“I’ve had the experience more than once of having
someone come up to me and — completely pure of heart — excitedly tell me they
bought copies of my CDs when I was last in town and they enjoyed them so much
they made copies for 15 or so of their friends,” said Carothers.
There goes the revenue stream. The unauthorized
copying and downloading of music has been a hot topic since the 1999 launch of
Napster, the peer-to-peer file-sharing service, and neither prosecution nor
legislation has meaningfully stemmed the tide. The failure of the Stop Online
Piracy Act and a companion anti-piracy bill months ago knocked the
entertainment industry back on its heels, raising questions about whether
Congress has the political will to pass legislation.
