After shutting down Napster and Audiogalaxy, the record industry has now taken aim at four college students for pirating music files. Although the industry has every right to pursue their likely valid claims that the students’ websites enabled massive copyright infringement, these suits only seem likely to briefly scare people before they find other ways to continue getting free music. Instead of focusing on these multibillion-dollar cases, the industry should finally work at adapting their business to work with new technology rather than against it.
Enabled by speedy ethernet hookups, college students’ collections of free mp3s have irked the recording industry ever since Napster set off the downloading frenzies. But until now, record companies have just asked schools to reduce the problem, a task they have willingly addressed somewhat because of their own increasing bandwidth costs. Boston University seems to act like most schools in that it asks students to consider their usage and follows up on specific industry complaints while generally leaving students alone.
Since the lawsuits were filed on April 3, many students have dismantled networks allowing their fellow students to share files, and schools like Harvard University are pulling the plug on more students who share copyrighted material. While the industry is setting an example with four students and its scare tactics are having some effect now, the downloading slowdown will not last long.
Much as students quickly figured out how to get around Napster bans from Metallica or Jeff Buckley, they will also continue to find legal loopholes or simply take their at least one-in-a-million odds that they can keep filling their hard drives with free music. The industry’s difficulties in shutting down KaZaA shows just how clever people are getting at setting up file-sharing systems, and students seem poised to remain far ahead of the recording industry in terms of their ability to use technology to their advantage.
To turn the tables, record companies have to find ways to harness new technologies and use them to provide economic gains. Experiments with ideas like including DVD footage and reexamining pricing schematics are promising. Furthermore, musicians all across the musical spectrum – from They Might Be Giants to Strike Anywhere – have found ways to gain fans and make money while embracing file sharing. While no magic solution has worked for everyone, using tactics like these will be far more effective than lame attempts to prevent stealing like sending out promo CDs glued into Discmans or the White Stripes’ effort to limit copying by initially using only vinyl for their latest release. Ill-conceived methods like these will not improve the industry any more than the latest heavy-handed approach of suing students.
These lawsuits requesting $150,000 for each song listed on the four students’ websites will probably be settled out of court and have little lasting effect. To actually improve their situation and tackle the economic challenge having their products readily available for free, record companies must play with new marketing strategies and get college students on their side. Then again, maybe just putting 10 decent songs on a $10 record would have cash registers humming a different tune.
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