Principia Discordia

These are notes I've compiled from The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason - a book about how piracy and copyright violation is changing both economics and culture.

I'll try and lay it out as best as possible, but I have a lot written down, so it may take some time to digest.  Its well worth it however, for a view of a much more interesting, better world.

For the last sixty years, capitalism has run a pretty tight ship in the West. But in increasing numbers, pirates are hacking into the hull and holes are starting to appear. Privately owned property, ideas, and priv­ileges are leaking out into the public domain beyond anyone's control.


Pirates are rocking the boat. As a result people, corporations, and governments across the planet are facing a new dilemma—the Pirate's Dilemma: How should we react to the changing conditions on our ship? Are pirates here to scupper us, or save us? Are they a threat to be battled, or innovators we should compete with and learn from? To compete or not to compete—that is the question—perhaps the most important economic and cultural question of the twenty-first century.


The enigma is this: If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, with­out our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?


Disruptive new D.I.Y. tech­nologies are causing unprecedented creative destruction. The history of punk offers us valuable insights into how this new world works. Punk was an angry outburst, a reaction to mass culture, but it offered new ideas about how mass culture could be replaced with a more person­alized, less centralized worldview.

Punk has survived in many incarnations musically—it became new wave, influenced hip-hop, and conceived grunge and the notion of indie bands. But more important, its independent spirit also spurred a do-it-yourself revolution. D.I.Y. encourages us to reject authority and hierarchy, advocating that we can and should produce as much as we consume. Since punk, this idea has been quietly changing the very fab­ric of our economic system, replacing outdated ideas with the twenty-first-century upgrades of Punk Capitalism.


"It's hard to spend your life working for peace, justice and a society rich with opportunities for all" wrote Lee Gomes in The Wall Street Journal. "It's pretty easy, though, to buy a computer and tell yourself that by doing so, you're somehow still helping to fight that good fight. Good deeds become equated with good shopping."


What is interesting is what else is happening; punk capitalists are starting to use the free-market system to their advantage, and are turn­ing the tables by selling real issues back to us through the things we consume.


These new ventures "leave the competition scratching their heads because they don't really aim to compete in the first place," wrote Richard Siklos in The New York Times in 2006. "They would certainly like to cover their costs and maybe make a buck or two, but really, they're not in it for the money. By purely commercial measures, they are illogical. If your name were, say, Rupert or Sumner, they would represent a kind of terror that might keep you up at night: death by smiley face."


Brands and products with a purpose are finally writing checks with their mouths that their wallets can cash. And because more people are being persuaded by these products, their checks are pretty good. Some other examples include the global market for fair-trade products, which increased in 2005 alone by 37 percent, and hybrid car sales, which doubled between January 2005 and January 2006 in the United States, while the rest of the car market stuttered off the starting grid, growing at just 3 percent.


"Punk was about not taking it, not believing what you see on TV or in the newspapers, and I think that definitely carried over, because people get their news from the Internet and don't believe any of the major networks. I don't know if it's necessarily anarchy, but it's definitely thinking for yourself."


A 2004 study for the U.S. Department of Labor on the future of work predicted, "Employees will work in more decentralized, spe­cialized firms, and employer-employee relationships will become less standardized and more individualized. ...We can expect a shift away from more permanent, lifetime jobs toward less permanent, even non­standard employment relationships (e.g., self-employment)."

There is a misconception that all the changes we are experiencing as a society are the result of new technologies, but as Florida and others see it, the real changes are profoundly cultural. As we shift to a D.I.Y. culture that runs on creativity, the implications could be as profound as when society shifted from farming to manufacturing. Managers and CEOs are fast being usurped as the creative emerges as society's new rainmaker. "The creative individual is no longer viewed as an icono­clast," says Florida. "He—or she—is the new mainstream."


It seems that ownership of the means of production—the backbone of capitalism—is falling into the hands of the masses. But soon the notion of "owning" the means of production may itself be redundant.


But the final frontier for punk capitalists, and pos­sibly the final nail in the coffin for mass production, may be just around the corner. The Internet has changed the game for anything that could be transmitted electronically. Now it has the material world in its crosshairs, too. Soon we may be doing the manufacturing ourselves.

Most 3-D printers are still pretty cumbersome, as are their price tags. But the technology is developing at speeds not unlike that of the PC. In the not too distant future, the 3-D printer could be a welcome addition to homes and offices around the world.

If this happens—or rather, when this happens—there will no longer be any boundaries left between producer and consumer. The only thing left will be the creativity and ingenuity of the design itself. A world where anything and everything could be printed out at home is a world full of questions. What would happen to Nike when kids start print­ing out Air Jordans at the rate at which they illegally download music? Will your new ride be printed down at the showroom? Would Christ­mas morning be ruined if the printer jammed and nobody's presents were printed?


Indeed, we may reach a point where there is no "industry" left at all, in its place many vibrant local markets producing value, but not controlled exclusively by big players. This is already happening to the music industry, and it's starting to happen with anything that can be transmitted electronically. But soon this may also happen in the world of physical goods. "We have reached a point in history where our most advanced technology is dirt cheap," Bowyer continues. "I want to make it an order of magnitude cheaper yet so that poor peo­ple can exploit rich people's toys to raise themselves up." If we learn to copy everything like we did with MP3 files, the fate of the music industry may have been the canary in the coal mine, an omen for the end of mass production as we know it.

Punk Capitalists are creating change using three separate ideas that came directly from the philosophy of punk rock:

1. Do It Yourself

Punk refused to take its cues from the mass market, and cre­ated a vibrant cultural movement as a result. Now a critical mass of punk capitalists is removing the associative barriers that held them back. They are working for themselves, setting up businesses, and finding ways to produce as much as they con­sume, laying the foundations for a wealth of new markets and business models. D.I.Y. is changing our labor markets, and cre­ativity is becoming our most valuable currency.

2. Resist Authority

Punk resisted authority and saw anarchy as the path to a brighter future. Punk capitalists are resisting authority, too—by leveraging new D.I.Y. technologies and the power of individu­als connecting and working together as equals. This twin engine of the new economy is creating new ways all of us can live and work, leaving old systems for dust. Technology + Democracy = Punk Capitalism.

3. Combine Altruism with Self-Interest

Punk had high ideals—it looked aggressive and scary, but through its angry critique of society and subversion of it, it sought to change the world for the better. Punk capitalists are using the same techniques, subverting a world full of empty cor­porate gestures, manufacturing businesses and products with meanings that attempt to inject substance back into style. Punk injected altruism into entrepreneurship, a motivator of people long overlooked by neoclassical economics. Not only that, punk made the idea of putting purpose before profit seem cool to an entire generation. It manufactured new meaning in an area where it was really needed.

In fact, pirates have been the architects of new societies for cen­turies: they have established new genres of film and music and created new types of media, often operating anonymously and always— initially, at least—outside the law. They overthrow governments, birth new industries, and win wars. Pirates create positive social and eco­nomic changes, and understanding piracy today is more important than ever, because now that we all can copy and broadcast whatever we want; we can all become pirates.

So who exactly is a pirate?

A. That guy who sells bootleg DVDs on the corner;
B. Some dude with a beard and a parrot who might mug you if yougo boating;
C. A guardian of free speech who promotes efficiency, innovation, and creativity, and who has been doing so for centuries.

