Start with low-cost recordable storage media-rewritable DVDs and the "flash" memory used in such devices as MP3 players, for example. Add file-compression protocols that make it easy to send music, video and large texts over the Internet. Mix in free software that lets you find and download the files you want from any computer on the Web and copy them to those cheap media. It's a recipe for the end of copyright protection as we know it. What Napster has done to music is just the beginning; movies, books and games are also being reduced to so many zeroes and ones, shot around the world over the Internet and copied at will.

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