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MP3.com CEO interviewed



http://home.cnet.com/consumerelectronics/0-3622-7-1542301.html?st.ce.3622-7-
1542300.txt.3622-7-1542300

"Music Distribution Evolves Another Step"

In the last MP3 Insider of 1999, I fantasized about accessing my music
collection from anywhere using a PIN number. MP3.com has taken us all one
step closer to this vision with its revolutionary Beam-it service. In case
you haven't heard, MP3.com has purchased, ripped, encoded, and uploaded
about 45,000 CDs, and you can access any of those that you happen to own for
free.

I interviewed MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson and asked him some tough
questions about the potential copyright infringement of the system, and he
had persuasive answers.

A Quick How-To
To use this service, you just install Beam-it, prove ownership of the CD by
inserting it in your drive, then access the music from your own personal
My.MP3.com home page. The collection is not limited to mainstream dreck, but
of course they don't have everything; for instance, they had May I Sing With
Me by Yo La Tengo, but not The Collection by the Fall. The CD is not ripped
on your computer or uploaded on your connection, which would be very
time-consuming. Instead, Beam-it identifies your CD by finding an embedded
code and uploads that code to MP3.com in a matter of seconds. Whenever you
want, MP3.com streams the music to any computer you use, at either high or
low bandwidths (128 kbps or 24 kbps). A great use for this: You can beam all
of your CDs from home and never drag them to work again.

In addition, CDs that you purchase from Junglejeff.com, Duffelbag.com, or
Cheap-CDs.com will be instantly available in your online collection. I tried
this, and new purchases showed up in my My.MP3.com account very quickly (in
about five minutes).

New Piracy Questions Abound
The record industry, of course, has legitimate concerns about unscrupulous
users manipulating this service to offer music collections to others or to
listen to music they don't own. Potential methods include sharing a group
password, beaming borrowed CDs, or hacking into the e-commerce partners'
purchase verification methods. The RIAA made its opinion abundantly clear
and filed a lawsuit against MP3.com on January 21 on behalf of the companies
it represents. The RIAA alleges that MP3.com should have paid licensing fees
in order to rip and upload the music, though MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson
responds by questioning whether the RIAA can dictate how consumers listen to
music they have legally purchased. Here's what Robertson had to say about
the potentially inflammatory copyright issues surrounding what he called his
"Music Service Provider":


MP3 Insider: Are security measures in place to prevent hackers from
pretending to buy CDs from an e-commerce partner?

Robertson: There are enormous security measures. Our system is built around
the position that you must have possession of a CD before you can stock your
My.MP3.com account. Proof of possession comes by MP3.com receiving a receipt
from a trusted retailer, or through using our Beam-it software. We not only
do a fingerprinting test but also a DNA type of test on the CD to ensure
accuracy.

MP3 Insider: Are server logs kept in order to address potential
password-swapping?

Robertson: Much tighter security than simply storing server logs is in
place. We can detect multiple users of the same account. We constantly
monitor usage. If we detect multiple users on the same account, they are
terminated.


Reading Between the Lines
There's a lot of intriguing stuff here. First of all, the "DNA type of test"
means that MP3.com is harvesting a unique identifier for each physical CD
(probably the same "DNA" the SDMI plans to use for watermarking digital
music files). Presumably, beaming the same CD to two different accounts will
get you noticed eventually, although I was able to do so with the Pixies'
Trompe Le Monde. However, when I tried to beam it to a third account, I got
a "Beaming Unsuccessful" error--whether this stemmed from the DNA testing or
from some other error is tough to say. As for setting up a group account, be
forewarned: Robertson said that MP3.com will be looking out for that too,
although if they are too vigilant, they'll end up cracking down on people
logging in from both home and work. Although these security measures may
seem exorbitant to those not familiar with music copyright law, such
precautions make this service possible.

Loophole Averted
I thought I found a major hole in the system, despite these security
measures. By viewing file info in Winamp, I was able to come up with a
clean, albeit long, URL for any song in my playlist. By creating a simple
Web page consisting of only a text link to the song, I was able to
right-click and save the MP3. I thought I'd worked out a way to disseminate
illegal MP3s using MP3.com. It seemed too easy to be true, and it was: the
MP3 I had downloaded was just a recorded voice that asked me to use an MP3
player capable of playing streamed MP3 files. I was actually relieved that
my trick didn't work, because solid protection against copyright
infringement is absolutely essential to a program such as this.

Why Should You Care?
It is of the utmost importance that Beam-it and other such future services
manage to innovate without frightening a music industry already scared to
death of piracy. Copyright infringement fears are a formidable obstacle
between us and a happy future where all recorded music will be accessible to
all of us, all the time, from anywhere. Nevertheless, Robertson sees the
future of online music as accessible by lots of devices in all kinds of
places, and he told me that Beam-it is a step in that direction. I have to
agree.

===========================
Dan Green
PC Administrator / Webmaster
Physics and Astronomy Department
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
corbeau@physics.unc.edu
voice: 919/962-6494