Recess: The Duke MP3 Revolution

The MP3 boom isn't new. Thanks to our ultra-fast network connections, we've been enjoying MP3s at Duke for over three years. Nowadays, many of us don't even bother to bring stereos, since most of our music is on computers anyway. We're on the right side of the much-lamented "digital divide." We are not workaday America-we're on the cutting edge. So if corporations-especially media corporations-want to understand the consumers of the future, they'd better start trying to understand us.

Record companies have never liked MP3 trading. In 1999, Devilnet was forced to divest itself of its fledgling search engine at the advice of lawyers for The Chronicle, where the Devilnet server resided. There probably wasn't a great risk then, but there had been some arrests at other universities, so it was better to play it safe. After all, MP3s were still fairly hard to get, and anything that made them easier to find might draw the attention of some very worried record companies.

Napster's arrival last year threw the doors wide open on MP3 trading. No longer were students limited to searches within the Duke network or clicking around the web-there were millions of potential users, all of whose song libraries were available for free.

Combined with the proliferation of CD-Recordable machines and cheap CD-R media at below a buck a disc, the situation threw record companies, record store owners and some artists into a panic, prompting lawsuits by both Metallica and Dr. Dre against the fledgling Napster corporation. With a decision possible as early as next month, the days of Napster may be drawing to a close. But what Napster has done can't be so easily eradicated-the promise of cheap digital music will remain, in some form, for as long as the Internet and fast connections exists. Before the courts slay either Napster or the recording industry, Recess wanted to weigh in on this summer's biggest music controversy.