What Makes Something "Better Than Free"?

Stanislav_J writes "In a very thought-provoking essay entitled 'Better Than Free' Kevin Kelly, Senior Maverick at Wired, probes the question of how thoughts, ideas and words that are so constantly, easily, and casually copied can still have economic value. 'If reproductions of our best efforts are free,' he asks, 'how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?' He enumerates and explains eight qualities that can, indeed, make something financially viable — 'better than free.' A very timely article in light of the constant discussion of RIAA/piracy/copyright issues."

Comments

chocolate

[Timesprout]

nuff said

A COPY of an original article.

[Anonymous Coward]

This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.

BETTER THAN FREE [2.5.08]
By Kevin Kelly

Introduction

"I am still writing my next book which is about what technology wants," writes Kevin Kelly. "I'm posting my thoughts in-progress on The Technium, a semi-blog." Kelly is one of the three sages that I consult with regularly editorial matters pertaining to Edge. The other two members of the hitherto ultra-secretive "Council of Elders" are Stewart Brand and George Dyson. Here, he invites the Edge community to look over his shoulder and provide feedback on his latest thoughts.

--JB

KEVIN KELLY is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the popular Technium, Cool Tools, True Film, and Street Use websites. He is the author fo Out of Control.

Kevin Kelly''s Edge Bio Page

Better Than Free

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.

Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system, where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire. We see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once its flowed on the internet.

This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.

Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?

There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.

There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable i

What's Better Than Getting Paid?

[NetSettler]

The article makes some quite useful observations in terms of categorizing present trends and is a worthwhile read for that purpose, I think.

But I'm uncomfortable with its "conclusions", if it can even be said to have any. (It seems to indulge a sense throughout of "this is ok, things are good, we just need to embrace them".) From the article:

In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

If I reworded this as:

In short, the money in a networked economy does not go to the people doing the work. Rather it follows the path of who controls the view, and that path has its own circuits.

it would sound a lot less benign.

He makes some casual references to the need for trust and the willingness of people buying to give money to creators. But he overlooks the fact that it's in the best (financial) interest of the people who are the conduit to do as much as possible to obstruct the ability to do this.

The industry thrives (for now) on talk of riches that can be achieved in this new world order if people just contribute freely and hope the money comes somehow, but the obvious truth is that that works better for the people who get the money than for the people who don't, and when you're touting that there's no correlation between where the money goes and where the credit is due, that's not sounding too good to me.

Just look at how long it took the TV writers to get what was obviously due them, and they were very organized. Now imagine how much difficulty a group of uncoordinated netizens is going to have getting the same, since when any number of them boycott their "jobs" putting out free content, there are gonig to be any number of others rushing in to fill the gap for free, causing the content deliverers to say "gee, why should we pay them at all?"

Re:What's Better Than Getting Paid?

[mspohr]

But I'm uncomfortable with its "conclusions", if it can even be said to have any. (It seems to indulge a sense throughout of "this is ok, things are good, we just need to embrace them".) From the article: In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits. If I reworded this as: In short, the money in a networked economy does not go to the people doing the work. Rather it follows the path of who controls the view, and that path has its own circuits. it would sound a lot less benign.

I think you have missed his point here. The money DOES go to the people doing the work. Except the 'work' is the not necessarily the people who made the original work but the people who are adding value through immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage, and findability.

I believe that his real point is that it is no longer sufficient to 'create' something and then retire on royalties but you must go out and continually provide value for that creation in the ways he lists. This is the great shock to traditional businesses publishing books, music, software, etc. Their business model has been formed on the scarcity of copies and they have failed to adapt to the reality that copies are no longer scarce.

Actually, I kind of like the concept that you have to work for a living by continually providing value rather than create a monopoly on some idea or expression of an idea and coast on monopoly rents.

Re:What's Better Than Getting Paid?

[kevinbr]

"......in a networked economy does not go to the people doing the work....."

In, for example, todays music industry, the money does not go to the people doing the work. There are rare exception like Madonna and U2, but the money goes to the distributer.

"...Just look at how long it took the TV writers to get what was obviously due them......"

Um, no. They still do not get what is due to them. I believe for example their download fee kicks in after something like 30 days ( where most of the money is made in the first 30 days ).

No one is due anything. We all have to work and in the US today millions of workers are told to adjust or starve. Writers and musicians are no different. The fact is that the cost of a digital copy is zero.

The other reality is that the existing distribution is trying to use the law to prop up a defunct model.

Take the movie distribution. I live in France but speak English. I see a movie available today in the US, but I am supposed to wait for 6 months to get it legally, when I can get it now on Piratebay? It of course never occurs to them I might pay today, if they would only make it available. They do demand creation but fuck up the fulfillment.

Or take a concert. I recently paid 120 Euros for several nights at the Nice Jazz festival. I want to buy MY concerts that I attended but of course where are they available? Bootlegs on Youtube. Demand creation yet no fulfillment.

etc etc.

