p2pnet.net News Feature:- File-sharers believe being able to find any track is more important than the fact the music is free, “clearly demonstrating that p2p network users may be willing to pay for a service which offers the range that only p2p can”.

That’s one of the findings in a study undertaken by Andrew James Laycock for his thesis The Future of Online Music, part of his submission for a BSc in Music Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University.

“Using the law to curb the file-sharing has seen some short-term success, but overall has actually advertised and improved the activity” is another of his conclusions.

“The publicity surrounding the Napster case essentially informed the world that free music was available in abundance on the Internet,” he says in his findings, based on 317 responses to questions aimed at Internet users who download music from P2P networks such as LimeWire, KaZaA and Soul Seek.

“The [more] recent legal action has been severely detrimental to the industry?s public relations image,” Laycock, who was using Napster in the early days, states.

“The music industry suing music fans is clearly a problematic route to encouraging legitimate downloading. The development of file-sharing technologies has also been accelerated because of the legal action against it. Problem solving is intrinsic to software evolution, computer programmers are simply trouble-shooters.”

Laycock told p2pnet that none of the survey results came as a shock, “although my research into official music industry statistics produced some surprising results.

“In the UK we get headlines in the press about ‘falling profits for the music industry’ and ‘an industry in crisis,’ etc etc. But further analysis showed that more albums are being sold than ever before: it’s just that prices are falling due to competition with other entertainment industries (eg, the movie industry, which is seeing a boom with DVD sales - exactly like the music industry did when it went digital with the CD in the eighties).

“The music industry don’t highlight these inconsistencies obviously. One stat from the survey which I found particularly interesting was that file-sharers found the fact they could find any track more important than the fact the music was free - clearly demonstrating that p2p network users may be willing to pay for a service which offers the range that only p2p can.”

Laycock say he finds p2p file sharing fascinating because, “it’s so relevant to our time: something which I think will be profoundly important to the future of the intellectual property industries and to the internet.”

Laycock told us that as another part of the degree process, since last September, he’s been producing an album and so far, “I’ve produced a six track EP and a multimedia interactive element (featuring photo gallery video interview etc).

Now read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The Future of Online Music
By Andrew James Laycock

Abstract At this moment, 3,155,687 people are connected to one peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing network. These users are sharing 599,456,456 files, nearly 90% of which contain compressed digital music in the form of MP3. The artists and companies who own the copyright for these musical works did not allow the files to be shared, nor will they profit directly from the uploading and downloading of these files. The files can be listened to on a user’s computer, transferred to a portable device, or copied onto a CD and played in a normal CD player.

File-sharing’s power lies in its scale. Virtually any commercial recording by any recording artist is available. The range of material is so comprehensive because anyone can contribute. The only comparison that can be made is with the World Wide Web - a seemingly limitless virtual structure of text and imagery. File-sharing offers a vast pool of multimedia content.

Initially this appears to be a huge problem for the music industry. In actuality, it is a huge opportunity. High quality, large scale piracy (the exchange of intellectual property without the copyright owner’s consent) is a by-product of the information age. Fighting this concept, attempting to cease the flow of information is proving to be unsuccessful, in fact, action by the music industry has promoted and improved file-sharing services. Legitimate peer-to-peer file-sharing has the potential to play a significant role in the future of the music industry and any other industry involving the sale of digitised intellectual property. If file-sharing can be licensed, industries whose commodities are information can stop fearing piracy, and start to profit from it.

In addition, society will benefit as a whole. Copyright law is intended to provide monetary rewards to those with creative ability. In a digitally connected world where anyone can publish their own work, and potentially be rewarded for it, creativity will undoubtedly flourish.

Introduction
When reading about the subject of Internet music file-sharing, the various sides of the argument are expressed exclusively. Literature on peer-to-peer computer technologies discusses a new breed of computer network which has the potential to revolutionise the Internet. Literature on file-sharing’s brief history discusses revolutionaries, technological forward thinkers and music lovers. Whereas literature on copyright law and the music industry discusses how such infringements abuse an artist’s rights and cost the industry millions.

