Pirates of the Digital Millennium: How the Intellectual Property Wars Damage Our Personal Freedoms, Our Jobs, and the World Economy

Chapter . Afterword

My Personal Journey: John

As we began the book, I had just completed a project for the Business Software Alliance on the economic impact of software piracy, so I knew that piracy was not a victimless crime. At the same time, I had been an early user of Napster (my wife and kids showed me how to use it) and had come to believe that it truly was a better way to find music than rooting through record bins or searching in vain on fee-based services. I found old jazz and rock and roll on the disk drives of Napster users that weren't available in any industry catalog. The rapid growth of Napster's user base—to millions in a few months—convinced me that there was a phenomenon taking place driven by much more than simply the availability ...