Chapter One
Wave of Change
On the sunny afternoon of May 3, 2000, a mixed crowd of techies,music fans, and reporters began to assemble in front of an uninspiringbeige building on a street corner in San Mateo, California.The city, one of several businesslike and nearly identical adjacentburgs, was set in the middle of the giant, remarkably expensive sprawlof asphalt, hills, and vegetation stretching from wind-chilled SanFrancisco in the north to the warmer Silicon Valley in the south.Gathering demonstrators, mostly white, middle class, and in theirtwenties or thirties, locked their cars outside of the well-tended apartmentbuildings that lined the street. Parking, the last-minute foil tomany would-be demonstrations, was easily found, and the gatheredforces seemed to be in good spirits, striking up amiable chats as theywalked towards the excitement. A visitor might be struck with the realityof many California stereotypes playing themselves out. It waswarm with a pleasant breeze, flowering plants and trees spread asoothing fragrance, and it was difficult to erase the feeling that thisstreet was an interchangeable set; even the protest felt oddly readymade,like the anonymous blocks that passed for a downtown nearby.It was one of those moments that felt like an intermission, when personalitiesand social forces came together in the flesh, outside of themore controlled and familiar media where most people had come toknow them.
Though the atmosphere grew increasingly frenetic as one approachedthe Napster offices, the mood of the attendees was mostlyone of curiosity livened with the anticipation of spectacle. A few policecars stopped mid-street without pulling over; other vehiclesslowed down as lunching office workers rubbernecked, and occasionallysomeone honked and shook his fist out the window, or displayedanother gesture of support—though it was often unclear what was beingsupported. More than anything else, the air that day was full ofmixed feelings. Metallica, one of the most respected and top-sellingheavy metal bands of the 1980s and ''90s, was about to deliver a challengeto the spirit of manifest destiny that often seemed ingrained inthe technologically savvy. Drummer Lars Ulrich and the band''s attorneyswere about to drop off a list of over 300,000 names, taking Napsterat its word that it would deny service to those who''d been spottedtrading unauthorized songs.
The largest contingent of spectators that day were from the media,and by far the greatest animosity on display was from photographersjostling for good position, or reporters swarming around the few participantswho actually started to say something. Five or so Napstersupporters held up a long banner denouncing Metallica and theRecording Industry Association of America as "Master of Puppets,"the title of one of the band''s songs. Reps from other online musiccompanies circled around the building in cars, slowing down to handoff their own branded freebies to an eager, antsy audience. Two youngmen who worked at a calendar publisher''s office in the same buildingas Napster had taken opposite sides of the debate and explained theirpositions to the gathered reporters who attentively jotted down theirevery pronouncement; for them it seemed great to take a break fromroutine, nice to have their opinions taken seriously. One explained thatsharing music, even for free, helped artists in the long run by makingthem famous; the other insisted that Metallica alone had the right todecide what happened to its music. A musician named Marc Brownwas quoted by the Associated Press as saying, "I have sympathy in thesense that if a ton of money was at stake for me, I might act like thisalso. But, objectively, I don''t think that they deserve any sympathy."
Soon a large black SUV pulled up, and while the crowd movedcloser, Lars Ulrich and Howard King, his burly lawyer, stepped outand pushed through to the building. An associate wheeled a trolleycontaining a brown cardboard box, filled with reams of paper, the listof 335,435 names. Surrounded by a crowd near the entrance to thebuilding, Ulrich turned and read a speech that was a rehash of statementshe''d been making through his PR agents, about how Metallicadidn''t approve of anyone trading Internet files of their music, andhow Napster itself was responsible for theft. To the dismay of fameseekers, the midday glare diminished much of Ulrich''s glamour, andhaving a mass of lawyers around him didn''t look too rock and roll. Hewas only beginning what would become a personal crusade and wasstill a little fuzzy on some of the details. But, believing his band, andmany others, were being wronged by the culture of trading that wasso rapidly growing, he was determined to do his best to point out theinjustice. The embodiment of rebel angst was having trouble shiftinggears to righteous do-gooder, though. When asked about the consequencesof his coming out as a spokesman for an industry perceived asbeing "the man," Ulrich switched quickly from wounded artist to hismore familiar role as devil-may-care rebel. "Metallica doesn''t give afuck about anything. If it looks right for us we just go for it; we don''tworry about the consequences."
