SURVIVING MP3:
All you wanted to know about MP3, and didn’t know whom to ask...

TRUE, music piracy, courtesy downloading via MP3, has assumed ominous proportions for the global music majors. Which explains why they’re filing fresh law suits, almost by the week, against the culprits. The injunction by the federal US court, against song-swapster, Napster, is being seen by some as a moral victory of sorts for the music industry.

Napster was ordered not to trade copyrighted material, though how that’s going to help the industry in the long run is hard to see, simply because every music buff who downloads stuff via MP3 cannot be tracked. And the stricture on Napster can hardly be expected to hamper the MP3-buff’s style.

With all the noise about MP3, things can get more than a trifle daunting for those who’re just about getting hooked onto music on the Web. After all, the topic encompasses software, hardware, consumer electronics and the Internet. And, like it or not, legal issues, too. But if you’re on the verge of getting on the scene, yourself, don’t let all the information overload bother you. Get in, in right earnest, and you’ll soon discover why MP3-savvy music buffs the world over are getting hooked onto it.

Here’s the low-down on the issue:

MP3, MPEG Layer 3, for short, is a file format that compresses standard audio tracks into much smaller sizes without significantly compromising sound quality. Its implications are far-reaching. Consider these: it enables you to search for songs encoded in the MP3 format from the Web, and play them on your computer using free-player software. If you have a portable MP3 player, you can even take your MP3s with you on the road. You can even burn your MP3s onto CDs, or “rip” existing songs from your CDs onto MP3.

Streaming Audio is the technology that lets you listen to MP3s and other audio over the Internet through your browser, without downloading anything on to your computer. This enables you to listen to Internet radio stations from all over the world. You can also listen to digital audio files stored on Web servers without downloading them, or even be your own DJ and create play-lists for the world to hear.

THE LEGALITIES INVOLVED
So what are the legal issues involved?
MP3s can be used in ways that illegally infringe on copyright, but that doesn’t make them illegal in and of themselves. The Fair Use Act for instance, allows MP3-buffs in the US to make copies of any music you own, as long as you keep them within your possession. However, when you start disseminating music in a digital form that’s infinitely copyable, as MP3s are, you and the people you give the music to are technically breaking the law.

But, let’s face it: very few individuals have ever been prosecuted for trading copyrighted stuff, despite the fact that many corporations get sued for doing the same thing on a larger scale. MP3-buffs can consider themselves on safe grounds if they do get to playing around with trading MP3s, provided, of course, that they take such measures as sending around single songs as opposed to complete albums. That way, people will still have an incentive to buy albums.
Of course, the band, Metallica, is now gunning for those individuals who pirated their music using Napster. So they’re the latest to tilt at windmills, for that’s indeed what it all amounts to simply because there’s no way the band’s going to nab all of them.

As SCREEN reported in a recent issue, the music majors aren’t the only ones attempting to nail the web pirates. The motion picture industry is also embroiled in a suit to stem the menace of digital video piracy. The law suit, filed by studios such as Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer and Time-Warner seeks to prevent Eric Corley, the editor of 2600, the website of the computer underground, from republishing the software code that allows DVDs to be copied and transmitted over the web. But the law suit has proved to be a waste of time for the movie industry, because thousands of websites have already posted links to Corley’s programme, and hackers can turn to any of these for the code.

Metallica, too, likewise, will discover it’s been wasting its time trying to nab the Napster hackers, because fans who trade in free music have simply switched over to other song-swap services like Gnutella. That’s why web-based piracy is the mother of all piracies. The sensible thing for the music industry to do under the circumstances would be to come up with easier and better digital content themselves.


Shaju George Alex