Cory Doctorow Says DIY Licensing Will Solve Piracy

An anonymous reader writes "The founding editor of Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow, has written a report about 'do-it-yourself' digital licensing, which he's touting as the panacea for piracy. Doctorow's solution for content creators is two-fold: get a Creative Commons license and append some basic text requiring those who re-use your work to pay you a percentage of their gross income. Doctorow refers to this as the middle ground between simply acquiring a Creative Commons license and hiring expensive lawyers for negotiations. He calls do-it-yourself licensing 'cheap and easy licensing that would turn yesterday's pirates into tomorrow's partners.'"

Comments

BRILLIANT IDEA

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have to pay 27% (standard royalty rate) of my gross income on the product as royalties when I make...NOTHING, I have to pay...NOTHING.

Brilliant. Everybody's a business partner.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[mftb]

CC is all about free sharing. Personally, I have no objection to people using my music in free projects. I do, however, have an objection to people using it to make money without cutting me in.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[twisteddk]

I have to agree. Current copyright laws dont work, because they do not allow "fair use". In fact licensing and patenting is getting to a point where the social benefits are not weighed in and thus otherwise profitable and usefull tools are distributed illegally.

However, the proposal will work fine for components, patents and such. But would be disasterous for coplete products, and would require a fair-use or even free-use model to follow it.

As someone else already pointed out, there are a ton of piriates out there who pirate to make money, and another ton who just "make a copy for the car", or even those who "make a copy for their friends". In either case the complete replication of a work is so simple that the recipient has no intrest in purchasing the original work, because the copy is "perfect", in that it's digital.
Some countries are already starting to deal with this issue by giving out licenses for "unlimited use" of example music, while you pay a monthly fee, this fee makes you able to download pretty much any piece of music and use for any non-commercial use you want. Same thing goes for videos and books. For years you have been able to get them at the local library as often as you wanted, basically for free.

With these great distribution models, then where's the incentive to pirate ? In the exact business model that the distribution companies are employing. Libraries and ISPs have limits in their spending policies because of wear and tear on their products, aswell as the strain on their profits due to aquisitions. But once the product becomes digital, it's just a matter of time before a purchase will last lifetimes, given that they again are subject to a decent pricing.

You dont have to be a genious to know that the laws of supply and demand show that the higher the price, the lower the demand and vice versa. So in our day and age, you can actually distribute your products at a price close to free, if the user himself will create the physical object (CD, book, whatever) on his home printer. So with the significantly lower price on distribution, a lower prices can be charge for the product, and more people will "buy".
The business model suggested simply states that IF the user decides to make a little dough by turning the download into for instance a karaoke thing and selling it to his friends, then he should fork over a part of his profits. I can't think of ANY artist who would normally provide his work free of charge who would object to this business model.

Ofcourse that doesn't stop people from pirating against THIS model, or even the business from claiming they wont make money this way, but how's that different from today ?
It's different in one major aspect: People who contribute, and people who are not profiting from other peoples work are no longer criminalized. A 6-year old who just wants to hear the latest justin timberlake song, or the co-worker who hands his collegaue a DVD and says: "hey I recorded this from the late night show, you REALLY have to see it" will no longer get treated like the taiwaneese pirate who bootlegs 60 million DVDs a month and sells them on ebay. So IF the taiwaneese pirate is willing to fork over $5 pr DVD he sells, then presumably the licensee dont give a crap if it's buena vista home entertainment or hai-fats local DVD store that made the physical copy as long as they get their end of the business.

Even though the idea is not new, it is IMO a great way to legalize (and in a smaller way also to profit from) the "casual pirate", while offering the organized crime a way to become respectable, and at the same time holding the door open for the possibility of legal action.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[noundi]

Exactly, I mean come on. This is not exactly news, this is the same bullshit solution that has been around for decades. The problem is not the solution, and it's not bullshit by default. It becomes bullshit because the major corporates don't give a rats ass about you profiting or not. They seek to grab anything and everything. If possible they would even have you pay twice (Spore) for the same product. It's not about ideologies (CC, GPL, MPL), so don't try to shape it that way. It's about looking to grab every penny possible. The corporates are simply not looking for a solution, they are looking to nail everybody that ever copied anything. Thus it's a bullshit solution.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Anonymous Coward]

CC is all about free sharing. Personally, I have no objection to people using my music in free projects. I do, however, have an objection to people using it to make money without cutting me in.

It's not that simple. People might profit a lot without technically making money. If you make something (let's say an image good enough to be a work of art) and CC it and someone else uploads it in their ad-supported website... They don't technically earn anything from your image (at least nothing from which it would be easy to calculate royalties. And saying "pay 27% from whole site's ad revenue" would be stupid and just as unfair if someone just uploads the image once) but it helps them make money.

Or perhaps if he uses it as art (background, load screen, etc.) in a game he lets people download for free (isn't necessarily open source or anything like that). He doesn't directly earn money from the image but it might be part of something that helps him get higher wage jobs, investor funds, etc. and earn more with those. And what if the website from which people download the game has ads?

Those aren't all the possible cases and I am not saying that people even should be able to earn money in all those. I ask you not to nit pick about some single examples. Rather... What I am trying to say is that it is VERY difficult to divide stuff to "He profits so he should pay me 27%" and "He doesn't profit so he should pay me nothing".

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Futile Rhetoric]

YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[RiotingPacifist]

You wouldn't shoot a policeman, THEN STEAL HIS HAT

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't shoot a policeman, THEN STEAL HIS HAT

You wouldn't go to the toilet in his hat, then mail it to his widow... and then STEAL IT AGAIN!

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[TheTurtlesMoves]

aka Hollywood accounting, where a movie can make 10x what it cost and still have zero profit. Use net sales or something else that much easier to measure, not "profit". Even better do something like 5% or 10K which ever is less.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[meta-monkey]

I'm a photographer and sometimes put together slideshows of my work set to music, and while royalty-free music tends to be crap, ASCAP and BMI won't even talk to me for less than $6,000, which is a little excessive for one-time use for a client's wedding slideshow on my blog.

I wish the recording industry could do for commercial rights to music what iTunes did for digital downloads. Make it simple, charge a reasonable fee for a sync license, and small business will buy it. But when every use of a song requires lawyers to negotiate a contract, and when the fees they want are completely out of proportion with any gross the user might expect...who wins here? The song doesn't get used and the artist and the label don't get any money.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[marco.antonio.costa]

I have to agree. Current copyright laws dont work, because they do not allow "fair use". In fact licensing and patenting is getting to a point where the social benefits are not weighed in and thus otherwise profitable and usefull tools are distributed illegally.

Current copyright laws don't work, because due to technology, ideas can now be reproduced to infinity.

The scarcity 'factor' that enabled publishers and recording companies to profit has now been removed. Those who cannot adapt to this new reality must go under so that the innovators may thrive.

If a bread multiplying machine was invented would you outlaw it with the best interest of bakers in mind? No. You ( we ) would want free bread.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[jonbryce]

But if I could make an exact copy of your car at the press of a button, you would still be able to drive your car.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Ihmhi]

The artist doesn't really get much in the way of money anyway.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Woldry]

If a bread multiplying machine was invented would you outlaw it with the best interest of bakers in mind? No. You ( we ) would want free bread. Sadly, looking at history, there would indeed be an earnest effort to halt, or at least limit, the use of such a machine, for exactly the reason you give. There would also be people decrying the machine as "untested" and demanding that it never be used till it can be proved to be 100% safe.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so you've discovered the saturate lever. Now please, for the sake of the children, turn it down. (Shudder). You've got a backup career right?

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[daveime]

It burnsss, preciousss !

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Reziac]

I had the same thought -- this model could turn existing counterfeiters into business partners, especially in markets that are presently unprofitable with a Megacorp's typical overhead. So let the counterfeiter absorb the manufacturing and distribution cost, and pay the royalty (as a percentage of their gross) as insurance against being busted/prosecuted. This amounts to free money for the content owner megacorp, with zero investment of their own in a relatively low-profit market.

Counterfeiters would probably line up around the block if paying a small post-sale royalty would ensure they got access to clean copies of new content, thus could raise their own prices and profits (as they'd be able to offer a higher-quality product) and could operate in the open, thus attracting a larger market.

Meanwhile, Megacorp gets a piece of the action in a market where previously they had no profit at all.

This, of course, assumes they can turn loose of the notion that they have to *control* the entire market end-to-end.

I doubt any of them will look seriously at it until some independent becomes wealthy using this model, tho... there's nothing so persuasive as a nicely turned out balance sheet.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Reziac]

Exactly so. You can't make costs out of proportion to profits, then expect people to comply with your terms.

BTW nice work -- I especially like the silhouettes against the marsh grass, and the keyhole shots.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[acheron12]

Narrator: You wouldn't steal a spaceship...
Bender: Or would I?

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[KingBenny]

brilliant indeed ... so ... if this guy can solve piracy, why not let him have a go at crime, poverty and unemployment while he's at it ?

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Txiasaeia]

Have you tried something like Magnatune?

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[bkpark]

And of course, this whole scheme is nothing but compulsory licensing, except without the "compulsory" part as required by the government.

I wonder if it would ever catch on without government action. It would be good if it could, but then, I don't know of any existing example of when it did.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Reziac]

Likely not, tho the "compulsory" part here is the threat of being sued and/or busted, depending on your level of activity, rather than a must-license factor.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[bkpark]

I think you misunderstood on whom "compulsory" applied. In actual compulsory licensing, I always understood "compulsory" to apply to the copyright owner, as they are required by law to license their work for these particular uses. Normally they would've been free to set the terms of the license—or not license their work at all.

Compulsory licensing trades rights and privileges of authors and copyright owners for more ... freedom in use of their work for particular cases.

I guess what I'm saying is I doubt Doctorow's idea (which isn't all that new anyway) will ever work if copyright owners were left free.

