Big Music Fights For Its Future

As it warned it would, the Recording Industry Association of America has begun filing lawsuits against those it accuses of sharing copyrighted music files. So far, 261 suits have been filed, but more are on the way. ''Criminals'' caught up in the dragnet include a 12-year-old New York girl who lives in a public housing project, a woman whose grandson might have used her Internet account to share music and a California businessman who says he doesn't even know how to download music.

The RIAA and its agents are using software to ferret out the Internet protocol addresses of those who are sharing large numbers of copyrighted files - generally more than a 1,000 tunes. It then subpoenas the Internet service provider to turn over the name of the account holder. Suits are filed against the account holder who - in some cases - may not even be aware that someone in their household is sharing music.

It's important to point out that the suits have, so far, been filed against people who make their music collections available for others to download. People who download music - that is, use the Internet to grab files from other people's computers - are far less likely to be sued. However, if you are using software that allows you to download music, you may be sharing your own files without even realizing it.

File-sharing programs generally have two functions. They allow the user to download files and they make it possible for the user to share the files on their PC. In some cases, the default setting automatically makes the user's files available. So, if someone has downloaded a substantial number of files or even legally copied (''ripped'') songs from CDs that they own, they could wind up being caught in the music industry's dragnet.

The RIAA hopes that these lawsuits will ''educate'' the public that sharing copyrighted music is illegal and could lead to serious consequences. They argue that downloading a song is no different than stealing a CD from a record store.

Well, only a very small percentage people steal things from record stores or any other establishment yet millions of people around the world seem to have no qualms about downloading copyrighted files.

Some say that's simply because they don't think they'll get caught, but I think there is more to it than that. There is something ethereal about non-physical goods that makes what the recording industry calls theft to somehow feel OK.

In the '60s and '70s, for example, there was an entire subculture dedicated to figuring out ways to make free long-distance calls. Back then, the phone industry was controlled by the big bad monopolist AT&T, and the cost of long distance phone calls was sometimes measured in dollars per minute.

Devices proliferated that allowed people to fool the billing systems. I knew students living in my dormitory at UCLA who imported Danish coins - worth only a few pennies - that could be substituted for U.S. quarters in pay phones. There was even a way to make free long-distance calls from the phones in our dorms and lots of otherwise law-abiding students took advantage of it.

While there are probably still some people who steal long-distance calls, it's no longer an epidemic thanks to a fundamental change in the phone industry, which has dramatically lowered the cost of long-distance calls to the point where it's not worth the bother.

I don't know if there is a similar solution for the recoding industry. Certainly lowering the price of CDs, as some recording labels are doing, will help a bit. Another big help will be expanding and enhancing the legal downloading sites like Apple's popular iTunes service that charges 99 cents per song. So far, these services are limited in the number of titles they offer and some have restrictions on what people can do with the music.

Emusic.com has a better idea. They charge $9.99 a month for unlimited access to their collection. Unfortunately, their collection is a bit limited (though there is a lot of great music), but the concept is appealing.

Another possibility - and this is something that the recording industry isn't going to like - is that we start to rethink the nature of the music business. Just as the break up of AT&T helped lower the cost of long distance calls, the dilution of the oligopoly of big record labels could dramatically reduce the price of recorded music.

There was a time when artists needed big record companies because the cost of recording, pressing and promoting an album was prohibitively expensive for all but well-heeled companies. But those days may be over.

Today, technology makes it possible not only to professionally record music on a standard PC or Mac, but also to burn CDs or upload music so that fans can buy it directly. Perhaps what we, as a society, ought to be thinking about is a new paradigm for music.

Such a paradigm might have less room for big record companies or even big name artists, but it could have plenty of room for the thousands of talented musicians whose work is barely noticed because they either don't have a recording contract or - for whatever reasons - they're not heavily marketed by the labels who have signed them.

Fans would still have music and musicians would have an audience and a market. Few if any of these musicians would stand a chance of becoming a multimillionaire superstar, but that's already the case. For every superstar, there are thousands of very talented artists who make virtually nothing from their music.

A paradigm shift doesn't happen by fiat, but if the recording industry succeeds in alienating itself from enough of its customers, we might see such a scenario evolve over time.

In the meantime, I recommend that people refrain from stealing music and start looking around for alternatives - including legal Internet downloading sites - that feature emerging artists and something even more radical: go to local concerts, support your local musicians and buy their CDs. They'll appreciate your support and they certainly won't sue you.

By Larry Magid