A New Paradigm for Content Producers

The production, distribution, and consumption of information goods have endured numerous challenges over the years. Most recently, the Internet and digital consumer technologies have severely disrupted established intellectual-property regimes, enabling the near costless reproduction and distribution of information commodities. In addition, sophisticated tools have enabled new collaborative spaces (such as blogs, social websites, and so forth) for media production and distribution, posing new challenges to traditional creatorproducer-consumer paradigms. This article analyzes the present situation's main technological characteristics, its economic implications, and the industry's response-and outlines a possible solution to the problems.