## Ownership in a World Where Copying Is Free Over the past few years, my thinking about ownership—specifically _digital_ ownership—has changed in a way that now feels difficult to reverse. I no longer believe that anyone can truly own something that can be copied at zero cost. That idea sounds radical until you examine what ownership has historically depended on: scarcity. Physical things are scarce because they require time, labor, and resources to reproduce. A house, for example, cannot be copied without effort. But the _design_ of a house can be. Blueprints can be photocopied, emailed, and shared endlessly without diminishing the original. Digital media lives entirely in this second category. Music, movies, photographs, videos, and software can be copied perfectly, instantly, and without cost. When copying is free, the traditional concept of ownership begins to break down—not philosophically, but practically. ## What I Mean by Ownership When I talk about ownership here, I’m not talking about authorship, attribution, or creative credit. I’m also not talking about creative control or censorship. I’m talking very specifically about **copyright-based ownership**—the system of licensing we’ve built around intangible assets. Under this system, when someone creates a song, a movie, or an image, they are granted exclusive rights to distribute that work. They alone can license it. Others may only access or share it with permission, typically in exchange for money. Ownership, in this sense, means exclusive legal control over copying and distribution. That is the form of ownership I believe is fundamentally unstable when applied to things that can be copied freely. ## Copyright as a Transitional System Modern copyright is often treated as a natural extension of ownership, but historically it’s quite new. Creativity existed long before licensing frameworks and royalties. Art flourished without per-copy enforcement. What feels increasingly clear to me is that copyright functions less like a natural system and more like a transitional one—something we’re maintaining not because it aligns with human behavior, but because we’re spending enormous resources to force it to. A significant portion of public money goes toward enforcing copyright law. Law enforcement, courts, and regulatory bodies exist to prevent people from sharing things they are technically capable of sharing effortlessly. This leads to a strange contradiction: most people pay taxes to enforce laws that primarily restrict their own freedom to share culture. That doesn’t feel like a stable equilibrium. ## “But Why Would Anyone Create Anything?” The most common objection to this line of thinking is predictable: If art can be copied freely, why would anyone make it? The interesting thing is—we already know the answer. Creation didn’t begin with copyright, and it won’t end with it. Before modern licensing systems, many artists—especially classical composers—were supported through patronage. Figures like Mozart and Beethoven did not earn money every time their music was performed, nor did they receive royalties in the modern sense. Instead, they often relied on regular support from wealthy patrons or institutions, which allowed them to focus on creating rather than selling individual works. The patron wasn’t buying individual works. They were supporting the _existence_ of a creator. That model never disappeared. It simply re-emerged under a new name. ## Paying for the Promise vs. Paying for the Work Patreon is not an accidental name—it’s a revival of an old idea. People don’t pay per song or per video. They contribute regularly so creators can continue making things. The work is often shared freely. Support comes from trust, appreciation, and demonstrated value. This stands in contrast to how licensing works today, particularly in film. When someone buys a movie ticket, they pay _before_ consuming the product. What they’re really purchasing isn’t the movie itself, but the promise that it will be good. The system rewards what looks compelling in advance—trailers, branding, franchises—rather than what ultimately delivers meaning. As a result, the movies that make the most money are often the ones that _appear_ most attractive, not necessarily the ones that are most thoughtful or impactful. A patronage-based model flips this incentive. If something looks impressive but turns out to be hollow, everyone can see that. The work may spread, but support won’t follow. Over time, creators are rewarded not for persuasion, but for fulfillment. This also explains why so many good ideas never get made today. Projects are routinely rejected not because they lack merit, but because they don’t look like they’ll sell. Entire categories of creativity are filtered out before they ever reach an audience. ## Scale Is Becoming Cheaper, Not More Expensive One objection to patronage is scale—especially for expensive productions like films. But cost is already collapsing. Music provides the clearest example. What once required orchestras, studios, and massive capital investment can now be accomplished by a single person with a computer. Production costs that once ran into the millions now routinely fall into the hundreds or thousands of dollars. This isn’t a small improvement. It’s a structural shift. Film is following the same trajectory. Cameras get cheaper. Editing software improves. Visual effects become accessible. Small teams—or even individuals—can now produce work that would have been impossible outside of major studios just a few decades ago. As production costs fall, the need for centralized, risk-averse capital diminishes with them. ## Open Source as a Working Example This future isn’t hypothetical. It already exists in open-source software. Open-source projects are freely available. Anyone can copy them. Anyone can distribute them. Ownership in the licensing sense is deliberately relinquished. And yet, many of these projects are actively funded. Creators are supported through a mix of patronage, sponsorships, grants, and institutional backing. Individuals and organizations pay not because they’re forced to, but because the software is useful and its continued existence matters to them. Funding isn’t tied to per-copy sales. Distribution is unrestricted. Value is demonstrated through use, not marketing. Support follows reliability, trust, and long-term usefulness. This fits the pattern almost perfectly: - Free copying - No artificial scarcity - Creators funded in advance or continuously - Reputation as the primary economic signal ## A Prediction, Not a Proposal I’m not proposing a system everyone should adopt, and I’m not making a moral argument. I’m making a prediction. Ownership of digital media through restrictive licensing exists today, but I don’t believe it can coexist with human nature indefinitely. It requires constant enforcement against behavior that feels natural—sharing, copying, and distributing culture. Systems that demand increasing force to maintain themselves tend not to last. Systems that align with how people already behave tend to persist. I don’t think creativity disappears when ownership fades. I think it becomes more honest. And I suspect that, over time, we’ll stop paying to restrict ourselves—and start supporting what we genuinely value instead.