Open Content and Value Creation

Magnus Cedergren writes "Which are the driving forces behind the creation of Open Content? What value is created? That is the major questions I try to answer in my paper in the journal First Monday. I would like to thank all you people participating in my study in different ways."

Comments

Open content != Open source

[DOsinga]

A big difference between open content and open source is the lack of tools in the former. If I would start a literature encyclopedia based on the content of the Wikipedia I could get started really fast. But once my visitors start adding contents and the Wikipedia changes, there are no real good standards to merge back the content. A fork seems unavoidable.

A good XML specification could help here, but currently open content usually means html files that can be freely copied. Until open content fixes this, the success of open source won't be copied.

Re:Open content != Open source

[dze]

So who was this "famous Afgani Scientist"?

Wikipedia does not "outsource" content and functionality to Google. Sure, searching Wikipedia is probably easier with Google than with its search engine, but there's a lot of sites in that boat. As for the content, many public domain articles are found via Google and incorporated within Wikipedia. Sure, people use the Internet as a research tool, they also use printed works, their own knowledge and contribute photos or diagrams.

I have found Wikipedia and the NPOV (neutral point of view) principle to work very well in practice. I think you may be missing the point of Wikipedia, which is to create a collection of generally accepted knowledge, not to publish "new or contraversial" material.

There is none..

[Creepy Crawler]

As a musician in a symphony and a band, I'll say there is little to create content for free. I'll play for free, but I dont make a symphony.

I also play in a jazz quartet (when we have a gig) playing Alto sax, Tenor sax, and B(flat) clarinet. If we played for free all the time, we couldnt afford new music or repairs on our instrument. We do a gig or 2 at nursing homes (goodwill and stuff ;-) but we usually like to get paid.

Also, my mom's an artist. She's not the one to do "New Age" crap. She hates that stuff. Instead, she paints on canvases up to 5 feet long and 4 feet tall. She enjoys it with all her passion, but she couldnt do that free either. Wanna know why? Look for oil-based paints at an artist shop. Now calculate how much paint/brushes/canvas/frame it'd take to do it.

Yeah, open content's nice. No royalties (sheet music), or public domain pictures would be nice. But it aint going to happen

Re:There is none..

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, wrong. You give away your mp3s for free, and you're an unknown indy band, you get publicity in exchange. Then people will be more likely to go out and actually buy your CDs (unless you're such a small indy band you can't afford to produce CDs, of course) or come to your gigs. :)

Open content fails really on only stuff that you can't really provide directly. Like making movies or something. And even then, there's nothing suggesting people won't be motivated to do it (if only for the fame value- or the resume).

Open content, just like open source, is a hobby thing. People give away open content all the time. Look at the mod and demo scene. No one gets paid for that stuff but a lot of people get some entertainment. This is really nothing new.

Re:There is none..

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yeah, open content's nice. No royalties (sheet music), or public domain pictures would be nice. But it aint going to happen

Don't be so pessimistic. Open content grows when the way to spread it becomes cheap. The open content in your mom's paints isn't the paint itself but rather her artistic culture and feelings.
She could sell her oil paints while giving for free computer made ones. Tell her how to paint on a graphic tablet, so her art can spread (and maybe bring more money to the other paid activity). Just be sure that she doesn't think you're trying to make her switch from hand painting to computer graphics.

Re:There is none..

[jc42]

On the contrary. There is a fair amount of free "sheet music" available online now, in a number of open formats. It's mostly of older (pre-1930's) music, of course, for the obvious copyright reasons. You can find both classical and traditional (folk) music.

There's a clear benefit for the musicians who do it. I started doing it so I could access my music quickly from anywhere on the Net. I've even had cases where I was in a fairly remote area, and someone asked "Can you play ...?" With my wireless portable computer, I could quickly get on the Net, find the sheet music, bring it up on the screen, and say "Yeah, we can play that."

And it doesn't take a lot of brains to realize that the more people doing this, the better it is for all of us. You can get at my sheet music, I can get at yours, and we all benefit. Your average 8-year-old should understand this (though your average politician and CEO probably won't).

Now if we could do something about the copyright laws that prevent working musicians from doing such useful things with music from the past 80 years or so. Then we could dispense with the bulky binders and fake books, and just use our wireless portable. But I can't see this happening soon.

