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You Can Lead a Horse to Water but You Can’t Make It Drink

The Music Industry and Peer-to-Peer

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Abstract

It is easy to outline a new strategy. To succeed in its implementation is another matter, especially where there is a large historical baggage. There is no question that the music sector has been facing a major challenge since the 1990s and that it correctly places peer-to-peer as the core issue. It is also obvious that the music industry’s strategy has been steadfast in defending today’s institutions and the associated “illegality” of peer-to-peer. That has meant that it has marshaled, very successfully, huge resources to ensure that the “illegality” remains unchallenged. That has meant making sure that institutions were preserved if not reinforced to establish the “illegality” of the activities of peer-to-peer networks as well as those of file sharers of copyrighted materials. In its management of peer-to-peer, the music industry has been exceptionally successful in the court, success that can only have reinforced the music industry’s instinctual culture of defending the existing nature of copyrights. The same does not hold for the music industry’s business performance.

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  1. Senior Affiliated Researcher with Columbia Institute for Tele-information, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Alain Bourdeau de Fontenay & Eric Bourdeau de Fontenay

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  1. Alain Bourdeau de Fontenay
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    de Fontenay, A.B., de Fontenay, E.B. (2009). You Can Lead a Horse to Water but You Can’t Make It Drink. In: Lehr, W., Pupillo, L. (eds) Internet Policy and Economics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/b104899_12

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