Carping Over Creative Commons

scubacuda writes "Arnold Kling, in his article, Content is Crap, writes, 'While there are many Net-heads who share Dan Gillmor's [and Larry Lessig's] enthusiasm for Creative Commons, I do not. It has little or no significance, because it is based on a strikingly naive 60's-retro ideological view of how content intermediaries function.' He compares artists' works to, well, raw sewage that publishers filter into something that can be later consumed by the public. 'What Creative Commons lets you do as an author is label your stuff before you flush it down the toilet.' Kling points to Bayesian Intermediaries (filters based on flexible keyword weights and 'trained' by user preferences) and weblogs as good ways to filter out the drivel that many content creators produce. (Dan Gilmore and Siva Vaidhayanatha respond, to which Kling responds in his blog."

Comments

"filter out the drivel"

[Anonymous Coward]

That pretty much dooms slashdot, don't you think?

Re:"filter out the drivel"

[ZoneGray]

Well, I don't think you could build much of a publishing company based on the material in the -1 posts. Perhaps Gilmor will give it a go.

But in reality, /. does have two valuable filtering functions in place; there's user moderation, of course, and there's the fact that only a few people are allowed to post stories in the first place. It was the user moderation that first caught my attention, since it's pretty effective at filtering completely worthless content (as opposed to filtering stuff that I simply disagree with). Likewise, even though I may think they're shallow, self-important, and ideologically confused, the /. editors manage to present a site that has a distinct personality. Soul, if you will.

This is one of the things that bugs me about Google News... yes, it does a great job of aggregating links to news stories. But there's no people behind it, and it feels that way when when I look through it.

Re:"filter out the drivel"

[6hill]

This is one of the things that bugs me about Google News... yes, it does a great job of aggregating links to news stories. But there's no people behind it, and it feels that way when when I look through it.

Of course, this can be seen as a benefit, too. No person's views and unconscious bias are inflicted on you; instead, you get all available sources and opinions presented as equals in their worthiness. Then it's the reader's task to make an educated judgement of the issue, as free of editorial bias as possible. It requires critical reading skills, but I personally prefer to chew my own news, as opposed to digesting ready-chewed stuff.

Re:"filter out the drivel"

[jonathan_ingram]

AlterSlash seems to do a very good job of filtering out the drivel from Slashdot.

Re:"filter out the drivel"

[gribbly]

No person's views and unconscious bias are inflicted on you

Wait a minute, someone wrote the code and filters that Google News uses. So there's still an inherent bias, although it may be at one remove. There's certainly "people behind it", just in a different way.

This is not to say I don't like Google News. It's just that saying that it's unbiased is a somewhat dangerous assumption.

grib.

Of course nobody mentions...

[Josh Mast]

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a super-keen new book just released under creative commons.

Re:Of course nobody mentions...

[Mac Degger]

Yeah, that popped up on wired acouple of days ago...reading it now on my palm, 76% done. It's pretty decent too, with some neat idea's which I think will pan out in a century or two. I'm just trying to figure out why he calls it 'Whuffie'...world honourarium fee?

CC needs NoEndorsement

[sbwoodside]

I would add an additional BSD-like clause that the name of the contributors cannot be used to promote the work:

* Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

I don't know why the CC people didn't include something like this.

a fantastic troll

[Dolly_Llama]

i wonder if kling built his article specifically to troll slashdot based upon keywords. Let's see: 1) Mention notable figure (lessig) check! 2) Take contrarian view (content creators are sewage) check! 3)Include buzzword (bayesian filter) check! 4) For bonus points, if at all possible, namedrop Google. check!

Troll complete!

Re:But seriously

[Henry V .009]

Your post manages to agree with the poster by pointing out that he is full of shit.

+1 for Irony--Hell I've even got a web log in my sig, make it +2

Sewage??

[Moridineas]

Well I must say I don't like the sewage analogy, but overall I do agree with the point. I would say that instead of sewage, authors (anyone who is creating something) often produce the raw ingredients for a meal--and it is the publisher who "cooks" the meal.

Having experience at a small publishing company, I can say that a large number of authors have no idea how much work is needed to produce a book. Not just authors--a vast majority of slashdot viewers (and people in general) don't have any idea either I'm sure. Making a book even once an author has completed the manuscript is still time consuming and difficult--not just sending it to the press and saying 'done!'.

To anyone who says publishers aren't needed, I'd advise them to try a job at a publishing shop for a short time, and see how they like the work.

Re:Sewage??

[RazzleFrog]

Writing software is difficult, too. Yet is seems that there are thousands of applications out there that were written without the help of any major software company. Sure a lot of them are crap but the good ones often have a way of standing out.

You are still wrapped up in the idea of physical publishing. Physically producing a book is a difficult task that requires time and money but writing a book only needs a talented author and some friends who are willing to proof read.

Re:Sewage??

[chrisseaton]

Making a book even once an author has completed the manuscript is still time consuming and difficult--not just sending it to the press and saying 'done!'

But with the internet, 'publishing' my blog entry is just as easily as sending it to my server and saying 'done!'. As content creators start to funnel their shit, as the article suggests, towards the internet instead of dead trees it will become much easier for the authors themselves to do.

Re:Sewage??

[Moridineas]

No offense to you (I don't even know if you have a blog), but a blog does not a book make, and most blogs are CRAP in my experience (not saying there aren't some good ones). I think people are taking the analogy of blog book too far..blog diary, maybe.

Besides...most authors do like to make some money of their works so that they can do what they like to do, and blogs aren't to conducive to those means.

Re:Sewage??

[Kaa]

I would say that instead of sewage, authors (anyone who is creating something) often produce the raw ingredients for a meal--and it is the publisher who "cooks" the meal.

That's WAY overstating the role of the publisher.

The author creates, the publisher applies some final polish and does the gift wrapping. If you really insist on a restaurant metaphor, the author makes the dish and the publisher arranges it on a plate and adds a sprig of parsley on the side.

And, of course, that's only concerning literature. In things like music or painting the publisher has even less input into the final product.

Publishers are needed, no question about it, but saying that they actually "cook the meal" is absurd, IMHO.

Re:Sewage??

[Moridineas]

Yeah, you're right, it is overstating the role of the publisher..It was the best I could come up with on short notice :)

But I do think your analogies, UNDERstate the role. I know it was suprising to me how much publishers actually DO do (such as sometimes it is the publisher who comes up with an idea for a book, and then searches out an author capable of writing such). interesting stuff.

Anyway, you're also perfectly right about music etc, I'm no RIAA et al fan.

Re:Sewage??

[bcrowell]

To anyone who says publishers aren't needed, I'd advise them to try a job at a publishing shop for a short time, and see how they like the work.
I say publishers aren't needed, and I have done publishing work. Specifically, I've self-published some of my own books. I have pretty decent sales. (It's a textbook, and it's been adopted by a bunch of schools. The digital version is a free download, and I sell printed copies.) I'm not trying to blow my own horn. I just want to point out that this is a counterexample to your argument.

The article is correct about the necessity for filtering. However, he makes some strange assumptions about how filtering can happen. He only offers two options: traditional filtering (filtering by the publisher before distribution) or some kind of vaguely imagined bayesian filtering.

What makes more sense, IMO, is that content should get filtered, but after distribution, by readers. To see an example of how that can work, see my sig.

Re:Sewage??

[Planesdragon]

To anyone who says publishers aren't needed, I'd advise them to try a job at a publishing shop for a short time, and see how they like the work.

They're not.

Editors, typesetters, and printers are--but not publishers. They're just the ones with the money and the sales acumen.

Everything needs polishing up, but the bulk of any creative work that worth the money is in the artist themselves; if not, then the bloomin' editor should be writing the books themselves, and getting all the credit and all the money.

Of course, the number of people needed only inrcreases the further we get aweay from paint-on-canvass. Authors need typesetters and proofreaders and editors. Video game progammers need coders and coders and coders. And musicians need sound technicians and someone who understands the best ways to get the sound and energy of a live performance onto tape/CD.

My manuscript is done. I need an agent, a printer, a marketer, an editor, and a typesetter. The first one I might be able to find on my own--but the last four I'm going to need to go through a publisher for unless I suddenly win the lottery.

Re:Sewage??

[Planesdragon]

Publishers are needed, no question about it, but saying that they actually "cook the meal" is absurd, IMHO.

Oddly enough, a cooking analogy makes sense. The artists is the chef; the publisher is the restaurant.

Re:Sewage??

