RECORD COMPANIES MAY EVENTUALLY EMBRACE DOWNLOADS (9-2003)

A few years ago if you wanted to listen to your favorite 
hit song at home on your own stereo you would have to 
purchase the CD from a retailer. More than likely, the 
other songs contained on the CD were not of hit quality, 
although sometimes you might luck out and buy a CD that 
contained more than just a couple good tunes.

With the advent of the Internet, audio compression 
technology, and peer-to-peer file sharing services, 
computer users began to download their favorite music from 
others who had already purchased the CD and recorded the 
songs onto their hard drives. The problem with that 
scenario is that it violates copyright laws.

That didn’t seem to matter much to millions of song 
swappers who were fed up with having to pay $16 to $18 for 
a typical CD that might contain only one or two of their 
favorite songs. It’s typical for a record company to 
produce one or two hit singles by a particular artist and 
then slap together eight or nine second-rate tunes in order 
to fill up a CD.

With file sharing, users can pick and choose only the songs 
they want and download them for free. But the music 
industry balked at the idea, saying it was cutting into 
their vast profit margins. So, obviously, they decided to 
sue the file sharing sites, such as Napster.

Although the courts sided with the recording industry, and 
shut down Napster, other file sharing sites began to pop 
up. File sharing actually became even more popular.

But rather than embracing the new technology and figuring 
out a way to give music customers what they really want 
legally, the recording industry has resorted not only to 
more lawsuits, but hundreds of them. And the suits are now 
being directed at individual computer users who have 
downloaded songs.

Thanks to the overly-broad Digital Millennium Copyright 
Act, the recording industry can subpoena Internet service 
providers and get the names of those customers who have 
downloaded music. The industry then sues the account 
holder, whether or not they are the ones that actually 
downloaded the tunes.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., has already promised 
congressional hearings into how the music industry has 
identified and tracked the Internet users it's suing.

“They have a legitimate interest that needs to be 
protected, but are they protecting it in a way that's too 
broad and overreaching?” Coleman told the Associated Press. 
“I don't want to make criminals out of 60 million kids….”

There are legal song-downloading sites. But most of them 
put severe restrictions on what you can do with the song 
file once you download it. Some let you burn it onto a CD; 
some allow you to put it onto your portable MP3 player. But 
you can only copy it a limited number of times. Most users 
want more flexibility than that.

One of these days, store-bought CDs that contain a dozen or 
so tunes that the record label picked out for you will 
become as antiquated as vinyl records are today. They will 
be replaced by custom CDs that are made to order by 
customers, and by downloadable music that computer users 
will be able to burn onto their own blank CDs.

Yes, the recording industry may eventually catch on that, 
by suing its potential customers, it’s not going to earn 
their dollars. One of these days recording companies will 
decide that digital music offered over the Internet at fair 
prices will be the best way to earn a profit.