Review of "Sonic Boom," a book that traces the history of the Napster suit and the music industry's heel-dragging passage into the twenty-first century.
In his book, John Alderman remembers attending one of the first online music conferences in the mid-1990s where an industry executive declared that the Net should be immediately closed down. Copyright protection had to take precedence over technological innovation. In contrast, the author of "Sonic Boom" — then and now — does get it. The music industry has no veto over the future. Its lobbyists and lawyers can only slow down the spread of peer-to-peer computing. Sooner or later, file sharing over broadband networks will become as unremarkable as making a phone call, watching television or using a computer today. The utopian vision of the Napster generation is technically feasible: every tune — ever made — for free. Quite rightly, what worries John Alderman is how anyone can earn a living from making music in such circumstances? While almost every other sector of the economy will be profiting from peer-to-peer computing, the music industry will have lost its major source of revenue: selling bits of plastic. Who then will pay the piper?