The aim of this paper is to combine all of the opinions and facts about the online music debate. It will explain the technological, legal, social, ethical, historical, financial and artistic considerations. This information will be collectively analysed to give a personal view of the future of online music. Whilst maintaining a focus on the UK music industry, informational from the US is considered imperative to this debate.

The objectives of this paper are to:

• Determine how, and to what extent, the music industry has been affected by file-sharing activity.
• Critically analyse the preventative techniques employed by the music industry to counteract the file-sharing trend, and to evaluate their success.
• Make informed conjectures on the future of traditional music retail and legitimate and illegitimate music downloading.

These objectives will be achieved through research of secondary sources including, books, magazines, websites, electronic journals, newspapers articles and online discussion groups. A survey will also be carried out to investigate the opinions of those participating in file-sharing activity, this primary source of information will provide unique evidence to aid the debate.

Analysis 5.1
Introduction
By combining the research findings from this report (see entire thesis), this chapter aims to interpret all issues regarding the online music debate, with regard to the initial project objectives, in order to make an informed judgement on the future of online music.

5.2 The Success of Prevention Techniques
Introduction

Two main techniques were employed by the music industry to combat file-sharing, this section critically analyses their effectiveness.

Technology

The attempt to solve the problem of file-sharing using technology has taken two main forms. The development of a CD which cannot be ripped (the music cannot be copied to a computer and compressed as MP3 data), and the development of secure compressed music file formats which cannot be played on multiple machines (hence rendering them useless when shared between users).

Copy-protected CDs have not provided the results the music industry hoped for. They have resulted in compatibility issues with standard CD players and copy prevention on only a fraction of computer CD drives. In addition, the consumer is legally entitled to copy music from a CD to another device including MP3 ripping, protecting the contents of a CD denies the consumer this right. It can therefore by concluded that while CDs that play in standard audio CD players are in production, the practice of ripping a CD’s contents into MP3 format will exist.

The failure of the SDMI to create a secure digital file format highlights the fact that when data is digitised it can never be fully protected. A circumvention method can always be found. Although new online music stores are offering their content protected by Digital Rights Managements systems, there is currently no incentive for hackers to dismantle watermarking and encryption technologies. The content is available, for free, and in an unprotected format on file-sharing networks. Whilst MP3 exists, other DRM protected formats are redundant, they only protect music which is not released on CD.

“The main DRM effort … aims to create a music file format that cannot be easily copied or transferred between devices - to bring the inconvenience of the physical world to the Internet, in other words … This in turn has led the industry to make the argument that the music-loving public should be willing to pay the same price for a song whether delivered on CD or downloaded, because it is costing the industry so much money to make the downloaded file as inconvenient as the CD.” (Oram, 2001 p.112).

Ken Hertz, entertainment lawyer and regular commentator on the online music debate said “InterTrust [a DRM system in partnership with AOL] is a security toll which seems to ignore completely what consumers want to do … What record companies are trying to do is create systems that replicate their business model in a virtual world; the problem is that kids don’t behave the way they do in the real world in the virtual world … In my opinion encryption seems to completely ignore the reality of where the technology goes. (Hertz in Alderman 2001, p.146).

Litigation

The music industry’s major victory over file-sharing was won in the courts when the RIAA’s action led to the closing down of the Napster network. The recent legal action against individual users of file-sharing networks is also seeing some, albeit limited success. The survey which accompanies this paper (see Appendix Two) found over 16% of file-sharing network users asked stated they had stopped sharing music because of the threat of being sued, and as more suits are filed each month, this figure is certain to rise. The thought process behind this unique approach is clearly not to sue each person sharing files, but to incite enough fear to seriously reduce the number of users sharing, hence limiting the catalogue and functionality of the network.

Unfortunately for the music industry, the litigation has also had some positive effects on file-sharing. The publicity surrounding the Napster case essentially informed the world that free music was available in abundance on the Internet. The recent legal action has been severely detrimental to the industry’s public relations image, the music industry suing music fans is clearly a problematic route to encouraging legitimate downloading.

The development of file-sharing technologies has also been accelerated because of the legal action against it. Problem solving is intrinsic to software evolution, computer programmers are simply trouble-shooters.