The correct answer is all of the above. A pirate is essentially any­one who broadcasts or copies someone else's creative property without paying for it or obtaining permission.


First things first: some acts of piracy are quite simply theft. Every year industry loses billions to piracy. Companies suffer, artists and cre­ators lose earnings, and people lose their jobs.


But although intellectual property rights seem right and piracy clearly seems wrong, the opposite also can be true. One man's copy­right terrorist is another's creative freedom fighter: many forms of piracy transform society for the better.


Another pirate nation that began in a fashion similar to Sealand is the United States of America. During the nineteenth-century Indus­trial Revolution, the Founding Fathers pursued a policy of counter­feiting European inventions, ignoring global patents, and stealing intellectual property wholesale. "Lax enforcement of the intellectual property laws was the primary engine of the American economic mir­acle," writes Doron S. Ben-Atar in Trade Secrets. "The United States employed pirated know-how to industrialize." Americans were so well known as bootleggers, Europeans began referring to them with the Dutch word "Janke," then slang for pirate, which is today pro­nounced "Yankee."*


When Edison invented the  phonographic record, musicians branded him a pirate out to steal their work, until a system was created for paying them royalties.


If copyright laws had stopped these pirates in their tracks, today we might live in a world where America looked more like a giant Amish farm. We would have no recorded music, no cable TV, and a selection of films on a par with an economy airline seat. The pirates were on the wrong side of the law, but as Lawrence Lessig expounds upon in his book Free Culture, in hindsight it's clear their acts were important. By refusing to conform to regulations they deemed unfair, pirates have created industries from nothing. Because traditionally society has cut these pirates some slack and accepted that they were adding value to our lives, compromises were reached and enshrined in law, and as a result new industries blossomed.


"With a pirate, none of the pressures we have are there," program­ming director Simon Long told me in 2003. "You can play what you want to smaller groups of people and you have complete freedom; that's why pirates will always be the breeding ground for new tal­ent.. . . That's why at Kiss we're determined to make sure talented and passionate young DJs have a chance to make it onto legal airwaves." The BBC and the United Kingdom's many commercial stations also recruit directly from urban pirates today, which act as a minor league, feeding the major corporate stations the hottest DJs and sounds, already tried, tested, and approved by the pirate listeners. Piracy is tol­erated by the radio industry because pirate stations make our music better.


Pirates highlight areas where choice doesn't exist and demand that it does. And this mentality transcends media formats, technological changes, and business models. It is a powerful tool that once under­stood, can be applied anywhere.

Successful pirates adapt quickly to social and technological changes, but this is true of all entrepreneurs. What pirates do differently is cre­ate new spaces where different ideas and methods run the show.

Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry, the editors, the chief executives, and let's face it, the proprietors. A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it."

The difference is that this generation is not a posse of outlaws on the run from the authorities, but normal people who would never think of themselves as pirates in the first place. But without realizing it, when society went online, it became dominated by the pirate mentality. And nothing illustrates this better than the rise of the blog.



Cassette tapes and video recorders both brought the film and recording industries hugely lucrative new revenue streams once they had stopped fighting the new formats and started figuring out how to make money from them.



"Copyright has been said to be necessary for the creation of cul­ture, and patents have been said to be necessary for innovation to hap­pen," declares the Pirate Party's website. "This has been repeated so often, that nobody questions it. We do, and we say that it's just a myth, perpetuated by those who have something to gain from pre­venting new culture and technology. When push comes to shove, copyright PREVENTS a lot of new culture, and patents PREVENT a lot of innovation. Above all, today's copyright laws has [sic] no bal­ance at all between the creator's economic interests and society's cul­tural interests."

The party's position may seem extreme, but given the history of pirates we've taken in, they have a point. Piracy has generated innova­tion throughout its history. In a world where a paranoid entertainment industry is criminalizing citizens even for legal file-sharing, spying on people through their PCs and forcing them to pay fines far higher than if they actually were stealing CDs or DVDs from a store, some might say it was about time governments pushed back on behalf of their people—the people copyright laws and patents were initially designed to protect.



"Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price, and availability," said Disney's cochair Anne Sweeney in a 2006 keynote address. "We understand now that piracy is a business model.* . . . The digital revolution has unleashed a con­sumer coup. We have to not only make in-demand content but make it on-demand. This power shift changes the way we think about our business, industry, and our viewers. We have to build our businesses around their behavior and their interests," she said. "All of us have to continually renew our business in order to renew our brands because audiences have the upper hand and show no sign of giving it back." Steve Jobs of Apple backed up Disney's sentiment, telling Newsweek, "If you want to stop piracy, the way to stop it is by competing with it."



If suing customers for consuming pirate copies becomes central to a company or industry's business model, then the truth is that that com­pany or industry no longer has a competitive business model. A company's or individual's ability to make money should be based on their ability to innovate and create value, not file lawsuits.



In August 2005 Monsanto filed patents in 160 countries, claiming ownership of the rights to pigs, and any and all future offspring those pigs may produce.



Patent trolls going after human gene sequences have already cost us lives. "Companies raced to beat the Human Genome Project in order to patent genes such as that associated with breast cancer," writes Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz. "The value of these efforts was minimal: the knowledge was produced just a little sooner than it would have been otherwise. But the cost to society was enor­mous: the high price that Myriad, the patent holder, places on genetic tests (between $3,000 and $4,000) may well mean that thousands of women who would otherwise have been tested, discovered that they were at risk, and taken appropriate remediation, will die instead."



Western drug companies don't sell many AIDS drugs in developing countries because more than 90 percent of the people in the world suf­fering from HIV/AIDS can't afford to pay inflated Western prices. And because these companies make a profit only when they have the monopoly, measures are taken by drug companies to extend the life of these patents for as long as possible, preventing cheap generic drugs from entering their foreign or domestic markets. The drugs do work, but the patents don't. As a result, according to the World Health Orga­nization, some three million people die every year.

Never before has an industry needed piracy so badly. And one such pirate who is making major waves is Dr. Yusef Hamied of the Mumbai pharmaceutical company Cipla. When his company produces generic drugs for the West, they are thought of as a legitimate and well-respected organization. But when Dr. Hamied began producing anti-HIV drugs for the developing world in the year 2000 for as little as $1 a day* com­pared to Western prices of more than $27 a day, he was branded by the former head of GlaxoSmithKline as a "pirate and a thief."



Pirates are forcing decision makers to reconsider the use of patents, and now the idea of a prize system is getting support, not just for devel­oping countries, but also for Western markets. "Under a drug prize system," wrote Forbes magazine in April 2006, "the U.S. government would simply pay cash for the rights to any drug that wins FDA approval, then put the U.S. rights in the public domain. Voilà! a free market in the manufacture and sale of new drugs. Generic drugs ("generic" being another way of saying the rights are in the public domain) already do a wonderful job of keeping prices down. While the price of patent-protected drugs has been rising at roughly twice the rate of inflation, the real price of generics has fallen in four of the last five years."

OK, that should give you enough to chew on, for now.

Please do not turn this into a "I am a moron who thinks I should be able to download music for free/I am an unpaid shill for the big 4 music companies and think the current system is hunky-dory" argument, kthanxbai

I am so going to start using the word yankee to refer to pirates now.

