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The internet is a copy machine

Kevin Kelly writes about what values start becoming more important when copies are free:

The internet is a copy machine….

Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order….

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied….

Trust cannot be copied. You can’t purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you’ll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.

There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy….

From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free…

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The eight categories are: Findability, Patronage, Embodiment, Accessibility, Authenticity, Interpretation, Personalization, Immediacy.

[via: Open Access News]