December 8, 1999
Outline
Electronic communication via the Internet has opened the doors to multitudes of new means of information exchange. At first, narrow bandwidth and slow speeds allowed for transmission of mainly text-based material. Today, high-speed Internet connections enable us to quickly transmit graphics, sound, software, and more. The conglomerate of record labels, musicians, agents, studios, and copyright lawyers known as the music industry is most concerned with the exchange of music.
The MPEG Audio Layer III (commonly known as mp3) format allows quick and easy transmission of high quality audio via the Internet. Mp3 creates feelings of doubt, excitement, and fear within music business. On one extreme, mp3s may make it possible for artists to better communicate artistic ideas with their audiences. Conversely, the business model that the music industry has previously worked hard to establish and maintain may not stand up to the change introduced by mp3-compressed audio. Mp3 has already created many disturbances, and it will continue to force adaptation and reinterpretation of the music business model and the law of copyright. To demonstrate mp3's past and future effects, it is necessary to first trace the history of the format and then examine current research concerning the prospects of compressed audio.
The mp3 format was not created as a stand-alone audio format. Its origin comes from the Motion Picture Experts Group's efforts to produce a compressed video format standard: MPEG-1. This specification, Introduced In 1992, Included A Compression Scheme For Audio Engineered By The Fraunhofer Institute/Thomson Multimedia And Termed Audio Layer 3 (Greenwald, 1999). As Internet connection speeds and personal computer ownership increased, the MPEG Audio Layer 3, or "mp3," format gained popularity due to its small size, high quality, and open specification.
When compared to the average file sizes a computer user handles, CD quality digital audio takes up a large amount of space. Smaller compressed files afford convenient storage on a computer and fast transmission via the Internet (Smith, 1999). The mp3 format allows storage of high quality audio in about 10% of the space it would take to store uncompressed audio. For example, a CD holds 74 minutes of audio in about 750 megabytes (MB) of space, while high quality mp3 compression allows storate of the same 74 minutes of audio in about 75MB. This works out to a file size of about 1MB per minute for the mp3 format. A 5 minute (5MB) song can easily be transferred between computers even across modem Internet connections. Besides having a good compression ratio, mp3 was one of the first high quality compression schemes. The basic method of compressing data involves using "a formula that removes data - redundant data, data you aren't likely to notice, data that can be derived from other data" (Greenwald, 1999). Mp3 works as a perceptual encoder, meaning that it removes audio data that the listener does not hear. Although audiophiles may be able to hear the adverse effects of mp3 compression, the average listener can hardly differentiate between mp3 and CD audio (Flynn, 1999). Below, listen for yourself to see if you notice the difference.
When listening to these samples, use high quality speakers or headphones to hear the difference. Try to listen to the high and low notes especially because these tend to reveal the effects of mp3 compression. The lower quality 112kbps mp3s have a small amount of "washing machine" effect in the softer parts. Listen closely, and you will hear some distortion that sounds like water sloshing around. Then, try to listen for the same problem with the 160kbps files. I personally cannot differentiate between the pure audio and the 160kbps mp3 compression.
Once established, the mp3 format blossomed into widespread popularity. At first, mp3 functioned as intended - as part of the MPEG-1 movie compression scheme. As more people got online and as Internet connection speeds increased, the need for a way to exchange audio increased. Programmers found the audio layer of MPEG-1 offered a good alternative, and so they created mp3 players. The online community soon embraced mp3 as the format of choice for transmitting audio via the Internet. Except for "pornography," "mp3" is now the most common search term entered on Internet search sites (Stuckey, 1999). A multitude of freeware/shareware mp3 players and encoders are available for free download. The mp3 format is not proprietary; that is, a single company does not have power to control it. Because mp3 is an open standard, many have taken the time to develop high quality tools that allow convenient handling of the mp3 format. Mp3 has certainly become the format of choice for Internet music distribution.
