Goodbye, Copyright. Farewell, Tenured Guilds.
It began with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
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Somehow creators still need to be able to get paid for their work. Andy Weir, who wrote "The Martian" had an interesting experience in that he produced his story and posted it on his web site for free. Later, at reader's requests, he provided a mechanism to download it. He still had people having problems doing this and to help he put it on Amazon for .99 -- the minimum they would allow a regular price. It took off and became a top seller. It appears that the convenience of being able to download the story and have it part of Amazon libraries was sufficient for a large number of people to be willing to pay $.99 for it.
As for research data, the system is different. In that arena, authors often pay to have the articles published. The service provided is peer review. But it delays not only who is first but the availability of the data in a fast moving world. I recently watched a TED talk where they were sequencing variations on ebola and immediately posting them to the web so that researchers could use them on the epidemic. They couldn't wait for a journal and peer review. Perhaps some review system can be set up that allows papers to be qualified after online posting. One would also need some archiving mechanism so that papers could be linked to with the expectation that links would persist. Perhaps this service could serve as the 'bottle' that is sold.