By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, September 26, 2002; Page A22
The music industry is launching a star-studded advertising campaign, using artists such as Britney Spears and Stevie Wonder to tout its most recent anti-piracy effort.
Full-page ads are scheduled to appear in newspapers today and will be followed by television and radio spots, urging consumers to stop downloading songs from illegal file-sharing sites on the Internet. The multimillion-dollar campaign coincides with hearings today before the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on courts, the Internet and intellectual property.
At issue in the House is a bill introduced in July by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.). If it passes, it would protect copyright holders -- such as artists and record labels -- from liability for any damage they may cause while using software to disrupt file-sharing services and search public files on consumers' computers for illegal reproductions of copyrighted music.
The movie industry uses a similar technology, called Ranger, that travels through the Internet, looking for illegally downloaded movies on home computers.
The ad campaign is sponsored by several organizations, including the Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry lobby; copyright groups, such as the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc.; and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists union. The major record labels are footing the campaign's bill.
The music industry attributes a decline in CD sales -- a 5 percent drop in 2001 from 2000 and a 7 percent drop in the first half of this year -- to music pirated over the Internet via popular file-sharing services.
At its height in February 2001, the Napster file-sharing service had 13.6 million U.S. users. Napster eventually shut down in the face of legal action. Now Kazaa Media Desktop is the most popular file-sharing service, with 8.3 million U.S. users in June, according to ComScore Media Metrix, which tracks Internet use.
Nearly 90 singers and songwriters have signed the newspaper ad, and several have lent quotes to the campaign. The group is diverse, including opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti, hip-hop superstar Eminem, country music's Dixie Chicks and former Beach Boy Brian Wilson.
Pop diva Spears, who will appear in the television ads, offers: "Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It's the same thing, people going into the computers and logging on and stealing our music."
Hilary B. Rosen, chief executive of the RIAA, said that illegal song downloading is not only against the law, "it also hurts the very artists and songwriters most downloaders profess to love."
Moving the artists out in front of the music industry's fight against piracy is a new strategy. The sentiment among many who illegally download songs is that their actions amount to justifiable theft -- that they are taking from a corporate monolith that is overcharging for CDs and fails to provide songs on an à la carte basis, which consumers increasingly desire.
The RIAA hopes this campaign will avoid the fan backlash that was inflicted on the heavy-metal group Metallica, which was the first major name to come out against Napster and online piracy. The band members were depicted as corporate stooges and anti-fan.
Somewhere in the middle of the debate are groups that do not necessarily encourage music piracy but do believe efforts to thwart it may be a smoke screen thrown up by a record industry that's been slow to come up with viable, legal alternatives to online piracy.
"I'm excited to see musicians take a more active role regarding piracy, accounting practices, radio consolidation, contract reform and other structures that impact their livelihood," said Jennifer Toomey, executive director of Washington's Future of Music Coalition and a singer-songwriter. "We hope that piracy [will] not be used as a code word to cover up the recording industry's slow adoption and licensing of new technologies -- technologies that may create a more efficient and equitable industry for musicians and citizens."
