MP3: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

From the days of player pianos to radio and now the Internet, copyright holders--those artists and others who produce creative works--have looked on new technology as a natural enemy. They have confronted the source of unauthorized copying and tried to litigate or legislate it out of existence.

The recording industry’s lawsuit against Napster, the San Mateo-based online music swap meet, is no exception. The industry may succeed in putting Napster out of business, but it will not erase the technology that Napster has made so popular. As is always the case, copyright owners and the new technology will have to learn to live with one another, and that’s where their energies should be directed.

The Internet does, indeed, pose a threat to the recording giants and their iron grip on the distribution of recorded music in various forms. Freely available MP3 compression technology has made downloading music easy and fast, and Napster has allowed millions of users worldwide to share one another’s recordings free. A federal district judge last week ruled that Napster has created a monstrous scheme for music piracy, and she ordered it shut down. But an appeals court Friday disagreed and allowed the company to stay in business at least until mid-September, when the court will hear oral arguments.

The crux of the recording industry’s case is that music swapping on the Internet amounts to a giant rip-off. That may be so. The appeals court left that issue open. But putting Napster out of business will not end the peer-to-peer music swaps that the company pioneered. Already, half a dozen or more other Internet services, such as Gnutella, Scour Exchange, Pointera Sharing Engine, iMesh and FreeNet, offer similar services. The music-sharing technologies, according to neutral studies, actually generate interest in music and stimulate sales of recordings. Independent artists have gained unprecedented access to audiences via the Internet.

Clearly, the recording industry, rather than mount a legal assault on the new medium, should look for ways to team up with it, while preserving artists’ rewards. New models are already being developed to distribute music via subscriptions (Emusic.com) or digital retail (Amazon.com). A new world is opening for sound and picture distribution that cannot be stopped by litigation.