Napster solved the problem of FTP servers being hard to find and unreliable. When Napster was shut down, Gnutella and many other networks were created using no central server, meaning legal action could never lead to the network being physically shut down. Currently the problem with these networks is that users are being identified and sued, therefore following the same pattern, ‘third generation’ file-sharing networks will be not only be completely decentralised but completely anonymous. In essence, fighting computer software programmers only makes the fight more difficult.

This development is already underway, the latest version of Morpheus includes proxy settings to provide anonymous use. How will the industry stop illegal downloading if it becomes invisible? Did the RIAA think closing down Napster would end the phenomenon?

Litigation as a technique to curb music file trading has had some short term successes. These apparent victories for the music industry have resulted in periods of decline for file-sharing, only to be followed by improved systems, more users and a better service all round. In short, the approach of tackling file-sharing in the legal sphere has had the long term effect of improving and advertising the activity.

5.3 File-Sharing’s Effect on the Music Industry
Introduction

Correspondences between falling sales of CDs and the rise in online piracy have been the primary reason behind the music industry’s attack on file-sharing. Proving these connections exist is task yet to be fully accomplished.

Statistical Correlation

Courtney Love asked a pertinent question in her May 2000 speech, “There were a billion downloads last year, but music sales are up. Where’s the evidence that downloads hurt business?” (Love 2000).

A lack of direct correlation between falling sales and file-sharing has made the music industry’s argument difficult to convey.

Figures showing negative growth in the music industry, or falling sales in singles or albums, even when the timing appears to correspond, cannot be definitively associated with file-sharing.

Music has new competitors, other digital products to consume the disposable income of the music industry’s target demographics. DVD sales in particular are enjoying the same boom the music industry witnessed twenty years ago when it digitised its product with the CD. Competition also lies in computer and console games, now sold alongside music in what are increasing becoming ‘entertainment stores’ rather than record shops.

The global economic downturn, particularly in America is certain to have affected sales on luxury items such as CDs. The driving down of prices on albums, where traditional music outlets have been forced to compete with the buying power of supermarkets or overseas online traders has undoubtedly provoked a slump in profits for retailers.

One popular argument is that file sharers download songs they wouldn’t normally buy anyway, as John Alderman, author of Sonic Boom: Napster, MP3, and the New Pioneers of Music suggests; “Songs and artists were rediscovered by listeners whose fond memories wouldn’t support a sixteen-dollar CD but who were happy to download a song for a nostalgic listen.” (Alderman 2001, p.108).

Others maintain file sharers merely preview music, then choosing what they buy based on what they hear. 82% of file-sharing network users claim they have bought a CD after downloading the music first, and only 21% believe they are spending less because of online their file-sharing habits.

The nature of downloads have led some to believe that file-sharing actually promotes music and can have a positive effect on sales. Comparisons have been made with radio, which also gives the consumer access to free music. Although this analogy neglects the fact that broadcasts are entirely different to a recording in the sense they are not owned or controlled by the listener.

If file-sharing is having a negative impact, certainly in the UK, it does not appear to affect the sales of albums. The BPI’s statistics prove that album sales are in fact rising. However sales of singles in the UK have plummeted. Again other factors can be introduced as complementary reasons for falling sales such as competition from mobile phone ring tones or poor value for money.

Another important consideration is that not all of the music industry’s revenue is generated by sales of physical music formats to the consumer. Although not covered by the BPI, royalties from TV, film, radio airplay and performances are an important element of the music business unaffected by file-sharing.

To conclude, there is a lack of definitive evidence that file-sharing is having a negative effect on the sale of music. There is no doubt that music is being shared on the Internet, but the effect this activity has on the industry’s profits is yet to be fully understood.

Other Industries

Despite anti-copying technology built into DVDs, such as the Content Scrambling System (CSS), the movie industry is already witnessing its output being distributed illegally over the Internet. Fortunately, a definitive system of transferring the compressed digital video files into a format viewable on a TV has yet to emerge. The number of people willing to watch films on their computer screens is relatively low so this industry may remain unaffected for the foreseeable future.

Computer software, including computer games are perhaps the form of intellectual property most affected my digital piracy. Major software titles are available alongside music and video on file-sharing networks and even sophisticated anti-piracy systems which require pieces of hardware to be present on the user’s machine are still cracked and copied.

