Transatlantic Cable: Needling Napster & mugging MP3

Like many people in Silicon Valley, I have an MP3 music player that I use when I'm out networking with executives in high-level meetings (i.e. catching the bus in the morning).

There's nothing like a quick blast of Beethoven to make this place seem even more surreal. And like most, I think my MP3 player is cool - mine has a hard disk that holds over 80 hours of music so I can take pretty much most of my record collection with me. But there are plenty of people who think that MP3 is somewhat uncool...

I'm talking here about two groups: Metallica and the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America), both of whom are engaged in legal battles over digital music. Metallica (a heavy metal group) are busy suing a San Mateo-based company called Napster, and they've been joined recently by rapper Dr Dre.

The bone of contention here is the eponymous software provided by Napster that allows users to share and exchange Mpeg 3 (MP3) files. It allows a user to search through the files of other users by artist name, track title etc, and then download MP3 files - most of which seem to have been "ripped" straight from CDs - directly from the other user's machine. So, if you were after a Metallica track (or indeed thousands of other artists - there are many thousands of Napster users, some who have hundreds of files available), you can simply search with Napster and download it.

Napster itself claims it isn't responsible for the origin of the files, because the files aren't ever stored on its servers. It simply provides the search service, and the MP3 file is then downloaded directly from one user's computer to the other. It points to its terms and conditions of use, which includes phrases like: "As a condition to your account with Napster, you agree that you will not use the Napster service to infringe the intellectual property rights of others in any way."

Perhaps understandably, this has not been well received by many musicians. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich claimed: "It is sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is. The trading of such information - whether it's music, videos, photos, or whatever - is, in effect, trafficking in stolen goods."

And they certainly do seem to be taking it seriously - they hired a consultant to track down the details of thousands of users who they claim are offering Metallica songs over Napster. They then presented these details to Napster and asked the company to ban these users. Napster has yet to respond to this at the time of writing.

Of course, this comes in the wake of MP3.com losing in court to the RIAA over its controversial my.mp3.com system. This allows users to listen to streaming MP3 versions of CDs once they have 'proved' they own the real CD by allowing it to be scanned in their CD-ROM.

What both of these situations show is that the record industry is still struggling to get a grasp on how technology has changed the nature of their business. But these aren't new arguments that the recording industry is using - they're the same ones that were used against video recorders. And despite the protestations of doom and gloom in the early 1970s from the TV and film companies, they haven't yet gone bust. In fact, they have benefited hugely from video rentals and people time-shifting TV programs.

Right now, we are at the early stages of digital music. The equipment is still expensive and difficult to use, much like early video recorders. But this will change, and the recording industry will have to embrace this or die. At the moment, their attempt to create a secure digital music format (called SDMI, for Secure Digital Music Initiative) seems to be making slow progress, with various companies involved reportedly arguing over the mechanics.

Ripping off other people's music is wrong, but it seems that it's likely to continue. At least in the US I'm not breaking the law by listening to CDs I own on my MP3 player (although the situation in the UK about this is far from clear). It's about time that the recording industry began to realise they really should be embracing digital music instead of trying to sue it into oblivion.