Due to the rapidly changing and dynamic nature of the Internet, the legal process often lags behind when dealing with online issues. The copyright act of 1972 laid down the general framework for sound recording copyright; "Congress granted record companies a copyright in their phonorecords and empowered them to bring infringement actions against pirates" (Miller and Davis, 1990). Before 1972, copyright law gave no protection and no copyright for sound recordings. This gave rise to much recording piracy (distribution without paying the artist and recording company). The 1972 act protected artists and record companies against much of this music piracy until the Internet came along and provided a new way for music piracy to find a rebirth.
Another copyright law relative to the uprising of mp3 audio is the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. This act seeks to regulate the copy-protection schemes used by consumer products that have the capability of recording audio. Using the Audio Home Recording Act as the basis for their case, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. to keep Diamond from releasing their portable, walkman-like mp3 player called the Rio. The RIAA claimed that the Rio did not comply with this copyright law because it did not include a copyright protection system as mandated by the Audio Home Recording Act. However, the court decided that the Rio is not "a digital recording device under the [Home Recording] Act's basic definition" (1999). This decision allowed Diamond to ship the Rio and opened the doors for many companies to build similar personal mp3 players.
The most recent addition to copyright law came with the creation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Introduced in 1998, this act includes the Online Copyright Infringement Act, the World Intellectual Property Organization's Copyright Treaty, and the Collections of Antipiracy Act. In general, this law increased the copyright period by 20 years, made the creation or sale of copyright-breaking technological tools illegal, and put together the World Intellectual Property Organization international treaty (Breslau, 1999). Title II of the Online Copyright Infringement Act applies in the case of web sites that provide search capabilities to find illegal mp3s without actually storing the illegal files. For example, mp3.lycos.com offers quick and convenient search capabilities for finding mp3s, but most of the sites Lycos links to have illegal copyrighted mp3s available for download (Markeiwicz, 1999). The Digital Millennium Act also relates to the illegal distribution of sound recordings via the Internet. If a college student posts a few favorite songs on his or her web site without consent, "it's pirating and it's punishable by up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines" (Ramanathan, 1999). The Digital Millennium act aims to bring copyright law up to date with the modern Internet-based community, but it also recognizes the problems with Internet law. As Jennifer E. Markeiwicz explains, there is an "incongruity between laws firmly ensconced in society and those suitable for the virtual world of cyberspace" (1999). Altogether, the current copyright laws dealing with modern Internet music have fallen behind.
The current music distribution model focuses mostly on physical media: namely, tapes and CDs. For many consumers, record companies, and artists, an Internet music distribution technique is not probable or possible in the near future. However, a small but growing group of consumers has embraced digital music distribution, causing a proliferation of web sites, software, and hardware dealing with digital music. The long list of web sites includes
Portals
Daily MP3, mp3 2000, MP3.com, MP3now, MP3-Place, Mp3Spy, and RioPort.comSearch Engines
Audiofind, FileQuest.com, Filez, Findsongs.com, Kermit, Lycos MP3 Search, MP3meta, Mediafind, and MusicseekMusic Sites
eatsleepmusic.com, Emusic.com, Liquid Audio, listen.com, MP3s on UBL, and MusicMatch
These sites allow one to easily find mp3 files and download them to a personal computer for playback.
Free and shareware software tools, such as Audiocatalyst, Liquid Player, MacAmp, WinAmp, and others, create easy ways for an Internet user to listen to his or her favorite new music for free. According to Alixandra Smith, "An estimated 20 million Americans currently have an MP3 player on their PC" (1999). Further demonstrating the status of mp3, Smith points out that the largest mp3 site, www.mp3.com, claims 200,000 visits and 75,000 downloads every day.