With digital copying, they might want to create demand yet throttle this demand in stupid ways ( I do not want DVD's I want 700 MB downloads for my hotel at night on a laptop but no this is not a commercial choice, they fail again to to fulfillment).

So this article makes perfect sense to me. I work with IT contractors who make lots of money. They ALL download films because that is the easiest way to them, not because they are free.

Re:What's Better Than Getting Paid?

[PietjeJantje]

Actually, I kind of like the concept that you have to work for a living by continually providing value rather than create a monopoly on some idea or expression of an idea and coast on monopoly rents. Let's put it this way, let's not take the RIAA as an example because that has been muddling the discussion into a mono copyright bashing affair.

If an author, say Douglas Adams (rip), spends a couple of years on a book, your equation does not work. That is because it is based on an investment of time, and you need a return for that. Creating value after that, for instance based on your popularity, is nice, but not economically related to the investment needed for the addition of value to the initial product. Also his audience, and book readers in general, might be less inclined to purchase services after the free copy.

Do we want a culture based on the commercial return on t-shirts and such? Would Adams have written the books? I for one prefer having given him some monetary units for his product, than obtain it for free, then see if I like him and toss him some coins like he's some kind of beggar.

I believe copyright and old-fashioned publishing are outdated mechanisms in digital times. I also believe that over time many money grabbing industries got a firm, unhealthy grip on the writers, artists, etc. But I also believe the single-minded mono-culture of simply proclaiming everything related to copyright as evil, and magic solutions like making everything free and then it will all be solved, is just silly and a cover-up for the fact that people like to take things for free while not having the worry about the morality of it. This makes one equal to the RIAA. Full of greed and hypocrisy.

Re:What's Better Than Getting Paid?

[IamTheRealMike]

I believe that his real point is that it is no longer sufficient to 'create' something and then retire on royalties but you must go out and continually provide value for that creation in the ways he lists. This is the great shock to traditional businesses publishing books, music, software, etc.

You're exaggerating. The number of people working on music, books and software who can actually retire on the basis of one hit are vanishingly small. The vast majority need to be continually creating new things if they are to have a living wage. Look at 99% of the programmers in the video game industry for instance.

Actually, I kind of like the concept that you have to work for a living by continually providing value rather than create a monopoly on some idea or expression of an idea and coast on monopoly rents.

You're also using language manipulatively :-( Especially on slashdot, most peoples connotation of "monopoly" is "sole provider of something I need". Saying copyright holders are a monopoly is like saying that Nike have a monopoly on producing Nike trainers. It doesn't say anything useful. Nobody needs Nike trainers specifically, just like nobody needs Britney Spears' music specifically (regardless of what the little sisters of the world may think). What you say might apply in very, very special circumstances, like with Windows but certainly doesn't apply to most copyrighted works.

Re:What's Better Than Getting Paid?

[oojimaflib]

If an author, say Douglas Adams (rip), spends a couple of years on a book, your equation does not work. That is because it is based on an investment of time, and you need a return for that. Creating value after that, for instance based on your popularity, is nice, but not economically related to the investment needed for the addition of value to the initial product. Also his audience, and book readers in general, might be less inclined to purchase services after the free copy.

Do we want a culture based on the commercial return on t-shirts and such? Would Adams have written the books? I for one prefer having given him some monetary units for his product, than obtain it for free, then see if I like him and toss him some coins like he's some kind of beggar.
While I'm aware that your argument may well hold for some people, Douglas Adams is a _really_ bad example in this case. Indeed, he's a fine example of the counterargument:

Douglas Adams (DA) is paid by the BBC to write a radio series. This is given away, for free, by the BBC, over the airwaves (I don't think that there was a radio license by the time Hitch-hiker's was broadcast). DA chose then to add value to the original product (the radio series) by: writing sequels, adapting it as a book, adapting it as a TV show etc., cashing in on its (and his) popularity.
Now clearly, in this proposed new world of content distribution, different ways of cashing in would have to be chosen, but the principle still holds. DA would have written the work regardless, as it was initially paid for by a corporation that wanted the content. How he then chose to cash in on his success was then simply a product of the time.

This is not to say that this will hold for every author--public service broadcasters can't be expected to employ every content creator--but DA is a fine example of exactly how you can make money by giving stuff away for free.

Re:What's Better Than Getting Paid?

[sayfawa]

If things go the way I expect/hope then, in your analogy, Douglas Adams would have been paid to write the book in the first place, instead of writing the book and then selling copies in order to receive payment. By the time he is done with the original work of art, he has been paid enough to make all the time and effort worth it. The valueless copies are freely distributable.

Imagine your favourite author stating that they are not going to start writing another book until they get x dollars to do it, but once they are done, the book is available for all in electronic form. Sure, there will be lots of freeloaders, but as long as the artist gets what they want, who cares?

