Napster and After: Where the Online Music Industry Is Headed (Knowledge@Wharton)

From the birth of Napster to the demise of the INDUCE Act–the controversial copyright law which the U.S. Congress has chosen to ignore–the explosion of digital music files over the Internet has been praised or condemned with few reservations on either side. Is digital file sharing a terrific way to enhance consumers’ ability to discover new music? Or is it computer age piracy, imperiling the very notion of intellectual property rights? Now, with the advent of such innovations as Grouper, podcasting, and the Dual Disk format, there are new solutions to the copyright issue. But will they be enough to quell the controversy? Napster and After: Where the Online Music Industry Is Headed answers these questions, as well as a host of other questions that are swirling around the future of the online music industry.