Against the background of these gradual changes in the law, along with the
practical normthat, in themain, the law didn’t reach consumers, the changes of
digital technology were a considerable shock. First, fromthe perspective of technology, digital technologies, unlike their analog sister, enabled perfect copies of an original work. The return from copying was therefore greater. Second, also fromthe perspective of technology, the digital technology of the Internet enabled content to be freely (and effectively anonymously) distributed across the Internet.
The availability of copies was therefore greater. Third, from the perspective of
norms, consumers who had internalized the normthat they could do with“their
content”whatever they wanted used these new digital tools tomake “their content”
available widely on the Internet. Companies such as Napster helped fuel
this behavior, but the practice existed both before and afterNapster.And fourth,
from the perspective of law, because the base technology of the Internet didn’t
reveal anything about the nature of the content being shared on the Internet, or
about who was doing the sharing, there was little the law could do to stop this
massive “sharing” of content. Thus fifth, and from the perspective of copyright
holders, digital technologies and the Internet were the perfect storm for their
businessmodel: If theymademoney by controlling the distribution of “copies”
of copyrighted content, you could well understand why they viewed the Internet
as a grave threat.
Very quickly, and quite early on, the content industry responded to this
threat. Their first line of defense was a more aggressive regime of regulation.
Because, the predictions of cyberspacemavens notwithstanding, not everyone
was willing to concede that copyright law was dead. Intellectual property
lawyers and interest groups pushed early on to have law shore up the protections
of intellectual property that cyberspace seemed certain to erase.

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