Re:What's Better Than Getting Paid?

[hey!]

If I reworded this as:

        In short, the money in a networked economy does not go to the people doing the work. Rather it follows the path of who controls the view, and that path has its own circuits.

it would sound a lot less benign.

Let me play devil's advocate here for a moment.

Money isn't a reward for work. That's the hard lesson of business. The economic system does not care about your personal travails. It is concerned with scarcity. Money is a reward for reducing scarcity.

Over the years I have turned my hand to a number of crafts from calligraphy to woodworking. I am fascinated by the process of craft. So when I walk into a store and see a basket that was woven by some third world basket weaver selling for less than five bucks, I automatically consider how long it would take me to make that same basket if I were doing it day in and day out. In some cases I believe I could make a many as four or five if I worked extremely hard. I doubt, however, that after shipping and stocking and whatnot the basket weaver received more than a few nickels per basket.

I have also seen domestic made, artisanal baskets that sell for two or three hundred dollars, that probably weren't much more work than baskets that sell for a few dollars. While on the surface this would indicate that a superior, more deserving artisan got more money, I don't think it's as simple as that. Who's to say the third world artisan doesn't have the ability to make equally unique and interesting designs? The problem is that he or she has no way to market them; there is no money for that artisan in anything but baskets meeting the specification of the exporter. I could probably (with practice) make a Nantucket Lightship basket that could sell for $700 to $1000. Given my marketing costs, I might clear three or four hundred for a week's work. That's not enough to support the lavish (by world standards) lifestyle I lead. There are third world artisans making a few dollars a day who could do the work; if they cleared even fifty dollars a week it would be huge.

The first world artisan is rewarded in part for is artistry, but mainly because he addresses a scarcity. There aren't many people willing to work for five hundred dollars a week where he lives, and people willing to work for less than that don't have access.

Creative activities, such as writing and performing, are a hobby for the vast number of people who do them, including those who get paid from time to time. A small fraction of people make their living from them, and a vanishing small number of people make a comfortable living from them. A world of "free" copying is a disaster for those who make a frugal living from their art; it puts them back in the hobbyist category. It also dashes the hopes of those in the hobbyist category of quitting their day job. But the idea of restricting copies is not an economic one; it's a value judgment. It's the idea that people should be able to make a living producing something even if it means keeping others out of the market who would produce for sub-living-wage economic rewards.

Re:What's Better Than Getting Paid?

[cshotton]

We already have an amazing system of "micro-payments", where you and I spend a tiny fraction of the amount of money it took to create a given work. Why screw it up?

Well, it's pretty much broken when it comes to paying for items with zero manufacturing costs. If I can get something for free, there is no real economic benefit to me to pay for it. The value is in the act of creation, not the result of it. My point is that for that category of value creation, a reputation based economy is more fair than not. Lowering the barrier to entry for new participants is the long-standing job of marketing organizations, venture investors, and other entities whose market existence is based on enhancing value, lowering risk, and commoditizing novelty.

Those organizations don't go away. But what alternative do you have for monetizing "free" other than to place value on creation? That is the only unique thing in an otherwise endless sea of copies.

A Step in the Right Direction

[orionop]

In a free-market world with supply and demand determining costs, it makes sense that digital information that is in infinite supply will cost nothing. The things that are listed in TFA are things that can not be distributed infinitely and thus help guide artists and software providers toward adding valuable content that customers will pay for. Maybe sometime soon we will see less lawsuits and more content.

Re:A Step in the Right Direction

[IamTheRealMike]

You're assuming a market system is a given, seeing that without copyright easily duplicated things have no value, and concluding therefore that they have no value. That's pretty ridiculous. More likely, the base assumption is wrong - if we can't enforce copyright, then we need some alternative to markets for encouraging the creation of copyable things. Nobody knows what though, which isn't surprising, our economic thinking is clouded by capitalist religion. We have yet to reach the Enlightenment period of economics.

Re:A Step in the Right Direction

[clarkkent09]

The things that are listed in the article are nowhere near enough to compensate an author for the time it takes to write a book. Hence, less people would write books. You don't see that as dangerous direction to go?

Re:A Step in the Right Direction

[ThosLives]

...then we need some alternative to markets for encouraging the creation of copyable things. Nobody knows what though...

We already have this. It's called people finding something they like to do for which other people are willing to trade goods and services which the former people want and/or need. If people enjoy making copyable things, and other people want those copyable things, then the balance works.

There is no rational argument for a system which enforces people trading for something I want to produce if that thing I want to produce is not desired. There is also no rational argument for forcing people to create something they don't want to create if there are people that desire it (but don't want to provide it themselves). To use two examples common in these conversations: If I create a song, there is no obligation for people to pay for it. If I only hold concerts and people want recordings, I am under no obligation to provide those recordings. (Note that I'm just talking about obligation, not about if it's a good idea or not.)

