Copyright Law Always Tied to Technology of the Time

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The music industry was in an uproar. In parlors and saloons across the country, people loaded cylinders into player pianos, pumped the pedals, and out came the tunes, without a penny paid to the composers or the sheet music publishers. Something, they screamed, had to be done.

The year was 1908. It was, in a sense, the Ragtime Napster.

Today, Napster is sending shockwaves through the recording industry. But the spasms over the free Internet music service are consistent with other times when copyright law seemed unable to cope with an unanticipated, wildly popular invention.

"Every one of the new technologies, had you been there at …