Music lessons: Record companies and the courts are coming to terms with the fact that the online music genie is o

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>

[Note:  This item comes from reader Garret Sern. The new Apple music
service was announced yesterday.  I downloaded all the new software
that supports it on the Macintosh and within minutes had setup an
account and purchased my first album.  I was quite impressed with the
service and its ease of use.  The only problem that I have is that
there isn't that much content up at the moment to choose from.  That
will change I expect as new content has already been added today.
DLH]

Music lessons: Record companies and the courts are coming to terms
with the fact that the online music genie is out the bottle
Neil McIntosh
Monday April 28 2003
The Guardian

Are the record labels finally being forced to join us all in the 21st
century? Certainly, the last seven days have brought some evidence to
suggest that might be the case.

First, EMI announced an apparently impressive music download service
last week, with tens of thousands of albums and artists being made
available. Better still, the new service comes without many of the
strings attached to the first generation of legitimate music download
services, which have been less than resounding in their success.

The timing of EMI's announcement was perhaps calculated to steal a
little of the thunder from another announcement, expected today from
Apple. Steve Jobs is expected to unveil a music download service
backed by all five major music labels, offering a per-track (rather
than subscription-plus-fee) pricing structure.

But it was also a recognition that music consumers want to download
songs, and will do it illegally if they are not offered a legit
alternative that's also comprehensive and reasonably-priced. EMI's
new offering looks set to become the first to come close to
fulfilling those criteria.

The second piece of evidence that times are changing came from a
courtroom in Los Angeles on Friday. There, a judge decided that the
online file-swapping services Streamcast and Grokster - two networks
that let computer users see the public folders of fellow users, and
copy files between themselves - should not be outlawed simply because
users can use them to share copyright material.

Judge Stephen Wilson found that "[the] defendants distribute and
support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it
for both lawful and unlawful ends... Grokster and StreamCast are not
significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders
or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe
copyrights."

That might sound like common sense, but this finding is a big deal.
The defining battles between the net and the music industry have
taken place in court, and thus far the online world has fared badly.
Napster, the daddy of music swapping services, was closed by a court
which found it responsible for aiding the illegal trade of copyright
material.

Since then the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has
been taking aim at other file swapping networks - even those
peer-to-peer networks which are not as centralised as Napster but
which, argue the labels, are just as responsible for piracy.

What, until Friday, did not seem to matter is that these networks are
used for lots of things other than the illegal sharing out of
copyrighted music produced by the RIAA's member corporations. Cynics
among you might doubt these innocent applications really exist - that
they are the gossamer-thin, disingenuous defence for networks used
99% for piracy.   But the peer-to-peer networks are also used for
sharing home-made software, public documents, copyright-free material
and other work where the authors have given explicit permission for
copying.

What is all this stuff they're exchanging legally? Many people -
especially the net's more tech-savvy users - are willing to give away
their copyright entitlements for the benefit of the things they are
interested in, or to gain a little fame in their online communities.

By sharing applications they have developed, or bits of code for
bigger collaborative projects, they recognise they can develop
something better than they could make by themselves. Others take
pleasure in making public their research, or sharing their insights.
Partly it's a form of personal marketing, partly it's a kind of
community spirit I'm sure we'd all love to see in the offline world.

This, it is fair to say, is not a world the RIAA is comfortable with.
They would prefer the file sharing networks closed, all of them, no
matter the implications. That is why Friday's verdict is so
important: for the first time (in the US, at least) they have been
told that is not going to happen, at least not without a lengthy
fight.

The RIAA, as a result of another verdict last week, may now attempt
to unmask and pursue individual file swappers through the courts, in
an attempt to intimidate this trade away. But that is likely to be a
long, expensive and mostly fruitless quest.

And in the meantime, in the face of falling sales and weakening
profits, the labels themselves are being forced to reappraise how
they approach the net. It's taken long enough, but slowly, quietly,
the revolution we knew had to come - the revolution in the way we
consume music - is finally underway.

Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>


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