The bit where technology is helping is where it helps match up the desires of the creators with the desires of the traders.

That's it, and anything else is just what I would like to call "economic friction."

WOW, Immediacy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Immediacy -- Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset.

Yes, yes, this is exactly what I wanted, the whole article immediately available here, instead of having to click on the link!

How much do I owe you? Where do I pay?

I would like to add "Connectability"

[Sique]

Information increases its value if it is connected to other information. Many inventions happen when separate, wellknown concepts were put together for the first time. No, I am not talking about "business method performed on the Internet", because this connection is very simple. Putting two things together of which one is all the rage is easy.

But in a cloud of possible dots finding the right ones and connect them actually creates value, and if the number of possible dots increases, the value of the single dot may be negligible, but the combination of the right ones gets more and more value. The process thus is twofold: Make every dot as connectible as possible, and find a way to spot valuable connections. Construction kits for children like LEGO show how you do it for the single dot. Every piece of LEGO can connect to every other piece (ok, sometimes with the help of a third piece, but the overall structure itself remains the same).

I hear often complain that open source software is "not innovative", and then it points out that it wasn't able to invent a single new type of building block for software. That complaint got it all wrong. LEGO also didn't invent a single new connector since the introduction of LEGO Tecnic. And when was the last time a new type of brick was invented? Often the invention of a new type of dot means that you can't connect it to anything. So the invention itself is completely worthless until you invent a way to actually connect it to something.

Many a commercial software has its value because of its combination of wellknown "dots". Photoshop is the standard because it combines Hundreds of wellknown algorithms in a unique way. SAP R/3 even is completely "open source" in a way meaning that everyone with developer rights on a SAP R/3 system can look into the complete source code of every subroutine and function block, and change it at will. But SAP R/3 draws its value from the fact that it implements so many different business concepts and business logics. Every single of it is well known, but only with a system like R/3 you get them bundled together.

And even Microsoft seldom was innovative, but it was always a good integrator. Microsoft software is not valuable because it implements things not found somewhere else. Microsoft's business was to present enough connected dots, so everyone could find something to use.

As previously seen on BoingBoing

[brit74]

His article was posted two weeks ago on boingboing and discussed quite a bit. I have to admit to being one of the detractors of his idea (which I think reduces artists and creators to beggars trying to eek out a living). I also think he talks too much in generalities, and that makes his ideas seem more persuasive. The minute you think about specific things (how does his ideas apply to X), his ideas often don't apply at all, or reduces the income from digital creations to pennies on the dollar.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/02/kevin-kelly-better-t.html

Re:As previously seen on BoingBoing

[CRCulver]

Copyright is a very recent notion. For most of the history of the human race artists, dramatists, and poets were not paid for each copy made from their work. Nonetheless, the art world flourished, and no one seemed to regret the lack of copyright. For example, when the Roman poet Martial heard that someone was transcribing his poetry recitals and having the poetry copied by a team of slaves and sold, he was angry only that this enterprising fellow was putting his own name on the poetry instead of crediting Martial. I think history shows us that artists can do just fine without copyright.

In the United States, there is a still a strong tradition of private patronage--that's how many contemporary composers make their living there--and in the European Union state arts ministries are generous with subsidies, so much of the infrastructure that supports the arts would survive if copyright were to disappear.

Re:As previously seen on BoingBoing

[IamTheRealMike]

Well, not really. Unless you consider "most" of the history of the human race to have taken place in the last three hundred years (a New Chronologist perhaps?) for most of human history there were practically no creative works, and what few did exist were usually religious in nature - paid for either by a totalitarian religious authority, or by believers own devotion.

Art, literature etc all started appearing during the renaissance, (or during the pre-dark age antiquity, depending which timeline you subscribe to) and were inaccessible to the vast majority of the population. Your Roman poet is a good example - he didn't care that somebody was copying his poetry because he wasn't relying on his poetry for his income. The size of the population who had disposable income to spend on poetry just was too small for it to be an issue. Anyway, a combination of illiteracy and expense of duplication meant that only the ultra-wealthy families like the Medici could indulge in owning books and paintings. The problem of copyright infringement didn't exist, because the scale was too small. As you note, fraud was the issue of the day.

The invention of copyright was triggered by "piracy" of books, effectively, and it happened only about four centuries ago. Even then, it would be a long time until the number of people making a living off of producing creative works was >1% of the population.

So what history shows us is not that artists can do fine without copyright. It's that it's possible to have the arts, as long as you have amazingly rich patrons willing to fund it, in which case not only would most of the creativity be oriented towards a 50 year old+ bankers tastes (forget Half Life!), but there'd be much less of it. We'd have an abundance of copies but a shortage of new, interesting things. Doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

Re:was actually performed by ... ?

