Music companies fight use of MP3s

By BETH LUCAS
Collegian Staff Writer

Six companies have decided to fight music piracy on the Internet by offering a better but more secure service.

BMG, The EMI Group, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music announced a joint effort with IBM earlier this month to fight the illegal use of MP3s -- compressed format files used to save music from the Internet onto a computer's hard drive.

"The big problem with MP3s is college kids distributing music they don't have the right to," said Lorraine Comstock, director of marketing for RioPort.com Inc., a branch of Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. For a charge, RioPort.com (www.RioPort.com) distributes MP3s of the music of independent artists.

The proposed service, meant to fight the abuse of such files and formerly known as the "Madison Project," would distribute legitimate MP3s through a broadband, cable-modem delivery system.

The six-month trial service will be in the form of an Internet store offering about 1,000 albums consumers can download in less than 10 minutes for a fee.

"We believe the adoption of (this system) by the music industry could accelerate the development of a new, convenient way for consumers to purchase music," Rick Selvage, general manager for IBM Global Media and Entertainment Industries, said in a press release.

In their current format, single songs take only seconds to download and can be played by MP3 players, which are also available for free on the Internet. Students can use this technology to exchange music without actually paying for an entire album.

It is possible for students to upload MP3 files to a World Wide Web site allowing others to download without paying anything to the copyright holder, Kola Segun (graduate-computer science) said.

The group coordinating the trial plans to expand the service to telephone modems in the future but is unsure how it would work because the telephone wires would create longer downloading times.

The trial service will begin this spring in San Diego because it is well-equipped with cable modem lines, but the group is unsure when the service could become available nationally.

"I don't understand all of the implications for the project, but I don't think it will be usable for most people because it requires cable access in the home, which most people don't have yet," Comstock said.

Because many students download free MP3s, the loss of this would negatively affect students but benefit businesses, said Nina Klein, manager of Vibes Music, 226 E. College Ave.