Springfield company offers solution to online music piracy

An answer to the music industry's widespread online pirating problem may be nestled in the Ozarks. Two local businessmen hope so, anyway.

Springfield music producer Chris Albert and software developer Paul Robertson have partnered to create Cryptic Audio, a Web program that charges for music downloads on a per-song basis.

The duo received a big break last month when The Harry Fox Agency Inc., a copyright information source and licensing agency for the music industry, signed Cryptic Audio to a license agreement. The agreement makes Cryptic Audio available to the 27,000 producers Harry Fox represents and grants the right to the Harry Fox song list, which is in the "hundreds of thousands," according to J.C. Lindstrom, new media coordinator with Harry Fox.

Thus far, Cryptic Audio has been used only on Albert's Web site, www.song- smith.com/hideaway.html, and for music produced by Albert.

"Now I have a license to be used on the net," Albert said. "(Harry Fox) will tell the music publishers about our program."

Albert believes such credibility may lead to bigger, revenue-generating deals. No money exchanged hands in the license agreement. Albert is required by federal law to pay Harry Fox 8 cents per song downloaded. He will likely charge 99 cents a song.

Cryptic Audio, a program of Media Wizard Inc. which Albert formed in March is designed for artists, retailers and music distributors. While providing a venue for selling digital music online it also prohibits download theft, Albert said.

"We're a business-to-business application," Albert said. "All these big companies Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Borders Books can feel safe putting their music out there and not worrying about somebody stealing it. We're like a tollbooth on the net."

Fighting piracy

Legitimate consumer download sites are growing now in excess of 30 to combat the national decline in compact disc sales, which dropped 6.7 percent last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The number of CDs shipped was down 8.9 percent in 2002, the same year seizures of counterfeit and pirate CDs by the RIAA more than doubled to 246,452.

RIAA officials make a direct connection and have taken drastic steps to crack down on piracy. In June, the association launched a campaign to file suits against individuals found offering a substantial number of music files for downloading. RIAA officials expect "several hundred" lawsuits to be filed in the next month.

"The whole point of these lawsuits is to dissuade people from illegally acquiring music online and convince them to turn to a legitimate service if they want digital music," said Jonathan Lamy, RIAA director of communications. "There are already a host of great legitimate services, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there are more to come."

Apple's iTunes is the latest service to hit the market. It joins Pressplay, LiquidAudio and a host of others. The recording industry considers free Web sites such as KaZaA, Morpheus and Gnutella illegal.

"We're coming up with ways to license various digital configurations, so businesses have a viable way to license content for additional distribution and to report it," said Lindstrom, adding that Cryptic Audio is the first of its kind to sign with Harry Fox.

"This kind of configuration Chris (Albert) is offering the technology he's using this is the first, I believe, of its kind that Harry Fox is doing," Lindstrom said. "Harry Fox has agreements with at least half a dozen major subscription services out there that offer download."

Cryptic Audio differs in that it is a pay-per-play program and allows sampling of songs before purchasing, Albert said. Additionally, Cryptic Audio works without a media player that installs the music to a computer's hard drive.

"With our program, you don't need a media player to listen to the song; it's embedded in the Web site," Albert said. "It won't ever leave our Web site. You now can preview the song without any loss of piracy. It's going to help in the retail market, and it's going help the individual artist."

Looking to the future, Albert envisions embedding the technology on CDs to prevent people from burning copies.

"We can embed this on every song on every CD," he said. "That will keep people from even stealing it off the CD; they won't be able to make copies. We're working on that technology right now."