Joho the Blog
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September 20, 2004
I'm going to NYC today for a meeting sponsored by the World Economic Forum tomorrow, isolated and secure on Governor's Island. (Jeez, have they no sense of: a) sybmolism; b) irony ?) I don't actually understand what the meeting is about or for, but the attendees seem to be about 35 people from the entertainment industry and a few miscellaneous others. The title of the event is "Barbarians at the Gate." Here's a draft of what I plan on saying during my 7 minute slot on the first panel of the morning. Your comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated because I'm feeling quite insecure about this: I'm a capitalist of sorts and a writer of sorts, so I am sympathetic to the idea that creators should be paid for their work. But, I'm also a citizen and a member of cultural communities. So, for one moment, I'd like you to perform an exercise in selective attention. Forget every other consideration — even though they're fair and important considerations — and see if you can acknowledge that a world in which everyone has free access to every work of creativity in the world is a better world. Imagine your children could listen to any song ever created anywhere. What a blessing that would be! Now, I know it takes a Zen-like awareness to keep that one idea there purely, and to beat back the Buts that want to crowd in. And I by no means deny the validity of those Buts. "But if access were free, then artists couldn't support themselves. " I won't want argue with that. "But it wouldn't be fair." I won't argue that either, at least not here. All I want to do is put on the table a value that I think too often is left on the floor because, among commercial media companies, it has no champion: All things being equal, a world that shares art freely is a better world than one where access to art is stifled. And that's at least as important as Sony making its quarterly numbers. Let me stress that I am not arguing for free music, for no copyright, for not paying artists. I am only pointing to a value that should influence the discussion of how to pay for music, how long copyright should hold, and how artists should be supported. Now, the right thing would be to explain my plan for how we can balance these interests. But I don't have one. I'm drawn to the EFF's plan for voluntary collective licensing, but I don't understand the issues well enough to have an actual opinion. So, instead of offering a positive plan, I want to point to an assumption that I believe should not be made in the discussions of this issue: Pay-per-use looks seductively like the fairest solution, but it is not. Pay-per-use is certainly fair for goods that are depleted with every use. But, of course, we don't always insist on it. Not all highways have toll booths and even childless couples pay for public schools. That's because we all benefit indirectly from having freedom of movement and an educated society. While art could be considered a public good of that sort, I think there's an additional reason why we have to resist the temptation to move towards a pay-per-use model. Compare a song or a book with a bicycle. A bike is an object that can move through the economy, being sold and resold at will without itself changing. Songs, books and movies have a bike-like side, but we do this weird thing to them that we don't do with bikes: We publish them. And publishing is a unique and uniquely valuable process. We publish stuff that gets its meaning and its reality by being read, viewed or heard. An unpublished novel is about as meaningful and real as an imaginary novel. It needs its readers to be. But readers aren't passive consumers. We reimagine the book, we complete the vision of the book. Readers appropriate works, make them their own. Listeners and viewers, too. In making a work public, artists enter into partnership with their audience. The work succeeds insofar as the audience makes it their own, takes it up, understands it within their own unpredictable circumstances. It leaves the artist's hands and enters our lives. And that's not a betrayal of the work. That's its success. It succeeds insofar as we hum it, quote it, appropriate it so thoroughly that we no longer remember where the phrase came from. That's artistic success, although it's a branding failure. Stifle that appropriation and you have literally killed culture. You stifle it by making every use of a creative work subject to legal and contractual guidelines. You stifle it by tracking every use of your bits.We need our appropriation of culture to be unimpeded by niggling concerns about nickels and galactic concerns about dimes. Culture grows in cracks in the sidewalk. So, although I promised not to be practical, I think this suggests a guideline for a compromise that supports the highest value of enabling culture to thrive and the lesser and contributing value of enabling artists to make money from their works. Distinguish works from effects. Artists should be compensated if we reproduce their bits outside our home. Not pay-per-view or even pay-per-bit. But