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A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log Chinese human rights site hacked - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Do you have favorite freeware and software? Discuss the programs and how you discovered them in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Prime time for hackers is over By Richard Thieme Why did a consultant hack a US West network to solve a 17th-century math problem? (10/27/98) Of math prodigies and canine cosmonauts By David Hudson "Habitus" mixes a dab of literary theory with a dose of the fantastic (10/26/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Microsoft's staggering profits overshadow the courtroom fireworks of the antitrust trial's first week (10/23/98) Good times for Dilbert By Janelle Brown Scott Adams, creator of the world's best-loved cartoon engineer, talks about Zippergate and the enduring stupidity of humankind (10/22/98) The adventure continues By Greg Costikyan Why Myst was no dead end -- and online gaming isn't ready for the big time (10/21/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

_________________ B L A M E_.I T_.O N_.RIO - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - NETHEADS LOVE THE MP3 DIGITAL-MUSIC FORMAT. WHY DOES THE MUSIC INDUSTRY HATE IT SO MUCH? BY JANELLE BROWN Throw away your Walkman, your Discman and your portable radio; heck, while you're at it, you might as well toss out your MiniDisc player and that new DVD. Music formats change faster than the speed of light these days, and the gadget you'll need in order to exploit the music technology of the hour is the Rio PMP300. This stylish little device from Diamond Multimedia, yours for a mere $200, will let you listen to 60 minutes of CD-quality music in the MP3 (or MPEG-1 Layer 3) audio format -- music you can download off the Web from a multitude of MP3 fan sites. Unfortunately, the odds are good that some of that music you'll download will be illegal pirated copies of popular songs. Despite the presence of tens of thousands of legitimate songs on the Web, the best-known music is still pirated. And for this reason, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the powerful trade association of the music industry, would be happy if every single Rio were locked in a box and dumped at the bottom of the sea. As RIAA president Hilary Rosen put it at a recent press conference, "We sincerely doubt that there would be a market for the MP3 portable recording devices but for the thousands and thousands of illegal songs on the Internet." The RIAA filed a lawsuit earlier this month, demanding an injunction that would prevent Diamond from distributing the Rio; Monday, the group lost the preliminary round in court. But that doesn't mean the battle is over. Mainstream online music distribution is getting closer every day, and the three primary music platforms -- MP3, the format of choice for Net-savvy music lovers, and the more RIAA-friendly a2b and Liquid Audio -- are lining up in hopes of becoming the new standard. The record labels that are members of the RIAA, on the other hand, produce 90 percent of all domestic music. With the power of this content in their hands -- and a passel of lawyers to boot -- the RIAA hopes to shape the direction of music technology. And it's not being subtle about it. "MP3 is already a standard -- this is an interesting debate, though," explains Michael Robertson, the confident young president of MP3.com. "How much leverage do the major labels hold when it comes to the Net, and do they have enough leverage to force people to adopt Liquid Audio or a2b? I think not. If Microsoft couldn't do it, why could the record labels?" MP3 is a freely available and open format, created by a coalition of international audio experts, with no embedded encryption or copyright protection. Any budding musicians can encode their own music into MP3 files and distribute them online or burn them to CD. Any music fan can also download "data-ripping" software, make copies of a favorite Aerosmith CD and upload it for the listening enjoyment of 60 million people on the Web. Meanwhile, AT&T Labs has come up with a2b, a music format boasting better compression technology, encryption -- and a system called "Policy Maker," which allows artists to decide whether a song can be duplicated, how many times it can be played and whether it will expire after a certain amount of time. Liquid Audio includes comparable features, plus a watermarking system that reveals where and when a song was downloaded, and by whom. Both Liquid Audio and a2b offer their playback software for free, but to make music in either format you have to license the pricey encoding software. Plainly, a2b and Liquid Audio are more appealing to piracy-conscious record labels than MP3 is in its current form. N E X T_ P A G E .|. Is the RIAA bullying MP3 devotees or just protecting its members' rights?