©ollectanea

Mark Cooper has posted a short research note, Music Downloads - A Victory for Consumers and Artists at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. It refers to music industry data to make the case for the victory it describes. Of course, the music industry would probably draw other conclusions from the same data. But it seems fairly clear where the trajectory is going, and that copyright can indeed play less of a role in the future than the industry thought it had to. In other words, controlling copies isn't as critical to making a living as a musician who wants to sell recordings as the industry believed.

Cooper points out that we're not through yet; this is just a milestone he reports, but again, the direction seems pretty clear.