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"

[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.

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??

[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??

[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.

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?

[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?

'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

[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

[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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :-)

Check out my latest sewage!

[asparagus]

Flame.

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

-Brett

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?

[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.

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.