Around the year 1450, a man named Johannes Gutenberg set into motion a remarkable technological revolution. It involved printing, and books.
In the early 15th century, you see, it had long been a tradition for Catholic monks to transcribe texts of important books by hand, one copy at a time. The results of this laborious process were typically in Latin — the language of the Church. Gutenberg's invention, called "movable type," made it possible for books to be efficiently printed and made available in popular editions, in the common language.
No longer would reading be a privilege reserved for the elite few. And for this, Johannes Gutenberg's printing press was seized, and Gutenberg himself spent the rest of his life in prison.
Gotcha! That last part never happened — though it sounds likely enough, doesn't it?
Throwing the baby out with the bath water, outlawing new technology to preserve the little corner of the world someone's carved out for themselves — that seems like the type of thing they'd do in the 1400s, don't you think? But while Gutenberg did lose some of his equipment, it was to pay off creditors, and not because of any suppression by the establishment. In fact, the Catholic Church was among the first to take advantage of movable type.
Meanwhile, it's 1998, and a computer peripheral company called Diamond Multimedia hasn't found itself so lucky. In September, Diamond Multimedia unveiled a nifty little device called the Rio PMP300. Palm-sized and able to run for 12 hours on a single AA battery, the Rio is the first portable MP3 player to be announced for the American market.
MP3 is shorthand for MPEG-1, Layer 3 — a computer file format used for encoding audio digitally, like on a compact disc. Through data compression technology, however, music stored in MP3 format takes up about one tenth the storage space it would require in CD format, while remaining very close in audio quality.
The advent of MP3 encoding means that it's now feasible for professional-quality digital audio to be stored on your hard drive and played through your computer. MP3 files can be traded over the Internet. You can even create MP3s yourself on your home PC. And now, with Diamond's Rio device, you can also download these audio files to a portable stereo device and listen to them at the gym, or on that interminable MUNI train ride to work.
Diamond didn't invent the MP3 format, but their Rio player is just one of the company's recent efforts to popularize the technology. Diamond is banking on the public catching on to the ease of storage, duplication and transmission this new format provides. Unfortunately, it's precisely the liberating nature of MP3 audio that has run Diamond into trouble.
Less than a month after the announcement of the Rio, Diamond Multimedia was served with a lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), claiming the device was in violation of something known as the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992.
A peculiar law, the Audio Home Recording Act requires that all digital recording devices sold in the United States incorporate technology to prevent individuals from mass-producing copies of digital recordings.
Further, all manufacturers of such devices must pay royalties to a fund managed by the "Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies," based on the assumption that unauthorized duplicates of copyrighted works will inevitably be made with the equipment. Whether any actual bootlegging can be proven or not, manufacturers must pay the major record labels for illicit copies that are presumed to have been made by someone, somewhere.
The RIAA has decided that the Rio falls under the terms of the Act, and as such should be forced to pay these royalties. Diamond Multimedia disagrees. Ignoring the issue of whether the Audio Home Recording Act is a fair and justified law in the first place, Diamond argues that the Rio itself has no actual recording capabilities, and as such is not covered under the Act. In a press release, Diamond compared the lawsuit to "outlawing ink jet printers because an individual may print out a personal copy of a newspaper article from a website."
In late October, a California District Court judge denied the RIAA's request for a preliminary injunction against Diamond to prevent the peripheral manufacturer from shipping the Rio product. Score one for the defense. It remains to be seen whether Diamond will eventually be forced to subscribe to the terms of the Audio Home Recording Act, once the lawsuit goes to court. But no matter what the outcome of the suit, Diamond's situation speaks volumes about the ostrich-like attitude that the media industry in this country takes toward technological advancement.
By comparison, consider the Asian market, where the very first portable MP3 player was introduced. Dubbed the MPMan, this product has enjoyed modest success — enough so that its manufacturer, Saehan Information Systems of Korea, has introduced some five different models of the handheld device.
In conjunction with the MPMan, Saehan promotes something called the MPStation. Sort of a "music vending machine," the MPStation is a stand-up kiosk into which you can plug your MPMan. For a modest fee, you can download the latest single by your favorite band (provided by the recording label in MP3 format and transmitted from a central server over an ISDN data line).
Delivering low-cost, high-quality digital copies of music tracks through a vending machine is only one possibility this new format provides. MP3s also seem tailor-made for Internet commerce, and visionaries will no doubt come up with other methods of getting their audio content to the consumer. But rather than seeing these new distribution avenues as an opportunity, the RIAA short-sightedly chooses to focus only on MP3 as a potential aid to copyright violation.
Already, though, independent artists are beginning to discover MP3 as a way of getting their works into the hands (and ears) of the music-buying public. Sites like MP3.com and Goodnoise.com are making available libraries of 100 percent original music from artists who have chosen to reach their audiences, not through a major label contract, but directly using the freedom that the MP3 format provides.
Instead of buying a packaged product from a record company, for a couple bucks a song you can download these artists' work directly onto your computer desktop, or your portable MP3 player. No record label — or even a physical record (or CD, or cassette) — is required.
While MP3 audio was once strictly the province of college students and emerging artists, the buzz from the underground has attracted the attention of more established artists, as well. This past summer, the Beastie Boys made a single from their recent album available in MP3 format. Likewise, the full length of the latest project by Frank Black, formerly of the Pixies, is available for download — for about half the price of your average compact disc.
Rather than trying to hinder the spread of the format, the RIAA could choose to see MP3 for what it is: a breakthrough in technology that greatly reduces packaging, production, and distribution costs for audio recordings. But instead of seeing an opportunity, the recording industry seems intent upon viewing MP3 only as a threat to their short-term profits. They've chosen the low road — trying to prevent change by suppressing the development that makes it possible. In doing so, however, they've only made change all the more inevitable.
Johannes Gutenberg's invention of movable type can be cited as one of the early causes of the Protestant Reformation in 15th Century Europe. I'm not about to say anything so earth-shattering is likely to come from a form of digital audio encoding.
But to a lot of people, the fate of MP3 in the U.S. is an issue worth fighting for. The RIAA's lawsuit against Diamond Multimedia has drawn the battle lines. And that, in and of itself, may prove to be their downfall — because I suspect that now, and in the coming months, a whole lot of average Americans are going to start hearing about a once-obscure computer file format called MP3.
