Right to Listen for Free Term Paper

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Record companies have been seeking to agree on a common industry standard to make such broadcasts secure and able to be recorded." (" Sony Launches Internet Music Sales" BBC News)

Simply generating a simple, strict technological standard could shut out smaller, cheaper, and better manufactures of particular technological products. "The consequences of launching competing systems was most famously seen in the battle between the Betamax and VHS videotape systems, which were launched almost simultaneously. Video shops often stocked Beta and VHS tapes of the same films" but individuals chose the "more widely available VHS format despite a widely held belief that Beta technology was superior." Consumers will almost always go for the more easily accessible and technologically popular systems, almost regardless of quality, a phenomenon also witnessed in computer technology with the dominance of Microsoft Windows. If the standards set by the industry are too rigid, it could lock consumers into buying a singular kind of technology, produced by only one company, to download music. Even if these standards were set to insure copyrights of music, this does not mean that the standards could also be so rigid as to prevent developments of competing technology by other firms. (" Sony Launches Internet Music Sales" BBC News)

The question remains as to how the music industry can regulate the MP3 technology that allows for such unprecedented, high-quality piracy through the medium of the Internet and MP3 recorders. At present, it seems like the only answer would be for the music industry to ban together and to generate forms of online music downloading systems that are only operational when the individuals utilizing them paid a specific fee. Such a system would also necessitate the computer companies that dominate the net to generate software that would not operational unless the individuals possessing them paid a fee to the musical companies as well. But such inter- and intra-industry cooperation and uniformity inevitably necessitates a breaching of anti-trust regulations that prohibit collusion between companies to the extent that one company dominates the market.

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One asks, what would happen if a young computer company wished to fashion a cheaper technological product that allowed for downloading? Perhaps this new technology did not meet industry standards in a strict fashion and could allow individuals yet again to circumvent paying for the music they were downloading? At present, it seems impossible to prevent the generation and sales of possibly piratical MP3 technology without record companies and Internet providers colluding and thus having a monopolistic control over the ways that music was available over the net. What is so dangerous to the consumer is that such monopolistic collusion between companies could also result in uniform pricing in the cyberspace world of musical products available on the internet, inhibiting the competitive pricing of music according to customer wants and desires. Yet without such controls, musicians will have no incentive to produce their product, for as producers, they wish to be paid a fee for the product they create.

The dissemination of music over the Internet thus seems like a classic example of technology shooting ahead of both legal regulation and of business savvy. A problem has been generated with little obvious solutions in the current regulatory market. More thought is required both of legal scholars and of industry insiders to address these concerns.

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