It has been said that the value of intellectual property is heading toward zero. This is because of the widespread ability to pass around information and to share so much easier than before the proceeds of creative output. It now costs virtually nothing to put something out there compared to the past when it was an expensive process only afforded to the elite. It's no big deal now to publish something and so the old scarcity/high value principle less applies. Creators now put stuff out not for money but just for the hell of it. Financial recompense was often not the motive in any case for artists but was more to do with recognition.

Of course if the value of intellectual property plummeted it would make a difference to creators but I wonder just how much of a difference given that historically the value of most creative works was virtually zero anyway. In other words it was always only a tiny percentage of output that ever translated into money. That was as true in the past as it is today. The prospect of your work being important enough for people to want it AND pay for it was always remote. Fact is, the copyright system only ever served to make a very small amount of people very wealthy. The rest got next to nothing for their endeavours if anything at all. Some may have experienced being the hip thing for a short period before returning to obscurity having made no money.

My mind was often exercised in the past thinking about alternatives to the copyright system but these were only ever idle musings. Until now that is. Now that intellectual property has increasingly no financial value then there is a pressing need to find new ways for creative people to be able to be rewarded. It is possible that soon not even the lucky few whose work is applauded and relevant will be able to live from the proceeds of what they create. In the future it may turn out that artists and writers able to amass personal fortunes from their works will have been a phenomenon specific to a historical epoch - i.e the industrial era. With the breakdown of mass society into infinite splinters then there can no longer be the one piece of music, the one book, or film, or play that defines the genre but many. Millions of songs and scripts and novels will be competing for attention. This is already the case. Soon an artwork may have no value in itself as a 'thing' and so if creative people are to be able to pay the rent then other ways of financing them have to be sought.

What might these new ways be? Perhaps sponsorship or contracts of employment are the way. Perhaps it might be akin to the patronage days when an artist required support from those in power. Perhaps a form of charitable donation is possible adapted to suit the modern age. Or public subsidy. These options may have some advantages over the copyright system in that it is actually the artists themselves as individuals that are being funded for what they are and what they contribute as opposed to being contracted as commodities. Art as commodity was always a rather crude way of defining value anyway open to huge distortions and exaggerations of worth.

In conclusion, if intellectual property is heading to zero then at least maybe here lies an opportunity to give up thinking of creative output as property and find other more workable ways of supporting artists, ways that befit a sophisticated society.