tying compensation to the moving of bits like bikes makes sense. But loosen up the strictures on how we appropriate works of art. Ease up on the copyright insanity; you've really gone overboard with that one. End the war on your customers. That's not just evil, it's bad business. Let us do what we want with your bits in our own homes. In the US, don't support the Broadcast Flag. Let us appropriate creative works because that's what it means to be a creative work. Keep fair use as the norm and compensated use as the exception. Cut us some freaking slack, because that's where and how culture grows. One more thing. I've been arguing for using our new, remarkble global connectedness (unevenly distributed, to be sure) to foster the growth of cullture and civilization. That would make you the barbarians, I believe. Posted
by D. Weinberger at September 20, 2004 09:34 AM |
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David, I like this very much, until the second to the last paragraph beginning "Distinguish..." I think you'll lose people who don't already agree with you with phrases like "that's not only evil...". Basically this one paragraph needs to be 2 or 3. Explain a bit more about compensation for the reproduction of bits vs for the bits themselves. It's a subtle point and one that's key. Make sure they get that one. Separate out the copyright points and the war on customer points and develop the "it's bad for business" theme a bit. This, too, is key since they need to understand that the world is changing and that they will be more successful in the long run if they move with the changes vs fighting them. That's scary, because it risks near-term results for longer term results in a business culture that severely punishes missing earnings by even a penny. They have to get that we want to be able to rip an MP3 of a song and share it with a few friends and that this OK - it's like taping a song for a friend and probably grows business over the long haul. The widespread use of cultural works spawns other new works that would not have come into being otherwise. Some of these works will generate earnings. Their best bet for staying alive as businesses is exist in a vibrant eclectic cultural system. Without that, they become a dependent on a monoculture, one which an otherwise trivial plague can wipe out. Posted by: rick gregory on September 20, 2004 12:13 PMI agree with rick,and the "Distinguish..." paragraph is precisely where I began to stumble a bit. It's difficult to know how to reach those who benefit from the status quo, however. What would convince them that letting go of the stranglehold on creativity may be in their interest? (Other than pure altruism.) How much money do they spend on legal hounds to track down infringements and how effective is that hunt in a digital world? How much do they lose to countries that "freely distribute" creative work, i.e. ignore copyright laws? How might they benefit by adopting a new attitude, especially since the digital/webby world has infinite means to "workaround"? It's a brave new world, and the old rules just don't work well anymore. If they want to join in the new process, they'll need to find a way to add something of value to it. Ask them what that might be. Posted by: w on September 20, 2004 01:28 PMWell, I don't want to get lost in delineating fair use (taping for friends was never that, privately listening with friends was and is), but I like what you have to say. The bike and bits thing lost me too, so I guess that means look and see what says exactly what it is you want to be the take-away, especially from a spoken presentation. The most powerful part for me, beside always admiring how David Weinberger speaks himself, is about audience participation in giving life to the work and how appropriation in culture is at the heart of art. Borrowing ideas of tangible property for something that emerges only through acts of participation is turning out to be really perverse. Your article had me dig up Article I Section 8 and notice that we have been using the license granted there without concern for its purpose, not unlike what we've done with the Second Ammendment. Thanks for the thought-provoking piece. Posted by: orcmid on September 20, 2004 01:36 PMDavid, The big problem I see with your premise -- that it is a desirable goal that everyone have free access to every creative work -- is that it creates an expectation of free for "micro-creators". Your argumentation has a big-media thrust. Big media worries about quarterly numbers at the expense of long term profits. OK, I disagree and think it is a convenient strawman, but I'll grant that for your argument. Little media worries about making enough sales to pay the bills and take home enough to make the house payment. To make my living, I write and sell software -- stuff normal people can use. I've worked in a dot-com making a six-figure salary, and produced crap that nobody could use because it's exactly to spec what their bosses asked for yesterday with the purchasing accounts they have to spend down before the end of the fiscal year. I also write software under contract