Cato on Copyright

Great article today over on Cato about copyright being stretched until it's broken. In many comments around the web, the sensible reaction is "well, let's abolish copyright."

I don't necessarily disagree, even as a content creator.

I thought this bit in the article was really important:

Adding more “content” will strictly speaking produce no value — whether culturally or economically. What’s valuable is supplying a context where people can come together to create meaning out of abundance. The digital world poses questions whose answers can’t remain within the digital sphere. A key challenge is to relate the digital to that which is not digital: time, space, human relationships, and so forth.

The digital world poses questions whose answers can’t remain within the digital sphere. A key challenge is to relate the digital to that which is not digital: time, space, human relationships, and so forth. Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, has recently captured it well: When copies are superabundant, they become worthless, while things which can’t be copied become scarce and valuable. What counts in the end are “uncopyable values,” qualities which are “better than free.”

This "frame of reference" in the first paragraph, and the "uncopyable" values in the second, I really think are the key to the next for-profit generation of entertainment.

It's important to note that "for-profit" segment, as the not-for-profit content creation market will continue to explode, and erode the ability of a large segment of people in the entertainment industry to make a living. This is simply the way the world changes.

So how are you going to evolve your style?