Hardware devices comprise the final piece in the current mp3 puzzle. The portable Rio player first emerged on the market and paved the way for a plethora of hardware mp3 devices. Creative Labs, Iomega, Pioneer, Pontis, Seehan, Samsung, Sony, and others have introduced many similar walkman-like portable devices (Reece, 1999). The use of RAM-based media in these devices means that these small players never skip, making them ideal portable music devices. Other derivatives of the Rio include home-stereo mp3 components, hard-drive-based car mp3 players, and CD players that include the capability to read mp3s from CD media.
In summary, the current status of digital audio is one of constant growth and change. Many people may not have heard of or used mp3, but as Internet users continue to realize the benefits of digital audio, they may begin to change the way they listen to music.
With this understanding of the background and status of digital music, we can examine digital music's future effects on the legal and economic aspects of music business. Will the process of music distribution change fundamentally? Will copyright law need reinterpretation, revision, or replacement?
Research Methods and Results: Music Distribution
To determine the path which digital music will take, we must examine the probable changes in music distribution. The music industry will have to face the changes introduced by compressed Internet audio.
Some of the primary groups that use mp3s are college students and teens. Colleges with fast network connections available in the dorms afford easy downloading and distribution of copyrighted mp3 files. The RIAA, trying to control illegal music distribution, issued "60 percent of all its Internet-related cease-and-desist orders at universities in 1997" (Ramanathan, 1999). This shows that a large number of digital music users reside at universities.
To further examine university students' mp3 usage, I conducted a survey of a student body. This survey asked students at Bradley University questions related to their usage, experience, and concerns with mp3. Around 50 students gave a variety of responses ranging from "I haven't really dealt with mp3" to "I haven't had to buy a new CD for over a year now [because of mp3]." Attached is a copy of the survey. Following is a table outlining the results of the response to the first seven questions. A sample of the complete survey is here.
| Questions |
Responses |
| 1. Are you familiar with the term "mp3"? |
Yes: 89.5% |
| 2. Have you ever played mp3s on your computer? |
Yes: 73.7% |
| 3. If so, how often do you play mp3s? At least once per ... |
Day: 42.1% |
| 4. Have you ever created an mp3 from your personal music collection? |
Yes: 26.3% |
| 5. Have you downloaded mp3s from the internet? |
Yes: 60.5% |
| 6. If so, have you downloaded copyrighted mp3s from the internet? |
Yes: 50% |
| 7. If so, have these mp3s ever created an interest in the artist such that you purchased a copy of their recording on CD or tape after "previewing" it with mp3? |
Yes: 36.8% |
Of the Bradley students sampled, 90% had heard of mp3 and 74% had played an mp3 on their computer. This shows the popularity of mp3s with college students. If the survey had been given to the general public of Peoria, IL (Bradley's location), surely the results would have differed. The frequency of usage figures from question 3 demonstrate that of the 74% who have ever used mp3, 79% play mp3s at least once per week. They are not just occasionally using mp3s: the format has become a primary method by which these students experience music. The combination of questions 5 and 6 verifies that while a few use mp3 without downloading copyrighted material, most use mp3 to listen to illegal, copyrighted, and pirated music. This becomes evident when noticing that of the students who have downloaded mp3s, 83% have downloaded copyrighted material. However, it appears that many students have some concern for the musicians. Question 7 indicates that 74% of the students who have downloaded copyrighted mp3s have been influenced to purchase a CD or tape after hearing the artist first on mp3.
Since the younger generation teens and college students has embraced mp3 digital music, the future of music distribution will most likely shift in the direction of internet-based digital distribution. The main problem with this change is the resistance of most record companies to it. Some people, both recording professionals and listeners, argue that mp3 has inferior sound quality and therefore will not emerge as the format of the future. In fact, since mp3 is a software format, it allows for quality improvement in the future. The present gap in quality between mp3 and CD music will continue to narrow in the future. In Andrew Flynn's article, Rick Broadhead, co-author of the Canadian Internet Handbook, explains that "MP3, because it's a file format, can be upgraded endlessly with far less effort than it takes to engineer a new piece of equipment to play music on" (1999). Mp3s or any similar compressed audio formats allow for relatively simple adaptation to the quality standards of the future.
