry, Courtney Love, the lead signer of the band Hole, likened the status quo to "sharecropping" (see sidebar) and stated that "recording artists have essentially been giving their music away for free under the old system, so new technology that exposes our music to a larger audience can only be a good thing."

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince went through a highly publicized falling out with his record label, finally breaking free from Time Warner Records in 1996. Recently, he called the increase in popularity of file sharing programs as a sign of the music lover's growing frustration over the way record companies control the music they hear.

"[Record companies have control] over how the air waves, record labels and record stores, which r now all part of this "system" that recording companies have pretty much succeeded in establishing, r becoming increasingly dominated by musical "products" 2 the detriment of real music," he said in his digital music manifesto, titled "4 The Love Of Music."

File sharing programs already seem to be loosening the industry's hold on music. In a bold move early this September, Billy Corgan, lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins, took 25 of the band's unreleased songs, pressed a handful of vinyl copies, and then distributed the albums to close friends and fans, instructing them to release them to Napster. A note was included with the vinyl copies, describing the move as a "final f--k you to a record label that didn't give [The Pumpkins] the support they deserved," MTV News reported.

While many artists are unhappy with record contracts, consumers and retailers are not happy with the high cost of compact discs. Bob Lee, owner of Face the Music on 13th and Kincaid, is frustrated by the prices that distributors charge his store for the compact discs they sell.

"If consumers think CDs are priced too high, you'd be surprised what retailers think. We're in the same boat. We think it's absurd what they're charging us for CDs." Lee says the average cost of a new album release is usually between $10-13 per CD - for retailers.

But Lee does not think that Napster is the answer to the high cost of purchasing music, and feels the majority of today's file sharing is theft. Lee, who is also a web developer and builds e-commerce sites for music retailers, stresses that he has no problem with an artist choosing to give their music away for free.

"But there is a fundamental difference between that and what is happening on Napster," Lee says. "Napster is not asking copyright holders, musicians, or bands permission to distribute their copyrighted materials across the internet." He points out that songs are often the only piece of intellectual property an artist has.

Regardless of a musician's frustration with recording contracts or a retailer and consume's frustration with CD prices, Napster's chances of surviving its court case are looking bleak.

When U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel initially ordered an injunction against Napster in late July - effectively closing the service - claiming that "'Piracy be damned' was pretty much the sense one gets from reading some of the early [Napster arguments]." She also stated that "they created a monster... That's the consequence they face." A day later, Napster was granted a temporary reprieve which allowed for the reopening of its service, but it will last only until the full hearing is underway, at which point an injunction could still be put into place.

On September 8th, the Justice Department and the U.S. Copyright Office filed a "friend of the court" brief siding with the RIAA. The brief states that the two government agencies believe Napster has "no possible defense" against the recording industry's accusation of copyright infringement.

However poor the case looks for Napster, the chances of all Napster-based search engines being such down is slim. Since the court case began, Napster has allowed users to set up their own servers. Even if Napster looses the case and is officially shut down, it will be difficult to prevent users from maintaining their own personal servers.

It is unlikely that MP3 file sharing programs will disappear in the near future. Outside of Napster there are now many other programs out there that allow users to share files, such as Scour.com and My.mp3.com as well as Gnutella and Freenet, both of which have no central network for their file sharing applications - as a result, there is no way to such down the entire system.

If nothing else, one thing is certain: file sharing is here to stay. Music lovers have developed a taste for downloading music online, and it is unlikely that will change. Chuck D may well have said it best when he said, "the genie's out of the bottle and the bottle is crushed to a thousand pieces."

Ben Nahorney, a senior majoring in Journalism, is News Editor for the Oregon Commentator