Re:BRILLIANT IDEA

[Reziac]

Oh, I understood it properly -- may not have written clearly tho :)

What I was going for was that under compulsory licensing, you really have no recourse against counterfeiters/pirates -- so long as they pay the mandated royalties. In fact, they become your business partners like it or not, and it behooves you to support them, if you wish to maximize your income from the sectors they serve. If that messes up your distribution monopoly -- oh well!!

At least, I think that's where I was going. The patent on my brain has expired since the original discussion. :)

Paying pirates

[BSAtHome]

So, you want pirates to pay royalties. I always thought that pirates we pirates because they did not want to pay the royalties. What another license makes for a difference is beyond me. If they do not want to pay, they simply will remain pirates.

Re:Paying pirates

[erroneus]

When he says pirates, he means people out to make money using material they have no rights to reproduce otherwise. People who download and share things freely are completely without obligation.

I think most people are in agreement that it wouldn't catch on simply because there aren't enough teeth in it. For people to take things seriously these days, a gentleman's agreement isn't enough. We need blood, gore and violence before anything is taken seriously.

It's a "good idea" until you realize that it would be of no interest to media publishers who are the REAL people behind all this copyright mess in the first place. The plan here is to skip around these publishers by giving everyone non-exclusive rights to publish copyrighted works. So big publishers won't go for it. Little publishers might give it a go but the distribution won't be there and neither will the marketing muscle of the big establishment. And if big publishers have anything at all to do with it, it would be in trying to block it or stop it in some way.

Re:Paying pirates

[Rogerborg]

Cory is projecting the ethics of his readers onto the rest of the piratsphere. It's a charming notion, but not very useful in the real world.

Re:Paying pirates

[smallfries]

Yes but that's easy to do when you live in a blimp, blogging away high at the top of the piratsphere.

Re:Paying pirates

[JeffSpudrinski]

BSAtHome,

Seconded. I think that using CC is a great idea, but the problem is that there are a LOT of software pirates who simply have no intention of every paying for anything unless they can help it.

Some software is "pirated" by some who legitimately want to try something out before buying it. They are not the problem. The problem are the ones who steal. Using CC won't address that problem.

-JJS

Re:Paying pirates

[eugene2k]

Actually, from what I've read, Corey doesn't claim that it will solve the piracy problem. He tries to tackle the problem of individuals creating derivative works without hiring lawyers to negotiate a license. For example if some person remixes a song, they either have to negotiate a deal with the record company and pay them royalties (and this involves hiring a lawyer to negotiate), or do it without hiring a lawyer, and thus be called a pirate. The latter is what Corey tries to address.

Re:Paying pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

When he says pirates, he means people out to make money using material they have no rights to reproduce otherwise. People who download and share things freely are completely without obligation.

Piracy in the media form is a myth. Piracy in taking a ship and killing the people and stealing the cargo is piracy.

What is at issue here? Content? No. The content is available in many, many forms. From free over the air to renting the property for a period of time.

The content sucks. Not a value judgement on the quality of the programming, but a technical one. I've got about $3,000 invested in a TV and a blu-ray player, and I feel ripped off. I can't find 1080p content. Most movies I get from netflix use about 1/2 of the height of my 16x9 screen. I had to abandon cable because the quality was so poor. Actually, DVDs or free downloads of rips from DVDs are about the sweet spot for price/quality.

Until the people can figure out a way of distribution and quality content, I don't think lawsuits are a viable business model.

Last night, I watched a music DVD and it had pictures of the band's _album covers_. They were actually still worth looking at. That ended in the mid 80s with the advent of the CD. I have boxes and closets full of CDs that I've been giving away to people over the years because its not worth my time to hunt for them (they are all on harddisks now).

Bah, yet another /. article on this crap. I guess it won't change until it changes.

Re:Paying pirates

[drinkypoo]

Little publishers might give it a go but the distribution won't be there and neither will the marketing muscle of the big establishment.

Sublime got their first commercial album exposure through IUMA... but whatever.

Also, I am too lazy to go look it up, but bands without album sales have got songs into the top ten since the rules were changed to permit it... perhaps that was a UK story? So your complaints about distribution and advertising are just battered customer syndrome. Neither artists nor listeners need major labels. Or, in fact, labels.

Re:Paying pirates

[jedidiah]

Actually, all he's advocating is the old state of things. The casual swappers
shouldn't be prosecuted, persecuted and litigated. The side effects of trying
to squash all the little ants ends up creating more collateral damage than it's
worth. It's far better to apply the old intent of the laws and the original
pirate ethos.

There was always a distinction made between those that just passed stuff
around and those that tried to profit from it financially.

The big problem of course, as others have said, is the fact that it is
big media that has driven the recent changes in the other direction.
They're the ones that want to make copyright perpetual and turn
criminalize everyone. They will never go for this.

Re:Paying pirates

[elrous0]

Besides, the "percentage of the income they make from it" would essentially be a free license for anyone to reproduce the work as much as they want without any restrictions, as long as they don't do it for profit. "Hey, post our whole feature film or piece of software to Youtube or anywhere else, just as long as you offer it for free!" would go over like a lead zeppelin with just about any content producer.

I like Doctorow's science fiction. But he's really beyond the pale on this one. Even a science fiction writer shouldn't be THAT far removed from reality.

Re:Paying pirates

[Chief Camel Breeder]

He's presuming that many commercial users of the product would pay the royalties if they could get a license without paying legal fees. They would cease to be pirates.

I agree that this scheme has no effect on willful pirates. I don't think it's meant to address that. The Slashdot summary exaggerates that aspect.

Re:Paying pirates

[Pharmboy]

Neither artists nor listeners need major labels. Or, in fact, labels.

<oblivious>
But if an album doesn't have a label, how do you know what songs are on it?
</oblivious>

Re:Paying pirates

[Hijacked Public]

You are on a short list of people who've read and understood the article. That list does not include Slashdot editors nor the AC who wrote the headline nor most of the people commenting here.

The licensing makes sense for certain uses but I don't see much advantage over the current system apart from the 'self serve' aspect. Licensing a photograph (which is the area I'm familiar with) for non-exclusive use is pretty straight forward and nearly always I or the client has some mutually acceptable boilerplate agreement that covers everything. Exclusive uses are more difficult and usually involve an IP attorney, but I don't see where his self-serve license would grant exclusivity.

Regardless, the biggest expense comes if you ever have to go to court to enforce a license, and that isn't changing here.

Re:Paying pirates

[Ihmhi]

Pirates, a summary.

Re:Paying pirates

[mad flyer]

Doctorow is somekind of Paris Hilton for the geeks.

He had his 15 minutes of fame. And now you continue to see him babling around like if he was to be listened like a wyse oracle of some kind.

He should do like the real one, stick to infrared war-in-the-gulf style porn tapes, product launch for crappy perfumes or the new equally crappy Audi of the week.

Re:Paying pirates

[nomadic]

When he says pirates, he means people out to make money using material they have no rights to reproduce otherwise.

In other words, a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of pirates.

Re:Paying pirates

[Rary]

Besides, the "percentage of the income they make from it" would essentially be a free license for anyone to reproduce the work as much as they want without any restrictions, as long as they don't do it for profit.

That's exactly the point. CC is intended for content creators who actually want their content to spread around. The problem that Doctorow is addressing is the hesitation that some people have to going with a CC license because they don't want people taking advantage of it to profit off the work without cutting the content creator in on the deal.

This solution is not intended for the major Hollywood studios. This is intended for the content creators who want to reside in the middle ground between absolute free-for-all and totally restricted licensing — and avoid having to hire a lawyer.

Re:Paying pirates

[colmore]

If I was a manufacturer of, say, illegal DVDs, and I saw some Creative Commons License with a little addendum on it, I would immediately think to myself: "OK, cool, this guy can't afford even four or five hours of a lawyer's time."

If pirates aren't going to pony up for licenses composed by corporate firms that are very capable of bringing suit, why are they going to respond to "pay me, please?"

Re:Paying pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I pirate because the right-holders do not want my money:
I can not buy series I like online "because of Rights Reasons"
I can not buy some of the music I like online "because of Rights Reasons" and
I can not buy some of the books I like "because of Rights Reasons".

eg: I already spent hundreds of Euros for ebooks of O'Reilly and Pragmatic Programmers because they don't refuse to sell to me. Same goes for Digital Music without DRM. I have hundreds of tracks bought on the ITMS.

But sorry: If you refuse to sell me your material, don't complain about not getting my money.

Re:Paying pirates

[Xest]

I think his idea isn't so much aimed at people who share and download, but at sites like The Pirate Bay.

I'll admit I haven't RTFA, but I'm guessing the idea is that a ton of content would be available for anyone to use if they pay royalties, so for example, the guys behind TPB could go legit using this license by paying royalties from their ad-revenue.

Effectively it'd make a way for new business ideas to be carried out without hassle. You could go home tonight and create your pay subscription site for the TV program Lost for example that has every episode available for download in 1080p to people you pay x amount per month. You could then pay the royalties out of that.

It wont ever work of course, because no one is going to pick up the idea, particularly the cartels who own all the content, it's a nice idea though and would be win-win for everyone as long as everyone was sensible - i.e. sensible royalty percentages etc. It'd mean the likes of TPB could go legit, artists etc. could get some money, and people could get content cheap or even free with an ad based revenue model or similar.

Re:Paying pirates

[MickyTheIdiot]

There was always a distinction made between those that just passed stuff
around and those that tried to profit from it financially.

Well... until the RIAA and MPAA knowingly tried to distort the distinction.

I still don't get why they fight file sharers when they are REALLY losing money when it comes to true piracy, especially the on-the-street selling that goes on in most of the countries in the East. I think you can get almost total agreement that sort of unlicensed, first-sale piracy is wrong without moral ambiguity and you can tell it truly costs real money without a pseudo-economist trying to pull numbers out of the air...

