Pearl Jam’s Bootleggers Switch to the Internet

Pearl Jam fans won’t be able to buy the rock group’s new Epic Records album until Feb. 3, but all they needed to sample nearly half the album’s songs for free this month was a little computer savvy.

The development--reportedly the first time such a large portion of an unreleased album by a superstar act has been “pirated” on the Internet--raises major questions about how record companies will be able to combat bootlegging in the Computer Age.

One nearly full-length song and one- to three-minute excerpts of four others from Pearl Jam’s upcoming “Yield” album appeared on a Web site run by a Syracuse University sophomore after virtually all of the 13-song collection was played without authorization on Dec. 3 by a Syracuse, N.Y. radio station.

That meant anyone with the proper equipment could get radio-quality copies of the five excerpts by downloading them between Dec. 3, when the music was placed on the site, and Wednesday, when it was voluntarily removed after Epic threatened to invoke copyright infringement laws.

“Radio stations for years have been [ignoring] release dates,” says Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, which represents the major record companies. “The difference now is, you don’t just have one potentially lucky kid at home with his finger on the record button. You have one person who can then translate that work to thousands or potentially millions of others [via the World Wide Web].”

Michael Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the pop music news-gathering Web site Addicted to Noise, believes this is the first time a superstar act has been victimized by the Internet in this way. (Pearl Jam has sold about $250 million worth of albums in the U.S.).

“There are a lot of implications here as to what’s going to happen in the future,” said Goldberg. “Once a large number of people have cable modems, there’s going to come a point where people could be passing around very high-quality versions of songs in e-mail. I’m sure record companies are pulling their hair out about this.”

The Pearl Jam incident began when Syracuse radio station WKRL-FM obtained a DAT copy of the album--station executives wouldn’t say how or where they got it--and played it. Fans taped the songs off the radio and Josh Wardell, a computer engineering major at Syracuse, uploaded them onto his Web site.

“It came off the radio, so I put it up,” says Wardell, whose site also includes about 200 live recordings of Pearl Jam, which encourages fans to tape its concerts. “The whole idea of the site is to have rare stuff. . . .

“This was a preview. I never had any intention of stopping people from buying the album. I wouldn’t put full versions of the songs up there, even if I had the full CD. I don’t want to hurt the band.”

Kelly Curtis, who manages Pearl Jam, said Friday that the issue goes beyond the Syracuse Web site, suggesting various tracks are also available on other sites.

“It’s not fair,” he said. “The band should at least have an opportunity to release its piece of work before people do what what they do with it. After it’s out, I don’t think we care what happens. . . . It’s kind of a new phenomenon and we’re still figuring out the scope of it all and how far reaching it might be.”

Michele Anthony, executive vice president of Sony Music Entertainment, which owns Epic Records, said Friday that there is a “tremendous difference between fan-based Web sites and the unsanctioned downloading of music.”

She added, “Downloading material without permission not only violates intellectual property rights, but it also robs the artist of the ability to present music and artwork in its entirety, with the quality the artist intended, at a time when it is available to everyone. Together with the RIAA, we are investigating the situation and intend to fully protect the rights of our artists.”

Meanwhile, the radio programmer who aired the album on Dec. 3 says he has no regrets.

“I had no ethical concerns whatsoever,” says Steve Corlett, programming director at WKRL-FM in Syracuse. “This was my scoop. . . . I don’t understand what damage I can do to Pearl Jam by promoting its album two months before it’s going to come out. . . .

“If [Pearl Jam singer] Eddie Vedder wants to call and tell me, I’ll take his call, but I don’t see how it could hurt.”

The RIAA’s Rosen, however, says the issue goes beyond one very high-profile album.

“You could always come up with the exception about why it doesn’t hurt,” she says, “but ultimately if the Internet doesn’t have some rules on this road, the investment in new music is going to be lessened. . . .”