Facing the Music, part 1 "It has been said that to download music when you don't own the album is stealing. … Why is it stealing? I'm not duplicating the CD and selling it, I'm not competing or bootlegging their merchandise, yet it is somehow stealing?" (Caston 1) Rodney Caston wrote these words when Napster was free and peer-to-peer file sharing was in its early years. Peer-to-peer file sharing, or P2P, has been controversial ever since it was created. Now, in 2003, over two years after the creation of that revolutionary software, the Recording Industry Association of America is trying to make P2P illegal and shut it down permanently. The United States Government should legalize all peer-to-peer file sharing, especially that of music files, despite the Recording Industry Association of America's seemingly endless attempts to deter people from utilizing this marvelous tool. Peer-to-peer file sharing originated with a program called Napster, created by a college student named Shawn Fanning. Fanning's program spread to multitudes of users across the country simply because of the novelty of it. Fanning was then sued for copyright infringement. Napster's flaw was that it had a central server where information was stored about which users had which files. Napster has been offline since Fanning was ordered to shut it down. Shortly after, programs such as KaZaA and Grokster sprang up to take its place. These programs continued to be used freely because they lacked an index of files possessed by each user. They could not be shut down because they had uses other than the swapping of music files. Late in 2003, the RIAA changed tactics. Instead of trying to pin the shadowy programs like KaZaA to the wall, the RIAA began to sue the users who shared files. On December 9th, 2003, Bradley A. Buckles, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, was appointed head of the Anti-Piracy Unit of the RIAA ("ATF Director to Head Music Industry's Anti-Piracy Efforts" 1). "'Brad's appointment should signal to everyone that we continue to take piracy, here and throughout the world, very seriously,' said Mitch Bainwol, RIAA's chairman and chief executive officer." ("ATF…" 1). The RIAA has since filed over 380 lawsuits with file sharers (Perez 1). The main tool the RIAA uses to win cases against sharers is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or the DMCA. The DMCA was passed in 1998 by President Clinton after Congress voted unanimously to pass it ("Digital Millennium Copyright Act" 1). The DMCA is, like most United States legal decrees, impossible to follow for most people, which makes it a bit of a surprise to encounter. "The first [part of the DMCA] makes it illegal to deal with "circumvention devices", devices that give you access to a copyrighted work." ("DMCA" 1). Such "Circumvention devices" include programs like KaZaA and Napster. These programs circumvent copyright by allowing users free access to copyrighted works. In order for peer-to-peer file sharing to be legalized, this law must be repealed or modified. Recently, the great and magnanimous RIAA has permitted the creation of pay services, like Apple's iTunes and listen.com's Rhapsody. These services do not violate the DMCA because they charge money to download files and thus do not circumvent copyright. Each service charges $.79 to $1.14 to download a single song. Rhapsody and iTunes charge subscription fees, while some others do not. However, are these pay services of the same caliber as the P2P many Americans currently enjoy? No, they are not. The pay services offer precious little bang for one's buck; they are expensive at best. Rhapsody charges a subscription fee of $9.95 a month, or $24.95 for three months. For the most part they require the user to download and install unique software, which can take a lot of time to download if the user has dial-up Internet access. Once the installer is finished downloading 30 minutes later, the service is usable. Again, dial-up users are given the short end of the stick, because the program requires that the user tell which type of connection he or she possesses. The broadband option yields crystal-clear quality files, while the dial-up option yields files of a lower quality. The quality difference may be noted between Tracks 1 and 2 on the accompanying CD [Note: Track 1 was an MP3 encoded at 196 kbps; Track 2 was the same song encoded at 32 kbps]. Furthermore, songs still take a long time to download over a dial-up connection, roughly thirty minutes minimum. Rhapsody only permits a full song to be downloaded as it is being burned to a CD. For those users without CD burners, this is decidedly impractical. The files are burnt in audio format, which makes turning them back into digital files time consuming at best. P2P, on the other hand, has fewer disadvantages. First, it's free. No subscription fee involved in P2P. There is an installer, but it is a bit smaller than that of a pay service. The quality of a file can easily be seen before it is downloaded. Generally, the files are of top quality, regardless of connection speed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, files are downloaded as files, without the burning prerequisite. This means that no CD burner is necessary for those who wish to download music. What about the selection? Which type of service has a larger variety of tracks available? The answer, again, is P2P. Rhapsody was unable to locate songs by any artists who have not agreed to be part of its family. Bob Seger, classic rock staple, is not available on Rhapsody. He is on KaZaA, however. More modern music by bands such as The Goo Goo Dolls and Barenaked Ladies is available on both services. Even classic music, such as Louis Armstrong, is available both ways. Old tracks from in between, however, are harder to find on Rhapsody. Scatman John's "Scatman" was unavailable on any pay site. He was not even listed on Rhapsody. KaZaA, however, featured not only "Scatman," but also other songs, including "Lebanon," the most