Breaking Records

By Tony Sclafani
Howard County Times

December 18, 2003

At 25, Mark Levy is already a grizzled veteran when it comes to the issue of downloading MP3 files.

While a student at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, he saw the best minds of his generation ignore their studies and spend hours finding MP3s via the infamous Internet program Napster. Napster was the first program to offer a centralized server that let computer users "swap" MP3s with other computer users. Through Napster, the concept of "peer-to-peer" (or P2P) trading was born.

That was in 1999 and 2000. Since then, Napster has been shut down by court order, but peer-to-peer file-trading has exploded, eroding the sales of compact discs and affecting the bottom lines of both record companies and retailers.

"I witnessed the whole rise and fall of Napster," says Levy, who majored in digital arts at UMBC and says he does not condone peer-to-peer sharing. "All Napster did was start a trend. People saw Napster and people played off it."

Whether file-swapping of copyrighted material should be illegal (as the courts have ruled) or whether doing so is the digital equivalent of tape-swapping (as users claim), the way people are getting their music is changing.

In the Dec. 5 issue of USA Today, music writer Edna Gundersen reported that some 2.7 million downloads per week pass through Kazaa, one of the most popular P2P networks. That's how many people are willing to risk being fingered by the Recording Industry Association of America, which started suing individual users this spring.

How it's done

One reason peer-to-peer services have become so popular is that they're easy to use.

First you find a program via a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, using words like "MP3" or "downloads." Then you find a program, say WinMX (www.winmx.com). You download the program (which takes about five minutes), then get it running.

When the program is up and running, it will prompt you to log onto WinMX's network, which serves as a sort of highway for downloads. Once you're on the network, you can go to the "search" function and pop in the name of an artist. Hit the return key, and filenames will start to appear in the main window.

These files belong to other users who are also on the network, users than can be as far away as Japan or as close as the house next door. Scroll your mouse over a filename, click on it, and the MP3 begins to download to your hard drive.

If you have a 56K modem, the average song will take about 20 minutes to download. But with a cable or T1 line, songs can be grabbed in seconds; entire CDs downloaded in minutes.

All told, it's quick and simpler than trekking to the local CD store, which might not have what you want anyway. It's also illegal, and the above details are included to explain just how easy peer-to-peer sharing is, not to encourage illegal activity.

Such ease of use has enraged the RIAA, which has successfully petitioned the courts to shut down peer-to-peer networks and has sued individual file-swappers. Still, an entire generation has now come of age using the computer to get music.

The Napster effect

"The best way I can describe Napster is that it was basically the nine-headed Hydra from Greek mythology in that you cut off one head and two grow back," explains Levy, a one-time Glenwood resident who grew to know digital media even better when he worked for a computer graphics company for several years.

"Napster mutated. Everybody in the recording industry thought it was a big victory when they were able to shut Napster down. It wasn't. It was a just a high-profile shutdown of the innovator."

The new services keep a much lower profile. WinMX, for example, offers no contact information and directs users with queries to a Google message board. Post-Napster peer-to-peer services are also better, faster, smarter, Levy says.

"It's expanded on what medium you can draw off," Levy explains. "Napster offered audio only. The new networks offer everything from audio to video to software, pretty much everything under the sun that you can put on a computer."

That's how the much-talked-about video featuring celebutante Paris Hilton was able to go round the world in about 80 hours.

"You've got high bandwidth, so people can get this stuff very easily," Levy notes.

Slumping sales

The dip in sales of compact discs ostensibly triggered by peer-to-peer sharing has had ramifications locally. CD sales at the Baltimore-based Record and Tape Traders chain have fallen 30 percent in the past three years, says company president Kevin Stander.

MP3 downloading "has affected us as far as the music end of our business," Stander says. "In my business, we diversified and got into DVD, which is booming, and video games."

Three years ago, when interviewed for a similar story, Stander didn't see much harm in file-sharing. Now he's changed his tune.

"On Tuesday, when new releases come out, we're selling a lot less of the brand new stuff," Stander says.

He says there is also a plus side to the trend. "For a lot of people just starting off, it's a way for their music to be heard."

But musicians also want to be paid for their work, says Baltimore attorney Brian S. Goodman.

"I think the big thing is that artists are concerned because this is how they make their living," says Goodman, who deals with copyright issues as part of his other job as managing director of the Young Victorian Theatre Company.

"For people to just be able to get (material) without paying for it is unfair. It's a copyright issue, and that's why there have been all those laws passed to prevent it."

Downloading copyrighted material presents "a sticky situation," says Tom Kelleher, an associate professor at Goucher College, which earlier this month held a debate on peer-to-peer networks: "Whose Music is This, Anyway?"

"There are legitimate uses for peer-to-peer networking," explains Kelleher, who will be teaching a new course on computer ethics this spring. "And of course someone could always put these files up on Web sites and people could download them that way. And I don't think any of us would want to start restricting Web servers."

But, says Kelleher, it's not a good thing that "so much copyright infringement is going on.

"I certainly don't condone the misuse of copyrighted material," he says. "It's sort of disconcerting to see how glibly some students treat software and these days, (as well as) MP3s."

Pay for play

Stander says something has to change. And Apple's "itunes" may be the first step.

A pay service that started in April 2003, it allows users to download songs at 99 cents a pop. "itunes" caught on with the public, and earlier this month, Napster followed suit and reincarnated itself as a paid subscription service called Napster 2.0.

"(Downloading) just has to be controlled," Stander says. "It can't be free. There are a lot of good pay sites out there. And even if there was file-sharing I think that would be OK as long as there would be some fee. I don't think people are going to work for free."

Ellicott City-based recording artist Richard Walton agrees: "As a songwriter and publisher, I think it's wrong to take people's music without them getting paid for it."

Goodman sees the pay services as part of a burgeoning trend.

"I think eventually there is going to be comprehensive protection, so that you can't just go out on the Internet and download anything you want."

An upside of downloading

Major labels might lose money from file-sharing, but it can help up-and-coming artists, says award-winning Columbia-based singer-songwriter Joanne Juskus.

"I think anybody who is unsigned is benefitting from these services," Juskus says. "The whole point of the services is for people to exchange music. Most artists aren't making very much money (from CD sales) anyway, and its a matter of getting the music out there if you're an independent artist.

"If you're a major-label artist, obviously the labels don't want you to trade your music for free. But at this point, there's never been a better time to get your music out there. I've had people e-mail me from Japan and England because they heard my music online."

Walton says he offers downloadable sample clips of his music on his Web site, and may look into selling songs in the near future.

"What we'll probably do is explore the possibility of being able to download a song for 99 cents."

Another gray area

Finally, there's the issue of out-of-print material. The record companies aren't making it available via reissues. Is it illegal to share this music too?

Yes, Goodman says, because copyright law still applies: "Once a composer has been dead for 75 years, then the copyright is gone."

But even music fans who oppose file-sharing sometimes make exceptions when it comes to getting that beloved song you just can't find anymore. On a Google music message board (rec.music.rock-pop-r+b.1960s) where this reporter posted a query about the topic, music fans were divided.

"You can make more of a case for downloading music that just isn't available commercially," wrote one poster.

It seems to be hard-to-find music that draws older fans to peer to-peer services. Running a search on the word "rare" on several file-sharing networks reveals a treasure trove of forgotten '50s oldies, one-off punk singles, and collectible jazz sides. Some fans consider swapping deleted catalog material to be the same as buying out-of-print LPs or CDs.

"If I go buy a record, tape or CD at a second-hand store, does the copyright holder ever see a dime from that transaction?" one message-board poster offered. "Absolutely not."