Re:Paying pirates

[sootman]

The side effects of trying to squash all the little ants ends up creating more collateral damage than it's worth.

Agreed, but sadly, I think it's clear the *AA don't care.

Re:Paying pirates

[DerekLyons]

Piracy in the media form is a myth.

Nice try - but the term 'piracy' has been associated with 'media' for nearly two centuries.

Re:Paying pirates

[RiotingPacifist]

How is this better than just dual licensing CC-BY-NC-SA & then selling commercial licenses?

Re:Paying pirates

[westlake]

Piracy in the media form is a myth.

The usage was current when the Black Flag still flew over the Caribbean. You'll find it in the unabridged Webster and in the OED.

Your bunk mates at Club Fed will lose patience when you return to this argument after your second conviction on the felony charge.

I've got about $3,000 invested in a TV and a blu-ray player, and I feel ripped off. I can't find 1080p content. I had to abandon cable because the quality was so poor

1080p is nice. But 1080i will suffice.

"Rio Bravo" "The Magnificent Seven" "Once Upon A Time In The West" "Winchester 73" "My Darling Clementine."

For other tastes:

"American Graffiti," "War Games" and "To Catch A Thief."

The Seven viewed off-air from PBS. The rest over our local cable's $6/mo HD movie tier.
I can't fault the color or presentation - in any way.

The configuration options on a $3000 set are endless. The geek can - and probably will - get it wrong - if only because he can't bothered to RTFM.

Re:Paying pirates

[Mr. Slippery]

Nice try - but the term 'piracy' has been associated with 'media' for nearly two centuries.

Citation needed. Thanks.

Re:Paying pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

If I was a manufacturer of, say, illegal DVDs...

...then this idea wouldn't apply to you.

RTFA, not the summary. He's not actually proposing a solution to the kind of piracy you (or 99% of the other people in this thread) are talking about.

Unfortunately, the article submitter didn't read/comprehend the article either.

Re:Paying pirates

[Rary]

How is this better than just dual licensing CC-BY-NC-SA & then selling commercial licenses?

You don't have to go through the hassle of actually selling the commercial licenses, including hiring a lawyer to write up the license.

Your suggestion is also an option, but for those who just want to put it out there and not do any further license negotiation, this is the way to go.

Re:Paying pirates

[Mr. Slippery]

Besides, the "percentage of the income they make from it" would essentially be a free license for anyone to reproduce the work as much as they want without any restrictions, as long as they don't do it for profit.

Yes. It's just like a musician's ability to play a song all they want without paying the songwriter, as long as they're playing for free. It's only when the performance is commercial in nature that the songwriter has to be paid mechanical royalties. Dylan gets his nickel if I play "Tangled Up in Blue" during a paid gig (via ASCAP or BMI, the bar pays, not me), but not if I play it at a party at a friend's house.

I've been advocating a system like this for years -- not a copyright, but a "royalty-right" on commercial use. Nice to see others starting to catch up. :-)

"Hey, post our whole feature film or piece of software to Youtube or anywhere else, just as long as you offer it for free!"

And if Youtube ever makes money from it (and they're going to have to figure out a way eventually, or they go away), they owe the creator of the film or software a cut.

Re:Paying pirates

[RiotingPacifist]

They don't seem to care much about corporate copyright either, so you've lost nothing but gained:
1) fans
2) A way for legitimate small companies to redistribute your stuff, with some profits handed to you.

Re:Paying pirates

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I wonder if slashdot has paid Cory Doctorow for this specific part of his writing ...

After all, if a corporation like slashdot can't be bothered to comply with his licensing idea ... then who can ?

Re:Paying pirates

[Sloppy]

I always thought that pirates we pirates because they did not want to pay the royalties.

That is pre-locked devices and DRM thinking. Nowdays, customers scream, "please take my money, but I am not using your piece of shit, totally broken beyond belief (not to mention untrustworthy and dangerous) playback device/software." Software, movie, and TV publishers are experiencing reduced sales for reasons totally different from users not wanting to pay; many of those users are desperate to shove money down the publishers' throats, but the publishers are refusing to do business. Their management sees revenue as something that stockholders should be prevented from receiving. So far, most of the stockholders haven't caught on, so the management is still fighting hard and currently "winning."

Music publishers tried to get out of business but failed (demand was just too damn high), so they're starting to try to sell their products again. (So in that respect, you're right. Current music pirates are just people who don't want to pay.)

Book publishers are dabbling with the idea of getting out of business, but haven't yet committed to telling customers to fuck off. Not having customers is something they see as a desirable goal, but they're not sure how to go about it. They're still selling paper books (ergo, people who steal books, are probably doing it because they don't want to pay), but they're trying to convince people who want files instead of paper, to stop paying them and switch to piracy (i.e. these "pirates" are currently split between not wanting to pay, versus obeying the publishers screams of "stop giving us money, we don't want it"). It remains to be seen if they can get out of the having-customers business.

Re:Paying pirates

[RiotingPacifist]

Regardless, the biggest expense comes if you ever have to go to court to enforce a license, and that isn't changing here.

IT seams to me that hes missing a chance on this one, if he provided a basic framework for the licenses, defining terms, etc, then all the licenses would be sufficiently similar that once one gets tested in court companies will just pay up in future.

With music its even more clear cut than software, whereas you can get away with distributing binaries because nobody can see the source, with music you can hear if a piece is being redistributed (if its so heavily remixed that you cant be sure then its probably fair use anyway)

Re:Paying pirates

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

even legitimate small companies aren't all that honest when it comes to reporting profits.

Thinking about it, I know a few small companies, quite legitimate, that don't even bother calculating profits on individual products.

Re:Paying pirates

[drinkypoo]

Citation needed. Thanks.

Found it with a bit of googling around: The Framing of 'Piracy': Etymology, Lobbying & Policy gave me search terms to find some references. You can find them, too.

Re:Paying pirates

[DerekLyons]

Nice try - but the term 'piracy' has been associated with 'media' for nearly two centuries.

Citation needed. Thanks.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/piracy
  http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2009/04/piracy-as-copyright-infringement.html

Re:Paying pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I heard Coulton makes decent enough money at what he does, and his songs are part of the Creative Commons. Perhaps he's not driving a sold gold Hummer or anything, but he makes money off CD sales and public appearances.

Re:Paying pirates

[toren]

[...] I've got about $3,000 invested in a TV and a blu-ray player, and I feel ripped off. I can't find 1080p content. Most movies I get from netflix use about 1/2 of the height of my 16x9 screen. I had to abandon cable because the quality was so poor. Actually, DVDs or free downloads of rips from DVDs are about the sweet spot for price/quality.

I've been through a couple hundred Blu-Ray movies from Netflix, and they're all 1080p format. The reason the films use "about 1/2 of the height" of your TV is because many films (especially big special-effect films which account for a lot of the Blu-Ray releases) use an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, which is wider than your 16:9 (1.78:1) TV. If they didn't letterbox the image, they'd be cutting the sides off of it, which is worse.

I've seen better and worse Blu-Ray movie releases, but they're all 1080p (except Short Circuit, which is 1080i for some reason). Many of them can be criticized, but not because they don't fill your TV screen. If you're curious about a film, look it up on IMDB, and check the aspect ratio listed on the "Technical Details" page of the film.

I'll agree that cable look like shit, even most of the HD cable I've seen. Ugh.

Re:Paying pirates

[Captain Splendid]

For people to take things seriously these days, a gentleman's agreement isn't enough. We need blood, gore and violence before anything is taken seriously.

When has there ever been a time in history when we got everything done via "gentleman's agreements"? You've always needed violence to back yourself up.

Re:Paying pirates

[mgabrys_sf]

Citations provided - dick.

Re:Paying pirates

[StikyPad]

IUMA may have contributed, in that any exposure helps, but Sublime already had a huge following in CA by the time IUMA was launched. Additionally, MP3s were essentially nonexistent before 1996 (when Brad Nowell died), and uncompressed music could fill an entire hard drive in those days. It seems much more plausible that their popularity was coincidental with IUMA, rather than because of it.

Re:Paying pirates

[Kjella]

This is intended for the content creators who want to reside in the middle ground between absolute free-for-all and totally restricted licensing and avoid having to hire a lawyer.

And as others here have commented, won't actually earn anything. 8% of a postcard is reasonable, 96% (12*8%) for a calendar is not and there's always hollywood accounting, you get the software free wtih an expensive support contract or some other variation thereof. That's what happened when Microsoft bought IE - they got a percentage of gross, Windows shipped IE for free and x% of 0 is 0.

Re:Paying pirates

[daveime]

The idea of copyright is to promote the author to create more innovative works. So, no we should NOT pay Cory anything, lest he spout more of the same nonsense.

Re:Paying pirates

[Reziac]

It seems fairly straightforward to me:

If you're making piddly money that doesn't put a dent in our real market -- we'll call you our R&D/marketing department. Companies might even be able to write that off as an ordinary business expense.

If you're grossing enough money to notice you exist -- then we want our cut.

And as to "teeth" -- how about this: if you don't either willingly cease and desist, or willingly pay up, then the reasonable 20% default royalty becomes a 50% royalty for, say, the next five years. This allows both for correction of honest mistakes (some small outfits might not realise licensing is required) AND penalties for wilfull infringement, without actually putting anyone out of business or fining them money they never made in the first place.

Occurs to me that this would also cover ordinary counterfeiters, who may be selling in a market that the actual owners can't profitably penetrate anyway -- 20% of something is still more profitable than 0% of nothing, so why not USE them rather than prosecute them??

Re:Paying pirates

[drinkypoo]

Sublime already had a huge following in CA by the time IUMA was launched.

I said first commercial album exposure. Weasel words? Maybe. But I said them before you made your comment.

Additionally, MP3s were essentially nonexistent before 1996 (when Brad Nowell died), and uncompressed music could fill an entire hard drive in those days.

