By Rachel Chalmers
Last seen being forced by its own record label to remove MP3s of its songs from its web site, hip hop band Public Enemy has hit back with a vitriolic single, Swindler’s Lust, in a format it calls MP4. The format is not, as its name misleadingly implies, MPEG-4 or some other successor to MP3. In fact, MP4 was developed by a web content company called Global Music Outlet (GMO) and based on AT&T’s a2b audio compression format. A2b will be part of MPEG-4, so GMO is essentially appropriating the informally used name for a proprietary subset of the industry standard. GMO has trademarked the term, which should contribute to plenty of confusion in the marketplace. Why have Public Enemy and GMO chosen to take this divisive route? MP3 is an open format which lets internet users copy and exchange music at near-CD quality. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has protested the proliferation of MP3 on the grounds that it contains no mechanism to protect record labels’ copyright in musical works – hence PolyGram’s decision to remove the Public Enemy MP3 tracks from the web. RIAA has even established a Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) to develop a copyright-protected alternative to MP3. GMO says MP4 is a midstep between MP3 and the SDMI, although precisely what that means is unclear. Like MP3s, MP4s will be freely downloadable, but a2b contains copyright protections MP3 does not have. Presumably these will also be included in MP4. That’s not to say that Public Enemy has come around to RIAA’s point of view. The lyrics to Swindler’s Lust are a barely veiled attack on the recording industry’s greed. The song opens with the words: Vultures of culture, dollar a rhyme/ but we barely get a dime. Hurling insults will not hurt the record labels, however; only the loss of control over the intellectual property generated by artists and owned by the recording industry can do that.
