Ah, the Digital Age. An age in which you can satisfy your consumer needs online by finding anything from your long-lost cousin to highly collectible bean bag toys. And if it's music you're looking for, you can even satisfy these needs for free. For several years now, people have fought over the right to obtain music online. Mp3 sites, FTP sites, and music search engines have sprung up faster than dandelions on the lawn. And while the legality of certain mp3 software takes front and center in the online music distribution debate...and, um, in certain court cases...it's worthwhile to quickly outline the benefits and the problems that come with using these tools. And in this case we're going to focus on Macintosh users.
Mp3 isn't plug-and-play just yet. First you have to download some software to listen to those mp3 files. Actually, you have to get one piece of software to prepare a file to be encoded as an mp3 file, and then you have to get one piece of software to encode the file as mp3. For Windows, there's Windows MediaPlayer, WinAmp, and RealJukebox; for Macs, there's SoundApp, MaCast, and Liquid Audio work. Of course, this is a mere smattering of available utilities, and if you'd like to see a list of links to these utilities you might try the Angry Coffee mp3 tutorial.
So I'll assume that now you've got your mp3 utility daisy chain. Where do you get mp3s? That depends. But if you want to find mp3 controversy that's a piece of cake. During the early part of 2000, the right of mp3 distributors to exist pops up just about every day in the major press. The Recording Industry Association of America (or RIAA), musicians, and users are embroiled in an occasionally shrill debate of whether or not mp3s should be freely distributed at all, and if they are to be distributed what should the law say about the right and wrong ways to distribute them.
The name that's been the buzz amidst the controversy is the Windows application, Napster, but let's look at its Mac equivalent, Macster.
Macster consolidates the uses of mp3, FTP, and search sites by providing a database of available mp3 files. Enter the artist or the title of a song, and Macster will search through people’s files, and provide a list of pointers on a central server.
Now, there's a key legal idea held in the "list of pointers" concept. If there was a central server containing the actual mp3 files, then Macster (or Napster) would be culpable for copyright infringement. Since the database holds pointers to the files that are actually still on your's or somebody else's hard-drive, the concept technically is legal.
Currently, Macster only provides information for downloading those files, not for uploading and adding to that database. But searching for most popular songs will return up to one hundred results. Results are categorized by user, their connection speed, and the length and size of download.
Macster is not all sweetness and light. Users can't always merrily troll for mp3s with their computers like they flip through a rack of CDs at the music store. As the number of users and demand for such software grows, Blackhole Media, makers of Macster, will have to upgrade its hardware to accommodate everyone.
Another problem is connectivity. Starting up Macster does not assure you will be connected to the server on the first try. If your computer crashes, or Macster quits unexpectedly, as Mac applications are wont to do, you can lose the trail of your search. That is, there is no way to know what you were downloading and from whom unless you've saved a note in your mind instead of on your desktop. When you register for Macster, they ask about your network connection speed. Unfortunately, knowing the user’s connection speed is not a guarantee of download time. A user could claim to have a DSL connection, and yet songs may download at a snail’s pace.
For some folks, ethical and privacy questions about using Macster and other Napster-style software might eclipse connectivity problems or download glitches. In the grand scheme of things, people have found these utilities worthy of boycott. When you fire up Macster on your personal computer, the application automatically combs through your hard-drive and sends a list of your songs to a database that other people using Macster can search through.
Music publishing groups brought up the first problem with mp3 sharing databases, which was how do the owners of the copyright (including the artists) get paid. But the issue that might touch more people than the publishing protection problem seems to be an issue of personal privacy. Do I want my computer to become a server? Do I want other people to know what mp3s I have available? Do I want people to draw on my bandwidth without my knowledge? Several universities have banned Napster because of its bandwidth requirement – but since most of the population is PC-based, Macster may have temporarily scooted under the university's radar.
While the mp3 war may go on for a long time, it will be interesting to see how this individual mp3 battle ends -- not just because of its impact upon the recording industry and computer users, but for the foray it makes into the realm of cyberspace privacy law. To some, software like Macster and Napster have hatched a scary idea: if small companies can build huge databases of pointers to music on my hard-drive, then not far away is the possibility of building a huge database out of any information on my hard drive.
