Page:The digital public domain.pdf/79

52 as cheap as paper and pencil; and digital technology may prove his vision right.

On the distribution side, a similar if less visible process is taking place. Digital goods that are distributed through the Internet are light rather than heavy, and use up a limited amount of storage space. But even more so because the technological endowment held by the public at the receiving end has in the meantime deeply changed. Even in the past, the consumer had to make an investment in technology, by purchasing a radio or a television set, a record player or a tape recorder. Since the beginning of the digital age, the scale of a minimum unit of the technological endowment at the receiving end — for example, the memory of a PC — has started to be largely in excess of the average needs of the consumer; and as a rule each unit is interoperable with all the others. A similar analysis can be reiterated in connection with file-sharing. Whatever legal assessment we may pass of this practice, its ultimate technological ramifications cannot be in doubt. Here we have enormous excess capacity residing with the public at the receiving end; and this excess capacity can be mobilized to create distributive networks of extraordinary scale, scope and effectiveness.

In this novel context, it would seem that the setting up of a relationship between creator and business no longer has the same compelling rationale it once had. Digital copies are (nearly) perfect; and can be duplicated at no cost at the receiving end. Therefore, in a number of situations both the “factory” and the physical distribution chain are no longer indispensable. Creators can increasingly access markets without engaging in the trilateral relationship that used to be characteristic of dealings in copyright. Indeed, these technological determinants enable creators to make works directly available to the public. It is even more remarkable that an increasingly large number of members of the public are in turn grabbing the opportunity offered by the technology available