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Doctorow Says Google & Amazon Stifle Progress
An anonymous reader writes "Google and Amazon are 'a danger to everyone involved in the creative industries' because they act as the intermediary between creators and audiences, says Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow. He warns that the corporate giants will 'only fear competition from other established giants ... companies whose character as gatekeepers of video distribution and discovery won't be substantially different.' The solution, he says, is to use copyrights to lower the cost of entering the market. 'For so long as copyright holders think like short-timers, seeking a quick buck instead of a healthy competitive marketplace, they're doomed to work for their gatekeepers,' he says."
Saying that Amazon and Google stifle innovation because they sit as an intermediary between creators and audiences is a bit like saying the Roman Catholic church stifles religion because a priest sits between the Creator and his followers.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
But intermediaries are never going to go away. A model where millions of creators market directly to hundreds of millions of customers just isn't going to work; the good stuff will be buried in the dreck (even worse than it is in the current system).
Put your copyright in,
take your copyright out,
put your copyright in,
and you shake it all about
you do the Cory bullshit speak
and you twist some words around,
that's what it's all about.
So artists should spend 60 hours a week pressing disks and mailing boxes to cut out the middleman? So there should be a hundred thousand separate online stores, one per manufacturer? I'm not giving out my credit card number to some rubik's cube manufacturer, but Amazon is trustworthy. And how does it make good sense to design a web site for every manufacturer; just uniting everything in one familiar format is much more efficient. Any possible gains from doing it on your own would be offset by the cost of developing and deploying your own ecommerce platform. I don't think Doctorow realizes how many millions of dollars it costs to run warehouses and hire workers.
As soon as we get rid of all these "intermediaries" we're going to have this wonderful creative utopia where everyone will magically know exactly what it is that they want and will be able to find it in a millisecond. You know what? In this wonderful future world, sites like Boing Boing and Slashdot will have no reason to exist at all, so they may as well just close up shop now. After all, they're just intermediaries/gatekeepers who are stifling my creative abilities.
I read the article and I still not quite sure what he is talking about. He seems to be complaining about fee structures. Amazon doesn't control compensation structures and offers all sorts of direct sales models and google by and large doesn't sell content at all.
I couldn't follow even the basic cause and effect claim for his issue with the current model.
The irony is that Dr Doctoro is another intermediary too, putting himself between the things he finds interesting and us. what a corporate dog! I free myself of your monopoly!
This is my sig.
Yes, because companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc. all started out as established giants, right?
These things, Doctrow, says combined has led to a stifled market. I don't know if I agree, since each evolution has been innovative and I hope Doctrow isn't making the claim that Google et al are going to be the last and final stage.
Unfortunately, Doctrow isn't an economist or a social researcher, he is an author and blogger of some repute. That doesn't give him the innate ability to investigate the market and social dynamics taking place.
Essentially, the main complaint he has is that the creative industry is going to be governed by a handful of companies (an oligopoly) or a single company (a monopoly), and that this has great risks for the creative industries because said company/companies will be able to impose their will on the creative artists e.g. what books they'll stock/sell, what price they'll pay for it, and sell it at, etc.
The only way to combat this is to ensure that there are no "gatekeepers", and that there is healthy competition.
However, he's saying that the cost to enter the market for these competitors is becoming too high because of deals involving copyright issues that place Google and Amazon at the forefront since they can afford to pay the high sums being asked for.
So, he's saying that RIAA, the MPAA, the Author's Guild and the like should make it much cheaper and easier for people to get into the market to sell stuff. FTA:
Dunno, it seems to me that he's just describing basic economics, and the dangers of monopolies and oligopolies.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
The Roman Catholic church has stifled diversity and innovation in religion specifically because the Pope and priests pose as intermediaries between between the parishioners and their god. Just ask Martin Luther. He couldn't even get the "Church" to allow him to translate the Bible into his native language so individuals could determine for themselves what it actually said and meant. He had to use innovation and start his own church, thereby increasing diversity in religion.
When organizations become so big that they are a practical monopoly (I don't want to get into a debate about what exactly is a monopoly and who has or doesn't have one. I define "practical monopoly" to mean most people go to them first when looking for a specific type of product or information to a great enough degree that that organization has a large and significant influence on what information people find or products they buy.) then they can stifle innovation simply by not making it easy for the public to find those things.
Lately I have been complaining that Google stifles my ability to find what I need simply by predominantly showing me sites that are selling a thing rather than simply have information about the thing itself. This stifles my access to new and innovative things simply by burying them amongst the marketing sites.