[CRCulver]

Do people actually make imitation Grateful Dead live tapes? Some bar band (or Phish?!?) and claim it's the Dead?

A lot of files on P2P networks are mislabeled. You'll see a file going around titled "Cocteau Twins - The Thinner the Air (Massive Attack remix)" which Massive Attack didn't actually have anything to do with (probably just some teenager adding beats onto the song with his home computer).

In the print publishing world, however, deceptive labeling is common. Think about the $2 "Webster's Dictionaries" you can get at a supermarket. They are paperbacks often printed on newsprint and haven't been updated in decades. Not an appealing product, but the presence of the freely usable term "Webster's" gives them a shine of reputability. However, the real standard American English abridged dictionary is something like Meriam-Webster's Collegiate and people might want to spend a little more if they know they are getting the right thing.

Re:the art world flourished....

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Without copyright you can bet they'd all be cheap duplicates of the original CD/film and nobody involved in producing the original work would make any money. I really don't see how one necessarily follows from the other.
You presume that the creators would expect to be paid for the distribution of copies and that 'bootleggers' would take any profit out of that.
So, the solution isn't to become a pauper. Its to figure out how to make money despite the bootleggers. For example, pre-sales - if enough fans pay for enough advance copies to make the production worthwhile, then the creators still make money, the fans still get new productions from creators they like and the bootleggers can still sell knock off copies to every one else. Take it a step further and the creators can sell subscriptions - as long as enough subscription moneys come in, they keep releasing the next in line - be it tv episodes, songs for the next 'album' or even movies (like sequels, or just new works from known quantities).

Here's my thinking...

[Viceroy Potatohead]

I've been thinking about this sort of thing recently, and here are a few of my ideas (wrt music).

What the music industry should have done is this:

Create a decent online store and classify the music as either popular (the Brtineys, Metallicas etc), historical (the Creams, Johnny Cashes etc), or up-and-coming (the Modest Mouses, Jason Webleys etc) where they DON'T sell the biggest hits, they give them away, when you purchase a different track from the same artist, as well as a track from any band classified 'up-and=coming'. Personally, I think $1 a track is quite a bit too much, but whatever, they'd have to discover the actual price point. Regardless, basically three tunes for the price of two.

If even a small percentage of those who buy then go and buy further tracks from the u&c bands, it would be promoting new and less homogenized music, as well as making the smaller bands more profitable for the labels.

For big acts (U2, the Stones, that sort of thing), I'd also offer some meatspace uber-boxset, with absolutely EVERYTHING they've done. These half-asses boxsets that are actually offered nowadays don't appeal to me at all. DVDs of all their studio work, a few DVDs of all known live recordings, a DVD of demos, DVDs of all known video, a book about the band, a book of all known tour and show posters, etc... Basically, I mean EVERYTHING. Number the boxsets and sell the first ten for a ridiculous price (maybe a couple thousand), and the next hundred for maybe twice the general price. Anybody else can get it for $200 or whatever... I know there are several bands that I would have happily payed that amount, and judging by the twenty to thirty million people who entered the lottery to see Zeppelin for $300 (IIRC), there are bound to be plenty of others like me.

Then, instead of the current rush ticket buying system for concerts we have now, I'd open the sales to those who bought the boxset first, followed by those who have bought tracks from the online store, followed by the general public. As well, bases on the areas the boxsets have sold well in, I'd do another concert, for $500 per couple, limited to 300 or 400 people. Personally, I wouldn't have paid $100 to see Zeppelin with 20,000 other people, but I would have paid quite a bit more than $500 to see them with only 400 people. Let everyone at the show meet the band. Considering what deranged, out-of-touch twats so many of these celebrities have become, it would be doing them a favour.

Anyhow, that's my 2c. An industry which is providing something people want has clearly fscked up when they have become as hated as the IRS.

Re:was actually performed by ... ?

[NewAndFresh]

Do people actually make imitation Grateful Dead live tapes? Some bar band (or Phish?!?) and claim it's the Dead? The mind boggles.

You have a point about the article, but I think you're harping on a tiny detail. (Although I have downloaded plenty of mislabeled music -which is probably the point he was trying to make)

All of the points make sense but he doesn't address that, while he is describing value, it many cases it is valued much less measured in dollars (OK, Euros) than previous, say 20th century, media value.

Yeah, but you can't go back in time.

Sure you'll pay for the immediate delivery, I do with iTunes, but I almost never buy the whole album/disk/collection

You paid something. (which I think is the point)

Personalization is fine in the future but where is the great employment engine in the here and now? While media is worth a lot less money, real estate, food and energy will only continue to rise. Can 21st century media provide anywhere near the level of employment that 20 century media did? That sure is a lot of adsense.

