Policing the Pirates: Digital Models for Music Distribution

According to the entertainment industry, the digital revolution is usurping its product and undermining its profit. Internet Service Providers have shown reluctance to interfere in the private domain of their users so at the behest of Hollywood, Congress in 1998 passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Nonetheless, the Recording Industry Association of America alleges that rampant Net piracy has precipitated a five percent worldwide decline of music sales in both 2000 and 2001.  The personal computer has become an expedient means of downloading songs from peer-to-peer file-sharing services or “burning” CD copies onto a blank disk. To ensure compliance with the Act, some record labels have embraced technology that distorts the error correction codes on illegally copied CDs.  However, this copy control solution is beset with various problems, including consumer aversion and technical fallibility.  After examining the dialectical tension between business cost and consumer choice, this paper proposes some other options