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Paying For Content In The Future
Kyobu writes: "Ars linked to Put a Dime in the Heavenly Jukebox, a proposal for making information free as in speech without preventing producers from receiving money, by charging ISPs based on the number of tagged files they transferred, and then transferring the charge to users in the aggregate. Although maybe not perfect, it's a pretty interesting idea, and well-argued." There's several really good points in here, and while it probably isn't going to say anything you haven't thought of (and in many cases, rejected long ago as impractical), it's worth your time. Something is going to have to change -- the question is, will it be better or worse.
And if I'm downloading Free Software? Or by the way, I set up a web-page with things I want to give away for free? I don't want any ISP to collect per-MB-charges on my free stuff and hand it to Madonna or whoever, and I don't want to recieve any paychecks myself either! This system requires that there is no such thing as gratis information. But there is... And btw, not only does it inhibit free information - it enfoirces the price of all information to be the same.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Content providers need to get over themselves and wipe the dollar signs from their eyes.
For the most part, the content providers need to stop thinking of getting rich from simply starting any ol' website. It's a real shame, because I've seen some pretty good sites come and go because they've decided that they need some VC funding and tried to become millionaires from pretty basic ideas.
Now, it does cost money to run a website. But if it's going to be treated like a business, standard practices should be followed. For one, don't assume starting a website today is going to give you profit tomorrow. Another, don't assume that somebody is going to pay you for nothing. For example, starting a company in January and trying to sell it by July. Starting a company is a long-term prospect.
Things are getting weeded out right now. It's not just the companies with bad ideas. It's the companies being run by greedy little pricks only out to make a quick buck for themselves. They're the ones that only want to run the company for the sake of saying that they run a company. Those types are not needed.
Companies also need to stop jumping at VC funding. Starting a company is long-term. Don't expect to start off at full speed.
My vote for this is NOT IT. The cost should be incurred directly by the user.
-Omar
Trains and Automobiles put Pony Express out of business. Why do we worry about this?
Technology is eliminating the middleman, not the musician. If musicians don't get paid, they won't make good music. The market will solve the problem on its own if we let it work rather than trying to find a way to make the square peg solutions forced on us by old technologies fit into the the round hole of post-internet intellectual property.
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Markets deal with goods whose supply is limited.
What is the scarcity here? The scarcity of information. The problem with information is that once information is created it is readily reproduced, which means once the information is distributed it is hard to compensate the creators.
The way this is dealt with is to create a kind of proxy good whose supply can be controlled. Historically this was the "fixed, tangible" form of expression, which served well because the means of reproduction (typesetting, recording) were either expensive or unsatisfactory for the average consumer.
Digital media don't have these limitations. A CD-R is just as good as the original CD-ROM, and no large costs, fixed or variable, are required to produce a copy.
So, you have two options; trying to continue the control of reproduction so that markets can work on these proxy goods (copy protection), or to find some non-market way of paying for content.
This guy is trying to on one hand compensate artists, and on the other hand, to free information from market constraints (or more precisely, free people from the kind of self rationing behavior being a consumer in a market entails). At first glance, this looks like a non-market technique, but he's actually using bandwidth as a proxy good. The problem is that you end up moving the self rationing behavior away from information onto the proxy good. Thus, if for a poor person who needs Internet access for e-mail or to do school research has to underwrite somebody's video collection, then he'll probably forgo using the Internet altogether.
Ironically, this method of "freeing" information makes it even more inaccessible to people of less means.
I think the download monitoring idea might have some merit, but I think a media tax would work better than a bandwidth tax. Media is purchasable in smaller increments (so it doesn't price out smaller users and scales with your actual usage of materials). Like in the article's proposal, there would still be no incentive to opt out. Sure, you could download an MP3 track in an encrypted (thus untraceable) form, but that just means that when you buy the CD-R some other artist will get the revenues.
It might not be so bad a thing to pay maybe a buck or two per CD-R or per GB for hard disk, and never have to pay for music again, and still have my favorite artists compensated. Sure, I do use CD-Rs for archival backup and sofware distribution, but it wouldn't affect my usage that much.
