“The Napster Crackdown”

Written in September last year, this is a fascinating look at
intellectual property rights, the “attention economy” and
Napster/file-sharing.

Large as the major record companies are, music probably
accounts for less than one per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic
Product – a measure in terms of the old economy. But in terms of
attention, music certainly gets a far bigger share: most of us listen
to music a good part of every day. Instead of protecting the musicians,
adhering the old system of copyright and the old methods of accounting
denies musicians the economic power that is actually theirs. On
average, it is an enormous, though understandable, mistake for them to
side with the record industry against Napster and other innovations
that would help the new economy into power. Because they make music
more accessible these developments would also increase the percentage
of attention and thus of wealth flowing to musicians as a group.

To put it another way, musicians along with movie
actors, video-game designers, writers and others who create whatever
gets attention, are in fact being greatly short-changed by the present
system. Even those who seem rich in terms of money, are kept far from
their just deserts, Rather than needing copyright, they are actually
suffering under the power that this legal form as presently handled
turns over to the corporations and their leaders. ”

The Napster Revolution and the Law