Let’s review. America has learned the shocking lesson this year that — gasp — the business world is corrupt. Martha Stewart, formerly the Wasp goddess of people with too much free time, is now being questioned by congressional investigators for some very unwholesome insider trading. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been dodging questions for weeks on the sketchy skeletons in their corporate closets. Meanwhile, Arthur Anderson seems to have their sticky little fingers in virtually every corporate scandal, and the women of Enron are posing in Playboy because they’re out of a job.
But as all this corruption dominates the national spotlight, an entirely different economic destroyer is able to lurk undetected in the shadows. Corruption does a nice job of distracting attention away from the age-old corporate blight of stupidity. Nothing, except for lying to shareholders and stealing their money, is more damaging to a company than stupidity. And nobody is as unequivocally ignorant as the music industry.
Right now, in big blinking letters on Sony Music’s website are the words, “Dixie Chicks’ new album, in stores now!”
The record companies are evidently still clinging to the illusion that consumers will be willing to trek to the store and pay an exorbitant amount of money for an album they can download for free right at home. Yet, despite being painfully aware of their imminent demise, the music industry has done virtually nothing to save itself.
There are people who say music is an age-old form of expression and no price should ever be placed upon it. Conversely, there are people who argue that music is a business, artists are products and glory be to capitalism. Ideological views aside, the bottom line is that the way people get their music is changing so rapidly and drastically that it can only be called a revolution.
You could say it all started in May of 1999 when Northeastern freshman Shawn Fanning founded the Napster online music service. Two years later, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Napster violated copyright laws.
In the end, Napster was easy to topple because it had two major weaknesses. The first is that it was based in the United States. There are too many copyright laws here to pull off a stunt like music trading. The second weakness was Napster’s central server; once it was shut down, the whole network fell apart.
But, Gnutella technology has circumnavigated the central server altogether. Now music fans trade their music directly with each other, peer to peer. With millions of fans sharing music directly with one another, P2P programs have created the equivalent of a mammoth international mix tape library.
As for the problem of U.S. residence, the new P2Ps have solved that as well, many major file sharing programs such as KaZaA and Grokster use Fast Track technology, which is based in the Netherlands, far from America’s jurisdiction.
Although, to say money isn’t trading hands in P2P sharing is not entirely accurate. Instead of record labels getting cash from consumers, it’s now P2P site hosts getting paid by advertising companies.
Not only do ads pop-up repeatedly while users are downloading MP3s, but the host programs also come with buried software. Millions of people have downloaded KaZaA and are using it regularly. What unsuspecting users probably don’t realize is KaZaA came with a buried technology from Brilliant Digital Entertainment.
The California-based digital advertising company’s software wakes up computers after it has been installed and then requests the owner’s permission to use that computer to host and distribute other firms’ content. In some cases the software may borrow people’s unused processing power to help with complicated computing tasks. Ultimately, the goal of the software is to turn millions of personal computers into nodes in a network controlled by Brilliant.
Now that’s the kind of insidious ingenuity that one would expect from the music industry. The P2P programs cannot be shut down or controlled. As the old adage says, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” Obviously, evil genius ad firms like Brilliant have taken this advice to heart and are working within the framework of the music revolution to make money.
The music industry is left on the sidelines, loudly whining and still clinging to the hope that people will succumb to their highway robbery and go buy records. That’s just stupid.
Kate MacDonald is a former Badger Herald ArtsEtc. editor.
