Thus it is reputation which needs protection from unscrupulous operators. No longer can supposed 'ownership' be protected. The present tangle of ownership claims and distribution rights would collapse. The facilitator would have no claim of ownership over the finished work. A publisher is not necessary but specialist skills may be hired to assist. Yet their cultural worth - on metrics beyond the ken of copyright rentiers - assists building reputation and funding to support further works.įor instance, a would-be author must offer up his works freely in hope of gathering a following of patrons. Completed (digital) works have no definable monetary value. People creative within a particular cultural genre compete with each other in an open market. Reputation, this suggesting ability to produce pleasing works, becomes the only commodity regarding digitally expressible culture. The Internet makes patronage in small gobbets from ordinary people accessible. the time of Leonardo da Vinci, patrons were exclusively wealthy individuals and institutions. Under this regimen, people believing they can produce something other people might find informative or entertaining must seek patronage from anticipated admirers. The alternative is abandonment of the spurious notion of 'intellectual property' and replacement by entitlement to attribution. Business models based on that assumption eventually shall fail. Try as people might, digital sequences cannot be forced to behave as if physical entities. I am not discussing law but instead reality. The distinction exists only in the realm of physical goods.

Comixology account