Once upon a time, artists had an easy life. When dancers and singers performed, only people in the immediate vicinity could enjoy the show, and they could be asked to pay up. Then over the centuries came technology-storage, reproduction and transmission-and along with it, the artist's ever-growing reliance on technological intermediaries, who in turn have relied on government protections. Printing presses meant that books could be reprinted by others and revenues lost (hence Queen Anne's Copyright Act of 1709). Broadcast meant works could be copied by consumers (hence the European levy on VCRs and blank cassettes).

The last wave of technology may be the most challenging of all. Digital recording is immune from the degradation that plagues analog recording devices: The millionth digital copy is exactly the same as the first. The Internet means a music file can be sent to millions of e-mail addresses with the stroke of a key. My role in this arena began in 1988 when I founded MPEG, the Moving Picture Experts Group (www.cselt.it/mpeg), a committee of the International Organization for Standardization. The MPEG-1 standard, approved in 1992, enables storage of compressed digital video and audio on compact discs; it is the technology behind MP3, a standard used by millions of enthusiasts to compress CD music files and move them over the Internet.