It turns out that most artists actually profit from piracy. http://torrentfreak.com/why-most-artists-profit-from-piracy/
And if you mean the industry, well think of how the icemen felt when the refrigerator was invented?

most free things have a real $$$$ cost

[petes_PoV]

Whether it's free software or a free sample or a "take it, it's free" giveaway of unsold items after a yard sale. Once you have something you start to make an investment in it. On the case of the free sample, the promoter hopes you'll like it and buy more. For free software you spend time installing it and trying it out. If you don't like it you spend more time removing it. With the unsold items, you spend real-estate in your home to house it (probably the reason it was up for sale to start with) and time to clean it when you do housekeeping.

So "free" doesn't really exist at all

To be better than free, an item has to pay you back for it's upkeep, care / feeding / maintenance and the time you spend using it, exploring it's potential and possibly the disposal costs if or when you toss it out.

In short to be better than free, it must make you a profit.

I've recently spend several days exploring a "free" CMS package for building websites. So far my time-cost has been well over $1000. In my view this package is certainly not free and may even be more costly than one I purchased for $500, but got my website built and operational in a day.

Free as in no-cost is a myth. In my mind "free" simply means disposable, with very few regrets.

Remember kids

[NewAndFresh]

Home Taping is Killing Music
(or to quote the Dead Kennedys on In God We Trust)
"Home taping is killing big business profits. We left this side blank so you can help."

Start of making it "as good as free"

[Chris_Jefferson]

One thing which irritates me about official channels of getting things is that it is often much more trouble than getting a bittorrent. There are things I would pay for, because I want more to be made, but it's too much hassle. The obvious examples of this is DRM and "Use need the CD/DVD in the drive" for games, but it effects other levels too.

A recent extreme case of this is the BBC's new iPlayer. This is free (and I'm in the UK, so it works), and I use windows so it works fine, yet I'm STILL using a standard bittorrent site to get programs, because the interface is so goddamn slow and awful.

Let me sign up once, then make it easy for me to search for, and download what I want with the minimal of fuss.

I am frequently surprised...

[ChainedFei]

... That so many people equate successful ideas with monetary value. How is religion successful? Were there people going around asking individuals to buy into the Renaissance? We, as a society, focus altogether too much on how to make a quick buck off of something that we ignore the fact that some ideas are just damn good. A good idea sells itself. Bad ideas have to be marketed to the idiots. And we should be asking, is money the point or are we making it INTO the point?

Re:Simple

[vertinox]

A price. That cannot be avoided (ie piracy kills the value of objects and ideas).

Artists have been making work for centuries without often being compensated for their work and many eventually dying in abject poverty only to be recognized for their talents years after their deaths.

One could argue that if one could not make money off of art then only those really interested creating art "for the sake of art" would be doing so. If copyrights went away tomorrow, there would still be musicians playing on the street corner, photographers taking pictures, painters making paintings, and writers writer stories. Now granted there will be a lot less of them, but people still desire to create work for the reward in itself rather than a monetary return. That may be a good thing or bad things depending on how you view it but I think aesthetics will enjoy the fact corporations are no longer actively creating art and the average joe will probaly not like it because no one is making art he likes anymore.

Personally, I think the ideal solution was how things were back in the middle ages. If you wanted art, you commissioned someone to do it. If no one is willing to commission it then either you give away your works for free or don't make them. The key problem with the current system is that it derives art for profit which is sometimes shallow at best due to the fact its creating something to be consumed rather than observed as art. (Damn I sound like a turtle neck art snob with a glass of wine complaining about the sad state of affairs at the New York Art gallery, but I hope you get my point)

One more way.

[PopeRatzo]

vertinox, of course I agree with your assessment.

I have been using for a year now a "commission" model to make a living off of my music. Besides the more "traditional" methods of earning money as a musician and composer, I create one-of-a-kind works on commission. After an interview and rather extensive set of conversations, I create from 20-50 minutes of music and then give the work completely to the patron, no rights reserved. They could copy it and sell it if they want, but I never will. They could even put their own name on it if they want, but I warn them it will probably decrease its value (unless their name is Bono). So far, nobody has taken that route, though.

Oh, I also charge for this work on a sliding scale, based upon income and political orientation (I require proof of income, too). The prices have ranged from the cost of an evening out for two at the movies to 5 figures. It's sort of like the way the fine artists have always worked, and when I figure in my time and expenses, my price-per-hour is about the same as a low to mid-level painter or sculptor (but I'm just getting started).

As you say, if copyright went away tomorrow, there would still me music, books, even movies. Also, there will still be artists making a living at it, and in new and interesting ways. Creative people are supposed to be innovators, so why shouldn't that extend to the ways they monetize their efforts?

Ultimately, the price is less important than the value, to me. As long as I can continue to do what I love, what I have to do, I'm happy.

Product vs. Service

[david_thornley]

One thing that struck me about the list of eight things is that very, very few people are going to get rich off them, while they will allow a very large number of people to make a good living.

