Notes From the Epicenter: Facing the Music, Again
The knot of lawsuits surrounding music copyrighting and the Web is starting to resemble the presidential-election tangle in Florida: So many suits are working their way through the courts that it’s hard to tell what’s what and who’s who. As with the election debacle, a speedy resolution to the increasingly messy online music-distribution predicament is probably the best chance at a positive outcome. And, like the election mess, a speedy resolution is likely the last thing we’re going to see.
Kill ’em All
Even as existing online music distribution sites try to forge ahead — MP3.com recently announced a new synching service that lets you download songs to all your portable devices at once, and of course there’s the Napster-Bertelsmann deal — the recording industry seems unwilling to let them be. Unity Entertainment has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against MP3.com — this in the wake of the site’s settlement with the big five record companies. And RIAA (Recording Industry of America) head Hillary Rosen is haranguing Napster to apologize for making fun of Metallica drummer and outspoken Napster detractor Lars Ulrich before she’ll make nice with them. (Now I’m all for Metallica getting paid for distribution of its music, but I can’t help but wonder how entirely different this is from the days when the band was just starting out and fans were trading bootlegged concert tapes with impunity.)
All of which is sounding a lot like the petty mess our presidential candidates can’t seem to extricate themselves from (a petty mess that, granted, will determine the future of the free world). The music distribution mess is further complicated by the existence, and machinations, of something called the Secure Digital Music Initiative.
Ride the Lightning
SDMI is a consortium of music and computer-industry companies whose mission, agreed upon in the long-ago time of February 1999, is to create a secure method of distributing digital music over all the various pipes that are or ever will be. To that end the group has been developing various technologies that might keep music from being pirated and then traded in a Napster-esque setting. The technology we’ve heard the most about takes the form of a digital watermark for CDs that would prevent songs from being copied in the first place.
SDMI is headed by Leonardo Chianiglione, who is also the founder of the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG to you and me), which makes him pretty much an expert in the online dissemination of rich media. But music is different from movies and video, in that music is worlds easier to copy and trade using today’s technology. (Do you know what you have to go through to pirate a movie on the Web? You may as well pay the $8.50, I’m telling you.)
And therein lies the rub. Salon.com writer Janelle Brown recently contended that if pay subscription models for online music were easier to use, and more ubiquitous, no one would be bothering with generally poor-quality pirated stuff. I’m inclined to agree. If there were a quick and easy and cheap way to get digital music on the Web, folks would be less likely to take the quick, easy, and illegal routes they’re using today.
…And Justice for All
Though I’m a little sad that Napster and its fellow free music exchange sites seem to be bowing to corporate interests, I think that those same corporate interests are in turn bowing (if grudgingly) to the trend that Napster has brought to the fore of the music world: that people are going to get their music online, and that’s that. They probably won’t get all of their music online for some time to come, but they will get some of it there. And the best thing the recording industry can do is to find a way to make this process easier for the end user while maintaining the interests of the artists producing the music. (Not that all artists place their interests in the hands of the big recording companies. Courtney Love, Smashing Pumpkins, Public Enemy, and the Beastie Boys have all offered recently released titles in MP3 format, free for the taking.)
If the recording industry takes too long to get a system in place that lets end users pay — , conveniently and easily — for the music they download online, they may be left with a greatly crippled ability to get their interests met on the Web. Just as the next president, if he becomes too mired in the present election debacle, will have his ability to govern sharply diminished. The sad thing is, from today’s standpoint, it seems as if both scenarios are likely to work out for the worst.
[Editor’s note: Anybody figure out the theme of this story’s subtitles? Post your answer in VoxBox!]
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on December 4, 2000
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