I agree, very important. Thanks for a great article, a lot of really good points covered.

Another facet of the issue might be virtual VR/AR world assets. Creators within most of these environments to date know the problem well. They create digital art, or real world representations in those environments, often with many weeks, months, or even years of concentrated effort, which the owners of the system generally profit from. Then when revenue is no longer being generated by them, perhaps because the creator no longer has the funds to maintain storage costs, they are deleted. I have seen many valuable assets disappear like this. We can’t blame the system suppliers in those cases, their companies have to maintain profit.

It should be recognised that all virtual data which has ever been appreciated has high value. In fact, ironically, these artifacts themselves are actually a better definition of value than the conventional money currently paid to keep them in existence. It is the wrong way round. The creators of those valuable artifacts should always receive some reward for adding them to the world. Custodians of such data should feel honoured to have it, and should be obligated to pass on fair share of any rewards due to the creators.

I believe the answer is a permanent distributed publicly owned non-profit virtual world, with the capacity to store all forms of digital artifacts, and the ability to reward the creators for their true value added to the world indefinitely.

There is at least one such system like that being worked on. More details are in my profile.