The music industry, which has already lost untold millions in revenue because of the underground technology, is in an uproar. MP3 (Mpeg1 Layer 3) files are small and have near-perfect quality; the programs which play them are cheap or free and easily downloaded and installed, and though they are, indeed, illegal, everybody from teenage geekazoids to aging hipsters are exchanging and enjoying them with little or no fear of prosecution.

My e-friend Ungabunga, an enthusiastic advocate of the new format, is well aware that MP3s aren’t exactly kosher. I spotted him online recently, asked him what he was up to, and he told me that he was in the middle of downloading bunch of new songs for a compilation CD he wanted to burn for his own personal enjoyment.

"mp3s? hey, cool! i’m writing a column about them... tell me more..." I said, with typical chattish disregard for proper punctuation or capitalization.

"heh," Unga responded, "technically they are in a gray area of legality." He paused, and then he said again, for effect: "heh. since one is copying copyrighted material such as, say, a beck cd... this falls into a legal gray area."

Actually, it’s fairly black and white. Using an MP3 is illegal if the song's copyright holder has not granted permission to download and play the song. Additionally, it is illegal to encode MP3s from a CD and trade them without permission from the copyright holder.

But pirates will be pirates. Unga is like the guy who occasionally smokes a little weed; it’s illegal, and he KNOWS it’s illegal, but he does it anyway, a little sheepishly, because he enjoys it and "Really, who’s it hurting?" The other camp is pretty interesting, too: those who think that the laws should be changed, because they believe that the $12 billion dollar a year music industry is too damn greedy.

Where Pirates Find Their Booty

Unga and I are both addicted to the music of cutting edge artists Beck and Bjork (sorta sounds like a cheap breakfast entree on a Scandihoovian diner menu, huh?). Unga, an unmarried college student of moderate means with more hardware than Tru-Value, downloads MP3s and burns them into blank CDs. He listens to them himself, and sometimes gives them to his friends. I, a divorced, impoverished writer with an obsolete computer and very little discretionary income, must wait in vain for “Army of Me” to be spun by local radio stations, most of which are nervous about anything more contemporary than old Blondie tunes.

Where does Unga find his ill-gotten tunes? MP3s can be found everywhere - on hotline servers, in IRC chatrooms devoted to nothing else, on the World Wide Web... Unga is most comfortable getting his on the Web, or from FTP (file transfer protocol) sites. Search engines and portals are becoming useful tools for MP3 location, too - Lycos, for example, has a specific utility with which you can use to locate over half a million CD-quality MP3s.

Many people, however, prefer to “shop” for MP3s in chat-oriented forums like IRC (Internet Relay Chat). This is an interesting group. Unga, I’m sure, simply wants to find his songs as quickly as possible, grab ‘em, and be done with it. But the chatters are looking for something else, as well: conversation and community.

Would You Like Some Chat With That?

When I was researching this article, I found 140 MP3-oriented channels on IRC’s Undernet alone; many were genre-specific (#latin_mp3 and #mp3hiphop, for example) but many were generic. To get a first-hand glimpse of the people who frequent these channels, I joined one, and had an interesting conversation with WickeD- (a Canadian male in his late 20s) and Doll_Face (a 41-year-old woman from Illinois), who happen to be regulars at this particular speakeasy. (I’ve added punctuation and caps as appropriate to make it easier on you, gentle reader!)

Immediately upon learning the purpose for my visit - “I’m here to learn more about MP3s, and how their increasing popularity is affecting the recording industry,” I more or less announced - WickeD- began defending his position. “I worked in the music industry,” he said. “I know what it costs a record company to make CDs. I'm a music fanatic and have bought hundreds of CDs at $20 apiece. I used to buy [them] like they were going outta style... then I found out they were making more than 200% on every CD! I couldn’t believe it. They send out thousands of copies for free to promote, then we pay for it. The whole industry is just a big money-making scheme. It’s my turn to get what I want and not have someone screw me up the b*** to get it!”

Yikes.

Furthermore, contends WickeD-, “If we all got our stuff for free, we would find out what bands were in it for the music and what bands were in it for the money.”

Yikes, some more. I wondered aloud whether hardcore MP3 users ever acquired ANY music through legal channels. Doll_Face said that she had purchased about 80 CDs during 1998 - but then she confessed that she had bought them to make MP3s, to exchange with her online friends. WickeD- figured that he had spent no more than $100, but he acknowledged that he’d downloaded many, many songs - “about 1000, maybe,” he said - and he was generous about sharing the titles in his enormous collection.

Indeed, scripts for songs old and new scrolled by as we sat and chatted. I asked WickeD- about the free exchange of MP3s in the channel. He pondered. “Hmmm... I love to introduce people to things they haven’t heard... I have bandwidth to share, and I enjoy sitting here chatting with people who have things in common with me.” Though he believes that most people don’t yet have the hardware to burn their own discs, he says, “I have a CD-R and I've burned a few MP3 CDs for people, but only charged them a blank CD for doing it. I don’t wanna make money. I enjoy doing it, or I wouldn’t be here.”

I commented that WickeD- must have a fairly good sound card and speakers on his computer, and he said, modestly, that his puter was pretty good. “And I have it hooked up to my Pioneer Dolby Pro-Logic surround sound home theater system. Yeah, I shake the walls. I scare my kid all the time with it!”

I asked these virtual pirates what they thought might be the fate of MP3s. Doll_Face responded, “I see companies buying rights to the use of them. If you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em. And [the record companies] can’t beat ‘em.”

WickeD- said, “The companies will just try better protection. But that won’t do them any good, ‘cause we can [still] copy the CDs.”

Doll_Face agreed that creative pirates would always be able to find a crack in ANY protective armor. “But if they OWN [the format], they could better control it.”

“Maybe,” replied WickeD-, “but how can they own something I can make from my computer and hand out to 1000 people, or more?”

“Well, they can own the proggies (programs) to make them... but like I said, [there will always be] cracks. They can't win this one,” Doll_Face said. “They are too late. They lost it, man.”

So the spin doctors at MP3.com and the suits at the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) continue to wage war, and the violence is escalating. MP3 itself estimates that the MP3 population is into the “many of millions”, and that there are “well over 10,000 web sites hosting MP3 files.” Though MP3's PR machine insists that eliminating piracy is a simple process, it’s only applicable to files that can be found on the Web. What about the zillions of musical flea marketers who use chatrooms for their bazaars? Unless drastic steps are taken to curb their eager exchanges, people like WickeD- and Doll_Face will blissfully continue to share MP3s (and the future generations of sophisticated digital music files) with their fellow e-pirates all over the world.

Caroline Wright, of WRIGHT FOR YOU Word Services, is a freelance writer. A former resident of Hawaii, she now lives in rural South Carolina. Feel free to e-mail your comments to Caroline at cw@wrightforyou.com.