Again, to quantify the impact on these other intellectual property industries is immensely complex. It would appear that any product that can be digitised has the potential to be shared, without control or cost, and perhaps at the expense of those who depend on the sale of that product.

5.4 The Future
Introduction

Based on the research presented in this report, conjectures can be made regarding the future of intellectual property industries and their online and traditional music distribution systems.

Copyright Ian Clarke, creator of P2P network Freenet believes “if innovation was to continue at Internet speed, the pretence of keeping track of and administering the ownership of ideas would have to stop.” (Clarke quoted in Alderman 2001, p.136). Clarke’s view, although highlighting the difficulties of copyright enforcement where digital technologies are involved, neglects the principles of copyright law. He assumes that creative and scientific development can continue without reward, monetary or otherwise. While interesting, Clarke’s theory doesn’t seem to fit within the materialistic society in which we live.

“without copyright a competitor would enjoy for free something for which ‘a recording company’ had to pay. If the system is allowed to predominate, the second producer would likely not invest in music, and the composer would likely not write for free.” (Remington 2001, p.21).

Courtney Love reinforced the need for artist payment, “I hear idealistic business people talk about how people that are musicians would be musicians no matter what and that we’re already doing it for free, so what about copyright? Please. It’s incredibly easy not to be a musician. It’s always a struggle and a dangerous career choice. We are motivated by passion and by money … Take away the incentive for major or minor financial reward and you dilute the pool of musicians … Less good music is recorded if we remove the incentive to create it.” (Love 2000).

Even those downloading music agree the principle of copyright is valid, the survey which accompanies this paper found that nearly 82% of file-sharing network users believe an artist should be rewarded for their work. Whether or not intellectual property law should exist is not in question, the problem is, how can it feasibly be maintained and administered in the digital world?

Howard Berman, the ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, observes: “Simply because we can distribute intellectual property to vastly wider audiences than ever before, with incredible efficiency, the fundamental reasons to protect intellectual property are no less valid today than they were prior to the invention of the Internet.” (Berman quoted in Remington 2001, p52).

Technological developments have allowed artists to be better rewarded for their work. The CD was a turning point for the music industry making music more accessible to more people.

Physical Music Medium

As already examined, the effect Internet piracy has had on the music industry is difficult to quantify, but the future of the CD album remains intact. In his argument that file-sharing could be used as a promotional tool, new media analyst Larry Marcus said; “let people hear the music, and if they hear it, and they like it, then they’ll ultimately buy it because the CD is still a great medium.” (Marcus quoted in Alderman 2001, p.105).

Although the music industry would benefit enormously from re-issuing back catalogue titles on a new format, the CD will be a difficult medium to replace. DVD-Audio and SA-CD, whilst offering enhanced sound fidelity and extra features don’t offer enough of an incentive for the consumer to invest in the new technology. The public are content with the CD, especially since its contents can easily be converted to MP3.

Virtual Music Medium

With DRM systems protecting digital audio and the continual development of audio compression technology, MP3 is clearly not the favourable format for the music industry. Unfortunately the consumer and the computing world have already accepted MP3 and reversing this trend will be an immensely difficult task.

“Millions of people are already using MP3s, so any secure format will need to have compelling advantages to convince them to switch. Even if new formats are sanctioned by the recording industry, consumers can still choose to convert songs from CDs (which are unencrypted) to MP3.” (Fries & Fries 2000, p12).

With portable MP3 players, digital entertainment centres and the continuation of the unprotected CD, not to mention the billions of files being traded via file-sharing networks, MP3 will remain the preferred compressed digital audio file format for the consumer.

Online Distribution System

The online music stores, offering up to 500,000 tracks all lack the appeal of file-sharing due to their limited range. File-sharing network users state that being able to find any song, by any artist, regardless of popularity is the most important appeal of an online music source. This range is due to the number of individuals participating via an innovative system allowing each connected user the ability to act as a server and a client. This collaboration makes P2P file-sharing a powerful, efficient and extremely effective method of distribution.

The potential of P2P or ‘distributed computing’ has been realised by the computing industry. Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger said “[P2P] ’s the revolution that could change computing as we know it.” (Gelsinger quoted in Alderman 2001 p.186).

