Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
entropy happens
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
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!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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".
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.
Send your spendthrift head of state this