When reproduction had high transaction costs, copyright was a feasable way to achieve this. The question should be: “how can creators be rewarded when reproduction is cheap?” not “how can we do copyright on the Web?”

The utilitarian has the notion of ‘global welfare’ as the objective, instead of it being the epiphenomenon – one that arises when the individual’s liberty is the objective (to be protected against commercial privilege).

Without copyright, individuals can still exchange their intellectual work for whatever price the consequently free market will bear. The price of copies will undoubtedly be very low, but there’s no reason why intellectual work should become less valuable as a consequence.

If you can only conceive of selling intellectual work via the sale of copies then the market for intellectual work without copyright must appear like jumping off a ship over the Mariana Trench end without a life belt.

The problem is, we don’t have copyright any more. We just have a means of randomly bankrupting people. The legislation doesn’t actually prevent unauthorised copies.

The ship of copyright is sinking and the skill of swimming, selling intellectual work without a monopoly over the manufacture of copies, is going to become essential. The first step is to convince people that no, the ship cannot be prohibited from sinking. The next step is to reassure people that it is possible to swim.