Evolving Money: Rebuilding the Creator Economy (Sponsored Content)

Because you're a subscriber to this Bloomberg podcast, we thought you'd be interested in a sponsored podcast called Evolving Money. Produced by Coinbase and Bloomberg Media Studios, it explores how money has changed over the centuries and whether cryptocurrency is just the next logical evolution of how we pay for things and store long term value. Here's a recent episode.

Every day, billions of people share their creativity online. But when their creative work goes viral, who benefits? Imagine a young woman, a dancer with a modest social media following. One morning, she comes up with a new dance at the kitchen table and posts a video. Her followers don't just like it and scroll on. They start imitating her moves and posting their own versions of the dance, and big media channels get a ready made story by covering the viral craze. There's even a cheeky SNL skit. The platform she originally posted on is benefiting from the traffic and ad revenue, and they decide

The stationers are everybody who's involved in the making and distribution and sale of books. So printers, binders, type founders, booksellers, the people who sell the books to the public.

That's doctor Adrian Johns. He chairs the history department at the University of Chicago, specializing in the histories of science, the book, media, and information. This group of publishers, the stationers, have a royal warrant to print, and this warrant protects the stationers from competition. It

was essentially a monopoly, a a kind of cartel that looked after the whole trade.

Locke is one of the loudest voices in a chorus of thinkers, writers, and printers calling for an end to the stationers' monopoly. And eventually, in 16/95, the crown lets its royal warrant with the stationers expire.

When that act lapses, there's no legal sanction anymore against pirating books. It's a kind of golden age for literary piracy. So whatever you write is free gain for anybody.

This period of anarchy lasts for about 15 years until 1710, when parliament passes a new act, the statute of Anne. Now if any other person who isn't explicitly approved by the author to print or reprint their work tries to reproduce it, the author can basically say, hey, stop. That's mine, and ask a court for an injunction. This was, in essence, the birth of copyright law. Sounds like a big improvement. Right? But the publishers respond by forming cartels called Congers to reclaim their power. In

practice, if you have the 12 biggest publishers in London all collaborating on this, they have enormous power to de facto. These congress kind of act to preserve the same kinds of rights that the station's company had always registered before.