The original article is just an oh-so-typical piece of American thinking, wherein money and market are the ultimate movers of everything.
Of course, if your concept of culture stops at Coke, Pop Music and Hollywood, this may hold true. If it extends to encompass Homer, Beethoven, Boole, Sartre, or Australian aboriginal art, however, you'll have to admit there is no direct correspondence between cultural "value" and market "price". The CULTURAL value of Picasso is NOT the price of his painting as sold at the latest auction.
Culture will go on existing even after all the Googles, Amazons, Wall Streets and Doctorows have perished.
Intellectual Property: an immaterial non-entity, most fiercely contended by those with no proper intellect to speak of.
I have to disagree with TFA. Google and Amazon make it easier for the little guys to get noticed. It's true they act as intermediary, but they lower the entry cost that is normally associated with traditional publishing/marketing. ...and if you don't want to get noticed via Google or Amazon, go ahead and set up your site/service/product from scratch and hope that it get's noticed. It has worked for some!
On a personal note, my sister published her first book, and has played Amazon and Google asa well as traditional marketing, and is now her publisher's #1 seller. Her success is a combination of hard-work, traditional marketing (out of her own pocket) and playing the web.
J-F
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
.. and similar. This is also true about _any_ kind of creative work n the current situation. Consider creative works and "intellectual property" produced by coders. Same exact thing and same gatekeepers.
Amazon doesn't kill progress. I do. Muhahahahaha.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
...they are fast becoming the intermediary between creators and audiences (and vice-versa), and that this poses a danger to everyone involved in the creative industries.
He simply doesn't get it. Thankfully, he outlines just how little he gets it very early in his article but he wants more competition but fails to realize that Amazon and Google, as intermediaries between creators and audiences, ARE competition with big media companies. For too long, big media companies have sat back and been lazy as they've manipulated and controlled their industries with no real competition in sight. Now, companies like Amazon, Google, (and Apple with iTunes and others) are showing up and demonstrating that creators do not need big record labels (for example). They ARE the new competition and they are GOOD for the industry. Sure, some companies may end up going out of business (I'm looking at you big media!) because they have failed to adapt and evolve to the new technologies and meet consumer demand but that's natural. They will fail and the companies that remain will be better, healthier, and stronger. That's capitalism - meet demand or wither and die.
The only people who are endangered by companies like Google and Amazon are people working for big media - the competition - who are failing to adapt and evolve. Everyone else in "the creative industries" will benefit. Artists will have an easier time interacting with consumers and creators - the people who make a creative industry possible - will benefit.
I'm just glad he made it so clear so early on that he doesn't get it...
It actually DOES do that. I guess that means Doctorow might be substantially right after all, then?
(Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of religion nor the Catholic Church in particular, unlike my genuflecting parent there.)
I love this quote: He warns that the corporate giants will 'only fear competition from other established giants ... when applied to Google and Amazon, two companies that were either nonexistent or minuscule 15 years ago.
The cake is a pie
But there are enough "hits" in this to raise your eyebrows a little.
EPIC 2015
About EPIC 2014 and EPIC 2015, from Wikipedia
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
What's REALLY funny, as another commenter pointed out earlier, is that every company he complains about started as some guy with an idea and a garage about 10-20 years ago! Talk about raising the barrier to entry!
Google did not exist in the early 90's, some guys with a great idea for a search algorithm started a search engine in their garage (or maybe basement, I don't remember). People started saying "Hey, this is kinda cool", and it grew, and as it grew so did it's influence, and eventually the Mega-Corp Google (actually on the small end of mega-corp) was born.
Amazon, same thing, some guy in his garage said "I can't afford to open a book shop, I know, I'll sell books on the internet!". It started small, and grew, and now Amazon sells -everything- and keeps market prices down while doing so because of his business model.
Doctoro seems to be forming his opinion by closing his eyes to the last 15 years of the Internet. Well, 15 years is not a long time, and in that time we've seen entire markets shaken up by the continually lowering barrier to entry - just look at the newspapers going through the same thing now.
Google and Amazon may be gatekeepers, but it's the back gate they are keeping, and they've been propping it open. If they try to close it now, an enterprising individual will simply find a new gate to prop open.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Google may tend to promote things that are Google-centric, and they may fail to recognize the importance of things that don't fit into their view. The same can be said of any big time development and distribution organization. That doesn't mean they stifle competition, or development. If there is any major player out there that actively seeks to stifle development that they can't control, that would be Microsoft. Even they are becoming less relevant, in that respect, thanks to Euro rulings among other things.