To get a better idea of the recording industry's perspective, I conducted an interview of composer, arranger, artist, and recording professional Richard W. Harris. His experience in the recording industry includes working for a recording studio under Mark Bunce at Bowling Green University, design and setup of a recording studio at a community college, and recording his own work. Regarding the changes ahead in music distribution, Harris noted that a major reason record companies will resist change is due to their investment in hardware. The companies would lose much if suddenly their CD-centered business model transformed into a fully software-based distribution method. If record companies begin to distribute music, says David Akin, "to consumers over the Internet, [they] risk offending music retailers," (1999). Despite this concern, Harris also noted that recording companies working to incorporate internet-based digital distribution would find success. Harris also put forth a parallel example of the music industry's resistance to change. When CDs (compact discs) and CD-Rs (recordable CDs) were first introduced, high tariffs were placed on the import of these technologies such that few consumers were originally attracted due to thier high price and scant availability. However, eventually the CD became common, and it now holds the spot as the music media of choice. Harris predicts that compressed digital music will follow a similar path, becoming the mainstream method of music distribution in 3-4 years.
A few candidate formats fighting for position as the internet music format of tomorrow include SDMI, Microsoft Audio, mp3, Liquid Audio, RealAudio, VQF, AAC, and more. Most of these formats were developed after mp3, perhaps as a response to it. SDMI, MS Audio, Liquid Audio, VQF, and AAC all add to mp3 various forms of copyright protection, higher quality, and smaller file size. While mp3 may not have enough copyright protection to become the record industry's format of choice, Michael Robertson's web site MP3.com has shown that a market exists for legally available free mp3s. Robertson refers to music business as tired and old, insisting that if they do not pay attention to the changes the web has introduced, they will "lose a huge, multibillion-dollar opportunity to upstarts [like MP3.com]" (Philips, 1999).
One of the most promising possible Internet-based distribution formats is the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). The man who chaired the creation of MPEG-1, Leonardo Chariglione, now leads SDMI with the goal of defining "an internationally applicable framework for a legitimate online music market" (Rawsthorn, 1999). On November 12, 1999, the participants in SDMI agreed upon the specific watermarking technology that will provide copyright protection. SDMI's web site states that now the "manufacturers of portable devices, software developers, and music content producers have the tools they need to produce SDMI-compliant products" (1999). The major hurdle SDMI has to overcome is the fact that mp3 has found its market mainly in music piracy. For legitimate compressed digital music to succeed, according to Chariglione, SDMI must "create a framework for a legitimate marketplace which is so convenient that consumers will want to use it ... [rather than] spending hours going from site to site looking for pirated music" (Rawsthorn, 1999).
If SDMI becomes the standard in music distribution and the country embraces compressed digital music, a bright future may reveal itself. Michael Stroud reports that Eric Scheirer of the MIT Media Lab foresees online music becoming commonplace within 3-5 years. Scheirer envisions a music business with cheap Internet music available for "1/100th of a cent per streaming song" at home or on your car radio (1999).
Research Methods and Results: Copyright Law
Copyright law has already endured much change since its incarnation in 1976 with the Audio Home Recording Act (1992) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998). These new acts try to keep copyright law up to date with the current situations, but they seem to lag behind instead of keeping up. In the future, change in copyright law's implementation may be very necessary.
One interesting example of a problem with copyright law introduced by digital music is the case of online service providers' liability limitation. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dictates that Internet service providers are responsible for the files stored on their computers. Even when individual users store illegal copyrighted mp3 files on the service provider's servers, the service provider is responsible for a copyright infringement. This brings up the question, who is responsible for what on a network? The physical disks upon which information is stored become less important as users interact with computer interfaces in more abstract ways. With a network server, should the server owner be responsible for its whole content when hundreds of individuals have access to modify the contents of the server at any time? Current copyright law fails to work well when faced with the non-linear, abstract model, which is the basis of the Internet. In the words of researcher Jennifer Markiewicz, "conventional legal principles, including those of copyright analysis, are simply incompatible with the function of the network" (1999).
