Stream #2 is: recording rights societies like RIAA are freaked about MP3 piracy. The recording industry does not yet have a handle on how to deal with Internet music marketing, and in the meantime the likes of Napster are enabling everybody to get an instant, free record collection. Imesh.com is said to be the next one on the horizon to facilitate mass recordings without being involved in licensing.

But what's the big deal, so far? MP3s are "near-CD quality," another way of saying they're low-fi. Indies are passing them out like candy because they are great promotion, without being the real thing. Tony Savona, editor at EQ and Surround Professional magazines agrees. He thinks it's a tempest in a tea pot. On the other hand, student leader Chad Paulson himself says that MP3 quality is quite sufficient for most people he knows, which no doubt puts the chill down RIAA's spine. Why buy it when you can steal it?

Curiously, the debate over artists' rights is the furthest thing from the minds of anybody on campus. The students want their MP3s, regardless of what it does to the computer system their tuition is paying for (exactly their point, oddly enough). It's their dime, education be damned. Meanwhile, faculty-spokesman Bruhn maintains this is strictly a pipeline issue and copyright is ancillary to keeping the scholastic cyber-world running.

And, in the process RIAA is suing everyone in sight (MP3.com is the latest) for amounts so outrageous that it's clear nobody is dealing from a full deck.

The final issue, however, is that old bugaboo - when are we going to RUN OUT of space in the pipeline and what are we going to do about it? Streaming media is bit-greedy, and automatic programs that enable massive automatic downloading are only one of the ways to turn even the widest broadband pipeline into a backed-up sewer. It's the next best thing to a virus. I dread to think what these may do to LAN systems like my Optimum cable modem rent-a-pipe. I'll be back to snail mail...

The pirates are swarming over the transom. It's time to repel boarders...the only trouble is, how do you separate them from the crew?