The development of the state funded IRIS Project implies the US government sees P2P technologies as an important progression.

Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Middelhoff, who made the deal with Napster to drop all legal action once a subscription service was in place said, “File-sharing in the future will be legitimate. My deep understanding, and my conviction is … that in the future file-sharing is an important part of the value chain of the media and entertainment industry.” (Middlehoff quoted in Alderman 2001, p166).

Guitarist Robert Fripp agrees that sharing music is a positive step for the consumer; “The challenge: to legitimise, validate and redeem the clearly demonstrated want, wish, need and intent to share with others music which we value.” (Fripp quoted in Alderman 2001 p.153).

The success of online stores has been very limited, and will remain this while file-sharing services are still in operation. While some new retailers claim to have adopted P2P techniques, they are still limited to the amount of recording companies they are in partnership with, and the amount of songs those companies are willing to release. It remains to be seen if SNOCAP will be a system allowing the sharing of any file, with payment for copyright owners. If it does, it may well be the first to follow the ‘new business model’.

5.5 A New Business Model
Introduction

Although the music remains the same, the way the consumer listens to, and purchases music has changed enormously in the past five years. Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com said “We’re talking about radically fundamentally changing how [consumers] buy their music, how much music they buy, how they listen to their music … and how artists get paid. That kind of radical change, I would suggest, makes the music industry the most impacted by the Internet of any industry in the world.” (Robertson quoted in Alderman 2001, p.144).

A New Business Model for a New Product

If the way music is delivered has altered so radically, the structure of the business which supports it, which creates the commodity in the first place, must also change. Ian Clarke, creator of P2P network Freenet said “If you sell water in the desert and it starts to rain, you need to develop a different model.”(Clarke quoted in Alderman 2001, p.138).

The product now exists as a series of zeros and ones. The music industry sells digital code. The rules which apply to a business which trades in physical products don’t apply to one based on numbers. Digital products can be created and distributed to millions at an extremely low cost. This should not be seen as a problem to be overcome but an opportunity to be embraced. The CD market is not under threat, MP3 technologies can complement not compete with CDs.

“If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can’t get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?” (Barlow, 1994).

Intellectual property, and copyright are difficult enough to control and administer in the offline world, piracy has always been an issue for the music industry. In the digital era, the problems are compounded. The intellectual property becomes data, which can be copied, manipulated, transmitted and without any degradation to quality. An industry which bases itself on intellectual property, functioning in the computing age has to learn this, and then learn how to exploit it. File-sharing is that opportunity.

The online stores offering pay-per-download services, with a limited range of DRM protected files, have ignored the reasons why so many flocked to file-sharing networks. These stores are an attempt to bring the same business models of the physical world to the virtual world.

“In the analogue world it costs money to make a copy of something. In the digital world, it costs money to prevent copies from being made. Napster has demonstrated that systems that work with the economic logic of the Internet rather than against it can have astonishing growth characteristics.”(Oram 2001, p.112).

The fact that copyright owners deserve to profit on their investment in their intellectual property is not in dispute. Without a music industry, artists couldn’t be marketed and advertised, high quality recordings and tours could not be possible and payment for artists would become even more difficult. For artistic work to be created there must be financial reward, but how that revenue is collected must change in the digital world.

The Public’s Perception of the Internet

In the online world, the perception is that data is free to anyone who wants it. Intellectual property being regarded as property has eroded. The premise seems to be: If the property isn’t in some tangible form, in your hand, how can you have stolen it? Combine this with the anonymity and apparent invisibility the Internet offers, and a breeding ground for mass swapping of information is created. Hence, the file-sharing network.

“…a question that would haunt nearly everyone who had some creative, digitized product that they hoped to sell on the Web: How did the Internet develop into a giant playground where everyone expected things to be free? Once a piece of work was digitized, Web users seemed to instinctively feel that it was fair game for anyone who wanted to download it.” (Alderman 2001, p.15).

This does not signify an end to copyright in the digital environment. The question is how can copyright law be practically enforced on the Internet? If digitised intellectual property is perceived as free on the Internet, a payment scheme is required which appears to offer this.