[Moridineas]

We survived for millenia without publishing middlemen in the sense that you describe. The difference was that not every jackass who can figure out a qwerty keyboard got his work published. I see nothing wrong with going back to those days. There are too damn many useless, repetitve texts out there now.

This is why I say if I you want to have a serious discussion you should get some knowledge. This is SO far from the truth. Publishing houses have historically had a huge role to play, historically more so than today!! Hell, publishing houses used to even push their own spelling for words back before english was standardized. Come on, don't post this crap.

Re:Sewage??

[Moridineas]

You need an agent? hmm...glorified view of being an author possibly..

In any case, you can certaintly do any of those things on your own. Editors are a dime a dozen (varying quality of course), typesetters there are plenty of, marketting companies, sure there are tons of those. So there you go.

Re:Sewage??

[susano_otter]

You are still wrapped up in the idea of physical publishing.

Okay, but I'm not wrapped up in the idea of physical publishing. May I transition your points back into the digital-network arena?

Physically producing a book is a difficult task that requires time and money...

So is digitally producing a book, but the cost is distributed differently.

...but writing a book only needs a talented author and some friends who are willing to proof read.

Writing a book only needs a monkey and a typewriter. Writing a good book needs a "talented author". Typically, it also needs a talented editor, and not simply "some friends who are willing to proofread". So right there we see two things: First, that simply authoring content doesn't guarantee the quality of that content. Second, a good editor is part of the process--a vital part currently supplied by the publisher. So it seems that publishers do provide a useful service. And since neither writing nor editing are limited to the physical realm, there doesn't seem to be any reason why the publishers shouldn't continue to add some of the same value in the digital arena as they do in the physical arena.

But what value could they add? Well, there's the aforementioned editing, which is pretty important. We can probably discard the actual "publishing" value-add, since digital networks pretty much take care of that already. But digital publishing tools and management systems will undoubtedly become more important as time goes on, so that may change.

Then there's marketing, which is the process by which publishers attempt to alert you to works you wouldn't necessarily become aware of or know how to find on your own. On the Internet, of course, we have the opposite problem: all the content is readily available and easily found. Instead of marketing, a process of pushing new content on us; we need filtering, a process of blocking the unneeded, unwanted, or otherwise valueless content. This is what Kling is talking about: filtering adds value to content, by sorting it into "valuable/not valuable" categories. I don't know about you, but I want the most efficent, most effective content filters I can get. The first company to meet that need will dominate the digital publishing world, as well it should. It will be adding quite a lot of value to the growing ocean of content, after all.

Re:Sewage??

[Planesdragon]

You need an agent? hmm...glorified view of being an author possibly..

Ok, "need" isn't really true. But "could use the advice of someone who actually knows the market and has a vested interest in seing me get money" sounds true.

Plus, agents know publishers, and publishers have money--which is something I don't have, or else I could actually try self-publishing.

(Also, like I said the manuscript is done. Contact me off /. if you want to know more.)

Re:Sewage??

[Moridineas]

Heh, so you want to add ANOTHER middleman into the mix? :p

Re:Sewage??

[MrGrendel]

I don't know if the stuff that is published at CC is mostly crap or not. What I do know is that whether something is published on the internet by the author or by a traditional paper publisher has little, if anything, to do with its quality. The publisher's primary role is not to act as a filter or as a "cook," but to act as a distributer. Publishers exist to make money and that is the only reason they exist. With the exception of some academic and alternative publishers, they don't care if a book is good, if the information that is presented is accurate, or anything else that most people would say contributes to quality. What they care about is selling a book to as many people as possible. If they think people want crap, that's what they will (and do) sell.

Anyone can witness this for themselves by taking a trip to the closest B&N. There are some good books, but there are also books full of conspiracy theories, nonsense presented as science, books telling you how to become powerful by rearranging your living room, etc. Just about every crank site on the internet has an analogue in book form. There are entire sections of most book stores that can be labled as crap. If publishers are acting as "cooks" then they should consider going to cooking school. I would rather eat the raw ingredients than most of the stuff they shovel out. The majority of the food they serve is Jell-o with almonds, potato chips, rice, and sausage floating inside, laid out on a bed of pasta with cinnamon-spiked marinara sauce and garnished with hefty slices of deep-fried spam. Sometimes they add horseradish sauce and pour imitation maple syrup over the top. It's been cooked, but I don't know anyone who would want to eat it.

In other important BLOG news

[stratjakt]

Bill Finklebork thinks the donut he bought this morning might have been a day-old, it tasted a little stale. He also thinks that someone should be airing Beavis & Butthead in syndication.

Truly this is important to us all, as it affects society at it's very core.

Re:Do we need this?

[Moridineas]

Ok I can tell you a couple things that it's a 100% sure that consumers want in books. Good spelling, properly formatted pages, sentences that make sense, tables of contents and indexes that are correct, covers that look good, footnotes in proper order and together, uniform citation styles, diagrams referred to properly and in the right locations, and I could keep going. If you think all this is easy, I would advise you to seek a job in the publishing industry--sounds like some publishers could really use your help!

You wouldn't believe the state of some manuscripts that come in..

it's a good thing we have quality "filters" ...

[timothy]

Like the FOX Network.

timothy

Re:Do we need this?

[Stonehand]

Quantity. The number of people who write, act, sing, et al is far higher than those that do it well, and random sampling from a consumer's POV is going to take a bloody long time to find the worthwhile bits.

Re:Do we need this?

[jbolden]

How many minor art film festivals do you go to? How many college author's books do you read? How many open art exhibitions?

The idea (which seems true to me) is that consumers do not want to have to choose between thousands of products most of which are bad but dozens of products most of which are good. Getting from thousands to dozens requires that 99% of the products be filtered.

For example I personally tend to for way more filtering buying almost always "greatest hits albums". I want multiple filters:

a) The group got a contract
b) The record was successful
c) Multiple records were succesful from the same group
d) The 10% best songs from the records were choosen.

I hate "live music" at bars and clubs because most of it is so bad. While I may be unusual in the degree of filtering I want for music, the basic idea is not atypical. Further many people have the same filtering for books (where I personally choose from a much wider range); and will only read books that are classics (i.e. have sold well for generations) or only read books that are massive best sellers. The Oprah book club (best new literary fiction each month) worked well because having to only pick 1 book per month Oprah could make it a very good one. Other people only go to the most succesful movies....

So no I don't think consumers have any interest in choosing between such a wide range of sources.

Frankly why are you getting your tech news from slashdot if not to get a filtered selection of the hundreds of tech news sites?

Haha ha

[BlackHat]

Filters!

These filters are why most if not near all of editorial cartoonists are white male 25-55. These "filters" are why many of the people here are here and not reading Main-stream-content.

The whole bunch of these fools think that there is some Content-Value in the control of the media. Some how the exclusion of some parts is enhancing the parts they let you see. That their view of what is good and bad is Added-Value. I am not so sure they do add anything. Nor do I think that never allowing the bad-stuff to be seen will do anything but obscure the contrast.

Imagine sports where we only get to watch only the winner play alone.

Re:Haha ha

[jbolden]

These filters are why most if not near all of editorial cartoonists are white male 25-55.

They aren't. You see editorial cartoonists in most international papers. So probably most editorial cartoonists are Asian males. What you probably meant is that most editorial cartoonists for US mainstream papers... in which case they probably reflect who applies for the job.


These "filters" are why many of the people here are here and not reading Main-stream-content.

Absolutely; the people here want a different filter. The same way classical radio stations filter differently than pop radio stations who filter differently than comedy stations.

Nor do I think that never allowing the bad-stuff to be seen will do anything but obscure the contrast. Imagine sports where we only get to watch only the winner play alone.

Pretty much that is another set of filters. The best high school players play for college they get filtered again to be on good teams and get filtered again to make the pros and get filtered again for field time. The result is that the sports people watch involve only "the winners".

In sports the filtering is much more drastic than in books or music.

'Cause You Get What You Pay For

[reallocate]

Take a look at all the semi-literate, poorly spelled, poorly argued, unsubstantiated crap that infests the web, e.g., most Slashdot comments. The crap is free, but you -- the reader -- have to spend your resources wading through it. The web trades off ease of access for little or no selection, filtering, and editing.

People who make a living by selling their work -- writers, musicians, etc. -- aren't about to threaten their careers by abandoning traditonal publishing and dumping their work on the net, free to all comers.

He's right, but...

[Black Parrot]

> He compares artists' works to, well, raw sewage that publishers filter into something that can be later consumed by the public.