And I'd envision that you could return an old CD (or a coaster) for a tax rebate.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It's been 2 years, and not many people seem to have read Schneier's excellent "Street Performer Protocol". Read it at http://www.counterpane.com/street_performer.html IMHO, things won't change until it is realized that the Internet is a pipe between users, and nothing more. At that point, we can start focusing on HUMAN protocols to agree how to pay artists (where recording companies can't get their greedy little fingers in) -- Schneier's suggestion is a step in the right direction. Until then, it's pointless. Unless we want to start a war on user control and the right for consumers to dispose as they like of the devices that are placed in their hands -- and this includes applications running on their computers, their DVD drivers, and any other form of doomed user-side content control.
how would that work exactly? Do you understand the system or not? The ISP charges you per megabyte at a fixed rate, regardless of what you download (a lot of ISP's do this now, although some have unlimited plans etc). They use the tags to gain and idea of popularity of content. That is, they want to be able to say 12% of the money that we have collected should go to artist X and 6% should go to artist Y. Then they give all their measurements and the money that they have collected to some collection agency and they send out the cheques.
Here's about the only way I can think of "hacking" this system for any sort of sane reason. I go and apply for a "tag" and then sign a lot of bullshit content and hand it out to people. They think they are getting some song by their favourite band and I get money for the download. The hacker would be caught in a week. Someone would complain, they'd check the logs, the tag would be recalled and they would follow the money to the hacker.
What else? You could scramble the tags before you gave it to your mates. This would just result in the percentages not being right. So some artist would get 15% instead of 16% of the pie. If the content that you are passing around is obviously good, so why would you want to deprive the artist of money? You're paying the money anyway, don't you want it to go to the people that you like?
There's nothing to hack here. I don't think you read the article.
How we know is more important than what we know.
All they have to do is hack this tag metering thing into Carnivore!
/sarcasm
How we know is more important than what we know.
What those that create the content should realize that most people on the web would like to sample products and test them before purchasing the better physical product. If a music publisher were to give away *free* 96kbyte-encoded mp3s (which IMO are close to FM radio quality) on the web, hoping to entice those that listen to them to buy the full album, they'll have a better chance than if they offered the same selections as 192kbyte mp3s; the former file size would be much smaller so that those with dialups can easily get them, and the encoding would be good enough to be able to judge the quality of the music for a potental future purchase. (Of course, consider that the average napster-using college student is going to snarf everything and buy nothing, but without napster, it's pretty much the same situation, they won't have cash to be buying overpriced CDs).
Same with, say, television. I wouldn't mind having to watch any broadcasted episode of (for example) Farscape or the Invisible Man from Sci-Fi in crappy 240x180 window size, mono sound, streaming video assuming it was distributed free, since I have some interest in the shows but am not a devotee, but I *will* pay good money for quality (DVD) reruns of Babylon 5. Maybe there's a particular episode of Farscape that I also want in high quality format -- the free option will allow me to locate it, verify that I want it, then go off to the store and buy it.
You still have problems with those that get the physical medium then digitize it and distribute it, but that's a problem with anything digital. I'm sure that while rumors, software companies have been compensating for pirated software losses for years (some possibly using it to their advantage :) ), and the content providers of today (music, movies, television and press) need to realize that they can't avoid such losses... if instead they worked to making better relations with net users as opposed to trying to shun them, they actually might see their bottom lines increase.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
It seems like this system requires ISP customers to accept a pay per byte system. Right now, most ISPs in the US are flat rate.
If we go to a pay per byte system, then spam will start costing us money. This is already the case in the UK, isn't it? Well, we certainly haven't solved the spam problem yet, so going pay per byte on the user end is problematic.
How about only charging per byte on HTTP, FTP, etc., but not SMTP? Well, then people who want to exchange copyrighted material will just set up list servers.
Another alternative is for participating ISPs to continue charging flat rate, but add a uniform surcharge to each account. Problem? The first participating ISP will lose customers to nonparticipating ISPs. Even if everybody does it, the cost of an ISP will be driven up for people who don't download copyrighted material.
Ultimately, the possibility of maintaining reasonable ISP prices at flat rates can be determined with a simple calculation: Take the current revenue of all content providers, add it up, and divide by the number of ISP customers. What do you get? I don't know. If it's $10, that's not bad. Who wouldn't want all the guilt-free MP3s they can download for $10/month? If it's $100 forget it.
The ISP could simply pass through charges to the customer based on whether or not they downloaded copyrighted material. Then we are right back to the same old problem. Users who want to download a lot of copyrighted material will find a way to make it look like they aren't.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Being rather blunt, this has stuff-all chance of being implemented. Lets look at why not:
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:) Many of them are writing articles on behalf of their companies, etc.
