History is taking place in the battle between the record industry and new technology. This is a battle I've forseen for a year or so, not knowing how it would take shape - the first battle of a long, long war.

Music industry newcomer mp3.com, who started it's own sort of "label" by offering web space and listings for any band who had material to share, took it all one step further (some say too far) by offering it's streaming MP3 servers to serve a library of 45,000 of the most popular commercial CD's via a service called "my.mp3.com". If you can prove to mp3.com, through it's proprietary "Beam-It" software, that you actually own the CD, you can log on to mp3.com from anywhere and listen to that CD (mp3.com's copy of it, essentially) on your computer while you work. In other words, your entire CD collection is available anywhere in the world, without actually carrying it along. It's quite a convenience for some people, and gives a whole new meaning to "desert island discs".

As was expected, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) stepped in and sued mp3.com for illegal digital copying of it's material. The suit seeks injunctive relief, and statutory damages for willful copyright infringement, in the amount of $150,000 per infringement - essentially a bill for $6.75 billion dollars to mp3.com.

MP3.com answered back; "The question is, to whom does the music belong? When a consumer buys a CD, does the industry get to tell the consumer where she can listen to her music? The type of technology that she can use to play the CD? Whether she can use new Internet technologies? 'Fair use' rights on the part of the consumer allow them to use whatever technology they want to listen to their music!"

Both parties claim to be protecting the artists' rights, and accusing the other of either restricting or depriving them. This looks to be a well-fought battle, with the law technically on the side of the RIAA, but logic and rationality standing on the side of MP3.com. The real culprit here is technology and the Internet and it's newfound availability. This case will end up choosing the (hopefully new) path of the future for the distribution of music.