By
Dusty Kraft
Kids
today... They make up a large segment of the Internet community,
but what are they doing with all those hours online? Looking
up resources for their latest History assignment? Doubtful.
And I know from experience. If there is one thing I don't
do on-line, it's look up information for a report.
So
what are these rowdy punk teenagers doing? Well a fair number
are pirating their favorite songs and saving a bundle of
cash on CDs.
MP3s
are nothing new. They've been around for a while, and I'm
sure you've heard of them. But have you heard of DSL and
T3 networking? As high-speed downloading and compact disk
burning technologies have become available to the mass public,
the pirating of music has spread like wildfire throughout
the entire Internet. Now you can find virtually any song,
and in many cases, any album ever recorded, and download
it free.
It
might sound tough to find the exact song you're looking
for, but it's becoming easier and easier everyday. A program
that was released fairly recently called Napster (http://www.napster.com)
connects you to everyone else's MP3 library. All you have
to do is type in the artist or song title your looking for
and it scans over 640,000 songs in 4,800 libraries - more
than 2,600 gigabytes of MP3 music - and returns the matches.
Pretty simple, don't you think?
What
does that have to do with DSL modems and T3 networks? DSL
modems run through lines just like the ones used to get
cable TV. DSL downloads can be up to 25 times faster than
the popular 56.7K modems that are in the newest PCs. You
can download two full-length CDs in less than 45 minutes
- not even a full episode of "Beverly Hills 90210."
DSL
is not availabel everywhere (see story page 9) and it can
be a little pricey for the average person, but all it would
really cost you is about $50 per month for the DSL box (after
a year, you own it) and about $20 more for Internet service.
But if you compare that to the amount of money spent on
music by us messed up teenagers, it's really a steal!!!
Literally.
If
you've heard about T3 networks at all, you know they're
high-speed, high-priced pieces of equipment. Large corporations
use them for business because they can afford it, but for
the common man, this technology is just a little out of
reach. Unless you're in college. That's right. Thousands
of college students have round-the-clock Internet access
via T3 networks. What do they do with all that time? For
one thing, they're downloading all the music they could
possibly listen to.
When
I visited my brother at UW-Milwaukee a few weeks back, a
friend had downloaded nine days and 22 hours of music, without
one song repeating. Obviously I asked how long it took him
to download all that music, and he answered "...like maybe
two-and-a-half days of pure downloading. "The problem,"
he said, "is thinking of songs to download."
Assuming
the average CD plays 45 minutes and costs $15.99, this one
student has pirated about $5,075 of CDs. That's one student,
at one college campus. Now imagine how many people, not
just students, are pirating music all over the world.
The
music industry is none too happy, but that's another story.
Dusty
Kraft was nearly suspended in 7th grade after hacking into
his school's computer lab and re-writing one of the programs.
Now 17, he has since been commissioned by the district to
build its web site.
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