This paper tries to reveal the tansformation of information from "cultural product" to "economic good", to highlight its specific characters in the market economy framework and to make evaluations and references to the present situation and the future scenario. This change began as a result of the coincidence of two inventions which revolutionised the scene and paved the way for the development of the market: the invention of the press technology and the creation of the intellectual property rights. The assembly of the idea ant its carrier sanctioned the creation of the saleable product; human creativity finally found the possibility of entering the market, assuring to those who controlled the copyright (i.e. publishers) the possibility of acting as monopolists in the marketplace. But, the crucial question is whether the instruments and concepts that have been assimilated and used so far, are still effective, or whether a new system is necessary in the case of the present transformation of several industrial economies into the single information society.
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Paper provided by Cattaneo University (LIUC) in its series LIUC Papers in Economics with number
44.