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1. Unless it's 100% "fire & forget" then the ISP's will bitch & moan about setting it up (you should have heard the complaints about the absurd legislation the Australian government tried to enact enforcing site filtering at the ISP level
2. Unless it's 100% easy and centralised with automation, it benefits the big boys and not the "basement recorders."
3. Packaging the files together into a compressed archive will avoid the TAG searches (unless the ISP looks into the archives as it goes past - whups, there goes my gigbit router slowing back down to 10mbps - say, what's this privacy thing too?
4. Why should I pay for some lame-o who just slurps TAG'd files? It would require some form of "pay per use" - sort of a modified RADIUS system.
5. What about "self-promotion" - I produce a TAG'd file and stick it up somewhere. I then go to what-ever places I can and start d/l'ing the file. It costs me stuff-all (free if I can "borrow" other people's accounts, etc) but it drives up the amount I get paid. Of course, it will also drive my file up the "frequently downloaded" lists and may induce others to download it, snowballing things and leading to lots of juicy $$$ for me.
So that's just 5 things that we can easily find which will cause problems. If something relies too much on the "goodness in our hearts" then it's doomed. Most people may be cool, but there are greedy, opportunistic, lazy, I-want-it-all-for-free types who will always be there to rort the system.
Of course, a fully draconian solution could be implemented, but that would require hardware & software level controls, etc throughout the end-to-end system (from record to host to grab to play, etc). We've all seen what's happening with the whole "Copy Protection on Hard Disks" thing...
Thus we are left here with yet another payment system that doesn't quite cut it. Bummer. So, what can we do to balance the need of content vs staying alive/profit?
As someone who has a family to support and rather intensely rich desires (Ferrari, business class travel, geek-toys, etc etc etc) I am not about to take on the role of "unpaid producer of content" etc - the tragically-hip suffering artistic type is just tragic, not hip
So, here's the basic model for the content sites & similar things that I'm working on at present:
1. I've got a real job (plus some paying consultancy gigs on the side). This keeps my family alive, well and getting as many international holidays as we can (admittedly via economy class - not quite there yet
2. I'm consulting & advising friends/associates in their business ideas (both at conception and during their operation). I'm doing this on a (mostly) stock option basis (eg: swapping shares for cash). Many of these will go no-where, some will pay off. I'm careful to give my time mostly to the ones I think will pay off.
3. The content related sites I'm working on at present have the following in common:
A) Topical theme that's just starting to gain public awareness.
B) Good content producer(s) - who also have regular paying jobs
C) Sponsors who are aware that they will likely not make any direct money out of this but will get their names "out there" in a beneficial manner (this public service supported by
D) Simple site designs and a dynamic database engine that's already been produced once so we're not reinventing the wheel. Looks good, loads fast, no crap "style over substance" crap.
E) All content is loaded dynamically - so long as the server is running, the tech crew are not required
F) Cheap (but good) hosting service - site is available, served quickly and (thanks to lots of clients) not too expensive to host.
G) Syndication of content around the planet with some $$$ coming in but mostly trading content.
As a result of all this, it's cheap to set up & runs on a shoe string, the sponsors don't have to shell out too much and the content producers are getting their names out in their industry (good advertising for them and/or their companies). Those of us on the core team are all shareholders (some more than others) and if the thing ever goes ballistic, we're happy. If it doesn't - who cares - it's paying for itself and we're getting a good reputation in our industries.
Just keep saying the magic mantra:
"If it worked for Slashdot - it can work for me!"
:)
PS Yes, I'm cheating by ensuring that everyone has a "real" income stream - I've gone out on the limb once and it's not my idea of fun. I'd rather take slightly longer to get it happening than do that again
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Stephen King ONLY made $120,000??? Thats a real shame considering how much quality probably went into "the plant". Let me guess, its about a plant that becomes powerful and evil after a comet passes close to the earth.
How many times have you paid good money for music, magazines or books, taken them home and realized they are pure crap. I figure that a lot of money is made out in the brick and mortar world just because people are too lazy to bring it back, or cant. With the internet, we know right away things are crap.
Sucessful musicians are going to have to eventually get used to living very comfortably, rather than like royality. Its just a confluence of circumstances that let them earn so much money new, while aids researchers and the like dont.
Advertising does work on the internet, just not as well as tv or radio, just dont have hundreds of people working on one site and expect advertising income to pay for them all.
The internet is for the poor man to talk to the world, if we lost amazon.com, ebay and whatever things will be fine.
As soon as I press submit I'm sure I'll think of something else to say.
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.