audio campRunning right past and outfoxing the Napster-suing RIAA lawyers, a new product called Scour Exchange is peeking out of the woods. It's essentially the same program as Napster, with a bunch of legally required tag-ons. Barely. But enough for now. For one, you can exchange anything with it. Pictures, word files and, yes, MP3s. Having only one use has been one of the big stopping blocks for Napster. Scournet's product also has a Web page which allows wronged parties, such as the record industry, to make individual complaints, mailed in and signed in ink, which they then have promised to deal with in due time, by shutting down offenders. Individual complaints. Chew on that one for a second. Think of the paper alone. The point is, technically, they're probably within the law, at least until the next round of court cases decides otherwise, which is plenty of time for twenty more such foxes to start coming out of the trees. Extending the metaphor, we have each industry vs. inventor court case being a night hunter with one bullet. Suddenly, all he sees is eyes in the dark. MP3.com, meanwhile, has deiced to try and play nicer, or at least appear so. You can read it in their literature; you can see it by their dropping of the counter-suit against RIAA. They're even proposing a smart subscription method whereby the industry could make money back online through a "guilt-free" Napster, where some people elect to pay every month rather than break the law, rather that getting courts and police involved. Of course, in the industry, current discussion has it that a legal solution may soon be the only way out of the RIAA suffering Nuclear Winter. Forgive me if I don't pack my parka if they continue this way. The new word is of a vague plan that targets individual perpetrators rather than companies like Napster, whose program can help users find nearly any song online for free. All the while, some opponents to a system of legitimate legal warnings, online-mass-delivered to those found passing around illegally copied files in MP3 form, are saying that such policing won't work by the sheer numbers of those breaking copyright law. This counter-argument even goes so far as questioning the numbers of those places where the law won't be able to be enforced, either by nature of its location or local legislation. It's a fine point for freedom, but, conversely, isn't that like arguing there's no point trying to sell music online at all because you can't get paid for every single song? I still agree with the point that policing is a weak way to solve this, though for wider reasons. If they did enforce locally, we'd actually have kind of a police state everywhere, all for the sake of entertainment and property. Presumably federal Cybercops could Cyberbust in and see what you have on your drive, invading your space. They'd better, anyway. Otherwise, enforcement would be seen as a joke. And that kind of Big Brother privacy invasion won't be tolerated, anyway, for the very reason you know the name Big Brother. It's an idea that's in everyone's heads already. All that turning the Web into a police state would do is drive the thieves away, if they're lucky. But seeing as so many people on the Web are thieves, well…. So it's almost like all of Net humanity, in a collective, is saying, no, police can't enforce these laws. Not locally, not on a planetary scale. And, they say, we don't care if it destroys “the rich,” though the actual rich may then punish the consumer in other ways, or at least try to. They may try and raise prices, which would sink the industry further. They may threaten to drop popular artists, which would eventually hurt their sales, too. The bottom line is always the same here. They should have been making money for years on this already. At least in order to get what they can now, before it's too late, as they stumble through the mud. They aren't going to be able to out-run or out-legal anyone, because they're actually fighting everyone on this one, in a giant game of Whack-a-Mole. Selling online is their only hope, even if they have to share. And, as a rock star friend of mine recently said, “Ah, I make more money touring and doing merch myself, anyway.” It wasn't all bad news this week, even though the markets ran around without pants for a few days, singing ancient songs from the ‘30s. Despite this, there was a slightly progressive note or three in the air. The forward-thinking EMI, for example, signed up with the excitingly named On-Line Entertainment Network to, yes, build a place of online, pay-per-listen MP3s. In other words, the recording industry IS going to make some money they never have before, rather than try and tear down something that's already so big it'll take either a million lawyers or one really smart, wise-cracking alien to get rid of. DataPlay Inc., though, has finally come out with something consumers have been waiting for since Dick Tracy was cool, and I don't mean the Warren Beatty version. They've invented $7, matchbox-sized sized disks with about as much storage space as a CD, just like in the movie Demolition Man. Or was it The Last Starfighter? Electric Boogaloo III? Anyway, you can't fit too many normal CDs into a digital camera or MP3 player, so this should be good. Football-sized computers should quickly follow. Hooray! The future is here! I'm off to buy my space helmet! One final note in music, and don't even think this could only happen in Britain, I-D Media is developing what they call the first virtual pop star, E-Cyas. Its new release, “Are You Real,” has earned it hundreds of emails a day, and the computer program is capable of playing live, through 3D projection. The only question we have: so what's the difference? Pop is clearly in the toilet right now, anyhow: plastic, fake and lamer than a one-legged spider. I welcome E-Cyas, frankly, and can't wait to interview the bastard who does his voice. The first virtual pop star, my ass. He's nothing more than a new version of the Brothers Pilatus, who once got a standing ovation even though their backing tape was playing at the wrong speed, giving out entirely by the end of the show. You may remember them as Milli Vanilli. But at least I-D is being up front about this. In five years, they probably won't need to be. [Publisher's Note: What else could possibly be happening in the music space? Soundscan goes digital, MP3.com does a deal with Compubank, Sony organized a Japanese online music portal cartel (with plans to deliver infrastructure for it via a new company called Label Gate), BMG Entertainment and IBM announced that BMG will support IBM's Electronic Media Management System (EMMS) and Pat Boone offers his In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy album for free download to anyone that will take it (just kidding about that last one).]
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