Ulrich then turned and entered the building, his entourage and thecardboard box in tow, and went upstairs to an office described byother visitors as neatly segregated between young and old workers.He met with Napster representatives for about ten minutes. Ulrich''smood seemed to lighten somewhat by the time he came out. He saidthat the sides "agreed to disagree" and appeared relieved that "thereare actual humans inside." The Metallica team sped away, and the remaininggawkers stood around aimlessly for a few quiet moments, asreporters rushed off to deliver their stories. Thus began Ulrich''spublicity campaign, which would be followed by online chats onYahoo, by an interview with TV''s Charlie Rose, in counterpoint toPublic Enemy''s Chuck D, and by a speech before a congressionalhearing. Ulrich would be cheered and maligned, a visible target forthe industry and fans.
Napster spokespersons dismissed the Metallica provocation as a"publicity stunt," but agreed to suspend the service of the 335,435users, who were identified by NetPD, a British consulting firm. "Ofcourse," said a Napster attorney, Laurence Pulgram, "if the bandwould provide the names in computerized form, rather than in tens ofthousands of pages of paper intended to create a photo op, that wouldexpedite the process."
By all reports, Napster''s founder, Shawn Fanning, was ruffled at beingthe focus of negative attention from one of his heroes. "I''m ahuge Metallica fan and therefore really sorry that they''re going in thisdirection," said Fanning, in a statement. "Napster respects the role ofartists and is very interested in working with Metallica and the musicindustry to develop a workable model that is fair to everyone whileunleashing the power of the Internet to build enthusiasm for music."From that moment forward, Fanning would appear frequentlydressed in a Metallica T-shirt, most famously as a presenter at theMTV Music Awards, where Ulrich sat in the audience looking sick. Itwas difficult to say whether the Beavis and Butthead-like fashion statementwas meant to be mocking or merely the honest expression of afan laced with a little irony. Whatever the case, Ulrich made clearthat, as far as he was concerned, being a Napster user and a Metallicafan were incompatible: on television and the Internet, he directly toldfans who used Napster that the band didn''t want their types.
Like Metallica, everyone in music and the Internet seemed busy goingfor whatever they thought to be in their immediate interest, andthey didn''t seem worried about the consequences. Heavy penaltiesloomed, like the threats of multimillion dollar entertainment businesslawsuits. But the long arm of the law did little to stop the relentlessboasts of computer whiz kids who believed that copyright would soonbe rendered meaningless. And this was the public dialogue. On privatemailing lists, the threats by either side were more graphic and morepersonal, including death threats, meant however jokingly. No oneneeded a reminder that the coming year would see more bile than ever.
How did the development of new technologies that supported aleisure time activity such as music reach this level of venom? And wasall the confrontation—and all the lawyers—really necessary? Probablynot. But because both computer developers and music industrylawyers had a history of getting what they wanted, the legal force andthe adolescent aggression seemed inevitable.
* * *
The sleepy, beachside city of Santa Cruz, California, is known forseveral things: a good university with a reputation for intellectual adventure;a population of New-Agey free spirits; and a natural environmentthat seems to infuse a mellow hedonism in most of its inhabitants.While very typically Californian, the city feels like the polaropposite of Los Angeles: little crime, no frantic social climbing, andcertainly not much in the way of an entertainment industry. In 1993,at least in as much as any event on the Web can be said to occur inone place, Santa Cruz became the birthplace of the online musicphenomenon.
The wave of change that would see fans turning to the Internet fortheir tunes, and away from the distribution networks built by largeentertainment corporations, began, as is so often the case, with a coupleof bright collegiate misfits. Though they did very little research,not much coding, and developed no new ways to compress music,what they did was build a Web site that offered a new way for peopleto get music and for musicians to reach an audience.
The buzzing of Web activity gave the West Coast a portentous feelingthat year. Nationally, the time was ripe for invention. While theReagan era sometimes felt like a long backward glance, Bill Clintonand Al Gore had just begun an administration that at the very least embracedan optimistic, forward-looking vocabulary, spotlightinginitiatives that pushed the new "information superhighway." In thebusiness world, offices that had never before even needed calculatorswere suddenly acquiring computers that sprawled over desktops to becomethe focus of a worker''s attention. News of the Internet was beginningto pique the interest of the public and the media. Wired magazinehad launched its first issue, including an article about libraries replacingtheir books with digitized copies, an idea with obvious overlap in othermedia. The story wondered, "if someday in the future anybody can getan electronic copy of any book from a library free of charge, whyshould anyone ever set foot in a bookstore again?" The focus on printwas predictable; text was much easier to send over low bandwidth, andthe Net was built largely around words. Meanwhile, those with an interestin music were wondering what the Internet could do for them.About the same time Wired was launched, a pair of University of CaliforniaSanta Cruz students hatched a plan to answer that question.
