SDMI Group Plans "Millennium Trigger" for Online Music

Computergram International, May 17, 1999 by Rachel Chalmers

By Rachel Chalmers

Should music be freely copied and exchanged, or should corporations hold the keys? The controversy over digital audio files on the internet just keeps getting hotter. Last week London hosted the third plenary meeting of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)'s attempt to replace wildly popular MP3 files on the internet with copyright-protected, industry-approved alternatives. In the SDMI's post-plenary press release, Leonardo Chiariglione, executive director of SDMI, painted a picture of a friendly, productive session: "The dialog among SDMI participants brought about a much higher level of mutual understanding than previously existed about the respective needs of the technology and music industries and their customers," he said.

Others claim that the music industry made it abundantly clear to supporters of MP3 that corporate interests will prevail. The web site MP3.com has published what it says is a report from a mole at the meeting. "Seems that all the suspicions of behind-the- scenes manipulation and not so hidden agendas are true," the document begins. It describes a committee called "Transition", which was assembled to discuss the problems of CD "ripping" or copying, new handheld hardware and MP3. MP3.com's mole claims representatives of Liquid Audio, Aris and MusicMaker were peremptorily escorted from the room, leaving anti-MP3 advocates like Lucent, Microsoft and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) holding the floor.

The result is that a hidden trigger is to be built into digital playback applications. When activated at some unspecified future time, this trigger will force upgrades to new applications that will block illicit files. "Apparently the powers that be are attempting an end run around the legal system," the mole concluded, "placing technology in place that would subvert the consumers' rights to make personal copies of songs... This would also undermine artists' rights to release promotional singles in non-SDMI formats." Exactly how far does the recording industry respect artists' and consumers' rights? No farther than to put a timebomb into playback hardware, potentially rendering it useless? RIAA declines to comment.