Content Owner Claims Over Time: The Chicken Little Angle

Mark A. Lemley, Stanford Law School, has published Is the Sky Falling on the Content Industries? as Stanford Public Law Working Paper No. 165485. Here is the abstract.

Content owners claim they are doomed, because in the digital environment, they can't compete with free. But they've made such claims before. This short essay traces the history of content owner claims that new technologies will destroy their business over the last two centuries. None have come to pass. It is likely the sky isn't falling this time either. I suggest some ways content may continue to thrive in the digital environment.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.