The future of digital music in the Peer-to-Peer Web

Abstract

After the music industry's restrictive future vision for the digital millennium failed to gain customer acceptance, the solution space is now wide open again. Building on recent fieldwork with students on their use of illegal file-sharing networks and their attitude on file-sharing I will argue that there is value in file sharing and present two scenarios, which capture the value instead of trying to prevent the free flow of data. I will outline the choice we face between a fragmented landscape of privatized music spaces walled within social networks and a shared public infrastructure based on the blanket licensing approach. I will conclude that the power of the market will most likely bring about the first scenario, but that we as an economy and a society may be better off by choosing the second option.