In an age of accelerating innovation, the question of whether technology serves the Common Good is more urgent than ever. From the disintermediation of music to the democratization of 3D printing and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the fundamental struggle is the same: Who controls the value generated by technology — and who benefits from it? At the heart of this struggle lies the issue of intellectual property (IP) capture versus regenerative empowerment. As we enter a new era defined by the convergence of physical, digital, and biological systems, the imperative is clear: Technology must be reimagined to serve people and planet, not just platforms and profit.

The Music Industry: From Disruption to Platform Capture

The music industry offers one of the clearest examples of how technology can both liberate and entrap creators. In the early 2000s, Napster disrupted the distribution of music by enabling peer-to-peer sharing. For the first time, music was uncoupled from physical media, and listeners gained unprecedented access. But this democratization came at a cost: artists were entirely cut out of the economic equation. Napster’s model — though innovative — violated copyright law and was shut down after high-profile lawsuits from artists like Metallica and Dr. Dre.

In response, Spotify emerged with a promise of legality and fairness. Yet while Spotify normalized music streaming, it institutionalized a new form of IP capture: one where platforms and labels profited while many artists received fractions of a cent per stream. The platform’s opaque algorithms, preference for volume over quality, and dependency on major labels created an environment where only the most viral — or the most connected — artists thrive.

To shift power back to artists, solutions have emerged: direct-to-fan platforms like Bandcamp and Patreon, cooperative streaming platforms like Resonate, and user-centric royalty models that pay artists based on individual user listening habits. These approaches aim to re-center value around creators and their communities — a regenerative alternative to extractive platform logic.

3D Printing: The Battle for Design Sovereignty

Much like music, the world of 3D printing is a battleground for IP and creator control. Digital design files — STL, OBJ, and beyond — are the new MP3s, easily shared, modified, and monetized. Platforms like Thingiverse and Shapeways provide centralized marketplaces for designs, but often with unclear IP protections and uneven revenue models. As with music streaming, platforms often benefit more than the designers who create the files.

Designers face real risks: unauthorized replication, mass-production without royalties, and the stripping of attribution. At the same time, the tools of empowerment are available. Blockchain technology enables provenance tracking, ensuring that creators get credit and compensation. Decentralized marketplaces and designer co-ops can reclaim ownership and distribution. Most importantly, regenerative principles in design — emphasizing repairability, circularity, and local fabrication — align 3D printing with both ecological and social sustainability.

Just as the music industry needs to transition from streaming extraction to artist empowerment, so too must 3D printing shift from platform dependency to creator sovereignty.

AI: The Ultimate IP Capture Engine

If music and design represent early battlegrounds, AI is the frontier of the IP war. Large language models, generative art engines, and voice synthesis tools are trained on vast datasets — much of which is scraped from the internet without consent. This includes everything from public social media posts to copyrighted songs, images, and writings. The result: AI systems that can replicate styles, generate content, and perform tasks once unique to human creators — without attribution, permission, or compensation.

AI companies justify this under the banner of “fair use” or innovation, but the ethical implications are stark. Artists, writers, musicians, and everyday users are contributing — often unknowingly — to systems that may replace or exploit them. This is IP capture at scale, invisible and systemic.

To counteract this, we must envision a regenerative AI future:

• Consent-based training data
• Smart contracts and blockchain tools for automatic royalties
• Creator-owned models and cooperatives
• Data dividends and collective bargaining
• Ethical regulation and public governance

Here, the common good depends not just on open access, but on just and participatory systems of value creation.

From Extraction to Regeneration

What unites these three domains — music, 3D printing, and AI — is the core tension between extraction and regeneration. In extractive systems, value is siphoned from creators and communities to platforms and investors. In regenerative systems, value is co-created, shared, and sustained across stakeholders, with attention to long-term well-being.

To transition, we must reimagine IP not as a weapon of control, but as a tool for stewardship and inclusion. Technologies must be designed for participation — what some call “cosmo-localism” — where innovation is shared globally but adapted and governed locally. This is the essence of the common good in the digital age.

