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This article first appeared in the February 2000 issue of the Louisville Computer News. It was written by Lee Larson.
It's been amusing to watch the big record companies smugly sitting on the track trying to ignore the train coming up behind them. The 'Net has won, they've lost, but either don't know it, or won't admit it.
Last spring, too late by a year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) introduced their Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), to fend off MP3. It might have stood a chance, if it was any good. But, it has the look of being designed by greedy accountants and lawyers, instead of anyone who actually listens to digital music.
The basic idea behind the SDMI scheme is for digital music to be encrypted, and manufacturers buy decryption keys to embed in their playback devices. A few manufacturers even made devices. Of course, they made sure the same devices could also handle MP3. With the SDMI standard, tunes can't be moved around, played off servers, or even easily transferred between two devices owned by the person who bought the music. Clumsy, hard to use, and poorly designed, it was doomed from the start because a better solution with none of these problems is already standardized--MP3.
So the train is coming, and they've nothing to fight it with except lawyers. My bet is on the freight train.
But, the RIAA does have a point. Newer software, such as Audion and SoundJam MP can turn a CD collection into MP3 files so easily a monkey could be trained to do it. Instead of 600 megabytes of data on a CD, all the tunes are now 30 or so megabytes, neatly packed into small files. MP3 files are so small and easy to move around, it seems the most natural thing in the world to share them, so that's what a lot of people are doing. And the worst part of it all, from the viewpoint of RIAA, is they can keep cloning with no loss in quality and... shudder... no royalties!
The perfume is out of the bottle, and all the RIAA's lawyers are trying to put it back.
To see this, download a little program called Macster (www.blackholemedia.com). It's the Mac version of the Windows Napster program that's been in the news a lot lately. The idea of both programs is to query a server that keeps track of MP3 files out on the 'Net.
When the program opens, its main screen will tell you right away there are something on the order of a quarter million MP3 files known to the server. Pick a song--any song--or an artist--any artist and type a few identifying words into the window. Soon you'll see where those songs live on the 'Net. Choose a location, and, chances are, it'll be downloaded to your hard drive.
For example, just a few minutes ago, I decided to try it. One of my favorite groups is the Cowboy Junkies, so I typed in "cowboy junkies" and waited. A half minute or so later a list of about 50 of their songs appeared. One of my favorites among them is Blue Moon, and I chose one of the sites having it. A few minutes later, I was playing it off my hard drive. If there was any difference in quality from my CD, I couldn't hear it.
So, play around a little! Who else does Blue Moon? Type in "blue moon" to see what comes up. Of course Elvis is there--a classic cut! Willie Nelson does a nice job! I hope Less Than Jake does a better job on another song. It would have been easy to find out, but I didn't bother.
Of course, none of what I did was legal. It's piracy. (If the RIAA is reading, please note that after several more listenings to research their quality, I did throw away the files, as I did with Ray Charles' rendition of Georgia, Jose Feliciano's take on the Star Spangled Banner, and most of the cuts from some Phil Collins CD whose title I never noticed.)
Can you hear recording industry moguls gnashing their teeth?
Most of my own CD's were converted to MP3 long ago. This is perfectly legal, as long as I resist the impulse to share. It's the only way to go with a PowerBook. The battery lasts a lot longer playing MP3's; the CD player can be used for data disks; and, you don't have to lug a bunch of music CD's along during that long flight to Oregon. An added bonus is they can be kept on my hard drive at work instead of carried back and forth, as I've done for years. In fact, I've written most of my favorite CD's to CD-ROM for safe keeping. It's easy to fit about twenty CD's worth of music on one CD-ROM.
MP3's are so convenient and ubiquitous, the recording industry should be thinking about how to make money off the new format instead of fighting it. They just don't get it!
The computer industry gets it. Good MP3 playing software is easy to find. Every Mac comes with QuickTime Player. The free Real Audio player is okay (www.realaudio.com). There are many others. Most are either free, or inexpensive shareware with downloadable demos that expire after a month or so. My favorites are SoundJam MP (www.casadyg.com) and a small shareware program called MACAST Lite (www.macast.com).
You don't have to be a criminal to grab MP3's off the 'Net. There's an astounding variety of free and legal music available. The biggest such site is called MP3.com, of course. Their idea is to put sample MP3's out as teasers to entice you to buy the whole CD from them. It's sort of an online record store where you can wander around and listen.
Of course, the RIAA has several lawsuits pending against MP3.com.
When the train hits them, only those record companies nimble enough to go with the flow will emerge. They're in the middle of a backlash from consumers who've believed for years that CD's are over-priced. To compete in the new world, they'll either have to figure out a way to navigate the new terrain, or come up with something better than what they've been selling.
Miscellaneous
When the big denial of service flap hit the news in mid-February, my first thought was "Oh-no, this time it might be Macs doing it!" There's no evidence my fears were fact, but what made me think this was the January release of the Open Transport 2.6 update. The reason for my reaction was the discovery by John Copeland, a Professor at Georgia Tech that due to a bug in the Open Transport distributed with Mac OS 9, the Mac could be used as an unwitting amplifier in denial of service attacks. The 2.6 update closes this hole, as well as fixing several other problems with DHCP.
The upgrade is intended for all computers running Mac OS 9, as well as G4, iBook, and iMac (slot-loading) models running Mac OS 8.6. It's available as a one megabyte download from Apple (asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11560).
QualComm is trying an audacious experiment with Eudora 4.3. Eudora has long been available in two different versions: Eudora Light and Eudora Pro. Eudora Light is a lightweight, feature-poor version for free, and Eudora Pro is full-featured for about $50.
In response to the free full-featured mail clients, Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator, QualComm is trying something new--three versions. The Pro and Light versions are still available, but so is a third version: Sponsored.
The idea is that e-mail users might be willing to put up with "... advertising that does not compromise the user experience." Eudora Sponsored has all the features of Eudora Pro, for free. The catch is that "The software displays a series of static on screen advertisements that do not interfere with the user's e-mail workspace."
If the advertisements become too bothersome, users can downgrade to the Light version, or upgrade to the Pro version for $49.95.
Downloads are available at the Eudora web site (www.eudora.com).
Thanks to the Internet, genealogy information is more easily accessed than ever before. At the March 28 meeting of the LCS, librarian Michael Steinmacher of the Louisville Free Public Library, introduces the audience to resources that include genealogy web sites, using e-mail, mailing lists, and newsgroups that aid genealogy research.
The LCS meetings are held at 7:00 in Pitt Academy, 4605 Poplar Level Road. All are welcome to attend. For more information go to their web site (www.aye.net/~lcs/).
The AppleSiders of Cincinnati meet at 7:00 in the Fine Arts Building at Northern Kentucky University on the third Wednesday of each month. More information about their meetings is available on their web site (www.applesiders.com).
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