“In the world of modern music, there are no songs with more than one or two samples, because no one wants to pay for that,” Doctorow said. “So, there’s a genre of music that, if it exists now, exists entirely outside the law. Anyone making music like Paul’s Boutique can’t make money from it, and is in legal jeopardy for having done it. Clearly that’s not what we want copyright to do.”
When the conversation turned to downloads and digital music distribution, both men were surprisingly passionate on the topic of digital rights management, and how it’s fundamentally a bad idea.