But what was long in stature was short on specfics as
the much-hyped event didn't offer any concrete plans
to combat the problem that robs the music industry of
millions.

More than 20,000 unauthorized copies of songs are
making their way over the Internet - robbing the $12
billion record business of millions in royalties.

Strauss Zelnick, CEO of BMG Entertainment, Doug
Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group, Thomas
Mottola, CEO of Sony Music Entertainment and Ken
Berry, president of EMI Recorded Music are
attempting to standardize all aspects of digital music.

That means that companies allowing music to be
downloaded from the web would agree to protect
artists' copyrighted material.

The standards are supposed to be ready by fall 1999.

Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry
Association of America, said in addition to the five
major labels, indie labels and technology companies,
such as AOL, AT&T, IBM, Lucent Technologies,
Sony Corp., Matsushita, Microsoft and Toshiba,
support the initiative.

Even Diamond Multimedia, which has a lawsuit against
Rosen's group, support the initiative.

Diamond Multimedia is planning to offer a $200
device called Rio, which is a Walkman-like player for
MP3 files.

MP3 technology allows anyone with a PC to easily
download digital music files onto their hard drive.

While the technology is being mostly used by early
adopters, it's moving toward mainstream, partially
because web users are getting faster Internet
connections which cuts the amount of time it takes to
download one song.

Mark Mooradian, an analyst with Jupiter
Communications, said MP3 is becoming one of the
top queries in search engine requests.

While artists may use MP3 technology to promote a
single, pirates can also easily upload and illegally
distribute music.

Recently, Public Enemy's Chuck D was ordered by
his label, Universal, to remove an MP3 track from the
Internet to protect itself against piracy.

"They were smart, and rolled out an architecture and
not a standard. If they had rolled out a standard, it
would have been rejected" by technology companies
and the consumer public, said Mooradian.

The framework addresses compression, encryption,
secure billing, distribution and watermark
identification.

Instead of siding with the technology of one company
that offers technologies to download music, such as
A2B, I.B.M., Liquid Audio, the RIAA will create
minimum standards for all companies.

That way, said Mooradian, which technology wins or
loses, "will be consumer driven."

"MP3 has got the industry very worried," said
Mooradian. "This initiative would have taken a lot
longer if it weren't for MP3."

-- Mary Huhn - 12/15/98