Group Hopes to End Music Piracy on the Internet

In an effort to stem rampant music piracy on the Internet, the Recording Industry Assn. of America is expected to announce today a venture to create a new technology standard allowing fans to download music while protecting the owners of the music.

The group--to be called the Secure Digital Music Initiative--is expected to include executives from such consumer electronic and entertainment firms as America Online Inc., AT&T; Corp., Liquid Audio Inc., IBM Corp., Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp., sources say.

The organization will be charged with building an industry standard that lets people buy and receive music electronically, but prevents them from making free duplicate copies of the songs.

Some industry analysts say the effort may be coming too late.

The recording industry “is scared, and they’re scared for good reason,” said Dan Lavin, research director and industry watcher for IV Associates in Burlingame. “The hurdle used to be that you couldn’t make a perfect copy. Now, that hurdle’s gone.”

There already are three technology platforms for downloading music: AT&T;’s a2b music; Redwood City-based Liquid Audio; and the leading platform, MP3.

Though the guts of the technologies are different, all three share certain similarities. Users must download an audio player, or a software program that acts as a digital interface for the listener. All offer CD-, or near CD-, quality audio.

The recording industry, until now, embraced Liquid Audio and a2b because of their security features. But most fans have opted for MP3, a maverick technology that allows fans to listen to music for free and send it to others, bypassing the record companies’ online efforts.