Quote
Brands and products with a purpose are finally writing checks with their mouths that their wallets can cash. And because more people are being persuaded by these products, their checks are pretty good. Some other examples include the global market for fair-trade products, which increased in 2005 alone by 37 percent, and hybrid car sales, which doubled between January 2005 and January 2006 in the United States, while the rest of the car market stuttered off the starting grid, growing at just 3 percent.

Have the music industry implement fair trade music, where the artists get payed a decent amount?  It would probably cost more than piracy does though.

"Intellectual property" ain't. In fact, copyright is an abuse of other people's property, because you get to use the State's might to force people into using their own property (their own computer, their own CDs, their own brains) in a restricted way.

Information ain't a private good because it's not rival. We can't both use the same car to go different directions at the same time, but we sure as hell can use the same recipe in different ways at the same time. Thus there's nothing taken from you when information is transmitted.

The Proper Capitalistic Way is that of the natural disclosure monopoly, which says you better get your efforts paid for the first time you disclose your original information, because you ain't going to make such an easy profit after other people have access to it. It's the model where only possession of information matters, and you get to spread it to anyone under the conditions you think best. A model where creation of original work is where the profit resides, and distribution of it just scrapes the margin.

The magicians' world works a bit like this already: they don't give shit about "I invented this so you don't get to use it in your spectacle", instead they reward contributing new stuff with unrestricted access to the others' stuff. Whole industries work like this too, there are companies out there (like Michelin in the tire-making business) not giving a shit about patents and intellectual property because, to them, it's a worthless system and they make more money treating ideas like valuable secrets that one has the right to do whatever they want with and thus should pay the good price outright to get them in the first place. The world of fast-subbing works like this too, where dozens of competing distribution networks race to feed their audience the newest episode of whatever-anime-is-hot-these-days as quickly and with the highest quality as is possible.

There's a whole other world of intellectual work creation waiting. And the pirates are making it come to us.

I wont argue that it needs to be weakened in many, if not the majority of cases.  Some economists have argued that there is an inventors advantage which confers a natural business advantage on a company who invents (for the purpose of this argument) a certain drug.  Others have suggested reducing it, or bringing in blanket fees for distribution, such as where federal agencies pay a company a certain amount, and then they distribute the drugs in whatever way they see fit.

In fact, distribution is a major issue, I would argue.  In the music industry, with e-books, with drugs and technology, its not so much the ownership as the exclusive right to produce and distribute that is the issue.  And when that is actually causing people to die, as it is in India, for example, where generic drug pirates are being prosecuted for producing drugs the poor can afford (never mind the companies they steal those drug designs from charge too high for the poor to afford), then we are in an area where profit is being put well above peoples lives.

1. Look Outside of the Market

Entrepreneurs look for gaps in the market. Pirates look for gaps outside of the market. There was no market for Holly­wood films before William Fox and friends. There was no mar­ket for commercial radio in Europe before pirate DJs. Pirates have proved that just because the market won't do something, it doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

2. Create a Vehicle

Once pirates find a space the market has ignored, they park a new vehicle in it and begin transmitting. Sometimes this new vehicle becomes more important, or as Marshall McLuhan put it, the medium becomes the message. The platform that pirate DJs created was more important than rock 'n' roll. The idea of the "blog" had a much greater impact than the picture of Cary Grant dropping acid on Justin's Home Page.

3. Harness Your Audience

When pirates do something valuable in society, citizens sup­port them, discussion starts, and laws change. It is the supporters that pirates attract that enable them and their ideas to go legit. Kiss FM got a license thanks to its listeners. Roh Moo­hyun became president thanks to citizens using the pirate mentality on his behalf. Entire nation-states are supporting pill  pirates to save lives.

The phenomenon known as "the remix" is different. It is a con­scious process used to innovate and create. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that the cut-'n'-paste culture born out of sampling and remixing has revolutionized the way we interpret the world. As Nelson George said in Hip Hop America, the remix "raises questions about the nature of creativity and originality . . . it changes the relationship of the past to the present in ways conventional historians might take notice of. What is the past now?"

Our Han Solo in this epic story is Arthur "Duke" Reid. When he and his wife, Lucille, won some money in the Jamaican national lottery, the Reids spent their winnings on a Kingston liquor store, the Treasure Isle. Reid installed his own sound system in the store to entice customers (the two industries have long been linked, most sound systems made their money by selling alcohol at clashes).

In essence the remix is a creative mental process. It requires you to do nothing more than change the way you look at something. Albert Einstein once said, "No problem can be solved from the same con­sciousness that created it"; the remix is that mind-set crystallized. It's about shifting your perception of something and taking in other ele­ments and influences. It requires you to think of chunks of the past as building blocks for the future.

The DreamWorks case is interesting, because as Lawrence Lessig points out in his excellent book on copyright Free Culture, "It is Mike Myers and only Mike Myers who is free to sample. Any general free­dom to build upon the film archive of our culture, a freedom in other contexts presumed for us all, is now a privilege reserved for the funny and famous—and presumably rich." But history, as we saw in chap­ter 2, suggests that pirates will continue pushing the copyright enve­lope until these laws are changed.



The implications of this approach to making videos, movies, and games are staggering. With current copyright laws being what they are, only companies with the muscle of MTV can do this on a grand scale without being litigated into oblivion, but anyone with the know-how and a decent PC can have a go.



Bestselling video games made of noth­ing but sampled film footage are a possibility. DVDs packaged with several remixable story lines, characters, and locations are not far off. The possibilities of this approach to creating new content are literally endless. This could lead to an unimaginably accessible new chapter in culture as we know it, with, as journalist Wagner James Au puts it, "no real barriers between creator and audience, or producer and con­sumer. They would be collaborators in the same imaginative space, and working as equals, they'd create a new medium, together."



Freedom to copy other people's designs is taken for granted in the world of fashion, which makes it unusual, but it's also the reason it's so successful. Haute couture designs are copied, sampled, and modi­fied, gradually trickling down until there are versions of last season's catwalk designs in bargain basements everywhere. The view that remixing or sampling a design is a serious threat to business is not one held by the fashion industry.* There are rarely objections from design houses when an idea is copied; in fact, it's almost encouraged. This is an industry where as soon as a high-priced designer garment becomes a trend, there are factories full of copies and knockoff designs compet­ing at lower prices.

In "The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design," Raustiala and Sprigman make the case that the remix stimulates growth in the industry. Because designs are copied quickly and styles diffuse down to the mass market, the original luxury items lose their allure, creating demand for new trends, and this pirate-induced demand drives the entire business forward. Raustiala and Sprigman call this process "induced obsolescence," arguing that copy­ing in fashion is "paradoxically advantageous for the industry. IP [intellectual property] rules providing for free appropriation of fashion designs accelerate the diffusion of designs and styles....If copying were illegal, the fashion cycle would occur very slowly."

Copyright laws have expanded dramatically in the past few years, partly as a defensive reaction to illegal downloading, and partly because of corporations having an increasing influence on political decision making. While file-sharing and piracy clearly need to be reg­ulated, copyright laws, like patent laws, are becoming so overbearing they now stifle the creative processes they were initially designed to protect.
Copyright periods are being extended by governments, and the entertainment industry continues to push that they be extended even further. Like the patent trolls fighting with pirates, there are also sam­ple trolls out there, acquiring the copyrights to old songs (often very dubiously) and suing artists who have sampled them. Jay-Z is one of many artists who have been sued by sample trolls for millions of dollars.



part of the reason why illegal downloading became so prevalent, as we shall see, was because the music industry failed to respond to this new technology and offer legal alternatives quickly enough. More than one million games of the Half Life mod Counter-Strike are played each day online, but you can play it only if you have a legal copy of the original Half Life game. This system is policed by modders and players alike, who respect the rights of the game's designers to earn money from their original creation.



