Freedom of expression

Music distribution is being revolutionised by the internet as millions of people flock online to download songs. Standard PCs are equipped with all the features that make downloading music and creating CDs easy and cheap. There's only one catch - most music downloading is illegal.

But a legitimate online trade in music is developing. In the US, the maker of the hugely popular iPod portable music player, Apple, has the lion's share of the legal music download market with its iTunes service. One of its biggest competitors is Napster, which began life several years ago as an illegal, free download service. It was reborn as a commercial operation after being successfully sued for breaching copyright rules by the US recording industry.

Last year the online music trade was reportedly worth US$330 million, as buyers downloaded about 200 million songs. In 2005, the market is expected to double in size.

New Zealand has its own legitimate download sites. Amplifier (www.amplifier.co.nz) was launched in 2000 and sells New Zealand music. Another, Digirama (www.digirama.co.nz), was launched last November and is working on licensing deals with international record labels to increase its catalogue of songs from about 60,000 in February to a target of 250,000 within a few months.

An internet user who goes looking for music to download is much more likely to run across the illegal than the legitimate sort, however. While the recording industry successfully made an example of Napster, numerous other illegal sources of songs have sprung up in its place.

The buzzwords in the illicit music download world are mp3 and peer-to-peer (or p2p, as it's usually written). An mp3 is a compressed audio file format that reduces a typical CD-quality music track to about 10 per cent of its size with only a small loss of quality.

The key thing is that the file is small enough to be readily downloaded. Software is freely available to convert tracks copied from a CD to a computer hard drive into mp3s, a process known as "ripping".

The common way to exchange mp3s is by peer-to-peer networks. P2P networks are collections of thousands of ordinary home PCs running file sharing software. Popular networks include Kazaa, Grokster and LimeWire. Anyone with Kazaa's software on their PC - again, it's freely available on the internet - can join the network, copying mp3s from other Kazaa users and sharing their own mp3 collection.

To many, it's the ultimate use of the internet - an informal sharing arrangement that opens up a wide world of free music. However, the recording industry, which claims it is losing out on millions of dollars of CD sales to peer-to-peer networks, continues to fight back, and has been taking legal action against thousands of downloaders in Europe and the US.

Legitimate download sites sign licensing agreements with individual record companies, which means the copyright owner earns a portion of the $2 or thereabouts charged for downloading each song. In the case of Digirama, the licence typically allows the buyer of a song to burn it to CD three times and copy it to a portable music player three times.

Download sites provide the only legal means of getting tracks on to Apple's iPod, probably the most popular mobile music player on the market. However, the most straightforward service for iPod owners, iTunes, is not available here, and when it will be is anyone's guess.

While thousands of people are merrily copying their CD collections to their iPods, New Zealand copyright law makes that illegal. However, the record industry turns a blind eye to the practice and a law change this year is expected to legalise it.