School of Information

Legislative protection that provides for a fair and balanced market of copyrighted material becomes much more challenging as new technology including peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) reduces the transaction costs of obtaining copyrighted material. This paper examines the current state of P2P trading and technology in relation to the currently applicable laws, and makes proposals on how the existing laws could be modified to better adapt to the rapidly changing forefront of technology. These laws will lose much of their relevance as P2P technology approaches what I call the “P2P Singularity” of completely anonymous file exchange, where identification and prosecution of infringing individual users becomes technically infeasible. At this point, the majority of the laws protecting digital copyrighted material loose much of their relevance as the cost and ability to enforce the laws becomes drastically higher than the overall benefit gained. After the networks have evolved to this point, this paper examines several of the new business models that copyright owners could adopt in order to continue to profit.