In the United Kingdom, the BBC has introduced the Creative Archive, a copyright-free library of video and audio available for any­one to use for noncommercial purposes. In 2006 the United Kingdom's (then) chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, recognizing the value of the remix as a tool of innovation, proposed new U.K. copy­right laws that would give artists more creative freedom to remix the material of others while protecting everybody's rights as well.



Creative Commons presents itself as the happy medium between total anarchy and total control, creating new, remixed copyright licenses that allow artists to grant some rights to the public without being exploited. Their "some rights reserved" model is becoming increasingly popular, with forty-six countries and counting now part of the initiative. Creative Commons doesn't do any­thing to roll back existing copyright periods or change the unlimited, unconstitutional powers being exerted on the public domain, but it does let creators legally share their work with others in a variety of ways, and indirectly it's attracting attention to the issue.

Good thoughts, these.

But while the DIY anti-capitalistic punk ethos eschews the "we're in it to make money," there are quite a few artists who would actually enjoy the opportunity to buy their food and pay their rent purely from their creativity and hard work.

While the current copyright system isn't a very good way to do this currently, the Pirate Culture advocates aren't really offering an alternative.

I disagree.  The outspoken "I should be able to download everything for free" retards are not helping, and people who think like that deserve to be treated with contempt.  However, those arguments are a strawman and Matt Mason, the author of the book, has repeatedly stressed he has never agreed with such people.

Those who are calling on weakening copyright, either in terms of duration or scope or via other methods are in fact giving both a balanced and pragmatic solution to the issue, in short giving real answers that can be put into practice right now.  Equally, changes to methods of distribution are going to disembowel bigger industries if all they do is repeatedly try to outlaw them (as the music industry is trying to do by shutting down P2P networks, where many underground artists do give away work they own freely) and should be considered as part of any successful business plan.

If we get locked into a binary you want artists to starve/lets uphold the status quo and ignore how fucking bad it is argument, then this thread is not going to progress and we may as well not bother even discussing the issue.

Whoa, not so fast, Cain.

I was just trying to clarify (speaking as a mother musician).

I agree copyright is pretty out of control.  I feel that fair use should be granted if you manipulate an existing piece of art towards another purpose.

I also feel that information should be free.

And I feel that people who produce information should be compensated somehow, not always monatarily.

I do download music occasionally, and I also give my music away constantly. 

I suppose what I meant in the last post is, what can an information creator do to weaken copyright laws while also being compensated for their work?

OK, but I wanted to get my foot in the door before the thread did head down that direction.  Because once it does, we may as well deep six it and never look back.

In open source programming, often the most basic of programs (internet explorers, word processors etc) are coded for free.  However, customized and advanced programs typically come with a more expensive users fee.  If you stick with a basic product as a free service, a hook or sample if you will, but provide more services at cost, that seems to be one workable system.  A good music industry example may be live shows, if you have people who know how to put on a fucking awesome show.  The deejays in Jamaica, for example, made their money off alcohol sales for the most part.  The music was a hook, to draw people in, not the product itself.

Thats one way.

Another is to offer free recording sessions to artists who sign up with a certain label, like say if iTunes started to produce and not just distribute music.  You'd have to have some caveats about who would be covered by this (maybe bands that have a decent reception at iTune sponsored gigs or something, designed to promote local bands), but you still drastically lower the entry level, and use a more efficient, more cost-effective and consumer friendly method of distribution.  iTunes recoups the losses through a cut of the royalties.  Sure, they end up taking less from each individual band, but they're bringing more and more bands in, not desperately trying to use the law as a cudgel to hold onto their few prized cash cows.  I believe it would balance out.

The music industry needs to stop treating this like a legal battle, and start treating it like a memetics fight, cause that's where they're losing.  Every time they claim its illegal to rip your CDs to your computer instead of paying for it a second time (admittedly, I think it is outside the US), or sue someone who doesn't own a computer, more people end up going 'fuck it' and download whatever they want without feeling guilty.

Focus instead on the ethics of the issue, it won't actually stop piracy, but it'll get people to buy stuff out of guilt.  Of course, at this point its a lost battle, since (regardless of the truth of the matter) nobody believes the artist gets anything significant from the CD sale, and the RIAA, as well as various DRM companies, have been fleecing the actual recording companies by charging for really bad ideas that have trashed people's opinions of the recording industry.

On top of it, the random terror lawsuits, and shutting down Morpheous/Grokster, has driven piracy from the gnutella protocol, which is a pain in the ass, frequently results in a crap track, and makes it nearly impossible to get a whole album, (my experience anyway) to P2P, which makes it simple to get ahold of an artists entire discography, as well as trashed the sound quality even on the CDs, which means there's no reason for even the audiophile crowd to bother laying down cash, as well as reducing the number of people who even care about sound quality, since they've never heard anything else.

Quote from: Cain on August 20, 2008, 03:46:06 PM

In open source programming, often the most basic of programs (internet explorers, word processors etc) are coded for free.  However, customized and advanced programs typically come with a more expensive users fee.

This is very, very rare in open source, I can only think of one company that successfully does this (whose name I forget, but they make CRM software).  Most of the money in open source comes from support contracts (which is where most of the money in closed source comes from as well, outside of Microsoft anyway).

This doesn't actually invalidate you're point, I just don't like open source associated with crippleware.

Quote from: Requiem on August 20, 2008, 03:56:35 PM

Quote from: Cain on August 20, 2008, 03:46:06 PM

In open source programming, often the most basic of programs (internet explorers, word processors etc) are coded for free.  However, customized and advanced programs typically come with a more expensive users fee.

This is very, very rare in open source, I can only think of one company that successfully does this (whose name I forget, but they make CRM software).  Most of the money in open source comes from support contracts (which is where most of the money in closed source comes from as well, outside of Microsoft anyway).

This doesn't actually invalidate you're point, I just don't like open source associated with crippleware.

I heard Linux does a fair bit of this (what I referenced), though I am not an expert on programming and economics.

Quote from: Requiem on August 20, 2008, 03:56:35 PM

Quote from: Cain on August 20, 2008, 03:46:06 PM

In open source programming, often the most basic of programs (internet explorers, word processors etc) are coded for free.  However, customized and advanced programs typically come with a more expensive users fee.

This is very, very rare in open source, I can only think of one company that successfully does this (whose name I forget, but they make CRM software).  Most of the money in open source comes from support contracts (which is where most of the money in closed source comes from as well, outside of Microsoft anyway).

This doesn't actually invalidate you're point, I just don't like open source associated with crippleware.

Agreed, to a point. Some of the developers that are creating "Web 2.0 Components" for various CMS solutions (Joomla, Drupal, Moodle etc) are basically creating Open Source (not necessarily GPL) solutions, but you can only use them (and the associated code) if you are a subscriber to their site, which is $30 every 6 months, or whatever. They're also making about $30 a hour doing customizations to the existing components and modules for specific user needs. It's definately got ESR's Bazaar sort of philosophy and feature customizations are getting done in just a few days in many cases... so the response to the userbase seems 1000 times faster, and they're willing to pay for it.

