To remain operational during COVID-19 and cater to an audience stuck at home, artists, producers, theatres and museums are all providing content online. A proliferation of live streams, audio books, online events, performances and exhibitions is being delivered, direct to our screens, without costing us a cent. At a challenging time for providers, Times of Malta looks at who is bearing the cost of the digital shift and if it’s reasonable for consumers to expect it for free.
To maintain their output and ensure projects under way are not entirely abandoned, artists and producers are naturally transitioning online.
Adapt or die, as the saying goes, and indeed, there may be no alternative. But if providers are paying to produce content and paying to digitise it, how can they afford not to charge for it? If the situation is unsustainable, there could be ramifications for the arts sector’s delicate financial ecosystem.
So with the future of artistic production itself quite possibly at stake, as consumers, is it okay for us not to pay?
To answer this question we must first understand what culture is, what our rights to it are and to whom it belongs.
What is culture?
The United Nations...