Because I used to use IUMA back then and in fact spent a day whacking files for them (could have done it in moments if I knew then what I know now about scripting... but anyway) I know that they used mp2 audio back then, and had player download links on their page. IIRC they also had some u-Law samples, but that might not be right. So the lack of mp3 and the size of uncompressed audio is quite irrelevant.

Anyway, I found a citation:

Patterson noted that industry executives already turn to IUMA as a source for new talent.

"Some of the labels--Geffen, for example--tell their people to come to our site regularly to find new talent," he said, adding that popular bands the Mermen and Sublime started on IUMA in 1994.

It got Sublime the exposure to the label that they needed to turn it into financial success. Too bad that wasn't good for the band... but that's a separate issue.

Re:Paying pirates

[bob.appleyard]

The difference is that now, they're all linked up to the same thing, and they can be found out with much greater ease. People swapping tapes weren't pursued because the enforcement costs would be ridiculous. Not so ridiculous when it's all effectively happening on one network.

Re:Paying pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

The Slashdot summary exaggerates ....

A truly unforeseen and unprecedented turn of events.

Depends upon honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

Works only if people are honest.

Re:Depends upon honesty

[noidentity]

Works only if people are honest.

...and believe that an author has a right to demand something in return for making copies/derivitives of things he's written.

I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[montyzooooma]

AFAIK what he's suggesting is already within the scope of the CC license. But it won't stop P2P/home copying. It won't really stop people selling copies of CDs or films out of their car boots either.

At best it will just encourage a lot of people to sell other people's media under the guise of legitimacy, while kicking back something to the creators. I can't see the MPAA/RIAA agreeing to that.

Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[clang_jangle]

We could make this work -- we'll start an association of content owners, whose purpose will be to enforce the license. They'll pay or we'll sue! Yeah, that's the ticket...

Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[Anonymous Coward]

as in... another *IAA? how is that solving the problem?

Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[Daengbo]

Whoosh!

Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoooooosh

Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[PhilHibbs]

He isn't trying to stop car-boot pirates, the only place he mentions pirates is a throwaway line at the end "cheap and easy licensing that would turn yesterday's pirates into tomorrow's partners". He's talking about people who want to use your material but not to just rip you off. Maybe "would turn the people who yesterday had no choice other than to be pirates into tomorrow's partners" would have been clearer, but less snappy.

Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[Anonymous Coward]

.I can't see the MPAA/RIAA agreeing to that.

These may be powerful cartels, but I fail to see what either can do for authors.

Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[Anonymous Coward]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!1

Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[blahplusplus]

"Maybe "would turn the people who yesterday had no choice other than to be pirates into tomorrow's partners" would have been clearer, but
less snappy"

Examples of such:

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work

[peoplesignDave]

So it's kind of like a reverse I.O.U., shall we call it a U.O.M? (yoU Owe Me?)

ok!

[Anonymous Coward]

this is the way!

Pirates don't pay

[jevring]

Why would a pirate, who currently doesn't pay for the work he/she redistributes, pay for a work with a license allowing him/her to do it? If the reason for not paying is that you don't want to pay, then you will not want to pay, regardless of the reimbursement model.

Re:Pirates don't pay

[downix]

Ah, because now you've moved from the Copyright law category to the Contract law category, which is by and far less compromized and much easier to enforce/more difficult to abuse.

Re:Pirates don't pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, no, you're moving from copyright alone to copyright plus EULAs.

Re:Pirates don't pay

[hairyfeet]

Because he isn't talking about the guy downloading from P2P as much as he is talking about artists like Danger Mouse who can't sell their albums because greed has made sampling all but dead. Which frankly sucks. This of course was kinda the whole reason for HAVING a Public Domain in the first place, which was stolen from us by Disney to make sure that damned mouse will NEVER be free as long as politicians are corrupt.

But the simple fact is the copyright laws have become SO long and SO nasty that pretty much anybody and everybody is a pirate. Don't forget we are talking about evil bloodsucking leech corporations that honestly believe that ripping your CD to your iPod is illegal and that you should have to pay them OVER and OVER and OVER again for the exact same content. And I'm sorry I can find the link right now but there was a great interview with the head of one of the record labels (I think BMG) where he said their ultimate goal is to make EVERYTHING into "jukebox content" where you will have to pay per listen, by simply getting nastier with laws like DMCA and DRM.

So whether we go with this idea, or the one I would prefer which is forcing copyright back to the term limits of 1900, or maybe even less, we simply have to scream bloody murder until something changes. Because as it is now YOU are a criminal and I am a criminal and your kids are criminals, simply because the laws have gotten so damned nasty that there really isn't any way to avoid it. Cue the guy with the Ayn Rand quote.

Re:Pirates don't pay

[russotto]

Cue the guy with the Ayn Rand quote.

"Did you really think we wanted those laws to be observed?"... oh, fuck it, look it up yourself.

There's no point in trying to find a middle ground while the other guys are moving the current situation further and further towards their extreme. Give them anything and they'll take it and then demand more, with nothing in return. May as well just declare them irrelevant and hoist the Jolly Roger.

I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all - what gross income? The pirates just upload their work to torrent sites. (Or, um, so I'm told...)

Second, why would someone who ignores the current "don't copy this at all" licensing have any more respect for Doctorow's proposed license?

Stone soup!

[iYk6]

Get a Creative Commons license, and append some basic text requiring those who re-use your work to pay you a percentage of their gross income.

Anybody remember stone soup? In this scenario, it appears that the CC license is the stone.

Re:Stone soup!

[RobBebop]

Anybody remember stone soup? In this scenario, it appears that the CC license is the stone.

Yes! I remember stone soup! It's a great story. So that means Music is the carrots, Video is the potatoes, Writing is the chicken, and the Performers are all the herbs and spices that make the end dish taste fabulous.

Only trouble is... stone soup is meant to take input from an entire village, while the artistic creations of the world are only contributed from a reasonably modest percent of the population. The fact that *everybody* can enjoy them creates sort of an imbalance (though, I guess that's where the "percentage of revenue" comes into play).

Re:Stone soup!

[Anonymous Coward]

The lesson I get from "stone soup" is that socialism works for groups dumb enough to believe in magic stones.

The guy who duped everyone into believing in the stone soup got to eat for free. See free-rider problem.

Re:Stone soup!

[Reziac]

We always made Nail Soup. Much more nutritious than Stone Soup. :)

But I get your point... yes, a few will just eat for nothing, but once someone contributes it's relatively easy to get most people to do likewise.

CCPlus

[tepples]

AFAIK what he's suggesting is already within the scope of the CC license.

It's been floated before, under the name CCPlus. See also Slashdot's coverage of CCPlus.

good idea.. I have a proposal too

[youn]

Wishful thinking is sweet. I am gonna write a proposal so that virii like aids or the swine flu or aids stop damaging the body and clean up after them... it would be beneficial to the virii too as their host would live longer and they would be in symbiotic harmony. they would stand to gain more if they applied my proposal. I believe it may have more chances of being adopted by the authors... and we dont need to talk about the riaa as they promised they wouldnt sue anyone (some more wishful thinking) and are very busy showing people how to videotape from a flat screen these days.

(yes I like this form of the plural of virus :p)

Re:good idea.. I have a proposal too

[thegreatemu]

Unfortunately, virii would be the plural of 'virius' (which, if it were a word, would mean something along the lines of 'manly'). =)

Re:good idea.. I have a proposal too

[zrq]

... virii like aids or the swine flu or aids stop damaging the body and clean up after them... it would be beneficial to the virii too as their host would live longer and they would be in symbiotic harmony ...

Sounds like endosymbiosis, which is how we ended up with mitochondria.
Apparently humans need the help of immunodepressive viruses during pregnancy, which I didn't know until I looked it up. Thanks for prompting me - learn something new every day.

Re:good idea.. I have a proposal too

[shentino]

cactus, cactii

Re:good idea.. I have a proposal too

[Reziac]

In Latin, -us pluralizes as -i, not as -ii.

So that's cactus, cacti.

Cactii would be the plural of cactius, if that were a real word.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Cory Doctorow
LOL

Why not lower costs?

[mangu]

Doctorow is a writer so his problem may be slightly different, but it seems to me that for much of the media industry today the problem is more of too high costs than too low income, no matter what "pirates" do.

To make a standardized measurement, let's limit ourselves to one well-defined segment: 007. Look at this graph. Investment in James Bond films has gone steadily up without a corresponding return in profits. The first 007 movie, "Dr. No", cost $1 million to make ïn 1962 and got $60 million in the box office, a 60:1 ratio. "Casino Royale" cost $100 million and got $600 million, ten times less.

One could argue that James Bond jumped the shark, but in adjusted dollars "Dr. No" got about as much income as "Casino Royale", yet cost 1/16th as much adjusted for inflation. People are still paying as much to see James Bond today as they paid in 1962.

The main problem, IMHO, is not reduced income for intellectual property owners, the problem is reduced creativity. They not only seem unable to create a character to replace 007, they also need to spend sixteen times as much to create the same level of special effects.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[BiggerIsBetter]

One could argue that James Bond jumped the shark, but in adjusted dollars "Dr. No" got about as much income as "Casino Royale", yet cost 1/16th as much adjusted for inflation. People are still paying as much to see James Bond today as they paid in 1962.

Actually, people are paying about 3 times more to see James Bond today than they did in 1962.

Ref: http://www.bbhq.com/prices.htm

Re:Why not lower costs?

[moon3]

You can't lower costs when banks are retarded and greedy beyond belief, they are basically unable to handle micro or low payments, fees start at $1 or so for transaction..

Re:Why not lower costs?

[bigstrat2003]

The main problem, IMHO, is not reduced income for intellectual property owners, the problem is reduced creativity.

Perhaps so, but you haven't shown such a thing.

They not only seem unable to create a character to replace 007...

