Evolution of Online Music & New Legal Ways to download

Evolution of Online Music & New Legal Ways to download Music!

The Recording Industry Association of America 's bid to stamp out music piracy is paying off to some extent, with the launch of more pay-for-download music services and an effort by a couple of brainy college students to provide legal tunes to their classmates.

Though the lure of free music will continue to tempt many downloaders, the new legal services that are spouting up are worth watching as the e-music industry continues to take shape.


Napster , the service that single-handedly started the Internet music wars, is back this week, if in name only. Backed by Roxio , Napster will officially relaunch this week as a pay-for-play online service aimed at competing directly with Apple 's iTunes service and RealNetworks 's Rhapsody .

The new Napster is hoping to win customers through the sale of pre-paid cards that music fans can use to purchase music downloads, The Los Angeles Times reported today. The cards will be sold "at 14,000 electronics retailers, supermarkets, convenience stores and other outlets around the country," the paper said. "Other online music services are planning to do the same, hoping to get a taste of the success that the long-distance companies have enjoyed from about $6 billion in annual prepaid-card sales. RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody and FullAudio Inc. 's MusicNow plan to introduce prepaid cards next month, around the same time as Roxio though in fewer outlets," according to the L.A. Times. The cards will sell for $14.95 and will purchase 15 song downloads from the site, The San Francisco Chronicle explained.

The L.A. Times noted that the cards "should help the services solve one of the biggest problems they face as they try to grow into sustainable businesses. Their standard method of collecting money from customers -- by taking credit card numbers online -- excludes most teenage customers and scares off many older ones. Mike Bebel , the head of Roxio's Napster division, said the cards also would make it possible to buy downloads as gifts, potentially introducing more people to the service." * The Los Angeles Times: Napster To Sell Pre-Paid Cards For Web Music (Registration required)

More from the Chronicle: "Napster 2.0 will be the latest attempt by the record industry and technology companies to turn back the worldwide music-sharing fad ignited in 2000 by its predecessor, the original Napster of Redwood City. The record industry has labeled file sharing as illegal online piracy that it says has contributed heavily to a three-year slump in CD sales." * The San Francisco Chronicle: Cards For Paying Napster

Copyright Technicality = College Kids' Delight

The online music piracy fight has often centered on college campuses, with the recording industry targeting many wired students with piracy lawsuits. But leave it to some brainy students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to figure out a way to bring digital music to the masses without provoking the ire (hopefully) of the RIAA.

Two students "created an electronic music library that allows anyone on the MIT campus instant access to 3,500 CDs that span the musical spectrum from Beethoven to the Beatles to Beck. The technology -- dubbed the Library Access to Music Project , or LAMP -- is part electronic database, part old-fashioned campus radio -- with 12 channels. Students who want to program a channel go to the LAMP Web site to select a song or CD, which is delivered through the campus' closed-circuit cable television network to a dorm room, student lounge or faculty office," The San Jose Mercury News explained. "Only 12 students can choose tracks at any one time. Each student who requests a particular track becomes a D.J. for 80 minutes, then someone else gets to program. The LAMP system reserves 12 channels on the campus cable system. Anyone else on campus can listen in, selecting among the 12 channels. The designers said they will release the software behind the system for any other university that might want to duplicate it." * The San Jose Mercury News: New Tune on Digital Music

The Associated Press reported that the "students will share the software with other schools, who they say could operate their own networks for just a few thousand dollars per year. They call that a small price to pay for heading off lawsuits like those the recording industry filed against hundreds of alleged illegal file-swappers. Here's the catch: The system is operated over the Internet but the music is pumped through MIT's cable television network. That makes it an analog transmission, as opposed to a digital one, in which a file is reproduced exactly." * The Associated Press via washingtonpost.com: Students Develop File-Swap Alternative

On the LAMP Web site, the creators say they hope the service will "cut down on students breaking the law just to listen to music. LAMP offers instant on-demand listening to about 50,000 songs quicker and more reliably than KaZaA can. And LAMP, unlike songs downloaded through KaZaA, is fully licensed and legal." In a frequently asked questions section, the creators answer why the service is legal: "We are transmitting music over the non-digital portion of MIT's internal cable television system. Because it is impossible to record exact copies of CDs from a non-digital cable television system, under the copyright law the licensing requirements are less stringent than for over the Internet: similar to the requirements for radio stations. MIT, like most universities and radio stations, pays for blanket licenses from the three organizations -- ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC -- that have the power to authorize analog transmissions of virtually all songs. These blanket licenses cost about 60 cents per student per year in total, including cable television rights."

The Boston Globe provided additional details today about how LAMP's creators, Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel , figured out a way to legally provide songs for free. "The students had hoped to stream the music files in digital form over the campus computer network. Then they learned that copyright law sets strict limits on such activities. ... But Winstein and Mandel found a loophole. The tough limits on digital music broadcasting didn't apply to analog broadcasting, the kind used by MIT's cable television systems. A cable broadcaster simply pays a blanket royalty fee to the major music licensing organizations, such as the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers , or ASCAP," the article said. "Like most colleges, MIT already pays such a fee to those organizations. And a cable broadcaster doesn't pay the additional royalty to the record companies. So Winstein and Mendel built a network that takes orders over the Internet, but plays the music back over the cable system. But they still had to work out a legal way to obtain recordings for broadcast. Winstein and Mandel used an Internet-based survey of MIT students to choose the music in the LAMP library. They settled on about 3,400 albums, ranging from the popular to the obscure. It took a year of negotiations with the National Music Publishers Association to reach agreement on a reasonable licensing fee for copies of the music." * The Boston Globe: Reinventing The Jukebox On Campus

