ABSTRACT
This chapter looks for some of the answers to the vexing problem of unauthorized exchange of music files on the Internet in the wisdom intellectual property law that has accumulated about the protection and distribution of factual information. The system should allow consumers, computers and software to ascertain, easily, whether music is hoarded or shareable, and thus encourage the design of computer software allowing the sharing of shareable music while making it difficult to share hoarded music. Posting information on the net is "sharing". Try exactly the same thing with recorded music and it's "stealing". The chapter explores the burgeoning digital information space that has grown up on the Internet in the last two decades. It suggests that one looks to the digital information space as a model for crafting a solution to the controversy over peer-to-peer file sharing, and reviews some of the proposals made in recent copyright scholarship.
