Instead of re-examining and perhaps reconsidering a losing strategy, the industry has expanded the battlefield. This is bad, and Lessig claims the copyright wars are making it worse. A study by the Institute of Policy Innovation that calculated that $12.5 billion is lost every year as a result of piracy, or unauthorized sharing, along with $422 million in annual tax revenue and 71,060 jobs. Since Napster, the first music-sharing service, went online in 1999, the recording industry has shrunk by nearly a third, deflating from $14.6 billion in estimated shipments to just $10.3 billion in 2007, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The recording industry won most of the lawsuits, but the sharing continued. The goal of the lawsuits was to make people afraid of passing on music, so that most would stop, just like speeding tickets are supposed to keep most people from speeding. Since the war began in earnest five years ago, entertainment companies have sued over 28,000 people for illegally sharing music over computer networks, including a 12-year-old girl living with her mother in public housing and an 83-year-old woman who had already died by the time the court case was filed. He warns that with no victory in sight, the costs of the copyright wars are mounting for entertainment companies, not to mention their hapless casualties.
In “Remix: Making Art and Culture Thrive in the Hybrid Economy”, a ferociously argued new book, Lessig calls for a truce.
For ten years Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig has watched the entertainment industry train its legal guns on everything from Napster to YouTube, blasting away at children and their parents, college kids and remix artists.
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