Yeah, but when the publisher in question is the RIAA they filter out all the good stuff and pass all the lip-sync dance-sync boy-band crap on to the consumer.

Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[Morgaine]

Having experience at a small publishing company, I can say that a large number of authors have no idea how much work is needed to produce a book.

While there is some truth in that of course, it is only part of the truth. The much larger truth is that without the content, the publisher has nothing, ZERO, zilch. Commensurate with this, the publisher does not really deserve much credit nor profit --- he is a middleman, useful, but still just a middleman.

Furthermore, the "no idea how much work is needed" response is often used to justify the continued existence of the middleman even when he is no longer necessary. If technology respected such words of caution, we'd have no desktop publishing, no home video and graphics production, and no home music studios. And of course, the individual artist would always be just a tiny cog in an immense machine.

The middleman does need to be put in his rightful place --- not necessarily extinction, but certainly in a limited niche.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[Moridineas]

Bah, I'm sorry, I stand by my earlier statement--if you want to really talk about this subject get some knowledge first--go write a book or work at a publishing shop.

Your statement that "the publiher does not really deserve much credit nor profit" is ridiculous. Let me list a couple things that publishing companies do that authors are quite glad to have no part in doing--market books. The press with which I have experience largely works in college books and things like law books (ie, nonfiction). All publishers devote a signifigant amount of resources to sending people out to schools to get prospective sales--meaning more royalties for the author. How bout managing sales, shipments, warehouses? That's fun. Or dealing with supply vendors, printers, etc? That's great fun too.

Another area I'm quite sure you haven't thought about. In many cases publishers are looking for a book--a book to fill a particular niche, and they go out and find an author to write said book. So if the publisher recruited an author like this is it fair to say that the author has "ZERO, zilch" and does not deserve much credit or profit?

The publisher is NOT just a middleman--they DO take on many activities of middlemen, but the act of publishing a book is a process in which creativity comes out of the employees of the publishing company as well, and in many cases editors and others greatly help the authors.

I could keep going ad inf. But I'll just stop here..

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[mochan_s]

The press with which I have experience largely works in college books and things like law books (ie, nonfiction). All publishers devote a signifigant amount of resources to sending people out to schools to get prospective sales--meaning more royalties for the author.

College textbooks are the prime example of where the middle-man should be cut. The middle man is so bloated and large for college textbooks that the price of textbooks are ridiculous. And, what do the editors do?

First of all, they demand that the textbook be submitted in Tex (so all typesetting is done). Second, a preliminary copy of the book would have been used in a professor's class (so it would have 99% of the mistakes weeded out). So, all the middle men fucking do is make money. I guess, for lower level classes, it takes a lot of work to "convince" professors to assign a $130 book when there's an equally good book for $20 (or a free downloadable book,lecture-notes from a website), or ask professors to upgrade the requirement to the alternate version or the web-enhanced version of the book so that student has to buy a new copy instead of a used copy.

You can rationalize all you want about publishers being so important. Sooner or later, professors are going to assign textbooks are ps files to download and the publishers are going to go. Not needed in the college textbooks scene at all.

Don't know about other kind of books. But, I can't remember the last book that I bought that wasn't a college textbook.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[Abcd1234]

And it should be pointed out that many professors are going the way of generating a full set of course notes for their class which fully covers the material at hand. Then, rather than having a set text book, they sell the lecture note set to the class for $20 (or whatever your going rate is). This is especially prevalent in many of the math classes I've taken.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[mcrbids]

without the content, the publisher has nothing

It's symbiotic.

Without the publisher, the content never gets seen. And, don't give me crap about "the Internet will fix all that". There will always have to be some sort of moderator.

Ever watch American Idol? Remember the hundreds or thousands of really really bad singers that never make first cut?

That's the real world, baby. Without "assholes" like Simon that crap would pollute our airwaves, and lead to a general disregard for "art".

For an example of unmoderated content, go to mp3.com and listen to a "rock music" playlist. At least 3 of 4 songs are pure crap - some guy playing a flea-market keyboard in "auto chord" mode with one finger singing in a flat tone a song made up moments before, and recorded (hissy, mono) on a flea-market battery powered tapedeck.

Yes. Really. That bad. Songs like "You used me like a potato" which laughingly became part of our family culture for a while as very possibly the worst song ever recorded.

They're starting to charge their "content providers" a bit which will probably weed a lot of this out, but still provides no assurances that somebody with a bit of money to burn (there are plenty) won't produce a ton of worthless crap that you have to listen to before filtering it out in your playlist.

A middleman is necessary and it isn't wrong to compensate him/her/them/it for the service provided. However, the jury's still out pending a workable method for doing so on the Internet.

If MP3.com were to put in a moderation system by category, something like /dork uses, it could have a chance at pummeling the music industry. However, being owned now by Bertelsmann means this isn't all that likely.

Anyone with a few bucks want to give it a whirl? I could design the underlying algorithm and get a decent site up within a few months, using technology like swarmcast or bit torrent to minimize the hosting costs and/or allow third parties to post their tunes.

-Ben

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[Morgaine]

This is funny, since I actually agreed with you in part, namely that there can be a lot of work involved in publishing. However, you missed entirely (or ignored willfully) the point being made, that without content you have nothing.

Then you point out even more heatedly just how much extra work is performed by the publisher ... while missing the insight that it's largely makework, either not essential or in very many cases capable of being done by the author. Furthermore, your contribution is undoubtedly the key reason why the end price is so high (the costs of an organization are always much higher than those of the author), as others have pointed out.

Finally, you point out that in some cases the publishing house actually creates the work, perhaps through doing the research, bringing together articles or authors, and so on. This is excellent ... you have become the AUTHOR. But don't confuse that situation with the normal one, where you are primarily a middleman dealing in presentation and marketing, no more. That can be a useful function function, in some cases, but extending its importance beyond that is flawed.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[rhadamanthus]

"While there is some truth in that of course, it is only part of the truth. The much larger truth is that without the content, the publisher has nothing, ZERO, zilch."

Sorry, but that depends entirely on the 'publisher' in question. The RIAA, for example, got around this nasty problem by conglomerating many companies into one 'Association' and then making it cumpolsory for content creators to sign over their works in exchange for publication, thus making the publishers the temporary 'owners' of the content, and the associated revenue. Lawrence Lessig, in The Future of Ideas quoted the founder of MP3.com (whom I forget-but is now at Lindows) who was barraged by RIAA types who could not understand why MP3.com did not demand ownership of new artist's works before 'publishing' the music. The quote (paraphrased from memory) was something like:

"Why are you helping the next Madonna without owning the next Madonna first?!"

You are correct in saying that the the middleman should be put back in his/her place, but they have a lot more clout -- reference MP3.com's collapse...

---rhad

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[lifeless]

> Ever watch American Idol? Remember the hundreds or
> thousands of really really bad singers that never
> make first cut?
>
> That's the real world, baby. Without "assholes"
> like Simon that crap would pollute our airwaves,
> and lead to a general disregard for "art".

Unlike the general disregard today?

You underestimate the 'general public'. Most folk I've met are quite capable of disambiguating unfiltered 'content' and filtered content.

What really disillusions folk is when the filtered content is crap - like most mainstream CD's for instance.

I expect that given the choice of filtering their own content, or only choosing from *badly* pre-filtered content, folk will choose to filter their own, in order to actually find something good.

Thus unfiltered content will not lead to a general disregard for art - we already have that.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[rmcd]

Well, as the recent author of a "ridiculously-priced" textbook, let me disagree.

Yes, I used the manuscript in class, so many mistakes were caught in advance. Yes, I submitted in LaTeX (the publisher wanted Word, LaTeX was my choice).

However, there is a *huge* difference from a student perspective (I know, I had to read the complaints) between a manuscript where many of the mistakes have been caught and one where almost all have been caught. In my case many got caught by the publisher, who found and engaged high quality people whose job was to go over every page and check the examples and cross references, etc. Students simply aren't sure when it is a mistake and when they don't understand something. The published book also looks a heck of a lot better than my .pdf manuscript. Maybe this matters more than it should, but it matters.

Finally, marketing. I was sort of assuming that if my book was high quality it would sell itself, since the market is well-defined. It doesn't. I've discovered that a lot of potential adopters are uncertain about some of the things I've done differently. The publisher's marketing efforts provide a channel through which I can make my case.

