Jamie King: Copyright and the new technological environment

Two recent technological developments - the digital format and the network - are starting to make the old model of distributing and paying for cultural content based on copyright protection seem antiquated. Copyright - the right of a creator to exert control over the reproduction of a work and to sell others this control - is a legal device which was designed for an earlier social/technological moment. Digital copies - whether of text or anything else - can now be produced almost infinitely at next to zero cost. We need to examine new models for funding creative works - to address the central question of how cultural producers will survive under the new paradigm. Where many in what is loosely referred to as 'industry' regard the challenge to copyright as essentially hostile, others see it as positive, and potentially socially transformative - seeking first and foremost to explore positive models for creativity in the new technological context.