Copyright is a difficult concept to characterize.

A copyright is a means for a creator to establish ownership over a given "work" when created for the first time in tangible form. A neutral third party, the Library of Congress in the United States, acts as the repository for the works. Intended as a means for promoting creativity, a copyright is designed to encourage public accessibility to a creative work by enabling the recognition of property rights over the work. The scope of the copyright, as a legal contract between the creator of the work and the public, is bounded by "fair use."

Essentially in consideration of a publicly sanctioned monopoly of sorts, consumers have rights too, originally for criticism and research but also including such acts as parody.

A seemingly simple concept is further complicated when the copyright is then used to represent the various parties who contribute to a particular work. For instance, a "song" may have a number of bundled rights: a song right for the songwriter, a mechanical right when a copy is made by a device, a performance right, etc. The limiting factor is only how much any particular creator contributed to the work as it is considered in tangible form and how each person is to be compensated. Yet the simple fact is that by and large, consumers care little about the mechanics of copyright. Further, in trying to separate promotion from the act of piracy, the legal, not technical, merits of making music available for creating recognition, sales and an impetus for purchase is maddeningly complex.

For instance, a promotional CD provided to program directors at radio stations, the radio broadcast of the song itself, the shrinkage evident between discrepancies of what was ordered and what was actually manufactured at a pressing plant represent leaks by which any song can be exploited by dedicated pirates. Any unauthorized copy of the music signal can be made available to all points of access to the Internet.

Encouraging distinctions between genuine media signals and pirated media signals is the best course of action for owners of copyrights to ensure financial gain.

Fact: In order to evaluate the potential salability of a song, it must be stored in a freely accessible form. Typically a standard audio workstation with several tracks stores the recorded signals, and any manipulations and mastering represent the final product. Once stored, only subsequent recognition and exchange can attribute value.

Recognition buys the artist a larger initial potential market for her works. It does not guarantee sales. It is also not possible to definitively say with consistency how many copies of any song should be sold given some expectation of sharing by any number of purchasers.

This blurring between copyright sale and successful creation of a fan is the timing hurdle evident to anyone involved in the speculative business of selling media content. When Picasso said people only seek his signature, not his art, his statement relates to the profound value of recognition. In Picasso's prolific career, recognition for recognition's sake created value independent of his contribution to art. One approach for recognition is to give away lower quality versions of work to entice purchases of the same higher quality product. Another is to encourage widespread recognition by encouraging fans and critics alike to record and compare works.

Think for a moment of that oft-cited example of the Grateful Dead, whose hundred or so copyrights represent a small fraction of the number of available and unique performances of any single copyrighted work in their catalog.

Many artists currently spend more time developing an understanding of their audiences and work to encourage an active exchange of ideas, ranging from e-mail vote requested song lists for upcoming concert events to collaborative efforts with other artists who may have similar audiences. They may broaden their appeal by working with artists with separate audiences to enable the creation of new fans. A third approach has gained currency in the software business: seeking to leverage the talents of many individuals for works which require the efforts of many, i.e. the open source movement. Recognition of the work generally precedes individual contributions.

A result of the open source movement has resulted in the Linux operating system, Apache server software. Collaboration by a number of people for the purpose of improving a particular software application would seem to require compensation, but the means of recognition of the work itself, not its creators, forms much of the incentive to keep the work ongoing. That the work can later be monetized into cash, a job offer or an initial public offering, is a matter of the timing of events in how value is created. There are plenty of examples of open source models that have not achieved success; arguably the opening of the source code for the Netscape browser is such an example. The assumption is made that whatever work is first created, the "rights" would be shared amongst the creators who volunteered efforts with foreknowledge that the work would be made freely available to any and all. Intent and market response form the ruler by which success is to be measured in any open source project.