that other companies sell to their customers. Being able to exclude non-payers from using the software I produce is survival, not short term versus long term. A world where my creations are freely available to everybody is a world where I do not eat. Actually, it's a world where I work for a lame big company like my Dad did, and then I come home and go play at the beach or go out to dinner with friends or anything else besides create software that normal people can use for free. You're not going to find me defending the practices and perceived excesses of big media. They can do that themselves. On the subject of intellectual property, I look at things in terms of how they promote the respect by the average guy in the general public for something I might toss out into the ether with a price attached. I don't have time or desire to sue anyone or everyone who has given an activation code for my software to a friend, nor do I have time nor energy to try to shut down warez sites and serial number sharing sites that illegally reduce my effectiveness of convincing users of my software to pay for my efforts. I am, however, disgusted by those things and disgusted by the people who partake in them. So I don't know quite how to react to a goal which is claimed to be universally laudable that gives them cover for their misbehavior by fundamentally changing the expectation. Posted by: Brad Hutchings on September 20, 2004 03:25 PMBrad, Eloquently stated. I see David's piece as trying to get people who are caught up in tactical thinking to put aside very real, practical considerations and look at the place of artistic works in society and culture independent of their function as revenue generating products. Layering that back into the world where creators of digital IP have to be compensated or they have no incentive to create is precisely where the draft lost me a bit. I actually think that the current crop of music stores is not bad and even the light DRM that Apple uses in the iTunes store doesn't alarm me much. The problem is, what if I decide to rip my new CD and share it with the world (or post my software and unlock codes for it)? Before we had the ability to easily share IP with millions of people, it simply wasn't possible for most of us to materially affect the bottom line of companies. Sure, I might tape my Talking Heads album for a friend, but I had no feasible way to do this for hundreds of friends. The technology was a limiting factor. That is no longer true and obviously relying on individual self-restraint is not going to work, But neither are the extreme punitive tactics of the RIAA. Do we pay a bandwidth tax that compensates artists for sharing losses? If so, how do you, as a software developer who might also be losing sales to illegal sharing, get in on this? And is this really fair to those people who don't participate in file sharing? Hard questions, but hey, David's got SEVEN WHOLE MINUTES... Posted by: rick gregory on September 20, 2004 03:55 PMif you want to take the "long view", this whole concept of IP protection is something that has only been around for the last 400 years or so. For hundreds of thousands of years, man lived on this earth without any notion of "owning" IP. Some of the worlds most elequent cultures created masterpieces of architecture, art, and technology and the culture "owned" and benefited from the results. I would put the "recent" evolution of IP rights in the same bucket as our decisions around the use of fossil fuels over the same 400 year span - a downward spiral that needs to be broken soon. Posted by: marty on September 20, 2004 04:50 PMblogging was just discussed in a very favorable light only minutes ago on PBS by Marg. Warner and an LA Times media correspondent, in relation to the value of analysis, rather than as first-hand sources. Posted by: bw on September 20, 2004 07:50 PMI'm hoping you'll deliver the speech wearing a viking helmet and brandishing an axe. Posted by: stavrosthewonderchicken on September 20, 2004 08:25 PMYeah. Kill the first eight parapgrahs (where you qualify the heck out of your talk) and the last four paragraphs (where you go back to qualifying). If you're wondering, that leaves only paragraph nine, the one that begins "We publish stuff that gets its meaning and its reality by being read..." Paragraph ten might be acceptable, if it's punched up a bit. Don't kowtow to these guys. There's no reason to. By paying homage to the king, as you do through most of your article, you are granting that he IS king - and believe me, the people working in the trenches for anything like free culture don't recognize the sovereignity of the copyright cartel. THEIR ability to charge royalities on something that can't be owned, can't be stored and can't be kept secure is a PRIVILEGE (and a state-granted and enforced monopoly privilege at that) - maybe remind them of that. Put some backbone into this talk. -- a barbarian Posted by: Stephen Downes on September 21, 2004 05:13 AMSome random thoughts (and I fear that they don't directly address your points, although they might be worth discussing). The issue is properly one of