The way to get rich is to sell a product, a single thing that you make (or at least design) once, and sell in very large quantities. If you do it right, you can take a certain amount of work you do, and use it to get money out of a whole lot of people. This is what the RIAA and MPAA are trying to do with songs and movies: sell the exact same thing millions of times.

The other way to make money is to provide a service. I make my living writing software for a company. They get my services, I get a continuing income that, while it pays for a nice lifestyle, isn't going to make me rich. (My current company does much the same thing: instead of selling the software, it supports the company in supplying a service very efficiently.) I do something specifically for the company, and they pay me.

The eight listed qualities of "better than free" are mostly services. They provide something personalized, or services that can't be sold indefinitely, or things that are of limited if positive value. That's extremely threatening to institutions like Microsoft or Disney, that have made oodles of money out of artificial scarcity.

It may well be that it will be much easier to make a good living in twenty or thirty years, but much harder to become rich. That doesn't sound bad to me, but there's going to be a whole lot of resistance by people with lots of money between now and then.

Re:was actually performed by ... ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to spend $1000+ per year on CDs and DVDs, until I discovered The Pirate Bay. Now I pay nothing. I can easily afford to pay the money, but I choose not to, because why should I pay for something that other people (who don't work as hard as I do) can get for free?

I don't begrudge paying the artists, but I DO begrudge being the only sucker who does.

I am the future, and I'll keep on doing it until it becomes too difficult or risky to bother.

centralization is an anomaly

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

and the interesting thing is that the author seems to be aware of that fact. (But maybe not of how it impacts his current thesis.)

Anyway, yeah, 20th century media provided an awful lot of nominal employment, but the jury is still out on how much value they provided. Kind of like Microsoft provided an awful lot of software, but the jury is now reporting on how much real work that software actually did/does. You can sell snake oil for a while, but eventually you find that you have polluted your own market.

But the thing is, when you can get a copy of any manufactured good you want dirt cheap, what good is money? Money is our proxy for value. If nothing has value, how can any proxy function? So, people who believe that value is generated by rarity will look for things that are rare, and this guy found several things that are rare even when everything tangible is copiable.

He kind of alludes to the fact that these eight things have been the actual source of value all along. But he seems to ignore that they all point back the way we have come -- back away from WalMart, back away from centralization. And when you step back away from centralization, you realize, we don't need need any big provider of employment.

All we needed was communication, and the people we were entrusting our communication (not the telephone company, although they did sometimes try) have, for the most part, held our communication for ransom.

We don't need big farming, either. (Nothing sucks the nutrition out of a crop faster than mass producing it.) We can actually produce sufficient food if we produce it locally, in most places. If we can keep unrestrained communication networks, we can produce our own food in the morning, be doctors, scientists, artisans, technicians, teachers, etc., in the afternoon, and philosophers in the evenings. Kind of like what Marx said, but not with the revolutions he assumed were necessary. (Not sure which way is bloodier, but that's a rant for another day.)

And we no longer need the proxy. If my neighbor gets sick, I and some other neighbors go answer his need without insurance money, just because we know that, when he's well, he will be making desks and cabinets and such in his afternoons. If I need a certain kind of desk, I go visit that neighbor (after he's well) and we draw out some plans, and he helps me work out the parts I don't know how to do.

When we can communicate about real value (because no one is holding things for ransom anymore), we no longer need the proxy. And we know longer need others to employee us or be employed by us.

Re:centralization is an anomaly

[ChrisMaple]

For just one thing out of many possibilities, money is a safeguard against waste. Many people are already slobs, as a walk down many busy roads will demonstrate. With a requirement that things be paid for, people are less likely to discard things for trivial reasons. (My car ran out of gas. I'll get a new one.) Some people enjoy destroying things. If they have to pay for the things they destroy, they are less likely to destroy things.

Not all things are manufactured. People pay money for live performances.

On a more fundamental basis, you have attempted to destroy the word "value". Value has 2 generally accepted meanings.

• A desire. If I want something, I value it.
• A useful thing. Hammers are of value for driving nails into wood.

Neither of these aspects will go away as long as people live and act. Money, as a fungible and divisible system for quantifying and trading value, will not disappear.

Big projects are facilitated with money. Try building a vacation cruise ship with voluntary labor, donated materials, and no accounting system. It isn't going to happen.

Even your example of a sick neighbor falls apart quickly. Highly skilled brain surgeons are rare. If your sick neighbor needs one, and it's 300 miles to the nearest one of a good enough skill level, the surgeon is unlikely to perform his valued function for free. Occasionally maybe, but always? Why should he bother?

Re:centralization is an anomaly

[shmlco]

Ah, the quintessential communal system. Of course, one only has to go back to the sixties to see how many of those utopian societies survived.

And if barter systems worked so well, we wouldn't have evolved money way back in the day. Communication doesn't help, as small villages already had excellent word-of-mouth communication systems.