While it may not have the purity of Stallman's vision (he is a dirty smelly hippie), I think its a pretty useful implementation of the general philosophy. And, as I mentioned before, I think Community Websites for musicians would probably be a good way to make money from music, without worrying about pirates.

Yeah, the Free Software Foundation splits it into two latin words for "free"... which I can't remember right now.

One of them means "you never have to pay for anything", which is what they're not about.

The other means "the basic tools of creation are free", and basically says that you're welcome to build it or modify it yourself, no charge.  But if you want someone to do it for you, you'll have to pay.

Kind of like the Computer Store is like Home Depot:  it will sell you the tools and hardware (Hammer/nails/wood).

Then you can build whatever you like.  But if you suck at it, you can hire a carpenter (programmer) who will make it for you.

The metaphor kind of breaks down when you factor in the ability of the user to make perfect copies of the carpenter's work, but that's kind of what this thread is about, isn't it? 

What's the best model to frame the Idea of Information Sharing?

Its entirely possible you cannot frame this in the terms of past models.

Quote from: Cain on August 20, 2008, 04:27:28 PM
Its entirely possible you cannot frame this in the terms of past models.

I agree 100%.  I am willing to stop trying.


So; we brainstorm.

Quote from: Cain on August 20, 2008, 04:27:28 PM
Its entirely possible you cannot frame this in the terms of past models.

I'd agree completely as well. With the dawn of the information age, the old copyright restrictions on intellectual property are outdated at best, and should probably be rebuilt from the ground up. The fact that it's so insanely easy to make a perfect copy of any piece of digital information (whether a picture, song, book, video, whatever) really kicks out the basic foundations of current intellectual property concepts, which are almost universally concerned with duplication and usage in a pre-information-age system.

Do I have any ideas on how to change things? Not really, although it's definitely something I and many people I know are giving a LOT of thought to.

Quote from: LMNO on August 20, 2008, 04:25:05 PM

The metaphor kind of breaks down when you factor in the ability of the user to make perfect copies of the carpenter's work, but that's kind of what this thread is about, isn't it? 

What's the best model to frame the Idea of Information Sharing?

The problem I see is that the musician has not had the same sort of deal as other artists in the 20th century. The Carpenter, the Painter, The Sculptor etc. all spend their time and effort to create a single product, an original. Then they sell that Original for lots of money (if they're lucky), the person who buys it, or perhaps the artist themselves (depending on the agreement), can then make cheaper copies to sell to the masses.

In the Recording Industry, the musician spends their time and effort to create a single product, an original. They then get an advance and have to help pay for various costs in order to try to make money off of popularity and sales of the cheap copies. The model is fucking stupid for the artist. However, I think that the artist can change that now. The reason that the Recording Industry existed was promotion and distribution. The free and easy information access, now makes their value null and void. I think that musicians now have the opportunity to create a model more in line with traditional Artists.

In my vision, I see Artists or groups of artists creating community web sites. It costs X to join the site and joining gives you access to music, live concerts broadcast over the web, forums with the bands, live chat with the bands (audio, video, text), interactive contests etc etc etc. Rather than the website being a vehicle for the product (like most band sites are now), the web presence would become the product. The Musician and the Graphic Artist would create an environment that would be worth money... like a really awesome Pink Floyd Concert with flying pigs and lasers, except its inside Firefox.

It could go even further. Traditionally, artists make most of their money from taking on commissions. Consider some of the greatest pieces of art that we know through history, from 'The Magic Flute' to the Sistine Chapel, all because someone hired an artists to do a job for them. I mean if I and my fiancee were  huge fans of a particular group, I would probably pay well for that band to write a song for our wedding... or maybe one to propose to, or maybe as a gift. Maybe bands could sell live interactive concerts for parties. After all, it wouldn't cost terribly much to have two-way video, so the band can see the dance floor/audience and a nice projection screen could be streaming the band in real time, full wall, everyone has front row seats...

But then, I've been eating and breathing community sites during this development cycle, so you may want to ignore these ramblings.

Its certainly one method that is worth considering.  Paying a monthly fee to a site, which gives you free download of all the artists on the listings, is a plausible method. 

I think most people honestly want to support artists.  They really do.  However, the inflated prices of CDs, the lack of choice in the music industry (buy-outs and cracking down on legitimate competition barred from competing on CD terms due to basic entry costs has essentially reduced the industry to 3 major corporations, who control the majority of the industry) and the dire state of radio mean that finding bands they enjoy, and figuring out ways to help support them, is very hard.

Quote from: Cain on August 20, 2008, 05:28:17 PM
Its certainly one method that is worth considering.  Paying a monthly fee to a site, which gives you free download of all the artists on the listings, is a plausible method. 

I think most people honestly want to support artists.  They really do.  However, the inflated prices of CDs, the lack of choice in the music industry (buy-outs and cracking down on legitimate competition barred from competing on CD terms due to basic entry costs has essentially reduced the industry to 3 major corporations, who control the majority of the industry) and the dire state of radio mean that finding bands they enjoy, and figuring out ways to help support them, is very hard.

Indeed, maybe a possible application for technology like Pandora radio to introduce consumers to artists?

Truth be told, I wouldn't really mind going back to the mid-80's DIY punk/hardcore mode.  Local bands, locals scenes, record econo, independent labels, tour, scratch out a living being supported by a scene that's willing to help artists directly.

To this day, if I go see a small touring band that's even maginally interesting, I'll buy some merch to get them fed or get to the next city.

Forseeable problem:  "Local scene" thinking doesn't consider global internet implications.

Quote from: LMNO on August 20, 2008, 05:36:26 PM
Truth be told, I wouldn't really mind going back to the mid-80's DIY punk/hardcore mode.  Local bands, locals scenes, record econo, independent labels, tour, scratch out a living being supported by a scene that's willing to help artists directly.

To this day, if I go see a small touring band that's even maginally interesting, I'll buy some merch to get them fed or get to the next city.

Forseeable problem:  "Local scene" thinking doesn't consider global internet implications.

I think that is what Matt Mason was trying to get at as well.  A sort of high-tech modern punk DIY scene.

Wasn't a main problem for many of those bands simply getting known?  In a way, the internet could help with that.  If a scene of like-minded people did develop around such ideas, bands could be more easily recognized by using free tracks to get themselves known, perhaps using pay-per-view feeds for live gigs, DIY merchandising (ie companies like cafepress, only not as nannying in content etc), as well as making money from doing live shows, charging fees for entry and buying CDs they burned themselves.

Quote from: LMNO on August 20, 2008, 05:36:26 PM
Truth be told, I wouldn't really mind going back to the mid-80's DIY punk/hardcore mode.  Local bands, locals scenes, record econo, independent labels, tour, scratch out a living being supported by a scene that's willing to help artists directly.

To this day, if I go see a small touring band that's even maginally interesting, I'll buy some merch to get them fed or get to the next city.

Forseeable problem:  "Local scene" thinking doesn't consider global internet implications.

Can you go a bit further with that idea? I'd like to better understand what implications you're seeing as problematic.

In a way, the 80s DIY scene was about human contact and community.  There were only 5 freaks in town that listened to the Stooges, so you formed a band, and then you went out looking for the other freaks in other towns.  You connected through the physical act of playing (and, when hardcore broke, the physical act of listening, as well), and of meeting people, sharing their space, their passion. 