Hal Abelson , an MIT professor of computer science and engineering who helped oversee LAMP's creation, told The New York Times: "Everybody has gotten so wedged into entrenched positions that listening to music has to have something to do with file sharing." He added: "[I]t doesn't have to be that way at all." The Times said that the RIAA, music industry reps and others did not offer comment on LAMP, which the newspaper noted was backed financially by Microsoft. "Although the M.I.T. music could still be recorded by students and shared on the Internet, Professor Abelson said that the situation would be no different from recording songs from conventional FM broadcasts. The system provides music quality that listeners say is not quite as good as a CD on a home stereo but is better than FM radio." * The New York Times: With Cable TV At M.I.T, Who Needs Napster? (Registration required)

Abelson told USA Today that LAMP "doesn't replace file sharing." He said, "You have to be there with your TV and you can't copy the music. But hopefully, it lessens the incentive to have to go copy files." * USA Today: LAMP Lights Way For Those Seeking Free, Legal, Net Tunes

Spam Wars in the Golden State

It didn't take long for California to put its tough new anti-spam law to work. California's "top prosecutor won the state's first anti-spam lawsuit Friday when a San Jose judge ordered defendants to pay $2 million and to stop sending unsolicited commercial e-mails," The Sacramento Bee reported. "But don't expect the flow of spam -- or unsolicited e-mail -- to ebb noticeably. Industry trackers say the case against PW Marketing and owners Paul Willis and Claudia Griffin blocks only one operation in a sea of spammers." Mark Sunner , chief technology officer for online security firm MessageLabs , told the newspaper that "many spammers have already shown a total disregard for the law and have a total determination to keep their spam businesses alive by any means." * The Sacramento Bee: State Wins Anti-Spam Suit

The judgment "will be the model for future spam injunctions, forbids PW Marketing from sending unsolicited commercial e-mail, accessing computers that belong to other people without their permission and disguising its identity by sending e-mails that appear to originate from a different address," Reuters reported, paraphrasing comments by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer . * Reuters via CNET's News.com: California Wins First Anti-Spam Judgment

Amazon's Search Central

Amazon.com has started a service that lets book fans scan the retail giant's database for certain words from the text of more than 100,000 books. Sounds great, but The New York Times today reports that the feature is "drawing skepticism from an authors' group." The article said: " Paul Aiken , executive director of the Authors Guild ... regarded the practice as dubious. He said that publishers did not have the right to make the contents of books available without the authors' permission. 'We find it a matter of serious concern,' Mr. Aiken said." * The New York Times: Amazon Offer Worries Authors (Registration required)

The Wall Street Journal, in its Friday edition, also noted concerns about the service: Amazon "is heading into risky territory, with some publishers worried that letting people search complete copies of books could hinder book sales. The concern seems most acute among publishers of reference books. Publishers familiar with the program said Amazon's search technology won't let users browse more than 20% of most books, yet that still leaves plenty of material that can be accessed free online. For instance, an Amazon user who types in the word 'Dublin hotel' can click into a guide to accommodations in the Irish city, and flip through and print pages of hotel listings from the book." * Wall Street Journal: Amazon Offers Feature Enabling Text Search of Books on Web Site (Subscription required)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos posted a letter on Amazon's home page about the new service. The company is running a contest tied to the search service to help launch the feature. The grand prize? A Segway scooter, which the company has also been selling on its site. The Seattle Times on Friday wrote more about how the service is supposed to beef up Amazon's service. " Steve Kessel , Amazon's vice president for North American Media Products and Apparel, said it helps customers turn up books they wouldn't find otherwise. Kessel said a test customer, for example, plugged in the name of his favorite author, which usually returns 13 results -- all books the author had written. The search technology now returned 81 results that included sections, paragraphs and chapters about the author." * The Seattle Times: Amazon Expands Search Options

Another Notch In Google's Belt

Search engine giant Google is buying Sprinks , Primedia's online advertising unit, Primedia said on Friday. The move solidifies "Google's position in the growing business of supplying pay-per-click text advertisements to Web publishers. Google will also supply ads for Primedia's Web sites, including its magazine sites and About.com directory sites targeted to different user interests, in a four-year distribution and revenue-sharing pact, according to a Primedia statement Friday," The Wall Street Journal said. Financial terms of the deal were not provided. The purchase news came a day after Wall Street was abuzz with speculation about a Google IPO early next year. * The Wall Street Journal: Primedia Agrees to Sell Web-Ad Unit to Google (Subscription required)

An AT&T-BellSouth Merger?

AT&T and BellSouth have discussed a merger for the past three years "and have come within days of striking an agreement at least twice," The Wall Street Journal reported today, citing unnamed sources. "Now, as the discussions get under way again, obstacles remain price, strategic risks for BellSouth and potential regulatory roadblocks. BellSouth, the regional Bell phone carrier of Atlanta, would be taking a big risk by bidding for the U.S.'s largest long-distance company in terms of sales, which has reported 15 consecutive quarters of declining revenue. Buying AT&T would give BellSouth quick access to the U.S.'s largest roster of lucrative business clients," the article said. * The Wall Street Journal: Bell South, AT&T Talks Face Hurdles (Subscription required)

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution report from Saturday noted that some analysts are questioning where a merger makes sense for the two companies. UBS analyst John C. Hodulik said last week: "We believe an offer to purchase AT&T at or near these levels would have a materially negative effect on BellSouth shares. The consolidation of these two entities would hinder the company's ability to grow earnings and cash flow on a long-term basis." * Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Telecom Merger Talk Fuels Doubts

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