Why would they? They have a good character that people like. Not replacing him isn't "reduced creativity", it's simply giving your fans what they want to see. Only a fool replaces something for the sake of replacing it.

...they also need to spend sixteen times as much to create the same level of special effects.

Blatantly false. They need to spend sixteen times as much to create a lot more special effects. Now, maybe you believe that the movies don't need that level of special effects, which is a whole different topic. It is untrue, however, that the level of special effects is the same as it was back then. The budget has grown because the amount of special effects has grown.

Furthermore, your logic as to the success of the movies is flawed. The industry isn't necessarily interested in maximizing their profit per dollar spent (although that's always nice), they're interested in making more absolute profit. Using the inflation-adjusted figures you provided, we can see that while the industry made $59 million in profits from Dr. No, they made $500 million in profits from Casino Royale. Even though their profit-per-dollar may have been less, they still made more money overall, which is what is desired.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Options invest a lot of money in Bond movie with well know star(s), and you are practically guarenteed a return on your investment, or try a brand new movie with unknowns and hope for the best ...

When one bad movie can kill a studio, they tend to play it safe...

Re:Why not lower costs?

[mangu]

Using the inflation-adjusted figures you provided, we can see that while the industry made $59 million in profits from Dr. No, they made $500 million in profits from Casino Royale

Perhaps I didn't make myself quite clear. "Dr. No" made $60 million in 1962 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, "Dr. No" cost $8.4 million and got $420 million in profits, "Casino Royale" cost $140 million and got $500 million in profits.

Go to any industry executive and ask, is it better to get $420 milion in profits from a $8.4 million investment, or is it better to get $500 million in profits from a $140 million investment?

Re:Why not lower costs?

[billcopc]

Reduced creativity is part of the problem, but another aspect is there is simply "too much creativity", in the sense that today, practically anyone can produce anything with very little investment. Those same eyeballs are being spread more thinly because there is so much goddamned content out there.

There's also the disproportionate salaries in the movie industry, that were certainly nowhere near as distorted back then as they are now. Does it really "cost" 100 million to shoot a Bond movie, or does it cost more like 5 million with a bunch of greedy pseudo-thespians accounting for the remainder ? The concept of celebrity actors is nothing new, but their hyper-commercialization and glamorization seems to have sustained dizzying heights since the 90's.

Cut out those extraneous costs, and suddenly the 60:1 margin isn't so ludicrous anymore. The cost of computer-based visual effects is at an all-time low thanks to mass availability of the tools and exploitative offshore labour, so a Bond movie could be a whole lot cheaper if they went back to their roots and focused on the characters themselves, instead of the name-brand puppets portraying them.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[bondsbw]

I don't think your analysis is complete.

Using your figures, we assume a 600% inflation rate since 1962 ("... yet cost 1/16th as much adjusted for inflation", applied to $100 million current dollars, yields a little over $6 million dollars or 6 times the unadjusted cost for "Dr. No"). That may seem a little high, but I just put the numbers in an inflation calculator (The Inflation Calculator) and it's close: 679% inflation between 1962 and 2007. So, let's assume that figure.

At 679% inflation, "Dr. No" would have earned $407 million current dollars at an expense of $7 million, or a total profit of $400 million current dollars. On the other hand, "Casino Royale" earned $600 million at an expense of $100 million, or a total profit of $500 million.

So, "Casino Royale" made 25% more profit than "Dr. No", when adjusted for inflation. It's not a huge jump, but it debunks your assertion that the new movie actually made much less by comparison. The new movie made less "percentage-wise" when comparing income to investment, but more actual dollars.

If you can gain 25% profit by investing 16 times more money, and you have the money to invest, you would be wise to do so.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[91degrees]

Dr No is probably a bad example. They had no idea whether it was going to be a success. Contemporary films To Kill a Mockingbird and Lawrence of Arabia had 2 times and 15 times the budget respectively.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you misunderstood: $500M is still larger than $420M. It doesn't matter that they're making less per dollar spent, they're still (a) making more money and (b) their investment is more certain to be profitable.

Obviously it's better to make more money per dollar spent, but the $140M invested in a new James Bond movie is almost certain to make its money back several times over (>4x in this case) whereas investing $14M in ten smaller projects is much riskier -- most won't make their money back and even if you get a couple of decent hits, you're still unlikely to match the $500M net revenue of the James Bond film.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[east coast]

I think part of what you're missing in the 007 example is that home viewing wasn't a reality in 1962. So fans went to the movie house. Welcome to the age to digital media in the home... I wanted to see "There will be blood" but I really don't enjoy the movie house scene too much so I waited for it to come out on DVD (and have since bought the BluRay after I got my BR player). In my case I have lowered the box office numbers by not seeing it in the theatre but have increased the overall profits by actually purchasing it.

How many people who haven't seen the latest Bond film on the big screen will buy it at 10-20 dollars?

Re:Why not lower costs?

[westlake]

They not only seem unable to create a character to replace 007, they also need to spend sixteen times as much to create the same level of special effects.

The same level of special effects?

That's ridiculous. The F/X in the Connery films is simplistic and obvious.

The best moments come when the gadgets are real.

Who hasn't wanted to pilot "Little Nelly?"

Re:Why not lower costs?

[cowscows]

The "media industry" is a pretty broad term, and might not even be that useful of a grouping for this discussion, but either way I'm not sure that big budget movies are the best example. While it's certainly true that the costs of giant blockbusters has been increasing pretty steadily, there's whole sections of the media industry, and even the movie industry specifically, where costs have come down a lot, or at least stayed about the same.

It doesn't cost any more to write a book now than it did before. If anything, it's probably cheaper than any time in history, because making edits and copies with a computer is so darn easy compared to dealing with actual sheets of paper. Digital technology has also drastically reduced the costs of making decent music recordings. A few thousand bucks worth of equipment and software, and just about anybody can build out a passable studio in their basement. Digital photography can cut out a bunch of costs that regular film needs. And for smaller and independent film makers, there's affordable editing software running on consumer level computers with abilities that were unimaginable just a decade ago. Factor in all the new ways being explored to distribute media digitally, and there's a giant amount of cost savings potential there as well.

There are a few very specific costs that are continually climbing, but it's nothing that's 100% to the production or distribution of any sort of media. Special effects don't come cheap, big name actors cost a bundle, and advertising blitzes can eat money endlessly. But you don't need any of that stuff to make something good or profitable.

Media is cheaper than ever. Don't let the extreme cases define the entire landscape for you.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[ConceptJunkie]

They not only seem unable to create a character to replace 007, they also need to spend sixteen times as much to create the same level of special effects.

Have you seen "Dr. No"? The fanciest gadget Bond uses in that movie is pasting a hair to a door to see if someone uses it while he's gone. The movie was extremely modest in terms of production compared to today's movies which often end up being little more than an actor running around inside a CGI video game.

The movie succeeded so well because it was a great movie. I haven't seen any recent Bond movies, but I bet they aren't even in the same time zone, relying instead on gadgets, effects (plenty of explosions) and sexy women... not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's a completely different kind of movie, essentially a comic book featuring an invincible, emotionless superhero, in stunning but ultimately drama-free action.

The problem is we're all spoiled by eye candy. I saw "Star Trek" and loved it, but there's this lingering doubt in my mind that the reason I loved it was because it looked really cool (best visual effects ever... I'm a total sucker for spaceships) and it featured actors repeating stereotyped lines and actions that most of us have been familiar with since childhood. I can accept that this movie was more of an introduction or prelude to a revitalized Star Trek, and think it did a good job at re-establishing the milieu, which frankly had become paint-by-numbers/phone-it-in stale. But despite all that, I thought "ST: TMP" was far more in the spirit of the concept, despite the pastel pajamas.

When the inevitable sequel (or dare I hope, a TV series?) happens, and it doesn't give me a big dose of wonder, philosophy and real human stories that made Star Trek what it is, then it will have, like so many franchises, been reduced to a mere 2D cartoon version of itself.

The real question to me is, could J. J. Abrams have made a compelling low-budget Star Trek movie? Maybe so... and if so, that's what the next one needs to be: a movie that would work if it were done on the cardboard sets and with the primitive effects available to the original series in 1965. I give him a pass this time around. Just seeing Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock and the rest all over again was well worth it, and the timeline twists are a refreshing change. Plus, the satisfaction of knowing that thousands of fanboys are so angry their latex pointy ears are melting off their heads is a nice piece of schadenfreude.

Now he's got all the toys out of the boxes and lined up... this is where the game gets really interesting and challenging, or it remains just toys.

The same is true with James Bond. It's not a question of whether "Dr. No" could be made today. Of course it could, and for a million dollars (inflation notwithstanding) it would look and sound better than original in pure technical terms. The real question is whether any studio would try to make it?

I seriously doubt it, and there's the whole problem with Hollywood today.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[shark72]

With regard to salaries, then vs. now:

Elizabeth Taylor was paid $1MM to perform in Cleopatra. That's about $7MM in 2009 dollars. Very, very few female celebrities make more than $7MM per picture today.

The film grossed $43MM, which is about $300MM today.

Relative hyper-commercialization and hyper-glamorization is an exercise left to the reader. Sure, celebrities didn't have Twitter accounts in the 1960s and (with a few exceptions) didn't show up in naked photos. Yet the star-making machine was in full force, and young people were just as rabidly crazy about their favorite musicians and flim performers as they are today.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[Red Flayer]

Go to any industry executive and ask, is it better to get $420 milion in profits from a $8.4 million investment, or is it better to get $500 million in profits from a $140 million investment?

This is the movie industry. There are no profits, remember?

Just royalty expenses paid to affiliate companies.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps I didn't make myself quite clear. "Dr. No" made $60 million in 1962 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, "Dr. No" cost $8.4 million and got $420 million in profits, "Casino Royale" cost $140 million and got $500 million in profits.

