John Borland
Mark Ishikawa was eating dinner at the Los Angeles Hilton a few weeks ago when he overheard a couple discussing the virtues of downloading music using free services like Kazaa.
As CEO of BayTSP, a company that tracks copyright infringement on file-swapping networks for record labels and movie studios, Ishikawa had a professional interest in the subject. So when he walked around the corner, expecting to see two college students, he was stunned to find a pair of senior citizens–a sign, he says, of how far the practice has spread.
“File swapping has gotten away from high school and college kids who understand protocols,” Ishikawa said. “These were completely mainstream people. The mind-set and availability has gone from someone who has a degree in computer science all the way to this couple.”
This is the reality that Apple Computer’s new online service and other digital music distributors face as they finally move into the mainstream. Although file sharing is less common on Macintosh computers, iTunes stores still must compete with the millions of people using ubiquitous Windows software who pay nothing for music files that have no restrictions.
Rather than fear their demise, free music services say the large music companies and e-tailers will have no choice but to work with file-swapping technology instead of against it. They say a rise in consumer awareness from paid services, a series of favorable court rulings and a shift in law-enforcement tactics all seem to signal the beginning of a new, third age of file swapping that will postdate the death of Napster and the troubles of its offspring.
“Apple and others are competing with extremely large numbers of people who are using P2P (peer to peer) and other forms of technology to get free content,” said Kevin Bermeister, chief executive of Altnet, a company that distributes paid content through the Kazaa file-sharing service. “Unless this is addressed directly, which entails reaching those users, I don’t see how content companies are going to get to the masses on the Internet.”
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