The Payment Mechanism

If file-sharing is to play a role in the distribution of digitised intellectual property, a system of payment must be in place to uphold copyright law and allow monetary rewards to be offered to copyright owners. Two tiers of payment are therefore required:

• The file-sharing network must pay copyright owners based on the popularity of the file
• The consumer must pay the file-sharing provider for the privilege of downloading and uploading computer files

The payment to copyright owners could operate in the same style as radio. Radio was originally seen as a very negative invention for the music industry and legal battles in the US soon ensued. The problem was resolved by introducing Voluntary Collective, or ‘blanket’ licenses. Copyright owners joined a scheme which offered licences to radio stations, allowing them to play any song they liked without the threat of legal action. The revenue from the licences was then paid to copyright holders based on the amount of airplay of a song.

According to EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann, “voluntary collective licensing aligns the interests of the music industry with music fans … the more people share music, the more artists and copyright holders should receive compensation for their creations.”(Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2000).

The consumer’s payment could exist as one (or a combination) of two methods of payment:

• Micro-payments - each download invokes a small payment, e.g. iTunes 99 cents per track
• Subscription - flat fee for a period of time, or an amount of downloads (by track or bandwidth)

A Micro-payment, or per-product-payment system, whilst offering control over pricing to copyright owners is not a practical solution for file-sharing. Firstly, the administration of such a system would be impossible due to the nature of the source of the data - files created by individual users. In addition, unsuccessful downloads, or downloads which provide unexpected results would cause problems and mistrust. This system would also slow down and complicate the download process, which, according to file-sharing network users, is the second most important factor when downloading.

The subscription, or ‘all you can eat’ model is far better suited to file-sharing. Allowing the user to pay a monthly fee, or purchase a ‘block of bandwidth’ would perpetuate the feeling that the product was free, of course in reality it wouldn’t be free, but could offer excellent value for money for the consumer whilst offering payment to copyright owners.

The BPI estimates 7.4 million UK people download music illegally from file-sharing networks. If that number of people paid, say, £10 per month for the service, over three quarters of a billion pounds could be generated in one year. Shared between the music, film, software, animation,

photography, visual art and ebook industries, this kind of compensation could offer a fair reward based on the popularity of their products.

A subscription based payment system, allowing access to a vast pool of data would offer a fair method of payment to those who own copyright on intellectual property whilst allowing the consumer the benefits of an unprecedented volume of artistic work.

5.6 Legal P2P File-sharing - ‘The Pool’
Introduction

The World Wide Web is an international resource of connected servers sharing mostly text and images with consumer home and office computers. The web, an interconnecting lattice of pages of information, the most significant element of the Internet to date, may soon be accompanied be a ‘pool’. A pool of multimedia content, music, video, imagery, animation, software and text. The pool will be the result of millions of connected computers, servers and clients, all sharing the digital computer files their users choose to own. Access to the pool will have to be paid for by the consumer, in order to remunerate those whose work is distributed.

Benefits to Artists

In order for the system to operate, a process of copyright ownership registration would be required. An organisation, similar to royalty collection bodies would deal with confirmation of ownership of copyright and payment to those copyright owners. This organisation would act as the median between the file-sharing network and the intellectual property industries.

With a new distribution system, offering equality to all, any artist, musician, film maker, animator, writer or photographer would be able to publish his or her work and be guaranteed financial reward based on popularity of the product. Creativity would flourish as the incentive to create artistic work would be overwhelming giving the artist unrestricted access to potentially a worldwide audience.

Consumer Incentives

Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer with the EFF said; “Does anyone think that suing 60 million American file-sharers is going to motivate them to buy more CDs? File-sharing networks represent the greatest library of music in history, and music fans would be happy to pay for access to it, if only the record industry would let them.” (Seltzer quoted in Chalis 2003).