compensation and whether it is possible/desirable for content aggregators to profit unduly from content creators. I'm surprised more people haven't analyzed EFF's blanket licensing proposals. I've written a preliminary critique of blanket licensing (see http://www.idiotprogrammer.com/sharethemusicday/#compulsory) It's dangerous to lump different types of content into one generic category. For example, there are vast differences between the visual arts (which be enjoyed repeatedly) and the literary arts (which is a one time deal). And nonartistic content (opinion, commentary, journalism) has different characteristics (timeliness is the critical value here). My friend does gigantic canvasses and sells reproductions. He just is not affected by the copyright infringement brouhaha (in contrast to me the novelist, where copyright issues really suck the life force out of me:) Even though the market hasn't yet borne this out, I continue to believe that a patronage/tipping system holds a lot of promise. If a content aggreator provided an easy infrastructure for voluntary tipping, it could occur. Shirky's critique of micropayments might be worth mentioning v. the value of directly compensating artists. (Also, of course, Kling's "Content is crap" dictim). The business model with the most promise (IMHO) is the nondiscriminatory webhosting model. Make content free for viewing, make a little off advertising and charge artists for the right to use the infrastructure (bandwidth, online tools, promotions). Ironically, this isn't terribly different from what we have today, except artists are resigned to giving away content without compensation. It may boil down to social habits changing, and actually I believe the media plays a big role in this (how many critics out there do reviews of Creative Commons content?) Except for incumbents, a lot of artists don't care about the copyright issue anymore, so I wouldn't waste too much time on it. Copyright is a big deal for big media companies only. Another idea. Alternative distribution channels will emerge only when hardware enables it and is widespread For instance, an ebook reader with truly open standards will make it possible to appreciate creative commons literary works. Unsigned artists won't make much money selling mp3's or sign up many premium memberships to mp3's until a critical mass of people have iPod's or irivers in their possession. The business model for content is heavily dependent on hardware, and that is why things like the INDUCE bill are so critical to stop. Posted by: Robert Nagle on September 21, 2004 01:01 PMI'm afraid I find your entire argument pointless because it rests on a lie, namely that this is about compensating artists for their work. There is a small group of "artists" who make significant income from their work. Too much, I think. Does the author of the Harry Potter series or the creator of Star Wars really deserve to be a billionnaire? (For that matter, in a world where most human beings are penniless, does *anyone* deserve to be a billionnaire?) But the vast majority of artists -- whether writers, painters, musicians, or poets -- have to support themselves with a "real" job. So what is all this crap about intellectual property really about? It's about preserving the profits of giant commercial conglomerates who are, in reality, exploiting the very artists that everyone claims to be wanting to protect. Don't buy the bullshit. IP is not about protecting the creators of art and it never has been. It's about restricting the rights of both the artist and the audience for the bottom line benefit of a bunch of middle men who never created anything of value in their lives. I'm in favor of any system that ensures that artists are paid for their efforts. I've yet to see anything on the table that protects them from the real pirates: the studios, the music companies, the publishers, etc. Posted by: Charles F. Munat on September 21, 2004 02:58 PMI'm in favor of paying people for their work. I object to having to pay them over and over for the same thing. I saw Kerry do the Top Ten on Letterman last night. If I wanted to watch it again should I have to pay for it again? What if I want to watch it on the tv downstairs? Pay again? Yet this is exactly what the record companies want me to do. I can download it for 30 days, then pay again for another 30 days. I can download it for my iPod, even though I already have the album or CD. In fact, I have the album and CD, so I've already paid twice for the same thing. Oh, and I bought the greatest hits too, so make that three times. First, let's get rid of all the manufacturing and distribution arms, because I don't need them. Then I can pay the artist via some broker service for the "right to use" their product once, for any medium I personally choose to use it on, as long as I don't use it more than once at a time (i.e. not simultaneously on two or more players). This broker could also have the potential to adjust prices based on demand on a regular basis, though I'm not sure how well that would work. Posted by: Larry Borsato on September 21, 2004 03:18 PMYou might find this