Tim May and many of us argue that copyrights will become unenforceable as copying bits becomes cheaper and crypto privacy and anonymity becomes more widely available. This will mean that any static collection of bits will just be FREE. Musicians will have to make money on live performances, because they couldn't sell many recordings. Etc.
Er, I'd say this is another instance of cypherpunk extremism: ``The world as we know it is about to collapse.'' Yes, information will probably be much freer over the nets, and copyright violations probably more difficult to pursue and punish. But think about this: with the speed and ubiquity of networks, it now becomes possible for every author or creative artist to keep the only copies of his work. Then, he could post "links" to it anywhere in the world. When people pass around the work, they wouldn't pass around the work itself, they'd pass the "link". Whenever someone wants to view the work, the link points to the unchanging address for instantaneous downloading. A very small transaction charge is billed to the receiver by the sender. (Of course, people could write stuff that would actually grab and store the text or whatever instead of just "play" it. But I'll bet that most people will eventually say, "why bother?" The direct access will be more convenient and the charge so minimal.) Links could be embedded wherever there is information, like in bibliographies or references or compilations or whatever. There are virtually NO MIDDLEMEN---the investment return to the artist is total. Contrast this to today's vast overhead with records and books, for example (these costs are largely associated with distribution, I'd wager). Of course, the individual artist is free to make contracts with knowledgeable cohorts for album cover design or whatever. The essence of a copyright is really to give a creative artist more control over their own works, and global, high-speed, reliable networks will give artists absolutely unprecedented and unparalleled control (and yes, I admit, a lack of it too). Hey, consider that programmers are artists too. I write some hot program, but I don't distribute it: I run it on one of my systems as a sort of network pipe. People anywhere in the world pipe in their data and get it back with a small transaction fee to me. In fact, what I'm really getting at is treating the entire world like Unix utilities with standard input and output, sort of like electronic vending machines! I can pipe my manuscripts to some address and they pop out edited or published. I drop a file on that goofy icon, and it goes to Bill Clinton. I could hook up pipes between companies to set up my own company! There might be a lot of command line parameters to specify and plenty of glitches reported on stderr, but it could work... This all would happen with commensurate drains on my online account (all digital transactions, of course). Imagine that you could write software that would bill the user! Big companies do it, why not individuals?