State of the MP3 Address, Part 1

The following is my latest column for the Yaletown View. It discusses peer-to-peer networks, file trading and the evils of the music and movie industries. My geekier readers are probably more familiar with these topics than I am, but some of you in the general populace might enjoy it.

Unless you’ve been living on an ice floe for the past five years, you’re aware of the revolution occurring in digital music and video. In case you’ve been subsisting on seal blubber, here’s a quick summary:

In 1999, a university drop-out creates Napster, a software program that lets you share your music collection and access other’s collections. It becomes insanely popular, making it a simple task to download any song off the Internet for free. Napster is eventually sued into non-existence, and is replaced by similar programs called Morpheus and Kazaa.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)—claiming decreasing record sales—has grown increasingly aggressive about defending its copyright. It ran television and print ads featuring Britney Spears and Madonna, discouraging their customers from ‘illegal downloading.’ It appealed to Congress for new laws. Finally, it just started suing its customers, including a twelve-year-old girl and a grandmother. Reports are conflicting about whether any of these tactics have made a meaningful impact on the file-sharing networks. They have, however, put digital copyright issues on the front page.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has devised a similar approach. They’re responsible for making you wait even longer before the movie starts. They run those sober ads starring blue-collar members of the film industry carping on about movie piracy. My favourite is the set painter with twenty-five years experience complaining about struggling to ‘put together twelve straight months’ of work.

The RIAA and MPAA’s ridiculous tactics are made more laughable for several reasons:

• Long before file sharing became popular, technologists were predicting that audio and video files would be exchanged over the Internet. There is plenty of evidence that the RIAA and MPAA had years to plan for these developments. Instead of offering consumers a legitimate service, they waited until the practice became commonplace before reacting.
• The major record labels claim that music sales are down because of file sharing. That may be true, but it may also be due to the decreasing quality of today’s music and growth of independent labels. More likely, it’s because of the emergence of other ways for young people to spend their time and money. Video game and Internet use have increased in proportion to the RIAA’s pleas about reduced sales.
• The RIAA, the MPAA and their predecessors have always resisted technological change. In 1908, music publishers fought the distribution of piano rolls, claiming that it violated their copyrights. They applied the same logic in 1931, with the emergence of the radio. In 1984, Jack Valenti, then as now the chairman of the MPAA, said that the VCR ‘is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to a woman home alone.’ All of these technologies provided massive profits for music publishers and movie studios. Today, the video and DVD markets are as or more lucrative than the box office receipts. Again and again, these industries have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the money tree.

Over the past year, the major record labels and non-music companies like Apple have begun offering legitimate alternatives that might have a chance to succeed. They’re not making a dent in the file-sharing networks, but at least they’re offering consumers an option.

In the next issue, I’ll take a closer look at these services and how they use digital rights management to limit our flexibility as consumers. Additionally, I’ll propose an alternative to download services that makes more sense for the RIAA, the MPAA and its customers.

Some of the ideas and concepts (and the phrase ‘dragged kicking and screaming to the money tree’) in this column come originally from Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow. Both writers have licensed the work that I refer to under the Creative Commons license. The Creative Commons license is an innovative system of copyright that enables copyright holders to describe their holdings as “some rights reserved” or “no rights reserved”, as opposed to the default “all rights reserved”.