So I don't feel abused. I feel that the publisher added significant value and committed real resources. I know that not all authors feel this way, but I do.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[kalidasa]

And, what do the editors do?

Developmental editing (telling the author "this is the sort of thing you need to be discussing here," "this really isn't necessary here"), production editing (everything people complain about on Slashdot: "you don't know the difference between a plural and a singular, do you?" to "this is actually a condition contrary to fact, so you should use the subjunctive in the protasis and the indicative in the apodosis" to "I know they use single quotes in England, but we follow the Chicago Manual"), imprint (this book is good enough to be called an Oxford University Press book), and marketing.

First of all, they demand that the textbook be submitted in Tex (so all typesetting is done).

Most publishers don't do that. Sure, some of the fly by nighters do, and some in the sciences, but most commercial publishers don't.

Second, a preliminary copy of the book would have been used in a professor's class (so it would have 99% of the mistakes weeded out).

Yeah, my Calc professor did a great job with that... he couldn't even spell the title of the textbook right. And it was his text book. No, I won't say the title, but it was two words one would think any mathematician could spell.

Now, if you could come up with some alternative financing for the developmental and production editing, and for the acquisitions editing, so that the everything but the marketing could be done in an open manner (free as in freedom), I'd be for that.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[Moridineas]

Ok, let me refer you back to my previous message where I said "college books" not "college textbooks". There IS a difference, though perhaps I should have said "academic books with a bent towards education at the collegiate or post collegiate level" to have been clear.

Secondly, you may be right about SOME publishers having those requirements, but I can tell you that the publisher I dealt with used tex not at all and didn't know of other shops that did used tex (I brought up tex once as a cost savers and was basically laughed at).

Third, often for textbooks the publisher is instrumental in getting the team of authors together. I DO agree that many college textbooks are overpriced (because its basically a monopoly once a book is assigned) but let me tell you also that there is fierce competition and that price does make a difference to professors when assigning books.

Fourth of all, you TOTALLY misuse middlemen. Publishers are production side, bookstores are the middlemen. You can buy from almost any publishers website direct and avoid the middlemen if you want, but most bookstores get like 40% discounts from publishers (So if a publisher lists a book at $80 they might *have* to sell it to amazon at somewhere around $50--so then whose making off like a bandit here). That's a good point (hah sorry, I'm typing this more or less stream of consciousness). If you want to get rid of the REAL thieves of the book industry, go after the bookstores.

and finally, I love your last comment about the only books you buy/use being textbooks. So clearly you have such a great insight into the industry. Thanks so much for your comments.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[susano_otter]

While there is some truth in that of course, it is only part of the truth. The much larger truth is that without the content, the publisher has nothing, ZERO, zilch. Commensurate with this, the publisher does not really deserve much credit nor profit --- he is a middleman, useful, but still just a middleman.

And commensurate with that, the truth is that without the publisher I, the audience have nothing. And without the audience, the author has nothing (or at least no paycheck). In the digital arena, I don't really need the publisher to literally "publish" the content, since that seems to be within every author's ability. But what I do need is a powerful filtering tool, adjusted to my preferences, and capable of separating valuable content from useless slashfiction involving Riker having gay sex with some bored housewife's space cat.

That's what value the digital "publisher" will add, in their absolutely vital role as a middleman between the content-producer and the content-consumer.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[Moridineas]

No, I'll try to make myself more clear--there's no doubt that the author is the prime creator and that without the base content there is nothing. The point I'm trying to make is that there seem to be a bunch of people out there who are demonizing the publishers and being worthless and basically thieves--and this simply isn't true. If you went into a shop like the one I worked in, I think you would find almost every person there had an emotional and creative investment (well not accounting or warehouse staff ;)) For instance there was one guy who made some of the best book jacket art I've ever seen (and anyone who says jacket art doesn't matter--hah). Isn't part of the total worth of the book now stemmed from his creative input? My point isn't that the publishers could do it without the authors, as you say, that is ridiculous. My point is that the publishing house isn't just a sterile house of greedy capitalist pigs.

Incidentally, you want to know why books are so expensive? Check what kind of discounts bookstores require. Check what kind of return policies they require. Some stores like Amazon get around (or upwards) of 40% discounts buying books from the publishers. If you were a publisher, and you knew you would have to sell to bookstores at 30+% discounts (the primary retaillers ), where would you price books?

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[Moridineas]

Well I'm at the moment at a private university, so it may be different at public schools or what not, but afaik (and having talked to multiple professors) that's exactly what they do--design their own courses, and books are of course reviewed in magazines etc. Authors for one like to have publishers sending people out to schools also, for instance to law schools. Authors DO like to have more sales :)

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[Moridineas]

Ok well with your familiarity with Tex etc, and your appearance on Slashdot leads me to believe you're an engineer or CPS guy :) And as such, you don't get many non-textbooks. If you take humanities courses for interest you get books that AREN'T textbooks--scholarly books, treatises, some books that aren't text books but may be aimed at a college audience. Textbooks are to me the kind of books used in engineering and cps, and also elementary, middle, high school.

Well let me ask you. If you were a publisher, and knew that to sell to a bookstore you would be required to give a let's say 35% discount, how would you price your product?

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[zangdesign]

As an example, books that cost $100 in the US usually cost $25 in Asian countries. They are identical in every respect. How do you explain that?

I would say that you are ignorant of economics, among other things. The cost of a good or service is determined not only by it's relative value in a given society (in this case, the US vs. Asia), but also by the cost of production. Wages and overhead are lower in some Asian industries than in the US, as is the cost of marketing. Then there is the demand for a given item - the same textbook which cost $100 in the US and $25 in Asia has these price values because that's what the market will bear. This is the basis of a capitalist economy.

When you complain about things not being as cheap here as in Asia, consider taking a basic economics class as an adjunct to your CS studies so that you understand the reason why.

Failing that, I suggest you go to Asia to buy your textbooks.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[kalidasa]

You think someone who probably has PhD in the field and is a leading researcher in his/her subject needs someone else to be saying that. The point of the book is that it's the author's expert view of the subject on what is important and should be emphasized, how it should be presented and what order it should be presented.

Most Ph.D.s cannot communicate their ideas in writing. God knows how they (or, more to the point, their doctoral committees) got through their dissertations. Please note that I am not talking ex ano here, but from experience.

A professor I know got his word .doc manuscript rejected and had to be typed in Tex. Every book in science that has formulas and diagrams would make sense to be required to be submitted in Tex.

Who was the publisher, University Presses of America? One example does not a rule make. One of my professors had a publisher fail to send her book to the proofreader (a glitch); but her second book was perfectly typeset.

Most publishers will reset a book. The cheap ones only accept camera ready copy. Some do require TeX, but I wouldn't publish with them.

Re:Middleman versus the author, artist, musician

[rmcd]

I will respond to a few of these comments.

The LaTeX book class is pretty darn good, but (in my opinion) the pdf that results is not as readable or usable as a high quality published book. (Not every published book is high quality---sometimes publishers create drek---but done right the physical book is simply a more usable document. IMHO of course. YMMV.) A place to have an informed discussion about the value added by professional publishers is comp.text.tex. You'll get a range of opinions but by and large the opinions are informed.

Many students who had the full pdf of the book explicitly asked me to let them know when the book was published so they could buy it. They said this after grades were submitted and (since I suspect you're thinking that they were just trying to butter me up) many said this after they graduated. It happened; take it as data. It's also a fact that I routinely buy books for which I have manuscripts. A published book is a more usable document in many ways. If I couldn't afford to buy books I wouldn't. I can afford to so I do.

Finally, I don't know what goes on everywhere, but I've never experienced bribery from a publisher, unless you call complimentary copies bribery. I'm sure the publishers reps wish they could engage in bribery! My experience is that you typically have profs trying to do the right thing for their students, and choosing the right book is an important part of that process. If the book does things differently than existing books, you need to explain the difference so that the prof can make an informed decision. That's what I mean by marketing.

Sturgeon's Law and Garbage

[redbeard_ak]

I'd agree with Kline on one hand that Sturgeon's Law is being enforced - 90 percent of everything is crap.

However, the notion that publishers are filtering with my best interests in mind is also part of that 90 percent.Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

And beyond that even, I'd have to say that one man's treasure is another man's garbage.

how does this differ from GNU?

[beanerspace]

Not being a legal beagle type, how is Creative Commons any different than the GNU license? I realize the former is for posts/articles and other blogish content, and the later for software, but aren't they essentially the same thing. Or am I missing something big (and legal) here?