You knew you wouldn't be on the radio.  The only way someone was gonna hear your stuff was to go directly to them, and play for them, and sell them your 45 EP for three bucks to get enough gas to get to the next town.  You could read about a band in Trouser Press or in MRR, but you needed the first-person experience to keep the scene alive.

And this is where the intertruck throws everything out of whack again.  If the point is all about the music, and the music is now easily available to everyone, for free, you don't need that IRL community. 

You don't need to crash on some dude's floor to get to the next town to spread your music at the next show.

You don't need to play a show to give someone your music.

You don't need to pay a cover charge to hear music you've never experienced before.

You don't need to send a $7.00 money order to Amphetamine Reptile records to get that obscure Scratch Acid LP.

You just have to go onto your computer, download it, type "Thanks, dude! You rock!" on their myspace page, and go back to bed.

Quote from: LMNO on August 20, 2008, 06:07:31 PM
In a way, the 80s DIY scene was about human contact and community.  There were only 5 freaks in town that listened to the Stooges, so you formed a band, and then you went out looking for the other freaks in other towns.  You connected through the physical act of playing (and, when hardcore broke, the physical act of listening, as well), and of meeting people, sharing their space, their passion. 

You knew you wouldn't be on the radio.  The only way someone was gonna hear your stuff was to go directly to them, and play for them, and sell them your 45 EP for three bucks to get enough gas to get to the next town.  You could read about a band in Trouser Press or in MRR, but you needed the first-person experience to keep the scene alive.

And this is where the intertruck throws everything out of whack again.  If the point is all about the music, and the music is now easily available to everyone, for free, you don't need that IRL community. 

You don't need to crash on some dude's floor to get to the next town to spread your music at the next show.

You don't need to play a show to give someone your music.

You don't need to pay a cover charge to hear music you've never experienced before.

You don't need to send a $7.00 money order to Amphetamine Reptile records to get that obscure Scratch Acid LP.

You just have to go onto your computer, download it, type "Thanks, dude! You rock!" on their myspace page, and go back to bed.

Yep.  I personally find music that comes out of that kind of scene just seems to have more "soul" to it, for lack of a better word.  I think the Seattle scene was helped by the fact that all of those bands hung out with each other.  In some instances they actually had side bands with members of the original bands (Temple of the Dog, Mad Season, etc.)  And then how the "Seattle Scene" hit was really through a lot of word of mouth and people going to shows in shitty clubs.  "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was out for quite a while before it actually hit.  It was that grass-roots groundswell that propelled it.  I don't see an internet scene endearing the same kind of reaction.  I could be wrong, but I just don't feel it. 

You may not need that community...but people may still want it.  I know I'd love to have a decent punk scene in my area, and would support bands in that scene as much as my means allowed (as an aside, South Wales does have an excellent stoner rock scene, I am informed).

Anyway, my point is while that transglobal interaction and empheral communities built on the world wide web may help satiate that need to some degree, and help in networking, learning etc...I still think that, at the end of the day, people want to be involved in something close to them and at a local level.  And while there may not be so much of a formal method of support (pay me for my LP and help me continue making music), an informal system of dedicated fans could still make it work.

Quote from: Cain on August 20, 2008, 06:19:30 PM
You may not need that community...but people may still want it.  I know I'd love to have a decent punk scene in my area, and would support bands in that scene as much as my means allowed (as an aside, South Wales does have an excellent stoner rock scene, I am informed).

Anyway, my point is while that transglobal interaction and empheral communities built on the world wide web may help satiate that need to some degree, and help in networking, learning etc...I still think that, at the end of the day, people want to be involved in something close to them and at a local level.  And while there may not be so much of a formal method of support (pay me for my LP and help me continue making music), an informal system of dedicated fans could still make it work.

I agree.

I'm not trashing the FreeInfo model.  It's here; let's deal with it.

I was just expanding on how my experience of the DIY scene seems to run counter to FreeInfo.

However, that isn't saying it can't work a different way.  We just gotta look agressively into the future, instead of mapping it onto the past.

Surely the best approach would be a black swan method?  Many different bands try as many different things as possible, with the tools available and minimum legal interference, and we see which ones tend to turn out best?

Do we have any reporters or academics tracking new business models for bands?

Not that I know of.

So: There are several musicians on this board.  Perhaps I will start a thread to brainstorm what can be done.

I'd say the first step is figuring out what your product will be and then how you will sell that product.

Possibilities:

Sell originals via a one time fee to online media outlets that have a model for distributing cheap copies (an Indie iTunes).
Sell access to the band via a community website.
Sell services in the traditional 'Patron' model.
Sell an image.

Obviously, depending on your philosophy and what you seek to gain from your musical career, some options may be possible and some may not.

However, let's say I hook up with the Indie scene in Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton, Cincinnati, Akron and Canton. Let's be generous and make the claim that there are 5 bands in the three big cities worth including and 2 in each of the smaller cities, so we're looking at 19 bands. We create a single online network "singfreeordie.com" which hosts a community of indie fans in Ohio.

Now we have a big 'local scene', we have networking so you can easily find places to crash or park the van for a couple hours sleep... and you have a way for people to know who you are before you show up at the crappy little bar in Sandusky... maybe they'll brave the strange smells from the parking lot, if they like your music and have chatted with you online. Cross promotional concerts or jam sessions... potentially impromptu ones (Everyone who is a member of the site gets an RSS feed anytime one of the groups decides to hold a public jam session, maybe just hours in advance...).

You can top that off with vlogs, a close up of the lead singer, bleary eyed and yawning yammering on about this problem with the venue and that the guy whose floor he's crashing on forgot to mention that he had cats... or a 20 minute rant by the lead guitarist on exactly how you're supposed to switch from an A7m chord to a C#... maybe complete with some fingering on cam (not that kind of fingering you sick fucks).

I don't know why, and I can't put my finger on it.   But it just seems so, sterile. 

Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on August 20, 2008, 07:19:32 PM
I don't know why, and I can't put my finger on it.   But it just seems so, sterile. 

Not enough sleeping on cigarette butts.

Quote from: LMNO on August 20, 2008, 07:20:28 PM

Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on August 20, 2008, 07:19:32 PM
I don't know why, and I can't put my finger on it.   But it just seems so, sterile. 

Not enough sleeping on cigarette butts.

Yep and needs moar empty Rolling Rock bottles. 

Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on August 20, 2008, 07:21:51 PM

Quote from: LMNO on August 20, 2008, 07:20:28 PM

Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on August 20, 2008, 07:19:32 PM
I don't know why, and I can't put my finger on it.   But it just seems so, sterile. 

Not enough sleeping on cigarette butts.

Yep and needs moar empty Rolling Rock bottles. 

But you could have both... people would pay to watch you complain about sleeping on Rolling Rock bottle and cigarette butts.... ;-)

Who's complaining?

Word.  You just can't beat the experience of playing in a total dive.  There's just something very visceral about it.  Man I miss those days. 

Lol, it may be fun playing in a dive, but I always hated having to tie in to some antiquated POS sound system or lighting "grid" (aka couple of lights on a stick). ;-)

Of course, at the time I was spoiled by having regular access to a big venue as their house tech. These days, I'd probably cut off a finger or something to be doing sound/lights/sfx rather than data security. Of course the worst part was, I always turned down the crazy sex and drugs... on second thought, maybe I shouldn't get back into that scene.

and of course, companies like Apple et al are aiming their PMP products at people who can afford to buy the songs/etc needed to fill the increasingly capacious things!  Of course people are all going to obtain all the material involved legally.......