I think you misunderstood: $500M is still larger than $420M. It doesn't matter that they're making less per dollar spent, they're still (a) making more money...

500 – 140 < 420 – 8.4

Re:Why not lower costs?

[daveime]

You clearly stated (twice) the phrase "in profits".

Therefore, 500 > 420, there is no need to subtract the initial cost again !

Re:Why not lower costs?

[Reziac]

Also, studios have become exceedingly adept at cooking the books to show that movies ALWAYS cost more to make than they can ever recoup in box-office receipts.

The whole industry is one big money-laundry.

Re:Why not lower costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

One could argue that James Bond jumped the shark

James Bond did. The evil henchman who had to report back to the evil overlord that he failed to kill James Bond? Let's just say that he wasn't so lucky.

"Those who do not jump over the shark, will become dinner for it."

I really hope this takes off

[iris-n]

What you are forgetting is that this is aimed to people who do want to paint the license, but can't. There are "pirates" who will just profit from another person's works, and there always will be. The idea is that you shouldn't be forced to be one of them.

Take my case for example. I ran a small t-shirt store, whose drawings included, but were not limited to, characters of famous and not-so-famous movies, who were definitely copyrighted and/or trademarked. I did make money off them, and never paid the creators a dime. Why? The cost to get a license agreement with just one of the biggies would be enough to put me out of business. And their terms weren't suited to me as well. They wanted a huge upfront payment followed by a small per-unit cost.

So, as a law-abiding citizen, I just went out of business? Of course not, I just didn't contact them and hoped that they wouldn't contact me.

The terms that Doctorow proposes would suit my purpose just fine. And I would pay.

Also, I don't think the big distributors would be against it. The distribution terms he proposes aren't advantageous to a big distributor. It wouldn't be fostering competition. And I doubt that the shop from around the corner can damage them.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[Anonymous Coward]

So if the creators of the content you want to put on shirts didn't want to use that license, you'd just continue to rip off their copyrighted images?

Nice. Also, you're a shallow ass for your entitlement complex.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[Garwulf]

Sorry, but as a business owner myself, I have to wonder - how did you know what their terms were without contacting them?

Aside from which, I think your argument here regarding your business does come out as a cop-out. Just because you couldn't afford to pay the license fee to produce the shirts yourself, it doesn't mean that you had to resort to piracy. Surely there are wholesalers out there who sell those licensed shirts to vendors like yourself, without you having to produce them, or pay a license fee.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[westlake]

The terms that Doctorow proposes would suit my purpose just fine. And I would pay.

You didn't before.

You flew under the radar.

Why should anyone believe you will behave any differently now?

The geek is always puffing smoke about the "failed business model." Meaning the one in which he is expected to cough up some cash.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[drinkypoo]

Take my case for example. I ran a small t-shirt store, whose drawings included, but were not limited to, characters of famous and not-so-famous movies, who were definitely copyrighted and/or trademarked. I did make money off them, and never paid the creators a dime. Why?

Because you were not sufficiently creative to produce original designs for which people would pay, and felt entitled to profit from the work of others? Many of us would have no problem with you wearing the shirts, but selling them is pretty much indefensible. I wonder if Copyright shouldn't be extended indefinitely, but with derivative works permitted and protected immediately so that anyone is free to reinvent anything any time, but nobody is free to reproduce anything without permission ever. It would promote similar, competing works... But still prevent people from gaining from the labor of others. They would have to do something.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[DerekLyons]

The geek is always puffing smoke about the "failed business model." Meaning the one in which he is expected to cough up some cash.

One of the best replies ever posted on Slashdot.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't before.

You flew under the radar.

Why should anyone believe you will behave any differently now?

Um, GP answered that in the original post: "Why? The cost to get a license agreement with just one of the biggies would be enough to put me out of business. And their terms weren't suited to me as well. They wanted a huge upfront payment followed by a small per-unit cost."

GP wanted to run the business legitimately, but the content creators made that impossible (well, actually, the copyright holders, who aren't likely the real content creators, but I digress). This licensing scheme would fix that.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[NeoSkandranon]

They goddamned well did not make it impossible.

No one is forcing him to use copyrighted material on his product.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[Garwulf]

I hate to tell you this, but copyright already works that way when it comes to derivative works. You can copyright an implementation of an idea, but not an idea itself. It's been that way for a very long time.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[iris-n]

Surely there are wholesalers out there who sell those licensed shirts to vendors like yourself, without you having to produce them, or pay a license fee.

That would defeat the purpose of me having a t-shirt shop. I started the business in the first place because there was a unfulfilled demand for high-quality t-shirts with themes that were known to people. There weren't any wholesale vendors that had movie t-shirts apart from the überpopular ones. And even these sucked. You know, they have to aim to the lowest denominator. My business was small enough that it could survive on the cinephiles alone.

Sorry, but as a business owner myself, I have to wonder - how did you know what their terms were without contacting them?

A fair question. I did, however, contact one of them. A relatively obscure Brasilian filmmaker. They wanted my to fly across the country to sign the rights of one t-shirt. And they wanted to license the production of no less than 50.000 units. "Excuse-me, but, it will take me about 20 years to sell all that". "Unh???". And so on. Somehow that didn't encourage me to go on and find the rights owner of every design that I wanted to sell. And even less to make international phone calls to Fox Searchlight to struck a deal to sell a million t-shirts.

I'm just thankful that Euler never registered a trademark on his name. And that BSD has that marvellous license (I had a fun one about fork()).

Re:I really hope this takes off

[iris-n]

Because you were not sufficiently creative to produce original designs for which people would pay, and felt entitled to profit from the work of others?

No and yes. I had plenty of my own designs, that sold well. I also had designs based on famous movies. Why? People wanted to buy them. And the rights owners didn't sell.

So they were entitled to sit in their gold saying "it's mine", and forbidding mankind from enjoying it? I'm sorry, I have no respect from this attitude.

Take Watchmen, par example. Its movie was stalled for how many year because of the copyright fight between Alan Moore, Fox and Warner? 20?

I had a design about them. So what should I do? Call Mr. Moore, and say to him that I wanted to sell a hundred t-shirts about his characters? But... he hadn't licensed their image to Fox? Or it was DC comics? Should I warn Warner too, just to be safe? Let's face it, it's just unrealistic. So, I should just refrain from using their image, and nobody would ever have a Watchmen t-shirt.

... but nobody is free to reproduce anything without permission ever.

That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard about copyright. So if someone makes some wonderful piece of music, innovating in rhythm and poetry, and does not feel like having competition, he can forbid mankind from ever copying and improving on that concept? He should be rewarded for his genius of course, but not in a way that stifles innovation.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[Anonymous Coward]

Indefensible my ass. It costs money to make these t-shirts, he found a market for them, why can't he make a little profit? If the copyright holders really cared about the t-shirt market, they would create the same designs as him (or better) most likely at less cost and with better distribution. This guy would get undercut right out of the market. When a copyright holder uses its position to eliminate a market, society loses out.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[Reziac]

Licencing fees for namebrand/trademarked characters tend to start in the mid-5-figures. Some go well up into 7 figures. Doesn't matter if you're just doing a thousand T-shirts that will show a net profit of $5000 -- the typical license terms want many times the small producer's expected profit up front, as their terms were designed around MEGACORP-sized partners, not CafePress-sized partners.

So -- paying that kind of fee would indeed be a failed business model before it even starts, because there's no way in hell the average small entrepreneur could begin to pay it, even if they want to.

Doctorow's royalties model would be directly proportional to your level of sales, whether that's Small Shop or Megacorp, without a huge upfront investment that by its very nature locks out everyone but Megacorps. The idea is to make it EASY and PROFITABLE (you can make more from selling "familiar" stuff) for any small producer to pay a royalty, rather than financially improbable for all but the largest partners.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[drinkypoo]

he can forbid mankind from ever copying and improving on that concept?

I explicitly said that derivative works should be permitted right away (e.g. mashups etc.) See sig.

He should be rewarded for his genius of course, but not in a way that stifles innovation.

Precisely how does making copies of someone else's work for your own personal gain without their permission encourage innovation?

Re:I really hope this takes off

[Anonymous Coward]

... For most of USA history, this guy's actions would have been considered more or less fair. Copyright was, constitutionally speaking, a small exception to the Free Speech clause intended to help creators get a leg up on earning a few bucks before their creation became public property.

From almost any perspective prior to the 50's, and certainly from those prior to the 1920's, he and anyone else today should be perfectly within their rights to draw up a Superman shirt, make up a Superman vs. Mickymouse comic book, do a Ninja Turtles and Superman sing Bob Dylan album, and sell the crap out of it. The fact that we have decided to make such things a crime puts us at a uniquely weird, probably creatively unhealthy, moment in history.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[iris-n]

I explicitly said that derivative works should be permitted right away (e.g. mashups etc.) See sig.

Sorry. I misread your post. But the thing is, it isn't so clear-cut the distinction between copying and making derivative works.

Your sig has great advice. You should follow it too.

If you read my post, you will notice that my t-shirts are derivative works, not copies. I based my designs on copyrighted characters, but the drawings per se were completely mine.

Precisely how does making copies of someone else's work for your own personal gain without their permission encourage innovation?

Distribution.

Take Led Zeppelin as an example. They hated live footages of their shows. They said that if you wanted to see they performing, you had to buy the ticket and go to the show. Consequently, the only footages of their early shows is low-quality tapes made by the public. There are a couple of shows that they decided to tape. Such is the scarcity that when they though that it was a good idea to make the DVD "How the west was won", they had to go after these fans they persecuted to get the footages and have enough material. This is my point about sitting in a mountain of gold and saying "it's mine". You shouldn't be able to do that. You are hurting the rest of mankind. If Led Zeppelin had their way, there will be no footages of their concerts available nowadays.

Try watching them. They're marvellous. Their style of performing (rave ons) was innovative and influenced a lot of music.