If the music publishers had a grain of sense, they'd do the obvious thing here. Set up web sites like the iTunes site, but for "sheet music", that charge a very small amount per page or per score. Encourage wireless coverage so that musicians will stop carrying around (copies of ;-) books of music and pay the $0.05 per page or whatever to get it on their screen. This could quickly put an end to the illicit copying of printed books, because it's so much more convenient.

But, of course, publishers will have to be dragged kicking and screaming (and suing) into the 21st century. We're watching the RIAA attacks on file sharers very closely, and we expect that the publishers will do the same thing to musicians in the near future. Musicians playing recent material will be in trouble. We classical and trad folk musicians mostly won't, because our material is public domain. You can't copyright Bach's or O'Carolan's music. (Yeah, publishers do claim copyright on these, but unless they make it clear that it's only their edition that's covered, their claim is fraudulent.)

The fact that musicians are doing this freely while publishers can't see the profit opportunity says a lot about economic theories based on a rational market ...

Re:There is none..

[johnnyb]

Open Content is not the same as doing everything for free.

In fact, Open Content used to be the norm. Copyright laws are actually a fairly recent phenomena in history.

If it costs X to produce a picture, there's nothing wrong with charging Y for it at a store. The problem is that if I'm an artist, too, and I make a copy for my friends using my own paints, and they pay me for cost of materials and time to do it, that should be legal, but it isn't.

In fact, a _lot_ of art is one-time stuff. Painting murals in houses and buidings and stuff like that. Copyright does not aide the artist in those situations at all.

There's nothing wrong with charging for CDs. It when I can't make a collection of the songs my wife and I enjoy and give it to her for her birthday (actually, this argument made more sense when she was just my girlfriend, but you get the picture).

The fact is, throughout history, most content was open. Closed content is a relatively recent phenomena, and it's usefulness is questionable.

Re:There is none..

[Godeke]

Actually, I do believe "this tripe". I make a decent living putting my foot into the doors of companies by providing inexpensive solutions up front. Over time I have built up a respectable customer base who come back to me for improvements and the like. I also contribute to open source and make a bit of my living by installing, configuring and customizing it.

So if you write your own music and wish to keep it to yourself, that is fine. If you don't think it is good, even better that you keep it to yourself. However, I do believe the "tripe" that an musician who put a composition into open content (remember, attribution is not normally permitted to be removed as copyright is retained by the author) would gain by the ability to be "heard".

If you are good, being heard through your compositions is only going to improve your likelyhood of success. I will leave it as an excersise for the reader in the alternate case.

Re:First Content Creation!

[saden1]

Open Source Content has a value for two kinds of people. Those who initially create it, and those who want make money on it.

It has no value to entities whose business is in danger.

Re:Open content = a library of knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. We have plenty of "secret" stuff from ancient times, and the vast majority of the "open" stuff has been lost. Of course, the vast majority of "secret" stuff has been lost as well, but plenty of "secret" stuff got preserved precisely because it was secret and hidden away.

We know exactly how statues were made.

No hope for open content

[dook43]

Unfortunately, open content is largely a different animal than OSS. While it sounds great, and is surely a great idea, it seems that until artists, musicians, and graphic/software developers don't make a living off of their works, they will never want to give their compositions away for free along with the details of how they were created. Since many OSS programmers are also employed gainfully writing non-OSS software, this is not a problem for them because they don't make a living writing it. Even if they don't, in cases such as Hans Reiser, they can get sponsorships from search engines, DARPA, and the like to add whatever features that a certain party wants added. Here is possibly where open content could work however; for example, I could pay Chris Cornell to write a song about whatever I wanted, and specify in the contract that he had to release information about lyrics, sheet music, and which instruments he used into the public domain. Artists who spend time creating works will never want to release their work into the public domain without compensation. They have to eat too!

Re:A learning experience

[martyn s]

No, but that's the point. People express themselves creatively because they enjoy it, not because they make money on it. (A corollary of this is that copyright is meant to finance art, not motivate it.)

long live open content

[Connie_Lingus]

I think the easy answer to this in that "open content" is its own reward...kinda like playing music. The act of creating something carries with it enough personal satisfaction to keep us doing it, without any need for others to comment.

