|
|||
|
By Dustin Dibble
One of the biggest legal battles of 2003 continues. On one side, the RIAA -- an organization of five record labels that controls 90 percent of the music that is distributed in the Unites states. On the other side, more than 60 million file sharers in the United States alone. Neither side is willing to change or compromise, and the fight over the music is heating up. In September the RIAA began to sue individual users of various peer-to-peer networks, instead of the owners of the file-sharing software. In the highly publicized event, the group of large record labels brought suit against 261 people for copyright infringement. Most of these individuals were sharing more than 1,000 songs. And at a possible $150,000 penalty per song, the fines can get plenty expensive. Although a good part of the file-sharing public is college students, no one is exempt. Among the victims of the RIAA's wrath are a 66-year-old grandmother from Boston and a 12-year-old New York City girl. The young honor student has already settled her suit, reportedly for $2,000. The suit against the grandmother was dropped after it was discovered that she only owns a Macintosh, which is unable to run file sharing programs. The grandmother was accused of stealing songs such as I'm a Thug by rapper Trick Daddy. "It's a bit unnerving", says Justin Caldwell, a junior from the University of Utah majoring in computer science. "I have participated in file sharing a little, and I just hear that they sued those three college kids for like billions of dollars." The RIAA's tactics are many, and are increasingly creative. The record companies are actually paying people to upload thousands of bogus files to the file-sharing networks, in hopes of frustrating downloaders into giving up. Some bogus versions play normally for the first 20 seconds and then all that is heard is a loud screeching noise. Some artists are getting into the act themselves. In the weeks before Madonna's recent album was to be released, record labels uploaded bogus versions of songs from her new album, on which Madonna speaks directly to the downloader: "What the [expletive] do you think you are doing?" A particularly offended (and technologically savvy) file sharer fired back by hijacking Madonna's website, crashing it, and posting his own message to her for all Madonna fans to see: "This is what the [expletive] I think I'm doing." The RIAA website usually condemns file sharing in no uncertain terms. But in August and September the site was hijacked by hackers three times in five weeks. On more than one occasion, the hackers posted free albums for downloading, along with links to file-sharing programs such as Kazaa, Grokster, and Morpheus. Mark Cornelison, a senior majoring in international studies, is an avid file-sharer. "It's an all out war. Now it's a technological arms race, and the geeks will win," he said. Many file sharers do so because they are fed up with the state of music in the United States. An anti-RIAA website, boycott-riaa.com claims that the "big 5" record companies released only 2,600 albums in 1999, while Napster signed 17,000 new artists in the first four months of 2000. Music lovers are angry because of the lack of variety in modern music. "The stuff on the radio is total garbage," says Justin Caldwell. "It's so stale. People want more variety, they want new artists and new music. Right now, file sharing the only way to get that." "The record companies need to see that file sharing is a great marketing tool," says Trevor Jeppesen, a junior majoring in electrical engineering. "It's a great way to get new music out there, and to show the people what great music is out there -- it's free advertising, and the RIAA should be using it, not trying to stamp it out." There might be a light at the end of the tunnel. Subscription sites are starting to emerge, the most successful so far is Apple's new Itunes, where you can download a song for just 99 cents. But the program only works on Macintosh computers. The race is on to develop a user-friendly, paid music downloading site for PC users. And just in time, guess who has risen from the legal ashes. Napster, the file-sharing program that started it all, is coming back -- this time as a paid site. The test version went online Oct. 29. Users can download a song for 99 cents, or pay a monthly fee of $9.99 for unlimited downloads. It appears that there may be a resolution in sight. Getting music digitally is coming to a computer near you.
|
||