“The issue of intellectual property,” said Miles Copeland, founder of I.R.S. and Ark 21 Records, “is not just an issue of the record business. It‘s an issue in our society over all, because we are a society that manufactures less and less, and thinks more and more. And if you don’t get paid for your thinking, pretty soon we could go the way of the Romans.”
To explain the difficulties of competing against “free” in a capital-intensive business, Copeland provided one scenario, accompanied by a Freudian slip that highlighted just how discomfiting the idea of intellectual property -- or I.P., in industry lingo -- can be. “You‘re a drug company and you’re developing a cure for cancer, but now all of a sudden it can be taken by some company that‘s on the Internet,” said Copeland. “Some company can immediately manufacture it. You don’t get your billions back.” A beat. “Why would you invent the next disease to be cured?”
Once again, everyone laughed. Nervously.
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