A New Tune May Bolster the GOP; The controversy about trading music files over the Internet raises an opportunity for Republicans to show their commitment to privacy and limited government, while scoring points with Democrat constituencies

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 2, 2003 | by John Berlau

Michigan Tech's president sent the RIAA a strongly worded letter complaining that even after the university agreed to cooperate the group did not send Nievelt a "cease-and-desist" letter before saddling him with the lawsuit. Sentiment at Michigan Tech and on the other campuses hotly supported the accused students. There were rallies and fund-raising drives, and at Michigan Tech students put up a "free-music" tree adorned with burned CDs and anti-RIAA signs. According to John W. Coleman (no relation to Sen. Norm Coleman), a Koch Summer Fellow at Washington's conservative Heritage Foundation and a student at Rome, Ga.'s Berry College who is active with the campus GOP, "If conservatives could show they're concerned about these issues, they could receive great support from students."

Sen. Coleman says he's concerned about whether the punishments fit the alleged crimes. "I'm an ex-prosecutor, and you don't use the law to make examples; you punish people for what they did," he says. "You start yanking life savings from families whose 14-year-old is downloading a few songs, there's going to be a huge backlash. I'm doing [the recording industry] a favor" by holding these hearings. The senator says many teen-agers may not realize they could be breaking the law and "see trading music online the way my generation saw trading baseball cards."

And there is strong disagreement about the legality and ethics of downloading copyrighted music even among hard-core free marketeers. CEI's Smith says networks sharing songs from compact discs people have purchased are no different, in principle, from copying a video or audiotape for a friend. "If they're selling it, the case for prosecuting is much stronger," Smith says. "But if they're just exchanging it among friends, even fairly liberally, I don't think the case is very strong at all today. That's always been fair use. They can't argue that the way to make people buy our goods is to throw them in jail if they find a way of borrowing it from their friends."

It's also not clear how responsible downloading is for the steep losses the record industry has reported in recent years. Insight has argued that the shallow, vulgar music the industry put out in the 1990s just isn't selling after 9/11, and that the industry should sign more artists who perform beautiful music and American standards, such as Norah Jones, whose debut album RIAA just certified as having sold 7 million copies [see "Still Music to the Ears," June 10-23]. Although a Hart Research poll commissioned by the RIAA appears to indicate a slight correlation between downloading and not buying as many CDs, many downloaders say they look only for hard-to-find music or that they can't find a service where they can buy only one song.

Sen. Coleman concludes that "the challenge is drawing a distinction between [first] clear commercial activity, second, the setting up of distribution networks, and third, personal use. I don't have the answer to that, but I'm certainly looking at those issues. I think part of [the music industry's] problem is they're playing catch-up" with the technology.