There previously has not been too much question about the ownership of distribution versions of intellectual property. Technology has freed intellectual property from its distribution media. The digital existence of an item makes its distribution a trivial and wide-reaching process. Thanks to information technology, a CD track in its source form is not only available from the handful of record stores in a particular area, but to millions upon millions of networked computers throughout the world. As is normally the case, it will take a while for law to catch up to technology, and the intervening battles will ultimately determine who has access to and profits from intellectual property.
Audio recordings are just the beginning.
As storage and bandwidth technologies improve, digital video is hard on the heals of the issues in regard to audio. And these media are just the tip of the iceberg. The rhetoric in this battle is disturbing. In reading the opinion , I failed to notice any reference to morality. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business.