The pair doing the hatching were Jeff Patterson and Rob Lord, twofriends who shared a love for music, as well as a distaste for the blandofferings of mainstream record labels. Patterson was a lanky, long-hairedblond; Lord, olive-skinned and often seen wearing an amused,knowing smile. Before going away to school, Lord had been managerof a record store in his hometown of Valencia, California. Being thefinal link in the long chain of the music business was an experiencethat shaped his feeling towards the establishment. The narrow rangeof available product and the heavy-handed marketing of the industryput him off. His own preferences leaned towards college radio stapleslike the anguished cries of Joy Division or the lush and dreamywashes of sound made by Galaxy 500, as well as music from the burgeoningrave scene—distant cries from the mass-market records heusually sold.
"I was the stereotypical music store employee," explained Lord,"saying things like `Barbra Streisand—you can''t listen to her, and youcan''t kill her ... Beep.'' Like any discerning music fan, you ended upselling all of this music that you wished people wouldn''t buy. I keptthinking to myself that if only there were a better way of getting bettermusic distribution."
Patterson was equally frustrated with the narrow range of musicalchoices readily available and was miffed by the few options open tomusicians wanting to expose their works to a wider audience. He hadfirsthand experience in that regard and was hoping there might be away for his band, The Ugly Mugs, to expose its music—songs withnames like "Cold Turd on a Paper Plate"—to people who would appreciateit. Music like his wouldn''t be released by Warner or BMG,but would probably appeal to a larger audience than Santa Cruzslackers, if only the songs could get out there.
At school, Lord studied information theory and digital signal processing,fortuitously under the tutelage of David Huffman, whoseHuffman encoding algorithm was popularly in use (it was, as it happened,a main component of the MP3 protocols). Lord also workedpart-time as the computer consultant to the UC art department. Hisencounter with the newly developing Web was deeply affecting and hebecame gripped with a fervor to promulgate Web browsers to anyonewithin reach. Mosaic was the most popular browser available at thetime. Freshly released by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications,it featured a graphic user interface that made using it easy.Lord diligently installed copies of Mosaic on all of the department''scomputers. The idea of a universal interface to data, combined withnew audio compression and player technologies he was learning aboutunder Huffman, sparked an epiphany in Lord, and he and Pattersonbegan to brainstorm ideas about how to combine the two. A decent student,Lord was nonetheless not thrilled with school; he claims he wasn''thaving enough fun and was hoping to find something that mightcombine his two passions: music and technology. That somethingwould materialize one day as Lord trolled the Internet, searching forinteresting ways to compress sound files (compressing the data in a musicfile was necessary to send it manageably over the Internet). He discoveredthe Xing Player, a piece of software that played musical filescompressed using the MP2 algorithm. A quick download and a listenwas all it took to hook Lord, and his life took a quick, profound turn.He became a cheerleader, what could even be called an evangelist, foronline music. His e-mail signature line read "Free or Shareware Music,Internet Distribution of Music Will Change All," with a link pointingeveryone towards the Xing Player. Friends and acquaintances followedhis suggestion, and years before Napster hit, Lord became a key figurein a clique that seemed to instinctively understand the power that Internetdistribution held for music.
With ambitions to bring together as much music-related content ashe could get his hands on, Lord opened an account at the popularpublic server Sunsite, which let him store his Web site for anyone todownload. From there, inspired by revolutionary dreams and technologicalfervor, Lord and Patterson took the leap to launch one of theWeb''s first start-up companies. Internet Underground Music Archive,or IUMA, was set up in a small office above a Santa Cruz gay bar. TheWeb start-up pattern was in full effect from day one: Lord andPatterson slept under their desks, and paid the wages of the few actingschool dropouts they''d managed to recruit as employees by picking upa weekly burrito tab.