interesting Dave: DataLibre. Even if creative works are unhindered by licensing.. we still all need to be free to tinker with it. DataLibre's Mission: "DataLibre is a body working toward getting self-publishers to tag and publish their content in ways that can make them usable by many people for whatever reason they may want them. This in contrast to filling information out on one website for that website to lock away in their treasure chest forever." Posted by: Steve Mallett on September 21, 2004 06:33 PMI design/write/code computer and video games for a living. Each game that is made cost around $10M to produce and all of that money goes to the saleries of close to 100 artist, programers and musicans. Unlike the movie business, no one makes very much money from the production cost. If there is any money to be made, it comes from royalties, and those are very small. You focus on books and music, which are artistic endeavors that can be undertaken by a small number of people, and thanks to technology today, it doesn't cost a lot to produce (or distribute), other then someone's time. People who write articles and give speeches like yours get all caught up in the "artist", but who exactlys is the "artist" of my work? Who is the "artist" of a movie? While I did do the design and am responsible for much of the creative direction (ala the Director), a lot of people worked on the project. It took a lot of money to build the game, all of that came from the publisher. I would love to hear some anti-copyright speeches from real artists. Not big name bands that have already made hundreds of millions of dollars, or small bands that are looking for any kind of exposure, but all the rest of them. Where are they in this debate? Probable on the side of "people not stealing their music". Problem is, we get a bunch of speeches and articles from people that don't create mass-appeal intellectual property for a living. Oh sure, they right books about IP, but are they novelists, musicians, movie directors and writers? No. I want to hear from them. Posted by: Ron on September 21, 2004 06:39 PMhey man, chin up - you are about to do the most important thing ever - and we support you. just wear a really nice suit and tie and comb your hair - think civil rights movement, not seattle protest. Posted by: sean keane on September 21, 2004 10:31 PM
I always say" If you want to be very successful do something very stupid, because you will address to 99% of the people" Besides, the copyright law never protected anybody unless he was a some sort of a criminal. Where is justice? Where are the copyright compensation? Consider me a visionary, but I think I have a goal in life. Nevertheless Americans still believe they are the greatest nation of all and shout and scream about copyrights. Somebody says " Where there is a will there is a way". Soon we ( World on IP) will have a wonderful wireless VoIp mobile phone system which can reach on the unlicensed frequency of 2,4 MGH up to 5-6 Km. The phones will have the name: Meucci. Greetings from a World on IP Patrizia David, be sure to let us know how the talk went. Posted by: JD Lasica on September 22, 2004 04:41 AMAfter DragonCon this year I sent an e-mail to the folks running the writer's programming track asking for some panel discussions on fan fiction. When asked in a reply what was fanfic, I carefully explained about how fans write stories based on favorite shows/movies/books, and that we make absolutely no profit from it at all. In fact those who keep the archives lose money most of the time, maintaining these archives. I got a reply back stating that fanfic was illegal, involved copyright infringement, and they would be very reluctant to offer a panel encouraging it. After blinking in astonishment several times, my first thought was if they'd read my e-mail at all where I explained we make no profit from this. My second thought was that I personally live for the day when my original stuff will spawn fanfic, because it will prove to me beyond a doubt that somebody is actually reading my stuff. Isn't that the whole point of writing? I haven't decided if this is worth pursuing or not. Will watch this matter with great interest. Posted by: Tilt on September 22, 2004 11:29 AM Echoes of my "Giving World" idea a couple of years back David. But as you pointed out at the time, people still got to be paid somehow or how do they continue being creative? The only way this can happen is if people can have access to these items freely BUT they still need to give something back to the creator (i.e donating funds, etc) for them to continue creating. I think as you said at the time, most people probably wouldn't do this so the idea wouldn't fly. Nonetheless I still love thought of this type of world. Posted by: Nollind Whachell on September 22, 2004 12:42 PMIf we discovered some technology that allowed every person on this planet to have any object they wanted entirely free, would people stop making new things? No. People would still create. I'd even propose that people would create *better* works because they would be motivated by love instead of greed. Post a comment |