GUEST COLUMNIST: Do our MP3s violate constitutional rights?

Before the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, copyright laws did not exist. But when the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 drafted the U.S. Constitution, they acknowledged the need to safeguard an author's work. They specified in Article 1, Section 8 that Congress will have the power to "secure for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." But now, more than 200 years since the Constitution was written, the debate over what is protected under the First Article rages on. This time, however, the debate focuses on the illegal distribution of music, not books, and it may soon affect the way in which thousands of college students obtain the songs that now fill their hard-drives. According to a recent survey conducted by Time magazine, nearly 75 percent of college students who have Ethernet access have extensive MP3 collections, and in effect, are breaking the laws set to protect our nation's authors and musicians. MP3s or MPEG3s, short for Motion Pictures Expert Group Layer-3, are compressed audio files that can be played on a personal computer, using software such as Nullsoft's WinAmp, or on a portable MP3 player, such as Diamond Multimedia's Rio, in "near" compact disc quality. But by downloading rather than purchasing songs, Penn students are denying music artists and their agents the royalties they make every time one of their albums are sold. Modest estimates say that the MP3 trade has cost recording artists, and the labels that represent them, $1 billion over the past two years. Obviously, the music industry is not taking this news lightly. Hundreds of recording companies, represented by the Recording Industry Association of America, took large MP3 distributors, software manufactures and hardware creator to court. They claimed that the MP3 songs and devices they produce and distribute must be encoded in order to limit CD piracy. To the chagrin of the RIAA, the US Court of Appeals voted unanimously to throw out the lawsuit on the grounds that the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act specifically excludes computers and computer software from regulation. On the surface, this would seem to be a victory for MP3 distributors and the millions of computer users who rely on the illegally copied files as their primary source of music. But despite the ruling, the five largest companies represented by the RIAA (BMG, EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers) are developing a new audio format that they hope will one day replace the MP3. The new format, entitled the Secure Digital Music Initiative, or SDMI, will soon be encoded into every compact disc. This will limit the amount of times computer users can "rip" CDs of their digital information. So, what does this mean to the three million and counting who have downloaded WinAmp and the X million people (including myself) who have bought the Rio? In all honesty, not much. The Rio will soon be SDMI compatible, as well as the popular WinAmp, which should make the transition to the new format smooth and painless. Existing MP3s will still continue to flood the Internet, and users such as myself will continue to download them. But in the meantime, we all need to respect the musicians who create the music that keeps us dancing and downloading. And that means purchasing the songs that we download, or at least using the SDMI file format when it will debuts in early December. If not, one day the recording industry may decide to make it impossible to copy any songs that appear on compact discs, completely crushing the file format that may one day eliminate the need to have CDs in the first place. Regardless of the regulations, the portable MP3 player, the Rio, will surely be to our generation what Sony's walkman was to the last. Similarly, what the slogan "I want my MTV" was to the '80s, "I want my MP3" has and will continue to be the catch phrase of college students and computer enthusiasts throughout the decades to come. While loopholes in the Constitution may protect us now, we must all work together to honor the spirit of the law that our nation's founders created to protect our authors and musicians. Piracy may seem to be the cheapest and easiest way to obtain the best music collection, but in the long run it will only drive up the price of CDs and force recording artists and labels to create more inhibiting restrictions on the music we listen to.

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