Whilst Seltzer’s statement may be true, file-sharers would require real incentives to ignore illegal, free services. This could be achieved by assessing the weaknesses of existing networks. These may include:

• Quality control - Internet users cope with the unreliability of the World Wide Web, file-sharing poses the same problems. With enormous volumes of information (especially when the source can be anyone) comes poor organisation, inconsistency, and inaccuracy. But these negative issues are far outweighed by the positive aspects of such a resource. File rating systems could also be exploited and developed to provide recommendations when downloading, or some technique of quality verification could be utilised.
• Searching - The data on the Internet (the web and P2P) is not clearly identifiable. Metadata (descriptive data about data), when used, is not organised, consistent or utilized effectively. This makes searching difficult and not always fruitful - certainly not foolproof. A universal system of metadata validation would enable more accurate searches. Or perhaps the price to pay for having a vast pool of data that anyone can contribute to is that organisation within that pool is essentially the responsibility of those sharing, leading to inconsistency. Although the web still survives in this unpredictable fashion.
• Indexing and browsing - Without knowing the artist name, or song title or album name, finding a song on a current file-sharing network is impossible. Much in the same way the World Wide Web would be awkward to navigate without search engines, portals and web indexes to point to the desired site. A future file-sharing network could examine organisation and classification. Even in the simplest form, statistics relating to the ID3 tag of MP3s could be used to give the user more information. For example charts of most popular downloads across all genres or most popular downloads for a particular artist. This kind of data could appear when a search is initiated to indicate which file to select for download.

The music industry clearly missed a huge opportunity in online digital music. Had it responded quickly to growing interest in the early days of the Internet and invested heavily in secure digital compression, the music industry would have maintained control of their market.

But in many ways, the failure to act by the music industry has unleashed a more powerful, innovative and potentially more profitable system, which could revolutionise the intellectual property industries.

A global multimedia information infrastructure, with the power of P2P computing and the backing of the entertainment industries has the potential to radically overhaul how the consumer pays for, and how the industries can complement their existing distribution systems for the continuation of copyright enforcement in the digital age.

Evaluation

The subject of online music is developing on a daily basis. Newspaper and journal reports, press releases and new statistics have been published throughout the research and editing phases of this project, and whilst making the subject exciting, relevant and very interesting, these factors inevitably affect the shelf life of such a paper, and this is acknowledged as a limitation.

As with most research projects, time has been a serious constraint. The sheer volume of information on the subject has led to difficult decisions on content inclusion, but remaining clear about the project’s objectives has aided this.

In addition, the word restrictions on this report have meant careful consideration regarding content have been made. Areas of specific interest, which complement not contribute directly have been placed in appendices for this reason.

The three main objectives of this paper have been addressed in detail in Chapter Five, below is a brief overview of the report’s findings:

Determine how, and to what extent, the music industry has been affected by file-sharing activity.

Statistical information would suggest file-sharing is having a negative effect on the sales of UK singles whilst UK album sales do not appear to have been affected. Any decrease in spending on music can also be attributed to other factors making a definitive answer to this question very difficult to determine.

Critically analyse the preventative techniques employed by the music industry to counteract the file-sharing trend, and to evaluate their success.

Technological approaches to counteract file-sharing have had little impact on the activity. Whilst protecting files for legitimate download appear to be successful, the requirement of this when the content can be found without protection, is questionable.

Using the law to curb the illegal activity of file-sharing has seen some short-term success, but overall has actually advertised and improved the activity.

Make informed conjectures on the future of traditional music retail and legitimate and illegitimate music downloading.

Copyright is still valid, but enforcing and administering it in the digital age is going to require changes in business practice. New business models are required for new methods of entertainment delivery. Luckily, file-sharing technology offers the opportunity to develop the kind of digital distribution infrastructure required.

A new method of obtaining entertainment products will not destroy the traditional distribution and sales systems - it can complement them. A new system, with an appropriate payment mechanism in place, could inspire creativity and offer financial reward to those who deserve it.

While the findings outlined above are fully supported in the preceding chapters, there is obvious scope for further study. Further statistical analysis, particularly f overseas industries, and detailed investigation into technological developments could certainly offer stronger analysis with regard to the project objectives. The survey (see Appendix Two) could also be developed to assess some areas of ambiguity, and offer more authoritative conclusions. This project has examined difficult questions regarding the music industry and how the Internet has affected it. Based on extensive research, this paper offers an informed, independent opinion of the future of online music.

Declaration
All the information in this report is the work of the author. Any other work or information used has been fully referenced to the persons responsible. This report adheres to the guidelines set out in BS4821: British Standard Recommendations for the Presentation of Theses and Dissertations as closely as possible. Andrew James Laycock

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