After content: the business of information in the postcopyright age

It is argued that the age of print is coming to a close more rapidly than had been predicted in the 1990s and that the system of ownership and control of content, embodied in the concept of copyright, will not survive into the digital age. Examples include the recent US legal rulings regarding the Napster (www.napster. com) and MP3 (www.mp3.com) Web sites for exchanging music, that have revealed the inadequacies of the US Copyright Act in the context of a modern communication model. In the post-copyright world of the Internet and World Wide Web, intellectual property will be traded in a different and, arguably, a more rational way. It is stressed that those who have argued most fervently about the primacy of content have not been the authors, artists or originators (the owners of the copyrights), but those who have only had access by licence. It is argued that the debate is not one about the ultimate ownership of content, but about its tradable status and the emphasis is quickly switching away from content and towards context. Some of the new, emerging business models are discussed including: free information acting as promotion for commercial services; advertising and sponsorship; vertically organized information services; and users-as-publishers. Concludes that in the mixed economy of the Web all of these models are likely to survive. In these networked content environments, the legal framework of exchange will be contract and licence while content and copyright will become forgotten concepts.