Restatement of article

[wunderhorn1]

1. It's likely that a given piece of Creative Commons content is going to be crap because 90% of everything is crap (this is known as Sturgeon's Law, BTW).
2. Content intermediaries produce mediocre results, but it's still better than crap.
3. Maybe the answer is not to guarantee that there is free crap available, but to offer a way to filter out the crap, without having to pay a middleman.

Makes more sense now?

Re:Do we need this?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Nice plan, except popularity has almost no connection to quality.

There's a ton of great but obscure stuff that you miss with this filtering approach, and a ton of highly commercially successful crap that you get instead.

Maybe you should try customized mix CDs. Then you can get songs *you* actually like, in the version/remix you prefer, in the order you want.

Why Creative Commons is a Good Thing(TM)

[Omega]

Perhaps Mr. Kling hasn't ready anything on the Creative Commons project. I think one of the best features the Creative Commons offers is simplifications of user agreements.

Essentially all the parts of a user agreement are reduced to a set of easily recognizable icons/keywords (from a set of 10) which detail what copyrights and licenses and granted and reserved under the agreement. So when you visit a website or buy a software package, instead of reading 30 pages of EULA's (which no one does anyway) and clicking "I Agree," you will see a set of Icons/Keywords which abbreviate the agreement so you can Agree/Decline. The legal elements represented by the agreement icons/keywords are universal -- so the icons ($), (=), etc means the same thing for every user agreement regardless of content provider. Providers can customize their agreements by choosing a set of icons which best represents what licenses they want to reserve and which ones they want to grant. Users benefit because they only need to read the text of the 10 possible licenses for a possible infinite number of service/content providers.

The argument, "Sure I clicked agree, but I didn't read it," is becoming more and more compelling to courts and shrink wrap licenses are becoming endangered of being ruled invalid because they are not easily accessible. By following the creative commons model, providers can be protected because they follow a universal license model that can be easily recognized and understood by users. Likewise, users can know everything they are agreeing to because the provider can't sneak spying provisions into the CC licenses and still represent the license with the CC icons.

Btw, I love it when some sniveling, little Reagan-ite calls constitutionally guaranteed freedom and liberty "60's era" or "naive." What they're really saying is "Sure, liberty sounds good...But facism and elitism just make more sense in modern society."

Re:Do we need this?

[Deagol]

The idea (which seems true to me) is that consumers do not want to have to choose between thousands of products most of which are bad but dozens of products most of which are good. Getting from thousands to dozens requires that 99% of the products be filtered.

Like we already don't end up filtering the crap that's already been filtered? Thanks, but I'd rather take my chances at sampling all of what's out there, rather than the top 5% of what the major media coglomerates decide is best to pump up on cable and radio airwaves.

I've sampled much stuff from mp3.com (before they sold out and started featuring Top-40 crap and screwing the indies that gave it a name to begin with), and have been more recently checking out stuff from cdbaby.com. I have to say that the indie stuff is no better/worse than what's out there in the mainstream. They both have a lot of crap, but there are some gems out there. Personally, I think I'm better off finding my own "hits" than the letting the radio do it.

I mean, really, half the hit songs become hits through sheer repitition of airplay -- subliminal, if you will. If a co-worker has a radio on all day, and I hear the same dozen songs eight times during my day, I'll very likely end up liking a song through familiarity. The other half of songs become hits via associations with TV shows, movies, and commercials. How many people truly thought Da-Da-Da was a cool song before the VW commecial?

Oh Christ, the old Social Darwinism Argument Again

[Interrobang]

This argument is not new in publishing circles. In fact, everyone from publishing industry executives to Spider Robinson (in a televised interview on the Space Channel) takes a crack at it every so often, and it goes like this:

Since Sturgeon's Law applies to all forms of content creation, publishers serve the valuable function of separating the wheat from the chaff and presenting us, the buying/reading public, with only the best of what's available.

Unfortunately, there are a few flaws with this argument. First of all, who decides what's the "best"? The guy who gave the go-ahead to publish The Bridges of Madison County? Literary critics? The New York Times Review of Books? Secondly, using sales numbers as the only arbiter of "good" or "bad" in an artistic venture is a really strange way of looking at art, one which sort of presupposes that that which is marketable is (de facto and de jure) automatically "good." (See argument one.) Thirdly, it's entirely possible for famous, well-respected, and talented content creators to have their entire careers axed by one failed venture. Don't believe me? Ask Norman Spinrad, author of Bug Jack Barron, and The Iron Dream among others. It happened to him, and it's happened (according to my own research) to many other authors (I'm afraid I can't really name names here, though).

See, the way the publishing biz operates, it works similarly to many areas in our society (like electoral politics, and the private sector, for two): If you've already got the "name" and you've got lots of money (or a couple of bestsellers in the hole), you're practically guaranteed to stay a success. If, on the other hand, you have to compete against the "brand names" and everybody else submitting their work 'over-the-transom', your chances of achieving even that first foot-in-the-door publication are very small. Your talent, or lack thereof, isn't usually much of a deciding factor.

So given all that, these guys making this Social Darwinism In Publishing argument really piss me off, because they're completely disconnected from publishing biz reality as we know it...either that, or they've got their lucrative contract, so they really genuinely believe that the stacked deck affords equality of opportunity. Therefore, obviously, the rather McLuhanesque (the retro-60's naivete Kling refers to?) levelling Creative Commons is a bad thing. Right.

Why so bitter?

[madgeorge]

Did CC piss on Kling's lawn, or what? Why so bitter? I can understand the argument defending the role of publishers to some extent, but in reality too much is "filtered". If we left it up to the big, commercial publishers Einstein would never have amounted to anything. More Danielle Steele, please!

That being said, I'm still trying to figure out why defending publishers requires attacking a project like Creative Commons. Yeah, the 5 million personal sites proclaiming "Hey, my name is Dorky McDork I like Satr Wars email me if you liek movies, two! LOL)LL" do kinda suck. But the need for search and filtering tools again is no reason to trash a project like CC that is "designed to help expand the amount of intellectual work, whether owned or free, available for creative re-use." How is this a bad thing?

But I preach to the choir. I need to copy this into an email to Kling.

--madgeorge

Article is Crap

[Tom7]

Well, his article is crap, too, so that's why I didn't read it. ;)

It may be true for writing, but it's definitely not true for music: for several years I've been having a great time downloading self-published music from mp3.com. Believe me, there's no sewage filter here, but that doesn't mean I'm not able to find stuff that I like fairly easily. It's great that these are real people, doing it for the love of it, and that you can have discussions and collaborations with them. Really refreshing. (It also feels a lot better than buying from the RIAA!) Of course, making my own music is a good way to have music that I like, and that some other people might by chance like, too. Seriously, if it meant the end of commercial radio and professional "artists," hell, sign me up.

This whole thing reminds me eerily of the academic publishing industry's claim that we as researchers need them in order to survive. (So sign over those copyrights!) Of course, with the internet we no longer need journals and conference proceedings to get access to papers, and with the recent academic scandals involving forged results, it's not clear that the peer review system is working particularly well, either.

You know what?

[Mac Degger]

He's mostly right...mosty of what comes out is crap. It just stands to reason (and empirical evidence :) ).

But what he's missing is that some of it is good, or even great. And even what's crap can spark something great in someones brain.
Sounds something like the current media, doesn't it? And it's free, and open to derivative work which can supercede the original in quality, to boot.

a man and his buzzword

[g4dget]

There are many approaches to text filtering and classification. Bayesian methods are just one of them. Latent Semantic Analysis and related techniques, for example, are not directly motivated by Bayesian considerations. Seems like this guy has heard a big-sounding buzzword once and is now parading it around as the solution to all our woes.

For the kind of "raw sewage" Kling produces, we don't need a Bayesian filter to detect it--it stinks enough without it.

Reviews!

[robson]

I agree with him in one sense... not that content is crap, and not with his overall tone or message, but that there is significant value in the filtering process. Not corporate filtering, or automated filtering, but review-based filtering.

I've thought for a long time now that, with advances in technology (home-studio-produced music, professional-quality DV software on PCs, etc.), and with advances in distribution (the Internet), we're moving into a different sort of creative "space" where anyone who wants to make art can make art, and have it be seen by anyone. That's unbelievably cool, but it makes "consumption" more difficult, as it's much harder to find work that interests you.

