'Underground' online music scene thrives

A US district court ruling last week has dealt a big blow to the legitimate Internet music scene that has been swept by a digital technology more popularly known in cyberspace as MP3.

The court ruling has it that the San Diego-based MP3.com, where Internet users could access and download any music for free, has infringed on copyrights held by record labels by creating a database of more than 80,000 record albums.

Through the online music firm's my.MP3.com service, Internet users who own original music records stored in compact discs (CDs) can even access a software wherein they can register their CDs with MP3.com's database. The software then allows other Internet users to listen to MP3.com-registered albums even if they don't have the original discs.

Although MP3.com does not generate any income from this service, about 80 percent of its revenues come from online advertising.

But the suit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group that represents major recording labels, along with the case filed by metal band Metallica against the online song-swapping firm Napster, has mainly affected only legitimate distributors of MP3 music in the Internet.

Online MP3 music companies like MP3.com and Napster are considered legal in the sense that they maintain registered Web sites in delivering their services. But the main problem of copyright infringement in cyberspace is that hundreds, or probably thousands, of Web sites exist mainly for the distribution of originally recorded music that have been stored in MP3 format.

Besides, MP3 music are also being traded in Internet relay chat (IRC) chatrooms, and at times via e-mail, even as you read this piece now.

This digital technology actually dates back to 1987 in the country that is known for its rich musical heritage -- Germany. The project was undertaken by the Fraunhofer Geseelschaft in what was dubbed the Eureka Project EU147, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB).

With the help of University of Erlangen mathematics Prof. Dieter Seitzer, Fraunhofer was able to develop the algorithm which has eventually called ISO-MPEG Audio Layer-3.

MP3 is, however, commonly mistaken for MPEG-3, which does not actually exist in any "tangible" format. The technology is actually the audio component of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.

MPEG-1 is a low-bandwidth video compression format that is usually seen in cyberspace as low-quality movie files, while MPEG-2 is an audio and video compression which has a high-quality format similar to those of DVDs.

MPEG means "Moving Picture Experts Group," which is the name of a subcommittee of the International Standards Organization-International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) that issues certification to computer manufacturing businesses.

It was in 1996 when Fraunhofer was granted patent right by the United States to the MP3 technology.

The process of copying CD music and converting this to MP3 format is called "ripping" and "encoding," respectively. "Netizens" (citizens of the Internet) can freely download CD "rippers" from any MP3 site.

"Rippers" first copy CD music tracks to .wav format then convert these to .mp3 format.

Internet music enthusiasts prefer MP3 to .wav because a three-minute song stored as .wav file at 44KHzZZ takes up about 30 megabytes (MB) of hard drive space. But when the same file is converted to .mp3 format, the audio file only occupies 3 MB of hard drive space, yet maintains near perfect fidelity when played back.

To play MP3 music, one needs to only have the software WinAmp, which is available for free download at winamp.com.

Since MP3 is just a compression file format, those who developed this technology consider creating MP3 files from original CD albums as legal.

Using MP3 files becomes illegal when, without permission from music copyright owners, these are uploaded to the Internet and made available to anyone for free downloading. Thus, under copyright laws, MP3 is legal only for personal use.

But since the Internet has become a venue for file-sharing and swapping, concern has been repeatedly raised by musicians and the music industry over the widespread online distribution of MP3s.

There has also been a trend wherein MP3s are stored in CDs and sold at only P150 to P200. Most computer users who have CD-ROMs prefer CD MP3s to original CDs not only because these are cheaper, but also because each CD can contain as many as 300 to 500 MP3 songs, depending on the amount of file compression done.

Moreover, MP3s are not only available for free download in the World Wide Web. With a few sets of commands using the chat softwares mIRC and PIRCH, MP3 music can also be availed of for free from IRC chatrooms like #mp3, #mp3free, #mp3music and the likes. There are also Filipino MP3 chatrooms like #mp3pinoy, #pinoymp3, #mpinoy3 and #opmp3.

Indeed, the copyright infringement suit has somehow curbed music piracy by legitimate MP3 Web sites.

But out there in cyberspace is the growing underground MP3 scene which, like the so-called "punk," "hard-rock," "metal" and "heavy metal" scenes, continues to thrive by inflicting huge losses on recording companies with the widespread piracy of CD music using a digital technology developed only for the purpose of saving space on hard disk data storage. -