ustration of the growing control the record companies currently have in the industry. The airwaves, record labels and record stores, which are all a part of the system the record companies have pretty much succeeded in establishing. Collective pressure tactics, copyright misuse (enforcing their copyrights to achieve anti-competitive purposes) and higher prices when it can be offered at a lower price, are just a few of the examples that demonstrate that record companies may be evolving into a monopoly. Granting them the property rights outright would only be encouraging these tactics to continue.What in essence is preventing, as Coase would term it, "successful bargaining"? Quite simply, the transaction costs of many owners (record companies, technology innovators and consumers) and the enforcement costs it would entail in policing copyright activities over the Internet. Record companies see a portion of their foothold on the record industry slipping away and realize there is revenue to be made in the area of peer to peer network (every computer in a sense becomes a server and a client looking for data). If a decision granted by the courts is given to the record companies, they will eventually in due time capitalize on the innovations of Napster which in turn would be an infringement on Napsters rights. Copyright law has always been a bargain (Italics added to stress the word) between the public and the copyright industries, a bargain that has been in constant need of adjustment in the face of changing technologies. Copyright conveys a legally enforceable monopoly, created for the instrumental purposes to create incentives for authorship that might not otherwise occur. As with legal monopolies, copyright is a necessary evil that should be tolerated to the minimum (Italics added to stress the word)extent necessary to ensure that the public receives the desired benefit. According to Demsetz, copyrights are needed. "If a new idea ...
