What the Cultural Sector Can Learn from Enron

Like the energy industry we in the cultural sector are now dealing heavily in intangibles, and discovering that the distinction between materials, information, and money is not fixed but fluid. The new environment has intensified the "unbundling" of property rights in creative works, a phenomenon that had only begun to occur in the analog realm. As a result digital works can, like Enron's disappearing assets, easily slip through our institutional fingers. Keeping a work of art that is "born digital" is not just a matter of storing it safely and away from heat and light: it must be migrated to a new platform when the software to run it becomes obsolete or unsupported.