The solution is reviews. Preferably from as many sources as possible. I see us in a situation where we actively pick reviewers whose taste matches ours, and who gain our trust. These are our filters. This already exists in the medium of web sites -- what are Slashdot, MetaFilter, Plastic, and K5, among many others? They're filters for web content. We don't have time to scour the entire web every day for pages that interest us, so we go sites who've obtained our trust, and we let them filter this content.

Kling's article was crap, that's for sure...

[crazyphilman]

As I read his love-letter to the publishing industry, which basically said that the output of authors, artists, et al was "crap" which was then filtered by value-adding publishers (Puh-LEASE), I couldn't help but think that if these publishers were any good at filtering crap, we would never have heard of Mr. Kling in the first place.

I like the idea of a creative commons, though. Kudos to the crew that created it.

Is Kling the Sphincter?

[core plexus]

"Arnold Kling, in his article, Content is Crap, writes, snip.

Then does this mean that the drivel he produces is to be flushed down the toilet? Arnold Kling is a nobody trying to be a somebody by stirring up controversy, rather than contributing or creating something new. If content is crap then is he the sphincter?

And trying to filter it out by blogs? Spare me.

Pentagon Seeks Robots-Prize is $1 Million

with all of the sewage and toilet analogies...

[rfischer]

maybe this story should be called 'Crapping Over Creative Commons'

Bayesian filters for slashdot

[__aawsxp7741]

Assuming that Bayesian filters are really suitable for this kind of content filtering, and seeing how often they're mentioned on slashdot, maybe we could use Bayesian filters to rank comments here.

There's certainly enough sewage here to make it worthwhile...

Re:Do we need this?

[RealAlaskan]

Good spelling, properly formatted pages, sentences that make sense, tables of contents and indexes that are correct, covers that look good, footnotes in proper order and together, uniform citation styles, diagrams referred to properly and in the right locations, and I could keep going.

Spelling will always be hard to automate, but most of the rest of that list is covered, flawlessly and (almost entirely) automatically, by LaTeX and BibTeX. Cover art is the only area that LaTeX doesn't address.

For example, making a USEFUL index takes some doing. The author must remember to mark useful words to be indexed by LaTeX. Once the words are marked, the actual creation of a correct index is fully automatic.

The one service which a publisher can provide to an author is editing. That, and that alone, the author can't do for himself and cannot automate. The one service which the publishers can provide to readers is filtering. I suspect that both of these could be provided without a publishing industry, but as long as the publishing industry provides both, it can earn its keep.

There is also marketing. That is probably a service to the author, and may be (but probably isn't ) a service to the reader. I wouldn't be surprised to find that we would all be better off if editing and filtering were divorced from marketing.

Typesetting, distribution and printing are all do-able by the author today (or by the reader!).

Re:Do we need this?

[jbolden]

That would work except that I'm talking about how I acquire the digital songs. I can't make a mix with music I don't have.

As for popularity and quality; I think popularity within a correct subgroup isn't a bad measure. That correct subgroup may not be "US total sales" (though for me with respect to music it actually works pretty well but I've got mainstream musical taste). For example you might like "Total sales within Jazz, or college radio playlist or...". Finding the right population for prefiltering is much easier than doing your own filtering.

cdbaby.com

[jbolden]

Good tip on the cdbaby.com. I like the layout of that site quite a bit.

BTW I wasn't arguing that mainstream radio is necc. the right filter. I wasn't arguing for large publishers over smallish within the right genre. Most everyone here likes O;Reilly but by total book sales they aren't even a blip in the screen. Within their niche however they are very popular.

As for how I end up liking songs I don't disagree with you. Familiarity has a great deal of influence on what I end up liking. But I the fact that I like something for a stupid reason makes it easier not harder for me to find music I like.

The column is true to a point...

[pr0t0plasm]

The influence of publichers over content is not an entirely bad thing, as Kling points out. However, the substantial influence that publishers have over content can be and is abused, especially due to the incentive for publishers to steer the content market toward material it can cheaply, easily publish. This seems more intuitive in music than in writing, but I think it applies in both arenas: crap is easy to find, so if you can popularize crap, you don't have to invest in cultivating relationships with producers, you can just find some hack to fill out the formula and pass the savings on to the customer. The trouble is that rather than charge extra for the good stuff to offset the extra cost of development and promotion, many publishers offer uniform pricing and choose not to distribute material requiring a harder sell.

Kling manages to miss that that last sentence is what the CC aims to address. If that undercuts publishers, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Middlemen are best minimized

[aphor]

When the distribution is expensive, then you filter the crap before the distribution. However, these filters always cost an unknown quantity more than their operating cost: they have false-positives in their crap-detectors and false-negatives in their goodsuff-detectors. I think its just a corollary of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (entropy), but The law of Leaky Abstractions (discussion) applies here also. In other words: Bayesian filters aren't much better than a bunch of publishers. Any publisher's experience of a work must be abstracted, and that abstraction is a function of that publisher's genetics and environment. It leaks at the "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" point, and thus some crap will be suffered by the consumers, and some priceless work will be lost forever because it is mistaken for crap. A lot of other stuff in between can end up in the wrong pile as the publishers sort things out.

Publishers are weak, unreliable (even at their best) arbiters of quality, which is why we need a lot of them. Some might say, the more the better. In a world where all authors can be publishers, and some non-authors can be publishers, the number of publishers can exceed the number of works being published at one time. That doesn't solve the problem, but it DOES keep it from getting completely out of hand to the point where consumers' opinions (crap vs. not-crap) are insignificant. If publishing is cheap, then the hidden costs are the big cost factor!

Value in "indy" works

[lostboy2]

I admit I did not sift through the articles and blogs, but I very much disagree with Kling's arguments.

First, he suggests that CC and publishers cannot co-exist, that the media world is not big enough for the two of them. I disagree with this notion.

Unless I've missed something, CC does not preclude authors from having their works filtered and distributed by publishers, it just gives them another alternative. Moreover, it gives authors who are ignored by publishers a means to protect their works and seek other distribution methods.

Secondly, Kling's quote

"...publishers are adding value, not simply stealing. They add value by filtering out content that people do not want..."

is highly presumptuous. First, how do the publishers know what I do not want? They've never asked me! But more importantly, it is this attitude that causes publishers to cater to the lowest common denominator -- to distribute only what they think a sizable percentage of the population would like. Without options like CC, works by authors and artists that the publishers deem "crap" might never be available.

I myself read a lot of comic books and zines. Personally, I LIKE independent press works and go out of my way to find them. Some of the most interesting stuff I've found has been created and distributed by the author/artist on a shoe-string budget (photocopied on plain paper, folded down the middle and stapled once).

I disagree that such things are crap, just because they aren't on glossy paper, with airbrushed technocolor, aren't produced by one of the brand name publishers (Marvel, DC, Image, etc.), etc.

Yes, there is a lot of crap out there too, but I'd like to be able to judge for myself, rather than leave that decision up to people whose opinions clearly differ from my own.

Content is not king....

[richieb]

Even, if it is not crap, it's not king. I found this article quite pursusive: Content is not king

Publishers will just do something else

[KjetilK]

I just posted this comment to his comments section: I think that what you completely fail to think about is that the only thing that is changing, is that publishers do not anymore have a veto.

Certainly, literary critics will become more important in the future. Those people adding value by aiding people in finding the gems and improving writing of the writers are not going to disappear. No, they will obviously become more important as the amount of stuff increases.

But they do not anymore have a veto, as publishers had before. That's the only real difference.

Has this author ever read Lessig???

[cyberon22]

I highly doubt this guy has ever read Lessig, or even understands what he means by a "creative commons".

Traditional economic arguments in favor of IPR assert that without them there will be no good content in the first place, since authors have little incentive to produce work.

But if ALL "content is crap", there is no justification for intellectual property protection in the first place. If the world gets BAD content by paying for it, and BAD content by not paying for it, the economically optimal solution is to have BAD content for FREE!

The discussion of Bayesian networks is completely irrelevant since what is at stake is a more fundamental assertion about how and why individuals innovate.

Score: Kling 0, Lessig 1.

Re:Oh Christ, the old Social Darwinism Argument Ag

[pclminion]

See, the way the publishing biz operates, it works similarly to many areas in our society (like electoral politics, and the private sector, for two): If you've already got the "name" and you've got lots of money (or a couple of bestsellers in the hole), you're practically guaranteed to stay a success. If, on the other hand, you have to compete against the "brand names" and everybody else submitting their work 'over-the-transom', your chances of achieving even that first foot-in-the-door publication are very small. Your talent, or lack thereof, isn't usually much of a deciding factor.

