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This article examines the music industry, and particularly its reaction to the file-sharing phenomenon, through the prism of the agent-principal problem. The file-sharing phenomenon shined a spotlight on the divergence of interests between the creators of music and their ultimate representatives in copyright debates, the recording industry. The economic interests of creators are focused on maximizing revenues from their works. Record companies, in contrast, are not content with their share in the revenue pie, rather are interested in maximizing their control over the exploitation of such works, in order to secure the dominant position they currently hold in the market. The constitution, however, is designed to protect creators' incentives to create, not the market-controlling position of record companies.The Article analyzes the measures taken to combat file-sharing, and concludes that the source of the resistance to file sharing is not its effect on revenues as outwardly claimed by the recording industry, but rather its potential to decentralize the control over music distribution and use. In that sense, the war against file-sharing is an extreme expression of the agency problem stated above. At the same time, the article points to the potential of file-sharing to minimize agency costs, by creating a more balanced power-relationship within the music industry, and concludes that legitimizing file-sharing may produce circumstances which are most likely to be consistent with the interests of both creators and society at large. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the practice of music trading and asks what the online discourse of music-trading fans tells about music consumption and file swapping. The development of peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet networks facilitated an unprecedented upswing in the amount of noncommercial music trading. Long before this technology was front-page news, Deadheads embraced P2P technology and were some of the biggest early consumers. Among those fans who care enough to trade the Dead's music online, Deadhead community norms were predictably and clearly enacted. There is a growing rejection of the MP3 format, a technology that still seems so twenty-first-century to many music fans. Other sites, such as Deadshow.com and Sugarmegs.org, offer RealPlayer streaming audio and/or MP3 downloads.