At first, IUMA was really two sites in one, one on the Web, whichrequired greater computing power than many had in that day, andone that used "File Transfer Protocol" or FTP. The sites gave bands aplace to tell the world about themselves and also to offer music fordownload. Much of the music IUMA hosted was initially sent in oncassette tape, leaving the encoding to the staff, for which the companycharged a small fee. Anyone could pay $240 a year and post onesong and band photos and offer merchandise for sale. It was a learningexperience for all involved. It gave Lord, among other things, alesson in the power of PR. Following the other now-familiar Webstart-up pattern, the media was quick to pick up on IUMA''s high-techbuzz, and the newly minted executive quickly learned to fan the firesof publicity with revolutionary rhetoric.
"This is going to kill the music industry," Lord proclaimed to theSan Jose Mercury News in 1993. From the pages of the Silicon Valleydaily newspaper, it was a quick jump to CNN and then the cover ofBillboard. The music industry had a new and boisterous, if somewhatill-defined and as yet naive, foil. Like a clever youngster testing limits,Lord and IUMA helped point the Internet generation at a new targetagainst which it could gauge its growing strength. The music industrywas a dinosaur that didn''t understand the promise of the Net and hadstifled its own creativity through the pursuit of corporate profits. Thisunsteady new establishment wanted to take over.
IUMA promised to be the place where less overtly commercialbands could create Web pages and reach more diverse audiences,despite the high-tech threshold for Internet use. In 1993, less than 3percent of American classrooms were connected to the Net, comparedto more than half in 2000. Even when traffic was minimal, musicclips were being downloaded from as far away as Russia—an appealingprospect to bands unaccustomed to being heard outside theirhometowns. Remember, at the time it was novel to make human contactof any kind using your computer; to have distant foreigners visityour Web site and listen to music you had just kicked out seemed veryfuturistic indeed. As the country, and the stock market, became obsessedwith Internet technology, the pace picked up, and the breadthand speed of Internet delivery accelerated. In a 1994 issue of earlycyber-culture magazine Mondo 2000, avant-garde musician KennethNewby interviewed Lord and Patterson and described IUMA as a"kind of digital club where the bands play for free, there''s no covercharge, and the owners are just happy that you came."
This kind of description echoed popular expectations of the Web ingeneral, raising a question that would haunt nearly everyone who hadsome creative, digitized product that they hoped to sell on the Web:How did the Internet develop into a giant playground where everyoneexpected things to be free? Once a piece of work was digitized,Web users seemed to instinctively feel that it was fair game for anyonewho wanted to download it.
The recording industry seemed unconcerned with IUMA, and if itnoticed at all, it was to take advantage of IUMA''s service, on a verysmall scale. The small, progressive, Warner-affiliated label 4ADRecords, for example, had Web pages created for its bands. Otherthan that, music industry insiders simply made a note to have a talkwith IUMA''s founders, to affirm that they were all interested in doingcool stuff.
As Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig has put it, the code fromwhich the Net is built is the law. Many of the expectations about onlinemusic are the legacy of builders themselves, and many beliefs arebased on the structure of the networks. Those who built the Web,though a very diverse bunch, tended to share many similar goals. TheInternet, of course, arose from the bowels of the Cold War infrastructureof military and education. It was a way of distributing researchand military data using computer networks that spurted "packets" ofinformation across multiple lines to be later reassembled into theiroriginal form at the final destination. The system, as developed at theU.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), promised a quick,if somewhat quirky method of communication that included not onlythe sharing of programs and data over great distance, but also radiomessaging that would not break down due to jamming or geography.
For a research-oriented group, the ability to share data fromaround the country and around the world was the main interest. Thelikelihood of commercial rights holders asserting their claims wasnot much of a concern; in fact all commercial activity was officiallyoff-limits on the Net until 1991. Commercial interest wasn''t greatanyway until the World Wide Web transformed the rather arcanecommunication tools of the Net into lively multimedia portals, readyto open on command on the screens of the workforce, student body,and swelling ranks of home users who were just getting comfortablewith their PCs.
Many of those involved in the creation of the Web had lofty, sociallyambitious goals that involved making it as easy as possible toshare information, and many expected to foster a leap in humanknowledge and culture that could usher in another Renaissance. "TheWeb," Tim Berners-Lee wrote, "was designed as an instrument toprevent misunderstandings." The system that he designed encouragedthe free spread of what would later be called "content," and hewas not alone in feeling inspired by beliefs that were strongly optimistic,even verging on utopian.
Continues...
Excerpted from Sonic Boomby John Alderman Copyright © 2002 by John Alderman. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Wishlist
Share
Tweet
Feedback