Now, let's see the number of bands whose members could watch their concerts live and compare it to the number who could only get videos. And tell me that restricting this information to the first group is not stifling innovation.

As for the personal gain, well. Everything is done for personal gain. You think the fans that recorded the concertos were doing that out of love for mankind? I'm not comparing the value of Watchmen t-shirts to their shows, but the principle is the same. This is how culture works.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[lennier]

"I wonder if Copyright shouldn't be extended indefinitely, but with derivative works permitted and protected immediately so that anyone is free to reinvent anything any time, but nobody is free to reproduce anything without permission ever. It would promote similar, competing works... But still prevent people from gaining from the labor of others. They would have to do something."

And that's why nobody performs Hamlet these days. The licence fees to the Shakespeare Foundation (a TimeWarner/Murdoch company) are just too steep.

On the other hand, "Revenge of the Danish Prince Bob Part IX: Now With Rockets" is doing pretty well in off-off-off-Broadway.

Re:I really hope this takes off

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, asshole. Learn to read a post and respond to it, not whatever BS you have canned to spew out in IP forums. You're a nauseating worm.

Won't work.

[jellomizer]

1. Most Piracy isn't a for profit business. It is just some one who downloads a bunch of pirated stuff, when he actually does buy a product he will post it online for the rest to pirate, combined with a few hackers to break any DRM to make sure what they get wont get others in trouble. But they do it to protect themselves because they don't want to pay for the software. Granted there is some people making money off of software piracy. However most of it is if any money trades hands is to cover cost.

2. They already don't respect your license. Why would they respect this. It is like telling the wolves in the zoo if they don't eat the rabbits then they will get a good meal later, then place a bunch of rabbits in the wolf cage of hungry wolves. They have already convinced themselves that Software Piracy is good and some how they are heroes for fighting the man.

3. After the fact enforcement, or in other words, if you don't do this and you are caught then we sue you. It is better to correct issues before it gets to that point. Though I am not a fan of DRM, DRM has probably saved a lot of people from getting sued and loosing a lot of money (on both sides) as DRM for the most part keeps the Honest honest. Sure it is a download patch away to breaking the DRM. However that is probably that one step too far that isn't worth it and they will just buy a copy. And no one bashing at the door and suing a guy for piracy of software that is stilled crippled.

Re:Won't work.

[RobBebop]

2. They already don't respect your license. Why would they respect this.

I have to disagree. Software pirates respect Creative Commons licenses. CC is a "free distribution" license. There isn't any way to distribute CC licensed material so that the person you give it to can't give it to all their friends for free.

The argument here, if I understand it correctly, is bridging the gap between the Non-commercial license and the No-derivatives license.

The fact is that MOST creative types that have an interest in profiting from their creations tend to distribute Non-Commercial AND No-derivatives to protect their investment.

A while back I had a plan to distribute my novel as NC-ND up until I was able to draw some pre-determined sum on money through monetary donations collected on my site. I have since abandoned that because $0 came in over the course of over a year.

But for the reader who isn't interested in reselling it or creating derivative works, as long as it is CC, then they don't care about the other terms of the license. Right?

Re:Won't work.

[Inverted Intellect]

All of your points disregard that this is an honor system, and they frequently work without any sort of enforcement whatsoever. You don't need 100% compliance either, you don't even get that with purely commercial works.

Also, it's not like giving a choice between a non-commercial CC license and a commercial license without enforcement has much of a downside, as compared to only offering the CC license.

Re:Won't work.

[Comboman]

DRM for the most part keeps the Honest honest.

No, DRM annoys the Honest and is at most a minor inconvenience for the Dishonest.

Boing Boing

[maxume]

Cory Doctorow is not the founding editor of Boing Boing. Mark Frauenfelder is. Wikipedia gives a decent rundown:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boing_Boing

Sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

You lost me at "Cory Doctorow says"

Panacea!

[retech]

Yippie! I'm certain that since this solution has Doctrow's name attached to it pretty much all of the world's digital piracy will be solved.

I can only hope he solves open sea piracy next.

This man is a GOD!

Okay, but the maths causes problems

[91degrees]

If I wanted to produce something that used two pieces of music, charged at 10% of gross each, 10 different images charged at 5% of gross each, and some animation charged at 40% of gross, I need to pay 110% of my gross to the make this.

Re:Okay, but the maths causes problems

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wanted to produce something that used two pieces of music, charged at 10% of gross each, 10 different images charged at 5% of gross each, and some animation charged at 40% of gross, I need to pay 110% of my gross to the make this.

Avast, matey! Ye have unraveled me secret plan to steal your booty!

Now walk the plank, ye scurvy dog!

Hollywood accounting

[malx]

This doesn't even work in licensing with proper commercial corporations like the record labels and film studios. It will fall foul of "Hollywood Accounting". Normally this is applied to rip off artists who are promised a percentage of profits (they find the company they've dealt with has made no profits, they've all been moved into a different company). This is slightly harder with gross revenue, but not much.

Re:Hollywood accounting

[RobBebop]

This was one of my first thoughts as well. Unless companies can track the real value that consumers spend on products and services, the opportunity for companies to lie about profits is much to high.

When the IRS can't even figure out how to stop US Corporations from getting tax shelters to avoid paying their legal taxes, I'll never believe that organizations are going to honestly pay the suggested "percentage of income" that Doctorow is suggesting.

Re:Hollywood accounting

[Wildclaw]

Hollywood accounting uses "net income" to rip of artists. Cory is talking about "gross income".

Re:Hollywood accounting

[russotto]

Hollywood accounting uses "net income" to rip of artists. Cory is talking about "gross income".

Hollywood has slightly less successful ways of cheating on the gross.

Different uses require different payscales

[Andy_R]

Here's a big problem with this idea... Let's imagine you're a photographer who uses this new system, and asks for 8% of gross. I'm a printer, and I want to use your work. I have to give you 8% of gross for a birthday card made from your work, 96% of gross for a 12 month calendar using your work and 11 of your friends work, and illustrating an encyclopedia would cost me many times more than gross!

Re:Different uses require different payscales

[argent]

So you contact the human licensing the good and say "I'm making a calendar, and can't afford to pay 12 people 8% of the gross each, will you accept 1.5% (18% of the gross shared among 12 people)?".

And if you're publishing an actual printed encyclopedia you ought to be able to afford actual lawyers.

Re:Different uses require different payscales

[CesiumFrog]

So private individuals are prohibited from profiting from mash-ups involving large numbers of original works?* I thought we were trying to solve the problem of IP owners (to the detriment of society) vetoing further progress?

*At least, until they set up puppet companies that resell (to the parent company) minor derivatives of the original works individually, for negligible gross price (effectively renegotiating the license away). And even in the best case, the whole idea only benefits creators if the derivative works are not also distributed gratis.

Re:Different uses require different payscales

[YourExperiment]

Indeed. The obvious quick-fix for that would be to divide the total royalties up between all of the contributors, but that too opens up significant loopholes.

Want to use a Britney sample in your new hip-hop album? Just sling together a little bonus track for the end of the album, using 99 other samples from 99 "close friends", then you only need pay Britney 0.2% royalties for her sample.

I really don't think Cory has thought this one through; it reeks of naivete 2.0.

Re:Different uses require different payscales

[argent]

So private individuals are prohibited from profiting from mash-ups involving large numbers of original works?

They're just not enabled directly by this clever scheme. It's not trying to solve every possible problem with copyright, it's simply trying to expand the domain of free culture by an increment large enough to be useful.

Aggregating Multiple Works into Something New.

[jsberg]

This particular CC+ license would be feasible when the product sold contains only one of these types of works in its makeup. But in the instance where something is created out of 200 of these works and sold as an integrated whole the cumulative royalty rate would be 4000% of sales. Any solutions to this?

This guy is dumber than I thought

[dilute]

This is not thought through in the slightest.

Not their work at all

[westlake]

First of all - what gross income? The pirates just upload their work to torrent sites. The pirates are uploading the work of others. That's so much easier and cheaper than producing anything on your own.

Fail

[DaveV1.0]

Get a Creative Commons license, and append some basic text requiring those who re-use your work to pay you a percentage of their gross income.

So, his solution is to allow others to redistribute one's work as long as the one redistributing the work make no money on the redistribution. This would effectively limit one's market, especially in a digital market, to one person who could then freely give it away to everyone, destroying one's ability to make money on the product.

One could set up two independent companies/organizations, one of which is a non-profit which distributes works under this license, and the other a shell company which makes revenue on ads and exists solely to direct people to the works provided by the first company. This would get around the "gross income" provision by moving most of the income to a company that is not bound by the license.

Interestingly, if one did the books right, one could buy a single copy of a book, convert the book to an electronic or book format, then print new copies of the book and sell them for the cost of printing and shipping. If one were to set up a company to do the printing and shipping, one could easily make money selling other people's work.

Doctorow is either being disingenuous, or he is an idiot, or both.

Already doing this...

[Yvanhoe]

It is a French-speaking website, but In Libro Veritas has this model since 2005. It proposes to host novels and short stories under free licenses, including CCs and Art Libre. If commercial derivatives is allowed, In Libro Veritas tries to sell books or compilation of short stories to its readers (while maintaining a free web access to the texts) and redistributes 50% of the profits to the authors. It keeps afloat, not many authors manage to live from that but it is trying to prove that this model can succeed.

They also have a big list of public domain texts that are classics of literature.

NOT ABOUT PIRACY

[lucas_picador]

AFAICT, the actual article has nothing to do with piracy. It's just about lowering transaction costs in your licensing business by using a standardized (CC) license instead of hiring lawyers. Doctorow seems to be addressing companies with media assets who are generally CC-friendly, but who are nervous about how to monetize the idea and so stick exclusively to non-commercial CC variants. The article describes a model whereby a for-profit media licensing business model can be built using modified CC licenses. That's it. He's not talking to Hollywood. He's talking to people who already know what CC is and think it's a good idea, but also want to make some cash off their media assets. I mean, Christ, it's in the first paragraph of the story.

