No More Napsters

As they try to engineer a successful transition to paperless books, publishers are trying to learn from the mistakes made by the recording industry. Some years ago, the major recording companies reacted poorly to Napster, the pioneering music-sharing site. Instead of working with it as a powerful promotional tool, the recording companies fought back with aggressive legal action against both file sharing services and their customers.

This led to plenty of ill will between the major recording companies and the young people who had been their best customers. File sharing continued, CD sales continued to dwindle, and the recording industry is still searching for a sustainable business model.

So the book publishers are trying to walk the fine line between protecting copyrighted work and not alienating their readers, as this National Public Radio story reports.