By PETER SINCLAIR
The Canutes of the global music-industry continue to stalk the shores of cyberspace, their voices shrill with dread, commanding the tide of MP3 to retreat. But the waters are lapping at their feet.
They can hardly believe a scrap of code is threatening to destroy everything they hold most dear, namely, their bottom lines.
The RIAA, has tried everything: humbug [their Soundbyting roadshow, "protecting music on the Internet", tours US campuses giving doomed lectures on the immorality of MP3]; intimidation [ask mp3.com or Diamond Multimedia, makers of the Rio player]; and violence [they got 22-year-old student Jeffrey Levy for criminal theft for swapping sound-files with a friend – two years' probation, with compulsory urine tests and restrictions on Net access].
Their Secure Digital Music Initiative is attempting to set up specifications for secure - and profitable - music downloads without any real demand [or hope of success, cracking technology being what it is].
Now, in a flurry of lawsuits, they're confronting the ultimate nightmare – an MP3 distribution network which is swift, foolproof and beyond their reach. Devised by a 19-year-old freshman, Shawn Fanning, it is named after his personal biorhythms: Napster.
In only 4 months it's become the hottest thing on the Web. Music is a human universal, making this small programme the kind of seminal software - like Visicalc, the first spreadsheet, or Mosaic, the first graphical browser – which divides the future from the past, altering the way we do business and the way we live.
By shifting control of a major industry from vested interests to individual consumers, Napster's many-to-many software represents the spirit of the internet in its purest form. Its profound implications will not be lost on all those who live off copyright, like the publishing [see BookMarks] and software industries.
The idea behind Napster is so simple you wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. It's just a distributed network which allows users to share music in MP3 format by briefly turning their PC's into servers when necessary to upload or download. Napster itself holds no music at all – that's up to millions of users round the world acting as individuals.
The functional interface sweeps you straight into "Oh wow!" territory. As yet [Napster is still in a v2.0 beta] there are no help-files or even a FAQ, and you don't need them; everything's absurdly easy. Just create a music-folder during the quick'n'easy setup, type the name of an artist or song you want, and watch the window fill.
After that it's just a matter of selecting whose connection you want to use, choosing if possible a 'T' data-line, DSL, ISDN or cable. Double-click your choice, and you're switched to the Upload/Download status window - though most people continue to search and click as Napster queues their selection [it downloads three tracks at a time].
As they arrive, songs are automatically filed and catalogued - there's a tab to view your library. And it's goodbye Winamp, Sonique and the rest of them – Napster has an excellent programmable stereo player built in, plus online chat with music-lovers in a host of categories; all this in the free 648Kb download.
As I write – and it's some nameless small hour in America, not prime-time - I have a choice of almost a million songs in over 7000 personal music libraries. Content changes as people log on and off – you really get a sense of the Web as a living organism. If your download gets interrupted, Napster automatically saves what you've got and queues the connection in a 'Resume' window.
My collection is modest – in a couple of days I've acquired about 35 of my favourites, everything from Nazareth to Purcell. Sometimes it takes a while to locate exactly what you want if it's a little obscure, but sooner or later someone with your taste in music will log on and you'll find it.
Many music-lovers download free 'ripper' software – MusicMatch is popular – which will convert tracks from your favourite CD's into MP3 code and store them on your drive so that others can enjoy them too.
Dodos, arise! And indeed, the writs are flying. The RIAA wants Napster outlawed – fat chance; they tried that already with Rio. Nor can they very well sue millions of individual music-lovers.
It may be that eventually the record-companies will have to abandon their elaborate, sometimes discriminatory star-system and become mere publicists, facilitators of fame, like agents.
There doesn't seem a lot they can do about it in the long term; the Force isn't with them. They need to read Tennyson: "The old order changeth, giving place to new, lest one good custom should corrupt the world… "
BookMarks
CREEPIEST: Riding the Bullet
Recovering from near-fatal injuries last year, shudder-meister Stephen King wrote Riding the Bullet, a 66-page "ghost-story in the grand manner". Curious to see "whether this is the future", the author launches it today as an e-book in the first online market-test by a best-selling author.
Advisory: $US2.50 at online bookstores only…
Comments: petersinclair@email.com
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