With frikken lasers

[argent]

One could argue that James Bond jumped the shark

The original James Bond, by Ian Fleming, was a parody of the "superspy" literature of the time. Adjusted for cultural inflation, James Bond was Austin Powers for a quieter time. James Bond is ALL ABOUT jumping the shark... and that has carried over to the movies right from the start.

There is a big difference...

[rshol]

...between putting language in a license and collecting money for your work.

Distribute high quality at no cost too

[drDugan]

We offer a service to Content Creators who license digital material with share-friendly licenses (like Creative Commons) and distribute the full quality content. We do not charge Content Creators for this service. We also offer to optionally collect sponsorship for the Content Creator (sent to them by check quarterly), and now (just recently) support external sponsorship links to Paypal, Google Checkout or other services.

see http://beta.legaltorrents.com/

piracy vs. bootlegging

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Most Piracy isn't a for profit business.

Perhaps we should start making a distinction:
    . piracy - commercial copying
    . bootlegging - private/personal, non-commercial copying

Re:piracy vs. bootlegging

[jellomizer]

Perhaps but we are unable to give Hackers their good name either.-

It's not at all about pirates

[Aceticon]

He's aiming at providing a legal, well balanced way of letting people and small companies create and sell things which use iconography from modern society which is "owned" by famous-individuals / large-companies under trademark and/or copyright laws while at the same time making sure that the owners of the original IP are rewarded.

This would, for example, empower somebody to craft a clay vase with (for example) the Intel logo and sell it while:
- Not needing to upfront pay expensive lawyers to agree with Intel Corp on the use of their trademark
- Not being sued (assuming Intel Corp had made their trademark sign available under this agreement) by Intel Corp for trademark infringement.
- Pay inga percentage of the profits to Intel Corp.
- In a standardized manner, making it clear in their work that it's NOT something done by Intel Corp.

At the moment, a huge number of the icons of our culture are actually owned by big companies and things are likely to remain so unless a proper reform is done of IP laws. What the article is proposing is a way of giving society more access to those icons in a way which lets individuals create and profit from derived work, not just large corps.

Re:It's not at all about pirates

[cdrguru]

You ignore the obvious use of something like this. To continue the use Intel from your example, how about an artistic work with an Intel logo in a bucket of piss, to use familiar theme?

Once you allow "good" and "favorable" uses of such icons you are also open to negative ones. Extremely negative ones. The Coke logo as a tattoo on the butt of a dead hooker, say. You know, with a caption indicating all the wonderful aspects of drinking Coca-Cola and what it will do to your body, such that the dead hooker is now much, much better off than if she had been able to continue drinking Coke for the rest of her undoubtably short, disease-ridden life.

Why wouldn't anyone want to do this? And if there is an avenue to do this without legal retribution or recourse, I would think it would be extremely common.

Decency is a high point on a bell curve with there being positive and negative sides to it. We haven't even begun to explore the left side of the curve, but the Internet makes it all possible.

Warning!

[spun]

Do not name your child Cory. All Corys grow up to be dumb as posts. Corey Haim. Corey Feldman. Cory Doctorow, all of them.

Re:Warning!

[Anonymous Coward]

Corey Matthews?

what?

[geekoid]

They can pay to use a work NOW.

This might be clever, but it won't do anything to stop piracy. you know, people not paying ANYTHING to distribute a work.

So what if I want to combine works?

[maxwell demon]

What if I want to combine works from several sources? Say I'm going to make and sell a game. I might take one of his books for the game story (20% of my income to him), take some artwork of someone else as basis for the graphics (20% of my income to him), then take a game engine from a third person (assuming the same licensing model, 20% to him), maybe a scripting engine from a fourth person (who also gets 20%), and finally add music from a fifth person (20% again). Now I'll already have to pay 100% of my gross income if I want to sell that game. In other words, I get nothing. And god forbid that I use a sixth source (say some more music from another person).

Small Labels are Great

[cromar]

Dude, labels are great. Small labels are great I mean. It's nice to have smaller organizations that can bring together artists in the common cause of some vision or style or sound. Also they are good because they will have producers who understand the particular niche of that label. Anyone can put out a demo, but you really need to work with someone who is good at production and mastering to get that professional sound (not style wise, but audio quality wise). Plus, a label can support its own studio, bringing down the cost of production and recording.

The label is still a great model, not necessary all the time, but certainly with its own benefits. The great thing is that so many independent labels and artists are springing up everywhere. This is what's going to bring the major labels to their knees! A flood of creative, independent music without any centralized, tyrannical masters at the reigns. It's happening right now!!

Another brave,original insight from the great C.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cory Doctorow, we applaud you for your amazing intellect. How else would we have though these things through were it not for your courageous leadership? Cory is truly one of our great thinkers especially in these hard economic times. Bravo to Mr. Doctorow for this remarkable discovery of a payment method that works and people will care about! We couldn't do it without you C-Dawg.

I see we have some 'Lost Boys' fans among the mods

[spun]

Sorry, I didn't mean to insult Cory & Cory, they were awesome in that movie, but c'mon, they kinda both crashed and burned after that.

Doctorow, though, you leave that kid out in the rain, and a raindrop hits his forehead? He'll look up all slack-jawed until he drowns if you don't get him under some cover.

Thanks for the strawman

[thtrgremlin]

Those are valid arguments, completely outside of the scope of what is being addressed. At present, and work that is licensed 'CC-NC-AT' typically only includes a note of "contact author for alternate licensing options". This is an attempt to expand on that. You referenced that the typical royalty rate is "27% of gross income". That is the system NOW under an All Rights Reserved model and while it obviously doesn't in your examples, it is a valid criticism of gross income royalty models. Whether you are using All Rights Reserved or CC is irrelevant. Obviously if you with to make a collage or remix, some other deal will need to be struck.

If you believe the law is a social contract, and that current copyright law violates that, then the current model is broken... no matter how fancy the suit of the person who would tell you otherwise. CC addresses many immoralities criticized by people, including artists. Now that the issue has been reasonably settled, the argument that keeps coming up is being addressed directly, "how do we make money?". A place to start is to incorporate parts of the old model that DID work. If you want to take a product and put in the time and effort to make money distributing a work AS A WHOLE, a percentage of the gross makes a lot of sense. Compared to a flat rate, the scalable model allows flexibility between free and commercial attempting to alleviate the barrier to market that could encourage people to pirate.

Further, don't confuse gross income with profit. Technically, 'Star Wars: A New Hope' has never turned a profit, leaving many of the actors who were paid on a 'net proceeds' model having never been paid. Investors in the principle of a business, such as the music on a CD being distributed by a music distributor, should be entitled to a portion of the gross. By contrast, a person assisting a distribution company voluntarily that believes they can sell the product well would justly be entitled to a portion of the net proceeds.

Anyway, hope that helps in understanding what's going on. It may not be a complete model for every situation: non-commercial remix licensing is still a mess and will be difficult to work out, likely even on an individual basis, but compare that to 'fair use' which is utterly useless when it becomes a legal matter.

Jamendo

[Siker]

Check out Jamendo for cheap to license music which is actually pretty good.

Read the posts, Luke...

[Mathinker]

> They goddamned well did not make it impossible.

This sub-thread discusses a specific business model, namely, legally running a small custom T-shirt shop which prints cinema-related images on its shirts. That is the "it" in question here. You are therefore wrong when you claim that the copyright holders did not make this impossible, as is their right.

> No one is forcing him to use copyrighted material on his product.

This is correct but a non sequitor. You might as well as said "No one is forcing him to run around wearing bermuda shorts and a bandana." The question at hand was actually if someone was forcing him to not use copyrighted material on his product, legally. This is obviously true given what has been posted.

You seem to be confused, here. "to force A to not do X" has no logical relationship to "to not force A to do X".

Re:Read the posts, Luke...

[NeoSkandranon]

I guess i parse "whose drawings included, but were not limited to" differently than you did. To me that says a portion of his shirts had copyrighted things on them, and some didn't.

Therefore his t-shirt shack was not "impossible" due to licensing concerns, he just chose to ignore them.

Re:Read the posts, Luke...

[Mathinker]

From a subsequent post:

My business was small enough that it could survive on the cinephiles alone.

It looks to me like we just were struck by different things. My interpretation of the text you quote, in light of the text I quote above, was that some of the images were public domain (silent movie stars, etc.), but enough of the sales were from shirts with images under copyright that the business wouldn't be viable only on the other sales.

I concede that neither of us has enough information to know which of us is correct....

nice try, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

says who?

Royaties on Gross Sales are Hideous

[GumphMaster]

This all falls apart the moment lawyers get involved to enforce your "rights" (dare I say privileges) against a mid-sized guy.

When each of the original artists comes after you because they think you have skimped on their royalty you can be absolutely certain that the lawyers (who are now involved anyway) will interpret "gross profit" incredibly broadly. They'll want 10% of every sale regardless of whether it actually contains anything of theirs: because the item "can use" their whatever. They will of course mean before tax (a royalty on money that's belongs to the State) and before any expense involved in the business of making the good or service. They will argue that your business only exists because they provide their music/image/data and therefore what is yours is theirs. You have pay your lawyers to argue them back to a reasonable starting point before you can even make headway.

Pour multiple "rights" holders into the mix and you'll quickly be paying 50% of your gross to them, and you still pay the tax (on 100%) and costs, and take all the risks.

The lawyers, on the other hand, can't lose.

Use fixed but user-dependent pricing

[Mandrel]

Yeah, rather than a percentage of the gross there should be a fixed price per use that varies according to the user's ability to pay.

Rails Wheels does this by allowing the price of a software package to vary according to both the user's type (non-profit, government, personal-promotional, or for-profit) and the user's size (as measured by the number of employees).