It started with companies like Napster and MP3.com, which created technology that let consumers access digital audio content without having to buy digital audio files. Instead, MP3.com allowed consumers to discover, manage and listen to their music collection from anywhere using any computer or other device with Internet access. Napster gave users access to content that resided on other users' hard drives and released it into the public domain for all to hear.

The desire to distribute artists' works to listeners on the Web has created one of the biggest debates in recent history. Should people be prevented from sharing the digital content of an artist?

Consumers used to buy records or tapes and duplicate their favorite tracks to play at a party. But today, when consumers download music onto an MP3 player, they are called copyright criminals. With the CD read-writable devices now hitting the market, we can distribute digital content via sneaker net, so are Napster and MP3.com really enabling something illegal?

Similarly, in the past when a person read and liked a book and wanted to recommend it to a friend, he or she would just pass it on. Today companies are moving to guard digital content so that only those that pay for the content will have access to it. Is this where we want to go? Many schools, especially those that help the underprivileged, use second-hand books and donated content to help promote reading. Will this become illegal?

As companies introduce content guards and watermarking, we will be charged for everything we listen to, view or read. If the consumer has bought a CD or a book, why should the company that sold it control where and how the buyer reads, listens to or views what he or she has paid for? Is this fair? Maybe not, but the consumer is caught in the middle.

Wall Street's expectations about the royalties and profits publishing houses should reap from digital content promote a corporate society driven to protect content and target those who can access it. This is a problem that will need to be solved. What will happen if the written word becomes controlled? Will we enter the world of Orwell's 1984, where the rule of thumb was control or be controlled?

The final answer will come from the Supreme Court, and this is one debate we need to watch carefully. Companies like Napster and MP3.com could set the tone for how content is delivered, shared and protected for years to come.

Rob Weber is Market Development Manager for Imaging and Entertainment Solutions at Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector (Austin, Texas).