The business of culture in our post-industrial times

Abstract

Media business models and intellectual property regimes are currently based on the economics of the mass-produced thing, originating with the book. The public allowed specialist companies to control the creative output for society because it required a great deal of capital to make the work available to the public. Copyright ensured that printer/publishers could obtain a return on their investment. As the book dematerializes into the browser, undermining the enforceability of copyright, and as 3D printing allows all manufacturing to become personal, what might the new business models for culture and creativity look like? I look both backwards to Kinko's/laserprinter/Pagemaker zine culture and forward to 3D printing to try to ascertain some lessons.