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

Preface

It was a quintessential New England fall morning—crisp, sunny, cold—that day in November 2002. We were two old friends and colleagues, getting together for breakfast to catch up, talk about our work, our children, our lives.

John, the researcher, was just finishing up a massive project at IDC on the economic impact of worldwide software piracy. Jack, the writer, smelled an important story in the making. We were both amazed at the extent of worldwide copyright violation, astounded at how fast Napster had grown, sad at its demise and the loss of one of the easiest to use software programs we'd ever seen, and amused at how quickly KaZaA had filled its shoes.

Little did we know that the casual activity known as file-sharing, or downloading MP3s, ...