IN THE past few weeks, the recording industry has stepped up its attacks against those who download music illegally and those who facilitate those downloads.
Last month, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced it was suing another 532 computer users for downloading music illegally.
Then during the recent Superbowl in the United States earlier this month, Pepsi and computer maker Apple, with the help of the RIAA, ran an ad humiliating four young computer users for their part in downloading music illegally from the Internet.
The four were shown looking at the camera as the captions ‘Incriminated’, ‘Accused’, ‘Busted’ and ‘Charged’ flashed on screen.
And last week, agents representing the Australian recording industry raided and executed search-and-seize orders at the Sydney offices and homes of executives of Sharman Networks, the company that runs the popular Kazaa file-sharing network.
Faced with increased heat from the authorities, a whole new breed of P2P (peer-to-peer) software has come online to help their users stay under the radar on the Internet.
Last year, Spanish company Optisoft launched Blubster ( www.blubster.com ), a P2P program that promises its users anonymity when trading files.
Optisoft chief executive Wayne Rosso recently announced that the next version of Blubster will feature encryption technology to disguise illegally downloaded music on the users’ computer so that it is harder for the authorities to find them.
Two months ago, 26-year-old New York computer programmer Jason Rohrer created his own stealth P2P network with Mute ( mute-net.sourceforge.net ), a program that allows computer users to remain anonymous and untraceable when they share files.
Mr Rohrer, who wrote the program after seeing how ants communicated with each other as they were invading his home, said in media interviews that he created Mute because he was not happy with the way computer users’ privacy had been invaded by organisations such as the RIAA.
To add to the recording industry’s headache, StreamCast Networks released the latest version of its Morpheus P2P software ( www.morpheus.com ), which allows users to connect to all the major P2P networks such as Kazaa, Grokster, iMesh and LimeWire, multiplying the sources of music and movie downloads available to the user.
While industry authorities are trying to kill the P2P beast, some industry experts believe they would be better off taming it instead.
Mr Michael Robertson, chief executive of Lindows.com and founder of pioneer digital music site MP3.com, believes that the recording industry is looking at the technology all wrong.
‘When cars were first invented, one argument against them was that bad guys would use them to escape the police who at that time were on horses,’ he said. ‘That argument is laughable today.’
As a software company that is naturally finicky about copyright protection, Mr Robertson’s Lindows, which distributes its own version of the Linux operating system, is putting its money where its mouth is by actually encouraging users to trade LindowsLive, a free online version of its product, on P2P networks.
‘By distributing LindowsLive to the millions of P2P users, we are increasing the number of people who are familiar with Lindows.com products, which provides valuable marketing.
‘In addition, since we do not have to pay bandwidth fees associated with P2P systems, we will be saving millions of dollars in networking costs over the course of a year,’ he said.
A new organisation called the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) is going as far as calling on record companies to actually pay computer users to share music rather than sue them.
Mr Marty Lafferty, who heads the DCIA, has been promoting a plan that sees computer users helping record companies to increase sales of digital music by sharing them on P2P systems and getting paid a small commission for it.
He estimated that record companies could see sales increases of about 10 per cent over the next four years if they embrace the technology, similar to how the movie studios increased their sales when they eventually embraced their nemesis, the VCR.
Mr Eric Garland, chief executive of market research firm BigChampagne, told The Sunday Times that getting the music and movie companies to embrace P2P technology is simply a case of ’show me the money’.
‘Major media companies will embrace P2P when they profit from P2P, when these content owners appreciate the sheer volume of this potential online business and the extent to which it can grow their business,’ he said.
‘The only way to minimise the illegal distribution of copyrighted material on P2P is to establish a collective licence, granting rights like those allowed to radio and web broadcasters, and allow a legitimate business to flourish online.’
Judging by the recent legal victories in the US and Netherlands favouring P2P software companies, Mr Robertson believes that whether music companies like it or not, the technology is here to stay.
This is one reason why Singapore is taking proactive steps to get the recording industry on the online music distribution bandwagon.
Mr Edward Neubronner, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association (Singapore), said that aside from enforcement measures, the organisation is trying to encourage music companies here to provide legal alternatives for computer users who want to download music.
However, he said the best solution to the piracy problem is neither a legal nor a technological one.
‘There will always be new types of technology that will appear to try to get around the system. So if we focus just on deterrents, it will drive illegal downloaders further underground,’ said Mr Neubronner, who estimates there are about half a million Singaporeans who download music illegally.
‘Our main focus will continue to be education and creating public awareness.
‘To reach out to the youth to highlight the damaging consequences this infringing activity has on the music they love.’
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