I don't see how this state of affairs is the publishing industry's fault. If anything, it is the fault of the consuming public. People, which are generally stupid creatures, care more that an author is well-known and popular, than whether his writing is worth any more than the paper it's written on. If authors continue to succeed, even when their work doesn't merit success, then it's because the sheep-like public continue purchasing their trash -- NOT because the publishing company chooses to market it.

On the flip side, if an unknown author can't get his life's work published, even though it's an amazing piece of literature, that's probably because the publisher has (correctly) realized that the aforementioned sheep-like public won't realize what they've got.

Hell, if I was a publisher, I'd act precisely the same way. Why waste money marketing an intellectual masterpiece if its content is going to be lost on the vast majority of idiots? Conversely, why shouldn't I publish garbage, if people are choosing to buy such garbage? It's just sane business practice.

If you're really upset at the state of publishing, then go scream at your idiot mom/brother/boss. They're the ones pumping the money into this drivel. People read what they like. Unfortunately, what they seem to like most is brain-dead, lifeless, putrid trash.

Beowulf cluster running Bayesian filters!

[extra88]

Natalie Portman recommends it!

I think you miss the point.

[FallLine]

The publishers are not just middlemen. They are the primary risk takers. Yes, an author may spend a couple months writing the book, but he either lacks the financial resources or is unwilling to commit them to promote, publish, and sell his book. So while the author takes risk, perhaps relatively great personal risk, and while they are necessary, it is very far from sufficient. The publishers make a real effort to actually sell the book, to get it placed in shelves, to get ad time, etc. A good number of their efforts fail, but some succeed. This is why the publishers are able to command such an apparently large premiums for what they do. If all they did was merely stick their stamp of approval on it, then you'd have a million other parties, whether that be the authors themselves or other sizable companies, moving in for a piece of the action. Part of the way that they survive and part of their function is by selecting works that are more apt to succeed on the market (so that they can maximize their profits). It may not be perfect, but it's nonetheless necessary.

This is not to say that there are not other possible methods that could eventually replace them, but it is foolish and wrong to ignore what they do. If you have a good working alternative, then I (and I suspect most others) would encourage you to go ahead with it. However, what many so-called artists on slashdot ask is downright irrational; they want to tear down the only thing that works, however imperfect it may be, without even offering a realistic alternative solution and certainly not proving its efficacy.

You know what? If the publish are unnecessary and are just middlemen, then go around them, for christssake, and create a better system. If they're as unessential as you claim then surely their returns will eventually reflect this. THAT is the way capitalism works, not legislation and braindead protests.

Re:I think you miss the point.

[bcrowell]

The publishers are not just middlemen. They are the primary risk takers.
You're right. As the author of a self-published textbook, the one thing I really missed about not having a publisher was not having someone to lay out the cash for printing. The other stuff wasn't a big deal -- desktop publishing software has really made a lot of the publisher's traditional functions irrelevant, provided you're willing to study up on book design and work hard at creating a professional-looking product.

You should keep in mind, however, that the economics of publishing have changed, and are going to keep on changing. Although print on demand still hasn't really become viable, technology now makes it much more practical to print small numbers of books. My first press run was 250, and now I'm doing printings of 1000. Because these numbers are small, the financial burden of paying for printing really isn't such a crushing one. Yes, if my sales grew by another order of magnitude, then we'd be talking big bucks --- but please bite me with that problem!

Promotion? Well, doing promotion the traditional way is indeed extremely expensive. You have to hire salespeople. In my market (college textbooks), you have to send out free review copies to professors. But promotion no longer has to be that expensive. Basically I just try to drive traffic to my web site, where teachers who are interested download the book. This costs me peanuts in webhosting costs. I do a little bit of advertising in a trade magazine (The Physics Teacher), but it's still not that expensive. Of course, if you want people to beat a path to your door, your mousetrap does have to be better, not worse...

If the publish are unnecessary and are just middlemen, then go around them, for christssake, and create a better system.
Yep, that's what a lot of authors are doing now.

Re:Do we need this?

[rhizome]

Bitter much?

It's not very sound to generalize based on a particular example, and even less sound to use yourself as the generalizing principle. You engage in "post hoc ergo propter hoc" by reasoning that because some group of consumers use unsophisticated selection criteria that consumers don't have any interest in doing their own choosing.

Well, if you prefer "Greatest Hits" compilers to make your choices for you, and I am able to find all the music I like without buying any "Greatest Hits" albums, does that mean that actually *half* of all consumers prefer to make their own choices? Your logic is lame. Just because record companies are trying to squeeze every last penny out of a band's catalog doesn't mean that consumers are demanding it. You're assuming that a particular premise is true based on its ability to support your chosen conclusion.

Kling's sewage treatment analogy

[rnturn]

Hate to point this out to him but the sewage treatment that the publishing corporations isn't working too well. Better call up the EPA because their treatment process is broken. There's way too much crap being released after they've supposed tidied it up for public consumption. IMHO, Kling has far too low of an opinion of the average person's abililty to perform their own filtering.

If the stuff that I find in the local music store, or the video store, and, especially, what's being put on the airwaves is the pure stuff that's left over after the publishing houses have filtered out the crap then that pretty much explains the drop off in CD buying or TV viewership. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that of all the content that the 3-letter TV networks could have chosen to air, that, after all the valuable filtering we're so fortunate for them to have performed, the best they could come up with was ``reality TV''. Or yet another cop show. And, of course, people watch it... it's the only thing on most of the time. And the reason that my TV is rarely displaying anything but a rented (or purchased) video.

Oops

[Bruce Perens]

And my whole book series, too. At least it's sewage that sells well, helps people get a job done, and gets good reviews :-)

Re:Do we need this?

[jbolden]

I gave a 1/2 dozen examples; the music example was just one. I assume then you pick your peanuts for peanut butter so as not to have your quality unfairly influenced by the farmer.

Check out my latest sewage!

[asparagus]

Flame.

You can check out some of my other raw crap here.

-Brett

Re:Check out my latest sewage!

[asparagus]

Wow. I didn't think it was possible, but I just slashdotted myself.

My day can get no better.

Try this link.

-Brett

Re:Do we need this?

[rhizome]

Your point remains the same through them, that because *some* consumers don't use their own faculties to express their preferences that consumers as a rule "do not want" to choose what they expose themselves to. And perhaps most ridiculously, that because there is an act of selection involved *at all* ("from thousands to dozens") that support for choice is misplaced. Gosh, if only there were just one thing to buy. Then perhaps we could all get on with our lives.

"So no I don't think consumers have any interest in choosing between such a wide range of sources."

Mod this A.C. up.

[FallLine]

This sort of fallacy is often propogated on Slashdot, generally by people that have never and probably never will have a marked contribution to society, but rather serve as equally pointless, if not more so, an existence than the role they find superfluous.

Without the labors of farmers, there are no meats, milk, or grains with which to produce consumable food. Without the proper tools, one cannot farm land effectively. Without people harvesting resources, you can't create tools.
People function at a higher level than these to create better tools, produce more effective methods, distribute the best results, and many other things.
And without all of their work, writers are not free to create anything. Is it your position that writers are thus unworthy of praise, for without the entire framework of a wealthy society, they would be spending their time picking berries, instead of producing yet one more piece of derivative artwork? There is no added value to life from retelling the same stories over and over, and evolving them ever so slightly for the times?
This is of course false, and purely crap. Looking up the chain and saying others take your work and provide no benefit, is delusional. I don't need to produce electricity for myself, or manufacture my own clothing or my computer , and I think it would be fairly absurd for a farmer to suggest the software I write isn't a sufficient contribution over the framework they provide, that I could not exist without.
Publishers provide a very real, human service. They help the writing process, secure the means of production, and serve to create a beacon I can look to for various standards of quality. They free from the writer many burdens, and ease the means by which I can find something I value.
In reality, most easy things are shit. Modern life makes it fairly easy to produce text, but it doesn't make it any easier to product quality.

I can look over at SourceForge, which is made veritably useless by the mammoth quantity of garbage, throw-away software. I can look at blogs, and find endless quantities of non-creative, boring tripe, that would be far more interesting to sociologists and psychologists, than anyone looking for artistic excellence.
I can go over the mp3.com and download thousands, and thousands of absolutely horrible pieces of crap. I could attempt to click my way through segments of the web, or I can use Google. Google couldn't exist without content to search, and yet it makes my usage of the 'net far more productive, by filtering out the endless quantities of garbage I'm not interested in.
I have no problems paying, myself, for the overhead of the services I find beneficial to me. This includes the quality control and branding of a publishing house. Whether it can exist without a lower step in the chain is irrelevant, because it makes for a better product.

