Thomas Edison on Copyright Control

False Positives points us to an excellent quote from a recent Economist.com article on the peer-to-peer showdown:

Economist.com - Illegal file-sharers under attack

The music business should have stuck by Thomas Edison’s technology if it wanted to avoid the threat of piracy. His wax cylinders could record a performance but could not be reproduced; that became possible only with the invention of the flat-disc record some years later.

This reminds me that I should have quoted from that WSJ $ article cited previously:

Supreme Court Hears Two Key Internet Cases

But technology companies and some independent analysts warn such a decision would chill investment in new products and services that, for instance, allow consumers to share content between their own household devices like digital video recorders and laptops.