AS THE American recording industry rallies behind its newest tactic to combat online music piracy, it is finally meeting with an unprecedented degree of success. Recording companies have pledged to potentially sue anyone that is found with any, even just one illegally obtained song, image or video on their hard drive. Using new technology and software that enables them to track down a computer's location through its IP address, many media downloaders are beginning to feel increasingly unsafe in downloading material from the Internet using such software as Gnutella and Kazaa. There has been a reported decrease in the amount of download traffic and users logged on to Kazaa, and for any average media file searched on the abovementioned network, the majority of the available files are shown as blocked by the user. Although the recording industry is currently enjoying its victory on this front of the online music distribution war, it should not rest on its laurels, as this triumph may well be short-lived. The music industry should stop going after individuals with just a few files as it doesn't solve their real problem and only works to possibly financially ruin the lives of those unlucky enough to be caught by an IP address search conducted by a record company.
As noted earlier, the recording industry's newest threat of legal action against ordinary citizens who may only download a few copyrighted files seems to be striking fear into the hearts of any individual who even thinks of engaging in online piracy. This success will probably be short-lived. One of the miraculous things about the Internet is its speed and the rate of technological change it embodies. The Internet provides a multimedia forum where like-minded individuals can connect and in some instances, work on solutions to problems. The recording industry's ability to geographically locate online pirates may soon be decimated.
As last month's massive Internet worm and virus attacks suggest, there are many intelligent and talented programmers connected to the Web who use their talents to whatever ends they desire. It is strongly possible that someone somewhere in the world will develop a program which shields a user's IP address or misdirects the recording industry's software, which will render their new tactic practically useless.
It is even more probable that an individual or team of programmers will develop a new generation of media sharing programs, which will combat this recording industry tactic. Apparently, the recording industry did not learn much from its last major legal action against music downloading. In 1999, it went against the first major music downloading service, Napster, and obtained a legal injunction to shut down their network. Within months, several newer and smarter programs such as Kazaa and Imesh appeared on the Web. These programs are an even worse problem for the recording industry as their decentralized peer-to-peer nature makes them impossible to shut down, and they make trading other media files such as video, images and software possible. Although it is possible that people may be sufficiently scared of legal action to drop any notions of creating newer and better downloading programs, based on recent past experience, the likelihood of independent programmers dropping out of the media downloading wars is improbable.
The recording industry should rethink its tactics on who it will pursue for legal action. The companies that are engaging in these IP searches are angry and rightfully so, as they are losing a great deal of money to online piracy. However, they are not necessarily providing any long-term solutions to their problems and are in the process ruining the lives of those who are caught. The industry has announced that it will prosecute online pirates up to several thousand dollars per illegally obtained song found on their hard drive. For an average law-abiding person who downloaded some music albeit illegally, this could be their worst nightmare and force them into bankruptcy. Yes, the recording industry is gaining a victory against someone that broke the law and effectively stole a company's product. But the users who are being engaged in legal action are only a few, while the problem of online piracy involves millions worldwide -- many of who may be much larger illegal music distributors than those that are caught.
The music industry has emerged victorious through their new strategy for now. However, the industry must be on alert for a fierce backlash against this new tactic. It might come from angry "netizens" who decide to boycott the recording industry because of their anger over the invasion of privacy inherent in the record company's tactics or the fact that relatively low-offending computer users are being targeted. Or more likely, there might be a software response from a programmer who creates a media-sharing program even harder to track down and stop than those which already exist. Either way, it is highly probable that the recording industry will be engaged in a new front of the online media sharing war sooner rather than later.
(Alex Rosemblat's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at arosemblat@cavalierdaily.com.)
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