Entry No.124

IT Writers Awards

Next time you're online, go to your favourite search engine and look for MP3s of songs by one of your favourite artists. Chances are, regardless of whether you're into Schoenberg or Squarepusher, you'll come up empty handed.

MP3 is a file format used to compress audio down to a manageable size, which makes it a little like a pinchbar: great for either extracting nails, or breaking open safes. The reason you won't find many MP3 files online ñ at least not files by artists you've ever heard of ñ is because few artists, and even fewer recording companies, have opted to release songs in that format. If you did find a Schoenberg piece online, its almost certainly going to be illegal.

Record companies, music publishers and industry associations have done a great job in chasing illegal MP3s off the net. They're vigilant, issuing cease and desist letters to the owners of servers hosting the sites where MP3 files can be found. Sites inevitably pop up, disappear then reappear somewhere else and if you're not in the loop, you're not going to find anything worthwhile.

Or at least you wouldn't have, until Shawn Fanning, a 19-year-old American college student, decided to do something about it. Fanning built a piece of software that he dubbed Napster - a nickname given to him by friends - which can turn the average home computer into a fully fledged MP3 server.

When you install Napster, or its Mac equivalent Macster, it creates an index of MP3 files on your hard drive. It also asks you to nominate how fast your net connection is and suggests that you give yourself a username and password.

Once you've done that, you fire up the software and ñ assuming you're online ñ it connects itself to a Napster server in the United States. The Napster server acts like an MP3 dating service by introducing people searching for songs by a particular artist to the computers of people who have those songs on their hard drive.

Once you've found a song, you simply click and download it. Using Napster isn't always as easy as that, because sometimes the songs donít download, or they take an inordinate amount of time to do so, but that's because the computers where the songs are found are desktop PCs and Macs, not purpose-built servers.

Many of the machines are connected to the net only via standard modems, which accounts for the terrible download times. A surprising number, however, are hosted at dedicated or high-speed connections, such as cable networks, DSL lines or even employee desktops in corporations.

But by and large Napster works, and works well. So well, in fact, that several colleges in the US have banned its use, not because of the dubious nature of downloading illegal MP3s, but because all that downloading was chewing into the bandwidth available to people performing legitimate activities online.

Make no mistake, illegal MP3s are illegal MP3s. The problem is that they're not going to go away. Although the number of files available using Napster varies as people log on and off, at the time of writing there were three quarters of a million individual tracks (not accounting for duplications) taking up more than three terabytes of space on hard drives around the globe.

Napster is now a company, and Fanning's hobby has become his livelihood. Professional managers have come aboard and the company is on the verge of securing second-round funding on its way to the inevitable IPO.

Naturally, record companies and publishers have taken umbrage at Napster's seeming complicity in mass piracy, with the result that the Recording Industry Association of America has decided to sue the fledgling company.

Napster, on the other hand, maintains that it is simply helping new artists get their music out, and that any piracy going on is an unfortunate by-product. In other words, they're making the pinchbar argument, saying that just because something can potentially be used for illegal activities doesn't mean it should be outlawed.

Napster is garnering a huge amount of attention in the US, with the big record companies marching in lockstep behind the RIAA suit. But whatever attention is being paid over there, it's not filtering through to the multinationals' local operations, with several of them telling The Bulletin that they were not aware of the software and hadn't done any thinking on the ramifications of the untraceable and illegal electronic distribution of their products.

That's not the case, however, with local record company Festival Mushroom Group or at Melbourne-based distributor Shock. FMG managing director Jeremy Fabinyi says Napster is typical in that it's being driven by a company attempting to ride to an IPO on the back of appropriated works. ìItís no secret that there are enormous problems with copyright protection, but these are problems that aren't going to be sorted out on a local level,î says Fabinyi. they're going to be sorted out at a global level, or not at all

Fabinyi says he has used Napster, but found it unsettling ñ and not just because of the illegal nature of the material available. ìWhen I saw my own username up there, and realised that people could reach in to my hard drive, it gave me pause to think: what are the security ramifications?î

Like Fabinyi, Shock CEO Charles Caldas has seen Napster and is well aware of the volume and scope of illegal MP3s available. ìWeíre different, because weíre distributors, not a record company as such,î says Caldas. ìWe see electronic distribution as an opportunity. Weíre not sure how to exploit it yet, but the reality is that if you ignore it, youíre going to get steamrollered by it. Electronic distribution, if anything, opens up the opportunity for smaller companies to compete against the multinationals.î

The fact is that Napster represents a sea change in the way electronic goods and services are distributed. Little stands in the way of someone tweaking the Napster formula so that instead of searching for MP3s, it looks for video, for slabs of text, or for pornography. Record companies and others, on the other hand, remain confident that when a secure digital format comes along, it will knock the MP3 underground out of contention and the problem will be solved. But they're wrong.

ìElectronic distribution will be a good thing - when a format comes along in two years or so that is portable and is also secure,î says Jeffrey Bartolomei, online licensing officer for the Australian Performing Rights Association. ìElectronic distribution will allow what the industry is calling ësuper marketingí. But no one is stupid enough to give away material in MP3 format because they know it canít be controlled.î

Bartolomei likens the act of giving away artists' material via MP3 to doing work experience in the hope of landing a job. ìSure, thereís a chance you might get a job, or in the case of free electronic music, get peopleís attention and then have them going out and buying the album,î he says. ìBut it doesnít happen often. More likely is the fact that the boss, or the consumer, gets used to getting something for free, and isnít going to start paying for it.î
Thereís no doubt that a secure digital format would be a boon to the record industry, but itís naÔve to assume that just because something is available and legal, people will move towards it, rather than getting something illegal for free.

ìLetís be realistic about it,î says Bartolomei. ìItís only a small sector of the population thatís using this sort of software. Itís university students with time and access to bandwidth. Many other people arenít going to get involved, and would welcome legal electronic downloads.î

The only problem with that logic is that youngsters with access to the net, with money and with time on their hands, are a highly sought after audience. If they get conditioned to expect content for free, what hope is there that they will eventually be weaned on to buying legal copies?

Caldas takes the position that, in some cases, music publishers and musicians will need to be innovative in the way that they distribute their music. ìPerhaps they need to look at giving [the music] away, and making their profits through the merchandising and ancillaries. Itís something that would perhaps work well with massive artists like, for example, the Spice Girls. After all,î he says, ìThat was just as much about merchandising as music.î

At a local level, thereís a resounding optimism about the opportunities that digital distribution will open up for companies willing to open their minds and embrace new technology. After all, the 33rpm vinyl disc was also groundbreaking in its time - to the point where it has shaped our opinion about things such as how songs are packaged together and the overall format that theyíre distributed in.

Digital distribution will change those conventions. If you want proof, download the Napster client, log on and see for yourself. Youíll never look at a CD the same way again.

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