obscure song he ever wrote. Songs by foreign artists, like Meja's "All 'Bout the Money," are nonexistent on Rhapsody. P2P once again triumphs. It can thus be concluded that the pay services, while conveniently legal, are expensive and less useful than free ones. The prices are extortion, broadband is prized above all else, and they just are not practical. Their selection is good, but not as good as P2P. The RIAA is using the fear inspired by its legal action to make money. The RIAA has said repeatedly that P2P costs artists money. Do artists make money for each copy of an album sold? No. The record company does. Should the consumer really be all that sympathetic that Mitch Bainwol will be unable to make the next payment on his Range Rover when the consumer himself is having difficulty making the rent payment on his housing? No. Mr. Bainwol should come down from his perch on the clouds and walk among the commoners. He might learn something. The RIAA makes money when albums are sold. When an album is purchased, the rights to the music on that album are purchased. Do the rights John obtained when he purchased a Bob Seger record back in the 1970s still apply? Is John entitled to a free copy of the songs on that album in digital format? The RIAA responds with its usual resounding no. Why? The album has the same music as the CD does. The CD didn't exist at the time. Why should John have to pay $15.00 to buy rights he already owns? A cassette, on the other hand, can be recorded from onto a computer. However, the quality is not the same as a file created from a CD. Should an individual owning a cassette be able to download a free copy of the songs on said cassette? The rights have already been purchased. Still no. Even when the rights are purchased in the form of a CD, digital files may not be available. Why? Copyright protection software. Celine Dion's latest album, "A New Day Has Come," featured software that would not permit a computer to transform the tracks into data format. Many fans were unhappy about this. The tracks, the rights to which the fans had purchased, could not be transformed into different media formats. The RIAA is once again uncooperative. This even shows through in pay services. Once the rights to a song are purchased, the song cannot be downloaded again for free. If John downloads a hundred songs, and a virus wipes his hard disk, he still has to pay a hundred dollars to get the songs back. The RIAA has no compassion; it is cold like the coined currency it covets and hoards. The RIAA is stopping at nothing to make more than its fair share of money. As G. Richard Shell wrote, "The industry's solution appears as novel as the technology … launch hundreds of lawsuits against otherwise law-abiding consumers who download music." (Shell 1). It sues people who decide that they have no need for the extortionist prices of CDs and decide to download songs on P2P. The RIAA has been going after "supernodes," users who share a lot of files (Currie 2). The fact that a supernode happens to be a fifteen-year-old girl makes no difference to the RIAA, who magnanimously offered the girl a paltry fine of $3,500 instead of the $825,000 copyright infringement fine (Furia 1). Is suing a fifteen-year-old girl really that smart? The RIAA does not care. It will scare people into paying $20.00 for a CD with one good song and twelve filler tracks on it. Is that right? The RIAA does not care. It is a corporation. Why should a corporation care about a consumer? The RIAA has the gall to fill its site with propaganda to draw the consumer's sympathies away from their correct target. 'Piracy' generally refers to the illegal duplication and distribution of sound recordings. There are four specific categories of music piracy. Pirate recordings are the unauthorized duplication of only the sound of legitimate recordings. … This includes mixed tapes and compilation CDs ("Anti-Piracy" 1). Is it illegal for John to put a bunch of songs onto a CD for a school project? The RIAA thinks so. Even if John owns the CDs from which the songs sprang, the new CD is still a "Pirate recording." Even if John makes a compilation of his favorite tracks that nobody else will ever listen to, he is nonetheless guilty of a federal crime. Is this right? Is this just? He owns the rights to the music, so why should he be unable to burn an audio CD for his own enjoyment? This entire controversy has happened before. The movie industry got its panties in a bunch[Note: Got chided for being informal in a formal paper.] because Video Cassette Recorders suggested that a high quality copy of the original would cause a collapse in the entire movie industry (Caston 2). "Now, I haven't checked the movie industry's books lately, but I'm pretty sure they're doing just fine in the money-making department." Caston wrote (Caston 2). The VCR lives. Does the RIAA fear cassette recorders with two decks? By the argument above, it should. Such things should not exist, because the whole purpose of a dual cassette recorder is to make mixed tapes or copies of tapes/CDs, which are both "Pirate recordings." Peer-to-Peer file sharing should be legalized in the United States despite the frantic cries emanating from the RIAA. Since the RIAA began filing lawsuits, only about five percent of P2P users have stopped downloading (Harmon and Schwartz 1). "The record industry argues that sharing songs online is just like stealing a CD from a record store. But to many Americans, file sharing seems more like taping a song off a radio." (Harmon and Schwartz 1). This whole issue is not about rights or wrongs, laws or crimes; the issue is freedom. The issue is money. The RIAA wants to charge the citizens of the United States of America, a country that prides itself as being a land of freedom and opportunity, for music. It wants to charge for the feeling a person gets deep in their soul when they hear a song come through over the radio and the music resonating with some inner part of themselves. They want to charge for hope. Should they?