Territorial Rights and Cultural IP: The Case of Antique Sculptures

As digital technologies enable the reproduction of everything from songs to sculptures, a pressing question arises: Who holds the rights to heritage — and who benefits when it is digitized, shared, or sold? This is especially relevant in the age of 3D scanning and printing, where antique sculptures and artifacts from museums around the world can now be replicated with extraordinary fidelity.

For many institutions — especially museums in the Global South — this creates both a risk and an opportunity.

The Risk: Cultural Extraction 2.0

• Private companies and platforms are scanning public collections and selling or distributing 3D models without compensation to the museums or originating cultures.
• This continues the colonial logic of cultural appropriation — turning sacred, historical, or communal objects into commodified, uncontextualized consumer products.
• Once a 3D model is made public, the cultural stewards — often underfunded — lose both control and potential income.

The Opportunity: Regenerative Digital Heritage

By establishing territorial digital rights, museums and cultural institutions can regain control over the digital replication of their collections:

• Geo-tagged licensing models where downloads are tracked and monetized
• Revenue-sharing agreements with 3D model platforms
• Smart contracts that automatically pay the museum when a file is accessed or printed
• Cultural co-ownership models including Indigenous communities

This turns the museum into a custodian of cultural regeneration, ensuring that digital copies fund preservation, education, and local prosperity. When a sculpture from a Ghanaian or Indian museum is downloaded for 3D printing, the file should include embedded metadata and smart payment rails that route funds back to the institution or region of origin.

By embedding territorial rights into digital files, we can move from cultural theft to cultural justice — reclaiming the commons not only for individuals and creators but for civilizations.

When Technology Undermines the Common Good

Not all technology serves society equally. When designed or deployed irresponsibly, technology can actively harm the common good in the following ways:

• Concentration of Power: Platforms and monopolies consolidate control over creative expression, communication, and economic life, reducing democratic access and amplifying inequality.
• Uncompensated Extraction: Data, creativity, and culture are harvested without fair exchange — often from marginalized communities — enriching a few while disempowering the many.
• Amplification of Inequality: Automation, outsourcing, and gigification erode labor protections and widen economic disparities.
• Cultural Erasure: Rapid digitization and commodification can strip context and meaning from cultural heritage, replacing diversity with uniformity.
• Environmental Damage: High-energy technologies and planned obsolescence accelerate ecological breakdown and material waste.
• Opacity and Surveillance: Black-box algorithms, facial recognition, and AI decision systems threaten human rights, privacy, and agency.

To confront these harms, a regenerative approach must address not only the technological tools but the values and power structures behind them. This includes redesigning platforms, realigning incentives, and reshaping governance to ensure dignity, justice, and sustainability for all.

The Case for Regenerative Governance

Technology does not evolve in a vacuum; it is shaped by the political and economic systems in which it is embedded. To truly align technology with the common good, we must advocate for:

1. Democratic oversight of tech platforms and AI models
2. New legal frameworks for IP in the age of digital replication
3. Public investment in open-source, non-extractive tech
4. Partnerships with private entities to scale non-extractive tech – retaining cultural rights for communities
5. Education and empowerment for creators, users, and communities
6. Interdisciplinary collaboration across ethics, law, technology, and the arts’
7. Governance models that prioritize transparency, accountability, and inclusion in technology design and deployment.

Reclaiming the Commons (and the Common Good)

The future of technology will be defined by who owns the means of creation and distribution. As with land, water, and air, the digital realm must be treated as a commons — not a corporate empire. Whether it’s a song, a 3D design, or a dataset that feeds an AI, the goal must be the same: equity, dignity, and shared prosperity.

We stand at a crossroads. One path leads to deeper extraction and centralized control. The other leads to regenerative systems where value circulates, communities thrive, and technology serves humanity — not the other way around.

The Common Good demands that we choose the latter.

Christian Sarkar is the editor of this site, and is a co-founder of the Regenerative Marketing Institute. Philip Kotler is the father of modern marketing. Together, they’ve authored Wicked Problems: What can we do in this Time of Collapse,  Regeneration: The Future of Community in a Permacrisis World, and Brand Activism: From Purpose to Action. 

DISCLOSURE: Christian Sarkar and Philip Kotler are both on the advisory board of the artclone company artficial.com