Further problems with copyright law can be illustrated with the Audio Home Recording Act. The purpose of this act is to regulate home recording equipment so that listeners can enjoy the music they purchase without making illegal copies of copyrighted material. This regulation requires home audio recording devices to have some type of technological copy protection scheme. Mp3 and digital audio on a computer clash with this act because people can use these modern tools to accomplish illegal copying while completely avoiding the limitations of the Audio Home Act. Evading this act is possible because computer hard drives do not meet the definition of a "Digital Recording Device" and therefore cannot be regulated by the Audio Home Act. Diamond's Rio, the portable mp3 player, escaped an injunction from the RIAA and proceeded to ship to consumers using this same defense. As noted in Rio Music Player Is Not 'Digital Recording Device,' 9th Circuit Rules, since a computer hard drive does not strictly hold sound files, it is not a 'Digital Music Recording'; hence, the Rio does not make copies from 'Digital Music Recordings' (1999).
Judging from the results of the final question from the Bradley University survey, many students have little knowledge of current copyright law. This question asked, "What personal concerns do you have with the legal copyright issues of mp3? Specifically, do you think that copyright law should be changed or reinterpreted?" Student responses to this question were as follows: 16% thought that copyright law must be changed, 13% felt reinterpretation or no change was necessary, and the remaining 71% did not have enough knowledge on copyright to voice an opinion. Besides ineffectively defining appropriate measures of enforcement in the digital age, copyright law has failed to clearly define the boundaries of legal action in the public. To become effective, the future of copyright law must not lag behind the leading edge of internet-based digital music distribution.
Mp3 has certainly introduced a shift in current music distribution and copyright law. By working to adjust music business and music law to embrace new methods, the industry will more easily distribute music and allow musicians to more effectively communicate with listeners. The exact audio format and business model of the future music industry cannot be predicted. In five years, will mp3 still be around or will a more secure format emerge as the standard for Internet-available compressed audio? As Veto Periano put it, "who's to say today's piracy is not tomorrow's business model" (Periano, 1999). Nevertheless, tomorrow's business model will still be a business model. That is, the music industry has to come to terms with the need for an upgrade. "'As long as the music industry continues to focus [their] energy on protection, they're going to continue to be disappointed,' Scheirer said. 'If you want to move on to the next vine, you need to let go of the last one.'" (Stroud, 1999).
MP3 Survey Sample
Alan Brooks
The purpose of my research project is to examine the Legal and Economic issues arising from the rise of mp3 compressed audio available on the internet.
The results of this survey will be tabulated and included in my research paper for ENG 304 Research Writing.
Please answer all of the questions which apply to you but feel free to leave blank if the question does not apply or provide additional comments as necessary.
I appreciate your help with my study on mp3s. Thanks for participating in this survey!
1. Are you familiar with the term "mp3" ? Y or N
(mp3 is a computer audio format which allows
easy transfer of music over the internet)
2. Have you ever played mp3s on your computer? Y or N
3. If so, how often do you play mp3s? at least once per DAY / WEEK / MONTH
4. Have you ever created an mp3 from your personal music collection? Y or N
5. Have you downloaded mp3s from the internet? Y or N
6. If so, have you downloaded copyrighted mp3s from the internet? Y or N
7. If so, have these mp3s ever created an interest in the artist
such that
you purchased a copy of their recording on CD or tape after "previewing"
it with mp3? Y or N
8. What personal concerns do you have with the legal copyright issues of mp3s? Specifically, do you think that copyright law should be changed or reinterpreted?
Once again, thank you very much for participating.
Please return to: Alan Brooks - 1011 W. St. James Pl. Apt. #4 - Peoria, IL 61606