Quote from: Ratatosk on August 20, 2008, 08:57:26 PM
I always turned down the crazy sex and drugs.

YAF,R?

Okay, I read the whole thread, and I have a couple of disorganized thoughts to throw out there.

First, from my understanding, copyright originally come around as a way for artists to be able to survive while making art. Making your art is great, but it doesn't help feed you, so somebody needs to feed the artists if they want the art.

Originally, this was done by patrons. Some rich duke or whatever would pay people to paint portraits of him, and then the artist could paint his own paintings on his own time, and thus he'd get to do his art. Eventually, we outgrew that system, and came up with a new one - copyright protection. It seems to me we've outgrown this one, and need to come up with a new one as fundamentally different and as updated for our time as copyright was to patrons. Artists still need to get fed, and it's ridiculous to expect them to give us stuff for free while they starve, but there's gotta be a better way to do this.

Second thought is this: somebody mentioned people buying things out of guilt, but I don't think that's the right way to look at it. People should (and do) support artists because they genuinely like the artists and want to help them make a living.

What people should be selling isn't physical products, but human appeal. And artists have an in with the people who want their stuff - if people like what you do, they're already inclined to like you. We want to like the artists whose stuff we like, we want them to be cool. And if they are cool and treat their fans right, their fans WILL do what they can to support them. (Fans who don't are assholes, and there are always going to be assholes, but the hope is that they will be the minority.)

Obviously, this doesn't apply to record companies. Nobody likes record companies, nobody wants to support them. And, IMO, part of the reason pirating music is seen as such a casual thing these days is because of that. Nobody feels bad ripping off record companies, but I think they DO feel bad ripping off artists. So that's a big motivation there for record companies to try to hold onto the system we have.

I don't know that much about the music industry, so I may be totally off base with this, but that's what I've observed. Thoughts?

Quote from: Tempest Virago on September 02, 2008, 04:22:41 AM
Second thought is this: somebody mentioned people buying things out of guilt, but I don't think that's the right way to look at it. People should (and do) support artists because they genuinely like the artists and want to help them make a living.

Bin and Go!

I personally greatly enjoy going to the CD store to buy albums.  (Or ordering them online from Amazon)  A lot of the artists I follow put a lot of time in effort into the music they create, but then, also the package they use to deliver it.  They carefully consider who is going to do the cover art, what theme it will convey, etc.  When I was young, buying music was something of a ritual.  You go to the store, pore through the CD racks (at the time it was cassettes actually).  Seeing what was new, checking out past releases from bands you follow, checking out the T-shirt racks, etc.  This followed by the ritual of checking our your new purchases.  Putting in the CD or cassette, following along with the lyrics, if provided, reading liner notes, etc.  I still enjoy this ritual. 

Music for me is a quasi-spiritual endeavour, both when I create it and when I listen to it.  The recording industry may not be the perfect setup for supporting artists.  But, as it is what exists, I'm not going to use that imperfection as an excuse to deny what the artists have rightly earned.  I am going to continue to buy their albums as they release them and I am going to continue to enjoy this ritual. 

there's a pretty simple solution for people who want to support an artist and don't want to shell out $18 for a CD when $17.25 of it is going to the record company.

GO TO A SHOW. BUY A T-SHIRT.

your average band makes a little less than a dollar per $18 CD sale (maybe more like $1.75 if they're on an indy label but then they don't sell as many albums).

now, if you go see them live and shell out $18 for a ticket to the show, they'll probably see $4 or $5 of that.

and if you buy a t-shirt from their merch booth for $18, they'll probably see $9 or $10 of that.

and that more than makes up for downloading a few CDs without paying.

Quote from: East Coast Hustle on September 02, 2008, 04:10:50 PM
there's a pretty simple solution for people who want to support an artist and don't want to shell out $18 for a CD when $17.25 of it is going to the record company.

GO TO A SHOW. BUY A T-SHIRT.

your average band makes a little less than a dollar per $18 CD sale (maybe more like $1.75 if they're on an indy label but then they don't sell as many albums).

now, if you go see them live and shell out $18 for a ticket to the show, they'll probably see $4 or $5 of that.

and if you buy a t-shirt from their merch booth for $18, they'll probably see $9 or $10 of that.

and that more than makes up for downloading a few CDs without paying.

TITCM

Merch is how a touring band makes its money, so buy some at the show if you really want to support the artists!

*cough* http://www.cafepress.com/SONOFCONVENTION (http://www.cafepress.com/SONOFCONVENTION) *cough*

Replacing copyright: basically there needs to be some way to make money from creating new intellectual works. But if a legally-enforced monopoly on the copying and distributing of those works won't fit, then what ?

Well, I experimented with one alternative. I have an active account in Second Life that I use to sell my own creations. Just so you know, SL enforces copyright by allowing creators to set "permissions" on their stuff, so that the next owner cannot duplicate or modify or transfer the object to someone else (and any combination of those, with one exception: you can always transfer a non-copiable object, or copy a non-transferable object, can't forbid both at the same time, so SL follows the "first sale doctrine" of legal theory applicable in much of the Western world). That's DRM, and I loathe it, so I went and found some way to do without.

What I did was selling my stuff with full permissions and an explicit authorisation of selling for profit and competing with my own distribution of it. I initially set the price very high, the principle is that with more sales, more people can distribute my stuff and compete with me (and recoup their initial purchase), so my price (and theirs) come down, until we all reach the marginal rate for distribution (that is, at this point we hardly make any money from distributing the stuff). At that point, my original work for the initial creation is paid for multiple times over and I, as an author, was rewarded for creating new things - and yet with this system no one can monopolize the distribution and leverage outrageous margins out of legal enforcement of bogus rights, like the RIAA members do nowadays.

End result: It works. It lets an incredible number of people access the works at lower prices although with a little longer delay (corresponding to the period during which the prices go from very high to "practically zero"). My stuff is now pretty much in the public domain, which is exactly what I wanted because it stops bastards from taking it, slapping restrictions on it through the inbuilt DRM system, and selling it as their own. Of course some people tried to do just that, but the fast-widening distribution model ensured no one would buy it from them when they could get it almost for free elsewhere.

That's the First-disclosure model I was talking about on page 1, put into practice. I could profit from my natural monopoly of disclosure on the original work (being the author, I was the only one to have access to it), as I sold access to it at a price that suited me and corresponded to how valuable I estimated my work to be. The first buyers were confident their own distributing leverage was sufficient to make a profit for themselves too (rewarding their own distribution work in the process), and in turns smaller distributors or end-purchasers bought access to it from those first disclosees, then they too turned around and sell it at a lower price, extending distribution of it some more and making it more accessible, etc... Basically, it works like some MLM scheme except the product sold has actual value instead of being an empty promise, and everyone is informed of the way it works and where it's gonna end, from the start.

(I did get some nasty flak from people who arrived after the whole thing was over, did not understand the model, and thought my prices were "way too low", missing the whole point of such a dynamic method of distribution.)

Its strage, but I keep saying games like Second Life and WoW would be brilliant places to try out new economic models.  Some games have actually quite advanced economies, and it has the benefit of not destroying peoples lives by experimenting with the system.