Everyone knows that Jim is a parasite who doesn't want to do any work. Now what? Let him starve? Jane does "favors" for the men. Is that work? Is that enough work? What if you don't need or want her favors and she needs one of your cabinets? And as mentioned above, some skill sets are more valuable. Many people can make cabinets, but the only brain surgeon around is Mike, who spent years learning to do what he does. And because of that Mike already has all of the cabinets he needs. Now what do you do? Run around trying to arrange a trade with someone else? Could be hard to do when you need surgery.

"But the thing is, when you can get a copy of any manufactured good you want dirt cheap, what good is money?"

IF you can get a copy of ANY manufactured good you want dirt cheap, then your argument may some hold water. But even "dirt cheap" isn't free.

As a musician, my work is free

[smilinggoat]

I'm a musician, and I've come to terms with the fact that from now on, music is free. I support other musicians by purchasing LPs and CDs and the occasional MP3 of other artists I like, but for the majority of our audience (the public), our music is free.

How do we, as musicians, make money on our works? By doing the same thing that any underground band has known for a long long time: merch. The money is in the t-shirt, the lighter, the sticker, the wallet, etc. People want that.

That, and vinyl will never die. It is definitely a niche. But for one of my bands, we sell a 7" EP and you get a free MP3 download version of it as well. For one price you get the high quality, inconvenient vinyl and the low quality, convenient MP3. Not a bad model, IMO...

I've bought a few MP3 albums off Bleep before they were available in a physical format, but damn it, I wish for my $10 for the MP3 album, I'd get a $10 coupon to buy the LP or CD...

Getting paid for ever?

[serviscope_minor]

A comment on some opinions above, first:

I did an engineering degree at one of the top schools and I got a high mark, a first as it happens. I had to work very hard for 4 years to get that, and I had to pay to do it as well.

You know what sucks? People don't keep paying me since I'm a great engineer. I have to actually work to get people to keep paying me. How is this different from being an artist? I had to work very hard for years, and PAY, just to get to the position where I'm recognised. Now I can do things that the majority of other people can not. Maybe you don't think I'm creative enough and only really creativeness should be rewarded in this way. If this is the case, look around at some of the modern engineering wonders of the world. They're as much art as science (and fine examples of both). But people don't keep paying the engineers for the use of those works.

Now substitute any other high-end training/degree/education for the engineering degree I claimed above. Art is great, just like engineering. But it's not special.

Finally, I have nothing against people being stupidly successful and making vast amounts of money. What I mind is people whinging and trying to change laws so that they can make more money at my expense.

Work for a living, damn it.

And that's kind of what the article says: you will have to accept that copies are simply not scarse. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. You will now (as always) have to make money by providing things which are scarse. Like service, customization, support, trustworthiness, and so on.

how was it 'for free'?

[mgkimsal2]

This is not to say that this will hold for every author--public service broadcasters can't be expected to employ every content creator--but DA is a fine example of exactly how you can make money by giving stuff away for free.

Where exactly was the 'free' in this? The BBC is gov't run, funded by taxes. Maybe not a direct radio license in this case, but it collects money from people, hired a guy to write something, then gave the original people something back in return: the work it commissioned and paid for with the money it collected from the original population. I'm not sure I see anything 'free' here.

Re:the art world flourished....

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Prepay only works if you can guarantee that the work will be completed Its called escrow.

also it puts a huge barrier to entry to anyone but the already established superstars. Jesus, is there a fucking echo in here? Didja read my second post in this thread where I addressed exactly that point?

Subscriptions don't work in general - it's the same problem. Most people prefer completed works so they don't have to wait for the next installment Have you heard of this thing called cabletv? You pay a subscription and you get your entertainment in weekly installments.

Subscriptions are also still subject to the "famous people sell the most" problem. Echo, echo, echo...

You're just pushing the issue of scarcity around. It's still the same system No, its not the same system, not by a long shot. The whole problem is that copyright is unenforceable because distribution is now practically free. But you can't distribute what hasn't been published, so that's the point where scarcity continues to exist and thus the point where creators can still enforce a contract.

Why not just enforce copyright, and then you get all the same benefits, but it actually works out to be better for the consumer - you know what you're buying, when you're buying it. The whole term of the deal is a known quantity and you're getting exactly what you pay for. People like to say such things without really thinking about them. Most people go to the movies with little knowledge of what they are in for beyond the reputations of the actors and director and tons and tons of advertising. Similarly with music where they tend to hear one song on the radio a million times (more tons and tons of advertising) and then buy the entire album. Similarly with books where they buy on the reputation of the author and tons and tons of advertising. Sure, you can go and point out that some people pay attention to reviews, but many reviews are just shills and the number of people who are devoted followers of reviews pretty small compared to those who are swayed by advertising. When comes down to brass tacks, very few people actually buy their entertainment as "known quantities."