Fidel Gastro’s

Net pirates outsmart record labels.

Why are BT Dotmusic, AOL, Audiogalaxy, Napster all trying to offer ‘legitimate’ music over the internet? To offer an alternative to Kazaa? To offer an alternative to IRC, Speciality P2P networks and Newsgroups?

What do they present us with? ‘Licensed’ music, wmv formats, limited playback options, monthly or per-listen payments - jeez they may as well just gouge my eyes out with a broken CD and charge me for the pleasure.

Kazaa offers easy access to millions of mp3’s, movies and games. Anyone with a broadband connection and basic PC knowledge can start downloading.
However Kazaa offers to masses poorly encoded music, looped files, apps and games which are zipped up under different names and those classy .mp3.exe viruses.
To the experts it provides keygens, hard to find bootlegs and interesting mpegs.(I must thank it for my collection of Kylie music videos).

Moving away to those with a higher level of computer knowledge. There are speciality swapping networks such as Soulseek and Ubernet which offer certain genres of music or enforced high quality ripped/encoded tracks. The issues are around installing the software, getting the servers working and having the right music to allow you to start trading.

Newsgroups again is a standard outpost for mp3s, those with a decent ISP and some knowledge can request and plunder the goodies there. Lack of search facilities and dependance on posted items does restrict it’s usefulness

The high end of technical knowledge is IRC. Amist all the multicoloured text and unreadable scripts lie full albums, including pre-released and most well encoded. Get to grips with IRC and you will be rewarded with a bounty of games, apps, movies and music - wooohoooh.

Who are the main traders exploiting all the technology above? I reckon it’s mainly (ex)students bred on high speed connections, with a thirst for technology and kleptomanic urges which they take on after university and into their homes using cheap and easy broadband connections.

As trading methods become mainstream they become diluted and preyed on by fools and the RIAA hell bent on taking it down. Those in the know will still be able to access music/movies from other sources. When kazaa is gone the l33t will still will be on IRC trading away. Will the RIAA has the sense to take down the IRC servers or will it be another ISONEWS debarcle.

Do the masses have rights to free music? I say no. Without any effort or real knowledge they are exploiting technology they don’t understand. File trading should stay the realm of the knowledgable.

What’s so attractive about trading is that the music that is seen as the biggest rip off (throwaway pop) is that which is least affected by lossy compression. Play that J-Lo mp3 on a PC versus the CD on a cheap lo-fi hifi and try and tell the difference.

I see myself sitting down in a few years time with a huge collection of compressed music and a nice big hi-fi NOT to play this music with. Then I’ll have to buy all those CD’s again (but at least I might know what music I really like)