Just because you're not personally capable of the reflection required to understand the world in which you exist, doesn't mean it fits within the scope of what you do understand, anymore than an illiterate makes my words just a bunch of squiggly lines. Stop thinking your simplistic insights of how the world is broken somehow escape the rest of us, and spend more time thinking of why the world works the way it does. I can assure you, we're not missing anythign you see.

Mod this A.C. up. Thanks

Re:Do we need this?

[jbolden]

You really need to read more clearly if you are going to be accusing others of logical errors. I do specifically address the issue of unfiltered choice in the very context where I first make that point. In context:
"How many minor art film festivals do you go to? How many college author's books do you read? How many open art exhibitions? The idea (which seems true to me) is that consumers do not want to have to choose between thousands of products most of which are bad but dozens of products most of which are good. Getting from thousands to dozens requires that 99% of the products be filtered. "

In other words there are plenty of avenues by which people can see unfiltered film, unfiltered art, unfiltered music, unfiltered literature. They exist, they are quite inexpensive (often free) and they are very poorly attended. Its not that people don't know about these venues its that they quite deliberately choose to avoid them.

Most people have very few areas of their lives in which they want to make detailed choices. You may find this offensive but I've provided quite a bit of evidence for it and if you can for a moment think about your own life you yourself make use of it. I think the particular case of music you find offensive because you probably do select from a much wider range (as I mentioned I do for books where I am much more of an expert and am willing to spend more filtering for myself).

Now stop thinking with your emotions while claiming I'm making a logical falicy. Reread the original post and if it helps replace music with best selling spice racks.

I've published several books

[phr2]

and yeah, it's work, but nothing like the work of writing them (I co-wrote one). By publishing I mean typesetting the book (with TeX) starting from an author-supplied input file, hiring an artist to do the cover illustration, getting the printing done, etc. It's mostly just grunt work and it really isn't that hard. Publishers who think that doing this legwork somehow is only worthwhile if it translates into a 100+ year monopoly on use of the contents are simply kidding themselves or whoever they're trying to convince.

Re:I've published several books

[NineNine]

There's a big difference between self-publishing and publishing. Any yahoo can write a book and get it printed. It's called Kinko's.
Publishers, on the other hand, actively filter out the good from the crap, and spend money to promote and sell and earn income for the author. Big difference.

Re:Do we need this?

[Moridineas]

Well a couple points--first, publishers have two clients--the people to whom they sell books and authors. Both are important (duh). It's a different business model than most people think of though I believe.

Secondly, ok sure, if all authors who ever wanted to publish a book wanted to learn latex, write everything in latex, figure out how to market their book, to whom to sell, with whom to print, what kind of bindings, design choices, etc, then yeah, anyone could make a book (albeit most likely poorly designed).

But the thing you miss is most authors DON'T want to do this. I don't think the company I was with ever recieved a manuscript in latex format (everything is word or wordperfect, OCCASIONALLY another wordprocessor). Most authors don't WANT to deal with printers or with marketers, etc.

Most authors want to do what they like doing which MOSTLY writing or teaching or working at their "real jobs" in some cases. The problem with people on slashdot trying to make informed decisions about the publishing industry is that they assume that all authors have the time or desire to be able to do all this latex and crap themselves. most authors have neither the time nor inclination! People in engineering and computer science (ie, large portion of the slashdot audience) are certaintly an exception.

Seems the proof is in the pudding

[Infonaut]

If Creative Commons is so useless/pointless/stupid/whatever, why not let the market decide? It seems like this guy is just knifing the baby. Let's give CC some exposure and see if consumers (aka the public) and content producers (aka artists and writers) like the approach.

Sharpshooting CC in its infancy makes me think this guy is just afraid of change.

Who's afraid of the Creative Commons?

Copyright yourself?

[cosmosis]

Since copy and intellectual property rights (now reaching oxymoronic levels) have been given the stamp of iron-clad permanence and near holy sancity, I thought this might be the perfect protection for individual identity and privacy:

Starting today, I hearby copyright my own unique creation - myself. My face, body, personal stats, biometric identifiers, speech, writing, and movement through space is hereby protected copyright to the fullest extent of the law. Anyone who copies my information in a database, shares my personal information with others, is guilty of piracy. My identity is mine, and mine alone, and falls under the purview of copyright protection. Anyone who has a copy of any of my unique identifying information, including fingerprints, iris scans, walking gates, and DNA, and possesses that information without permission is now elgible to be sued.

On the one hand I admit this idea is silly, but I didn't write the rules of the game, the IP cartels, the congress, WIPO, and now the US Supreme court did. On the other hand, perhaps this is a way to use their laws to protect ourselves from invasions of privacy and unwanted intrusiveness of surveillance, which in this context is "stealing" our copyrights, and then pirating that information by copying and sharing it across countless goverment and corporate databases.

Anyone who sees a flaw in this argument is welcome to contact me. If there are any lawyers who think something like this can be pulled off, then also please contact me.

Nice long article

[hikousen]

with the primary messages: everything sux. Only big media companies know what people want.

lol

O' Reilly?

[NineNine]

Please raise your hand if you trust a book filtered (ie: published) by O'Reilly more than you trust a book published by the "For Dummies" press.

Now if publishers would filter

[bluGill]

Sure publishers should be a filter, but they are not. Mercedes Lackey was one of my favorite authors, but her latest works have not been worth reading. Same for most other authors, they get successful, get a name, and then ride it instead of producing. (And yes I'm aware that she writes things that are not fo interest to me, I'm refering to books that by the cover and subject appeared to aim at my tastes) An honest publisher would ahve taken a read at some of her recient books, and said "Nice rough draft, but you will dissapoint fans if you publish it, so go write something they will like."

I buy authors because most people cannot write, and those that can often don't write the kind of thing I'm interested in. By sticking with a good author and/or publisher I should have confidence that I will get something good, that I will like. It doesn't happen that way at all in fiction, and even in non-fiction everyone has a few bombs.

Part of the problem in fiction is authoers write fences around themselves. They create a wonderful world that people love, put some memerable heros in it, and then belive the fans who say they want more. We want more only when there is more to say.

Bayesian Intermediaries - just one approach

[mesocyclone]

Most people really don't have time to filter the sewer by themselves. Publisher do provide that function (among others). The author suggested Bayesian intermediaries as an alternate filter. Some form of AI will indeed prove useful in this regard - just like google is useful for web searching.

But other approaches may work also. Here are a couple...

1) dmoz.org like things. Places where reviewers categorize works and list the good stuff. With slashdot-like (perhaps improved with time) moderation and metamoderation this may be a quite powerful content sorter and filter.

2) popularity based measurement... the web equivalent of the Nielson ratings.. but voluntary, automatic and anonymous. You download a song (or whatever), and your demographics automatically help sort that song by category - especially if you can (or have to) sample a bit first before downloading the whole thing. Inferences can then be made, by software, about what content appeals to what self-classified sort of person. Feedback on one's own personal choices (similar to the Bayesian idea), combined with this, can do an even better job of content filtering.

I know what sort of music I like. I don't know who performs it and I don't want to know. I just want the damned music!

Too bad all of this misses the point.

[dracocat]

The only purpose of Creative Commons is to create a license. It has no intent or purpose than creating a license.

So... Why is everyone talking about filtering--especially this author. In fact it looks like he hasn't even been to the Creative Commons Website.

All of this is makes as much sense as saying GPL is in trouble, because of the way they filter content...

That is, it doesn't make any sense at all!

Let your friends do the filtering

[niminimi]

Consider the set of pieces of content, each identified by an url. Now map the urls into a (potentially) infinite-dimensional vector space of finite subsets of (Strings x Reals). Just give some url some finite number of pairs (keyword, rating). This act may be called rating or moderating of content. If a keyword doesn't get a value, let it be zero. Suppose you and your friends do that. Now you want your ratings to depend on your friends ratings, and your friend may want her ratings to depend on yours. To make things simple, let these dependencies be linear. So we have a digraph of people and a linear map for each arrow. The nodes are where these ratings are summed together. A sufficient condition for the system to settle (to converge) is that the maps in the arrows be contractions ("of absolute value less than one"). Just as in real life, your objects of interest would (and should) depend on your friends' ones.