Convergence CultureA number of websites are allowing users to buy a share in luxury objects, but can this sharing concept apply to the arts, asks Haydn Shaughnessy

ArtWorld Salon, a web debate about art, led with this tortured question last week: "$72.8 million for a Rothko? $71.7 million for a Warhol? More than $870 million spent on contemporary art in a single week? What does it all mean?" What makes these sums surprising, though, is not their size. It is the fact that people still wish to own.

In the wider circle of luxury living, the trend is away from ownership towards renting and co-owning. The website FractionalLife.com is a window onto this world where the rich no longer want the responsibility of owning. Everything from a Gucci handbag to a night club to a hotel room or a super yacht can now be co-owned or rented from the partner websites on the site.

The reason, says FractionalLife chief Piers Brown, is because it makes better economic sense. People with hedge-fund bonuses, the guys in the IFSC, City of London and New York who bag a million-dollar bonus every Christmas, tend to be smart, says Piers, and realise that you use luxury items very occasionally, so it is better to own them only when you need them. Only a dummy would leave an E-type Jaguar in the garage for 300 days of the year.

This utilitarian approach to luxury living, however, is not yet having a major impact on the wider art market, where hedge-fund bonuses are believed to be driving up prices. When it comes to art it seems people adopt an all-or-nothing attitude.

There are examples of fractionally owned art. Artvest.co.uk is a website-based buying syndicate for people who want to co-purchase contemporary artworks. Glasgow-based Artvest "was set up out of frustration with the limited collecting opportunities available to individuals who are passionate about contemporary art, but who do not have either the funds or the expertise to build a high quality collection of contemporary work on their own", says the website. By attracting people from around the web, and pooling funds to buy into the idea, the company has been able to hire experts to advise on what works should go into the collection.

Theartflex.com is altogether more vaulted in its ambitions and price plan.You join it in order to co-own the works of the masters - Picasso, Rubens, van Gogh, Gauguin. The site is run from California and is designed for high net-worth individuals who want to round out their investment portfolio with art, "the new asset class".

The internet is the perfect medium for attracting interest in the co-ownership of culture. Myfootballclub.co.uk is an attempt to get 50,000 people to sign up to a soccer club co-ownership scheme and already, in less than a month, the site has more than 26,000 members, each pledging £35. FractionalLife lists six websites that promote the idea of co-owning vineyards. And you can co-own a polo retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York. The bug doesn't seem to be biting the finer arts community yet, though.

This is all the more curious if you consider the fact that public galleries are historically a co-ownership form and if you look at what is happening in the iCommons movement. This is an outgrowth of creative commons, the group that campaigns for looser rather than tighter intellectual property laws. It is the arts equivalent of creative commons, and places more emphasis on music and books.

ICommons wants to encourage "universal participation in the cultural and knowledge domains". One of its remits is to promote international collaborative projects among cultural groups. An important part of doing all this is to ensure that cultural works are free to be used and re-used. An artistic or cultural producer should be able to take any cultural object and re-use it in some way - for example, if I photograph a sculpture, am I free to use that photograph in my art? Am I free to use images from around the web in a collage? An important step for convergence culture is clarifying those questions in favour of re-use, in effect marking the point where art works become a form of common property.

Even with all this activity in collaborative co-production, and a history of public ownership, the arts community and its public seem to be relatively immune to co-ownership.

Is it just because an art work is ultimately one of the few objects that will remain unique? If so, then the cordon sanitaire around unique works of art could become a thing of the past, as any image, performance, music or object is pooled across the digital world, ready to take its place in the first generation of net masters. Maybe then a sceptical public will be convinced that ownership isn't everything.