Dor Morpheus, ignorance is bliss

By Hiawatha Bray, 9/8/2003

Michael Weiss distributes a piece of Internet file-swapping software called Morpheus, but has no idea what people do with it. Actually, he can't afford to know. "I'm in litigation," he chuckles when asked about his extraordinary ignorance.

Weiss says he's never loaded up a copy of his software, typed the word "beatles" into the search window, and awaited the results. But thousands of other people have done so, as did a curious reporter at this very newspaper. Knowledgeable readers will not be surprised to learn that a Morpheus search for "beatles" turns up hundreds of digital electronic recordings of the Fab Four's greatest hits, free for the downloading and illegal as crack cocaine.

Michael Weiss knows nothing about it -- nothing. "As a software developer, why do I have to go monitor what my users do?" he asks with an amusing air of innocence.

Why indeed? Especially when ignorance is Weiss's chief defense in his legal clash with the world's leading distributors of movies and recorded music. The film and audio companies have sued Morpheus's parent company, StreamCast Networks Inc., as well as another file-swapping firm, Grokster Ltd., for enabling the illegal exchange of movies and music recordings worth billions of dollars.

In April, Grokster and Morpheus won a stunning victory, when a federal district court judge held that the companies aren't liable for what people do with their software. Even if most people use Morpheus to download music and movies without paying for them, what's that to Weiss?

It's a beguiling argument, well-rooted in legal precedent. Two decades ago, the movie companies tried to ban video cassette recorders, fearing the machines would spawn a trade in illegally copied films. But a 1984 Supreme Court ruling held that you can't ban a technology that has legitimate uses, just because it can also be used to commit crimes. As with VHS, so with Morpheus, the district court said.

It's not over, of course. An appeal is pending, one which makes some telling points. For example, Weiss claims to have no idea what his users are swapping, and says it's none of his business. Why, then, does Morpheus provide antivirus scanning of all files, to make sure they're not spreading digital infections? Morpheus will stop users from distributing copies of the SoBig computer worm. Why not bar them from swapping music that they haven't paid for?

Because if they did that, hardly anybody would use Morpheus, thereby eliminating StreamCast's earnings from the sale of advertisements and various goodies available for purchase at the site. Everybody understands that the appeal of music and movie theft is the only thing that attracts the crowds to Morpheus. Everybody but Weiss.

Columns like this one inevitably attract outraged responses from file swappers seeking to rationalize their illegal habit. Their favorite argument is that the music companies have it coming, for charging extortionate prices for lousy product. This is true. Last week's announcement that Universal Music would slash CD prices as much as 30 percent simply underscores how overpriced the disks were. But what of it? The rapacious greed of the music companies doesn't excuse the smarmy hypocrisy of the music thieves.

A particularly contemptible example came to light last week. One popular music swapping product, Kazaa, has earned a bad reputation among some users, because it installs obnoxious "adware" programs onto their computers. This adware keeps flinging up unwanted advertisements at inopportune moments, and people hated it. So some enterprising software hacker created Kazaa Lite, a clone of the original program with the adware removed.

Kazaa's parent company, Sharman Networks, has never shown much regard for the copyrights of others, but its own intellectual property is a different matter. As rockers Guns N' Roses sang, "You can have anything you want, but you better not take it from me." In this spirit, Sharman's attorneys contacted the Internet search service Google to demand that they remove all links to Web sites offering downloads of Kazaa Lite, because the cloned product violates Kazaa's copyrights.

The palpable dishonesty of all parties in the file-swapping wars is more entertaining than any disk ever cut by Madonna. The music companies overcharge their customers and underpay the artists. The file swappers denounce the worthless drivel being put out by the recording firms, even as they steal as much of it as their hard drives can hold. And last but not least, we have guys like Michael Weiss of Morpheus, who swear they have no idea what their products are used for, and not the least interest in finding out.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.