1
Arguably no industry in the world today has been left untouched by the revolution that began with digital technologies and the internet. Each industry has come up against unique challenges, but those in the content industries—publishing among them—whose business models revolve around selling access to content, have been most deeply challenged by a radical shift from a world of content scarcity to a world of content abundance. In the digital age, it has never been cheaper or easier to publish content. Barriers to entry for creators have nearly evaporated, creating immense competition and an unprecedented and unparalleled crowding of the marketplace. The valid fear that arises from this change is that the economic value of content is threatened when it is no longer a scarce resource, and the traditional leaders of the content industries have been trying to grapple with how to minimise the damage of such a change to their business models or, more sensibly, how they can adapt to it. However, a threat can also be viewed as an opportunity, and while the legacy publishers struggle, new players have entered the market, with the advantage of being able to build a business model from scratch that acknowledges and leverages an environment of abundant content. Others again, as part of the Open Web movement, have taken the opportunity to dismiss commercial imperatives and instead embrace different value systems, where community and shared interests prevail[1]. What results is a climate of tension and innovation, where the future of the content industries is yet to be determined.
It must be acknowledged that by enabling the current environment of abundant content, emerging technologies have highlighted an issue that has always existed in content industries; that information and cultural products are not standard economic goods, and as such the traditional markets around them have always been tenuous[2]. This is because content is “non-rival”, meaning that it is infinitely replicable and any one person consuming it, does not deprive any other from also consuming it. It is largely through copyright laws limiting production rights that content creators, or more specifically copyright holders, have been able to profit from the sale of content, but second-hand sales and other methods of sharing content have always posed a challenge. The market around content has also placed the emphasis on the physical product—print books, in the case of publishing—relying on the cost of production and its tangible clues as to the value of the content to justify their monetary value. However, along with being non-rival, informational and creative content is also different from most economic goods in that it has value to both producers and consumers as a non-market resource, and as a contributor to societal welfare[3]. This has placed a tension at the heart of content industries where socially valued material must be joined with traditional market approaches in order to continue t