For better or worse copyright is dead for music, and shortly for books and movies as well. This obsoletes existing business models. What will spring up to replace them? An interesting experiment is taking place over at TechDirt. They are selling of complementary goods - for example, for $150 you can buy a package of books signed by the authors...including of course Against Intellectual Monopoly. Go take a look.

Copyright may be "dead" for music, but if that is true, why were sales of copyrighted music up 10% in 2008?

David thanks for the post! And for taking part!

As for the anonymous commenter, I've got a couple points:

1. If sales are up, why all the complaining? There's clearly no problem in the marketplace, then, right?

2. Sales of "copyrighted music" does not mean "sales of music because of copyright." Much of it has nothing to do with copyright, just as people buying the book package above aren't doing it because of copyright (the content is available) but because of another reason. Yet, those are still sales of "copyrighted books." So copyright can still be "dead" without meaning the end of the sale of copyrighted works.

Mike Masnick:

The question to you (and David Levine) would then be, How do you define the "death" of copyright?

I should also point out that music piracy in the United States decreased (for the first time) across all demographics, but most for teenagers in 2008. If piracy is decreasing and purchase of music is increasing, how do you define "dead"?

Death of copyright = you can get unauthorized copies of pretty much whatever you want without any trouble.

David:

By your definition, copyright is clearly not dead for music. People continue to be sued for illegal downloads, and regardless of whether they are sued for it, it remains illegal.

That's a bit like saying that it isn't safe to cross the street because people occasionally get hit by cars.

David:

People get hit by cars when crossing the street because they are not looking where they are going. Illegal file sharing is somewhat like that, in that the illegal file sharer should really pay attention to what they are doing and then they would be less likely to get into trouble.

Regardless of the analogies, the laws remain, piracy remain illegal, and copyright in music remains a force.

Bullshit. Copyright is doomed. It may not quite be technically "dead", but it's been diagnosed with a tumor and told it has less than six months left to live.