However, we all should know that plenty of Big Corporate Interests will soon start trying to eliminate "open content" from the table. DRM and legal challenges will soon start working together to eliminate what-they-will-call unregulated content, of course, to protect us from some imaginary threat to our safty/children and/or security, and to control the distribution of products and threatening memes that the internet allow to run unfettered.

We must all be vigilant to protect this bastion of free speech, for powerful forces are combining to reshape it into there restrictive image....

The problem of value.

[panda]

The problem of value is that *most* people are conditioned by society to equate value with money. There are many things in my life that have value to me but I cannot express that value in monetary terms. Most of these "things" (my family, my friends) have a value that far exceeds any quantifiable monetary sum. These are things which I hold so dear that I would not sell them at any price, and I would even give up my life to protect them.

Free Software that I use and that I have contributed to also has value to me, but I don't generally attempt to quantize that value in monetary. It has a utility value in that it helps me to accomplish tasks, it improves my understanding of software creation, and it even entertains me. So there are many levels of value in otherwise valueless software: utility, entertainment, and intellectual stimulation.

The same holds for "open content." Most of the www is still available to us at little or no charge, and though much of what may be out there is dross, there is still a great deal of entertainment, utility, and educational value to be found.

Warren Buffett has been quoted as saying that the Internet is the greatest destroyer of value to ever exist. In the strict monetary sense of value, he is correct. In the less tangible sense of value, as in what I value and what I have to gain of an intellectual and/or utilitarian nature from free and open content and code on the Internet, Mr. Buffett could not be more wrong. The Internet and technologies that can be used have the potential to greatly increase the non-monetary value of any information, and that in my opinion is a good thing.

It is time that we get beyond money as the sole measuring stick for value.

The Public Good

[DesScorp]

Why would someone make open content?

For the same reason some people (not all) write open source software. For the same reason that some people take their personal time to volunteer for the Red Cross or Goodwill. For the same reason that someone participates in a neighborhood watch. For the same reason the Martin Luther posted the 99 Thesis on church doors.

For the public good. You do it because you think it benefits some sector of the public. Most people can't do it ALL the time, because we like to eat and have homes and be able to buy things occasionaly. But most people have the impulse to volunteer for something worthy from time to time. Most developers do commercial work, copyrighted and proprietary by day, to pay the bills. Some do extra volunteer coding in their spare time, because they want to contribute their skills to the benefit the public at large.

The value comes from the knowledge that you're doing something worthy and good, and doing it for the right reasons. I could use my time in a variety of ways, including making money. But I know that when I give blood, I may have just saved a life. CPR instructors know that their efforts may helpy MANY people save lives. Volunteers refurbishing a downtrodden playground know they've helped give kids a better place to play.

Providing open content is no different if you do it for these reasons.

The Imperfection is Yours

[FreeUser]

Open Source Content has a value for two kinds of people. Those who initially create it, and those who want make money on it.

It has no value to entities whose business is in danger.

"Microsoft Software has a value for two kinds of people. Microsoft and those who want to make money on it (fixing it, in all liklihood).

It has no value to entities whose business is in danger."

Both those statements ignore another group for which the product has value: those who use it (although, if my girlfriend is any indication, Microsoft Software's value to the end user is a negative number, but I digress). Indeed, that is where Microsoft loses in value (and free software wins big ... not just in value of quality, but in value in rapid development, improvements, and direct feedback to the creators that commercial entities such as MS are soreley lacking), but wins by making up for it in quantity (the power of marketing and inertia).

Free and Open Content is of great value to those who create it and those who enjoy using it, as well as those who enjoy creating with it. I know: I've created an open content novel available under the Creative Commons license. The work has great value to me, and to a decent number of people who have read and enjoyed it.

That value is real, and your inability to place a monetary amount on that value is your failing, not that of free content.

Re: Story Moderation

[4of12]

Already gets done.

If you look closely at the number of comments and the number of comments with high scores associated with the story.

I wouldn't mind if the Slash code showed some nice graphics so I could more quickly find the hot stories. Something like larger pies for more comments, with colored sectors for fractions of high comments, etc.