Obviously no replication can be perfect, but with micro-economic models and trends, it could be very, very useful.  Real people generally act more like real people than computer projections done by economists, so I think there is merit to the idea.

Quote from: Jesrad on September 03, 2008, 11:57:10 AM

End result: It works. It lets an incredible number of people access the works at lower prices although with a little longer delay (corresponding to the period during which the prices go from very high to "practically zero").

How do you determine when to lower your initial price?

Also, this model of distribution appears spontaneously in the right conditions: as lots of authors of intellectual works abandoned SL over time, they just started selling their stuff with full permissions just like I did, as a way to grab the last shreds of value they could before leaving for good. It sparked an entire, fast-growing movement of "BIAB" (stands for Business In A Box) commerce, where you pay a lot for full permission stuff you can start to sell for profit as restricted, DRMed content on your own. The whole thing immediately followed the same trends: as people started reselling the BIABs as such instead of as DRMed content, the prices went down fast, the content became more and more accessible and cheaper, and in no time people started buying the BIABs not for the purpose of reselling, but for enjoying the content itself. That movement is strong and keeps going, new original content gets released this way continuously, in turn fueling more original work creation. Hopefully, at one point the whole DRM thing can be abandoned once and for all (that's one of the last things stopping SL's editor from licensing their server software or interoperating with compatible, reverse-engineered servers).

QuoteHow do you determine when to lower your initial price?

At one point, after being away for a few weeks, one customer came to me and said: "Hey, you should check that, this guy X is selling your stuff at 1000 while you're selling it 12000. I think he has pirated your stuff !" So I explained to him that this was actually the model working as expected, and thus I dropped my prices to 500. I kept an eye on the prices that other people were selling at, adjusting from time to time, which is easy to do since there are "online-shopping" websites where you can lookup the stuff and check its price in realtime.

See, the strength of this is that if I set my price too high initially, then I only get one or two purchases and the reward I end up getting for creating is lowered to a more reasonable amount. The continuous lowering in price and eventual "open sourcing" happens at the rate the whole audience decides, as they make actual purchases, instead of at some fixed legal rate. If they don't buy, or buy little, then the lowering takes more time, but it happens eventually. If I price it lower than I could, then more people rush to it and try to make a profit from distributing it, and that augments my reward. It balances out.

It's more complicated in my example because I do both creation and distribution, but I could restrict myself to making new stuff and selling it at high price to all the distributors I could, and not bother on distribution at all (leaving this entirely to them to cope with the downward trend and accessibility explosion).

Quote from: Jesrad on September 03, 2008, 12:19:22 PM


It's more complicated in my example because I do both creation and distribution, but I could restrict myself to making new stuff and selling it at high price to all the distributors I could, and not bother on distribution at all (leaving this entirely to them to cope with the downward trend and accessibility explosion).

Would the initial price in this option be the same as if you were distributing initially yourself... (I'm not understanding the difference between being your own distributor as opposed to distributing your stuff to as many distributors as possible?  Is it just that as your own distributor you would be both wholesale and retail but wholesale only if you simply sold to other distributors?)

Quote from: singer on September 03, 2008, 12:27:54 PM
(I'm not understanding the difference between being your own distributor as opposed to distributing your stuff to as many distributors as possible?  Is it just that as your own distributor you would be both wholesale and retail but wholesale only if you simply sold to other distributors?)

There's no difference, you're right. Every customer is a potential distributor in this model. The marketting is a bit different though :p

Interesting thread.

I feel if an artist can touch me in a way that I want their music I will go buy it. I will go see them in concert. I will listen to them on the radio. I will buy their merchandise.

What I won't do is scan through a thousand internet loser wannabees trying to find a single artist worth listening to. Grass root garage type bands who have the will, talent and dedication rise to the top for a reason. People who just want to make music and post it on a website and expect millions to flock to it and pay them big bucks tend to bore me.

If artists have beefs with record labels then they have the right to co-op their own label and save millions.

I really enjoy listening to local and touring bands live. Some are far better than others. But they are almost always interesting. I think supporting live music is critical. When I owned a bar I always had live music. Some bands would come in all cocky and say 'This is what we charge for a night." If I liked them AND THOUGHT THEY WOULD BRING THE BUSINESS I WOULD HIRE THEM. I hired a band once and it was their second live gig. After talking about it they decided they would play for the door with a not less then clause. 30 minutes before they were to start I was at over 3 times occupancy load and you couldn't breathe without hitting someone. They sold me almost completely out of alcohol. I gave them the door ( 3 times the not less than clause) paid their (extensive) tab plus a bonus. And invited them back. Every time they played they repeated the scene. This to this simple man is what music is. Something to touch people, get them off their asses and go see them. To make people want to hear them bad enough to actually drop a few bucks on a CD or merchandise.

Quote from: Jesrad on September 03, 2008, 12:56:37 PM

Quote from: singer on September 03, 2008, 12:27:54 PM
(I'm not understanding the difference between being your own distributor as opposed to distributing your stuff to as many distributors as possible?  Is it just that as your own distributor you would be both wholesale and retail but wholesale only if you simply sold to other distributors?)

There's no difference, you're right. Every customer is a potential distributor in this model. The marketting is a bit different though :p

When you have the time I would appreciate it if you would explain the marketing differences to me a little  :p... I'm really very interested.

When I explained the gist of this conversation to someone else this morning, he said... "So what happens when the SL model meets real life?  What if, right now, some tv producer is grabbing his song (distributed in SL) for the title theme of his new blockbuster prime time show... making a couple million of real life dollars off it... and providing the artist with....Zip.... in return?"

Does the SL model take into account derivitave profit?

Quote from: Cain on September 03, 2008, 12:02:26 PM
Its strage, but I keep saying games like Second Life and WoW would be brilliant places to try out new economic models.  Some games have actually quite advanced economies, and it has the benefit of not destroying peoples lives by experimenting with the system.

Obviously no replication can be perfect, but with micro-economic models and trends, it could be very, very useful.  Real people generally act more like real people than computer projections done by economists, so I think there is merit to the idea.

I have no desire to play any massively-multiplayer games, but I find this kind of thing fascinating.

As far as economics goes, you should take a look at EVE - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19844 (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19844)

Also, I saw this in the BBC some time back - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6951918.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6951918.stm)

I don't know where to find a link, but quite a while back I remember the American military trying to get hold of data from Counter Strike games or something.

Quote from: Xooxe on September 04, 2008, 03:24:13 PM

Quote from: Cain on September 03, 2008, 12:02:26 PM
Its strage, but I keep saying games like Second Life and WoW would be brilliant places to try out new economic models.  Some games have actually quite advanced economies, and it has the benefit of not destroying peoples lives by experimenting with the system.

Obviously no replication can be perfect, but with micro-economic models and trends, it could be very, very useful.  Real people generally act more like real people than computer projections done by economists, so I think there is merit to the idea.

I have no desire to play any massively-multiplayer games, but I find this kind of thing fascinating.

As far as economics goes, you should take a look at EVE - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19844 (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19844)

Also, I saw this in the BBC some time back - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6951918.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6951918.stm)

I don't know where to find a link, but quite a while back I remember the American military trying to get hold of data from Counter Strike games or something.

Yeah, they're not my sort of thing either, really, but I do find their potential for mapping and modelling such things fascinating.  Thanks for the links, I'm just looking at the BBC one right now.