Music Piracy: Who Cares?

Music Piracy is a hot-button issue these days especially considering the proliferation of such technologies such as the Internet, the MP3 codec and the recent low cost of home CD burners. Downloading songs off the Internet is just as illegal as making your friends a copy of your CD, 8 Track cassettes, cassette tape, DVD audio discs or Vinyl record. Some thieves may try to argue that they are entitled to this music because the music industry rips them off or whatever inane argument they may come up with but plain and simple; it's stealing.

Why do people steal this music? The same reason people steal food and clothes. Why doesn't the music industry like people downloading songs off the Internet? They don't make any money off of it yet however they do make money from people shop lifting their albums out of local stores. I hardly see how they can compare downloading a song off the Internet to walking into a store and stealing a CD. You get artwork, linear notes and most importantly: full CD quality (44kHz) music. The most widely available MP3 files are encoded at 128 kB/s, which is comparable to FM radio sound quality. It is also much more convenient to download a song in 3 minutes than take a trip to the local music store.

Now some people wonder, why don't the major labels sell their music over the Internet? Well they do, however they put special restrictions on where you can put these files called known as "DRM", short for Digital Rights Management. It is not the same as if you went into a store, bought a CD and encoded it yourself. You are entitled to fair use of your CD e.g. the ability to make backup copies and copy it onto your computer or MP3 player. Plus why would you want to buy a song for $1 a track when you can get it in CD quality for around the same price. What makes the price of an MP3 so high? 1. Encryption of the file so you can't make backup copies or burn it to a CD, this requires that certain servers be put up for authentication rights which cost money. 2. MP3's have royalties attached to them (see mp3licensing.com for more info). 3. They still want people to invest in CD's, a decrepit format by today's technological standards.

Why doesn't the industry adapt? People will always steal regardless, whether online or off. It is true that the advent of the Internet has made it easier to steal but it has also opened up a lot of promotional opportunities as well. Take for example 2 cases, Apple Computers AAC codec and the DVD encoding scheme. Both of which were purportedly "unbreakable" security schemes, yet Norwegian hacker Jon Johansen broke them both. Truth is that the only security scheme without flaws is in a perfect world; every security scheme can be broken, regardless. The industry should just open up to the digital medium and let people have their free use, which they are entitled to.

Should musicians be concerned? Yes, there will obviously be more stealing of popular artists music but more exposure of lesser-known artists as well, the people who really need the money more than the more popular mainstream artists. Now some people blame Internet music piracy as the sole contributor to the recent lapse in music sales and even to say that it's the reason that Dreamworks records has folded. I myself would agree with that to an extent but I would mainly put the blame on the widespread use of such "band-aids" as Digidesign's Pro Tools and Antares's Auto-Tune, these products significantly reduce the quality and originality of our music by leaving digital artifacts behind and contributing to the homogenization of it.

Some people wonder how does this music get on the Internet? Is it just your average everyday folk ripping their CD and sharing them on a Peer-to-Peer client? Hardly, I would only contribute about two percent of the music on the Internet to that. Professional groups on the Internet rip music, many members of these work in retail and are very technologically savvy, others just know people in the industry.

For example I could be a music pirate and upload music files to a file distro (Short for file distribution). A file distro is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server, this is where mainly all 0-day (Released on the day or before it comes out) downloads originate. They are on extremely high-speed Internet connections and are often hosted on University or overseas connections. They are password protected and the password changes every week, the only way to get access is to be a friend of a friend.

Then many of the people who run Fserves (Another type of file server ran on DCC socket connections over the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) protocol download these and put them on their Fserves for the masses to download. Many people download files off IRC, it is where you will find them before they hit Peer-to-Peer networks. However it is more daunting, complicated and less user-friendly to access these then Peer-to-Peer networks. Hence many computer newbie's do not go here. IRC is where everything illegal propagates, child pornography, pirated programs and music to name a few but that's not to say there are legitimate legal chat channels on IRC.

Then those people that download the files from IRC share it over a Peer-to-peer network and that's how you get your files. How can the industry stop 99% of new music piracy these days? Infiltrate the IRC channel and serves lots and lots files until they are trusted with file distro access. Then they can take down the file distro owner. Why don't they? That, I don't know. I assume they want to take down small fries first or they don't even know of file distro's existing.

Myself as a musician, I do not worry about piracy. If I had a band I would embrace the Internet because almost every moderately successful band gets screwed in the end by a label. I would have an independent band website where people can buy my songs in Ogg Vorbis format (Much better sound quality than MP3's and best of all, no royalties either!) then they could burn them to CD's or transfer them to their MP3's players. I would still include the legacy MP3 format but throw them in as a "bonus" to avoid royalties. I would also sell Vinyl pressings of my music via snail mail for audiophiles to have or people that like the artwork.

In closing I hope that people will make smart choices in not buying records from labels that are on the RIAA's roster (For more info see riaaradar.com), that organization has already been convicted of price gouging and other numerous illegal practices. I also hope that people will buy the music they love, turn off the radio and embrace original independent music that features people that can actually sing than having to resort to listening to homogenized generic major label junk that has Antares Auto-Tune on the vocals.