I cannot see that either Google or Amazon constitute some sort of monopoly, or oligarchy, or whatever term might fit. Apple may come close - but they don't quite make it either.
If I have an idea, it's easy to distribute the idea, it's easy to recruit developmental help (especially if I go open source), and it's pretty darned easy to display my wares on the internet. If it's really a good idea, people will pick it up. Now, whether I can make MONEY with my idea, is another matter entirely. An online game, for instance, requires expensive servers and personnel to maintain those servers. Not to mention support personnel. Which means, capital investment.
Am I to blame Google or Amazon, if I can't find the capital to start up my game? Maybe I should have hired some marketing guru to sell my idea to an investor somewhere, instead of whining that Google wouldn't move on my idea.
IMHO - Google deserves a good deal of credit for the innovative ideas that they push forward. At worst, they may neglect some important new technology, in favor of other technology. Never, to my knowledge, have they pulled a Microsoft by adopting then changing a standard, bastardizing it to the point no one else can make reasonable use of it.
The author will have to go a long way to make a convincing argument that Google stifles innovation. Making a case against Amazon would be considerably easier - but still no small task.
One has to wonder if the author hasn't submitted something to Google and Amazon, which was rejected by both. Failing to recognize that his submission may actually be worthless, he blames them for stifling innovation.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
As long as big content is simply trying to play shave-the-penny toll booth, and content creators are content to cede control of sales to others, others will find a way to make all the money.
-- $G
I worked form one of these stock photography companies and I would completely agree with this statement. Photographers are paid 30 cents per download per customer. On the other hand the stock photography company charges anywhere from $1 to $50 for that same image.
Considering the technology is relatively simple and they are not generating the product, there is a lot of money that goes into management, marketing and sales. Of course these are the people that create the illusion that they are needed to sell this product.
Cory Doctorow seems to me to be a career activist, raised in an environment of "dismantling the system." This is the sort of person who's so blinded by ideology that he'll never choose to grasp anything outside of a contrary perspective to mainstream thinking. It's not that he doesn't--he can't.
This man didn't even complete college. His education consists of attending a "Free" "Alternative Education" High School before failing out of college and working at a series of non-profits. Most of the people posting on this thread are probably more qualified to make statements on this matter in both a theoretical and real world sense. Think about it. Have you taken economics classes? You win.
We're reading the words and ideas of someone who's been raised to just say things that are contrary. When Doctorow makes sweeping statements, it's best to back away and think through them. Sci-fi writers are good at sounding like they have authority. Sometimes, this leads to brilliant and revolutionary visions of the future in a superficial sense, other times you get Scientology.
I know he's got oodles of "internet cred," but I'd just like to state for the record that I don't choose to credit this man as an authority in this field and I think we should take anything he says with a grain of salt.
Funny, back in 2006, Cory Doctorow wrote an article titled: "Why Publishing Should Send Fruit-Baskets to Google", where he says:
Google's new Book Search promises to save writers' and publishers' asses by putting their books into the index of works that are visible to searchers who get all their information from the Internet.
Oh, and congratulations on getting yourself on slashdot, again, "anonymous reader" (aka Cory Doctorow). You are truely a master of self-promotion. Clearly, Doctorow has a talent for creating controversial stories to raise his status and visibility on the internet. It isn't really about the consistency of his views, but rather, saying whatever is going to get himself in the news.
Cory is still mad because he can't release his audio books on Audible(owned by Amazon) because they require DRM on the audio books they sell, even if the author and copyright holder does not want DRM.
Did YouTube take down some BoingBoing video and that has him cheesed at them now?
no
Ok what he is saying is that Google and Amazon aren't enough, we need more of their like, a lot more, to cover every niche.
What he is missing is that Google and Amazon do not, keep the gate, google in particular is only a search engine, *the Internet is the gate*, Google in particular has no intention of hiding niche websites so nobody is getting obscured by it.
There's nothing to see here...
But... the future refused to change.
The library (& Google) stifle innovation by unjustly taking the bread money of creative authors. The library contributes no added value.
Crunch the numbers such as a new book. A city metro libraries buy 10 to 50 book copies. In one year, 2 weeks of check out time, divided by 52 weeks a year. A loss of 10 books (actually checked out), 10 times a years(many unchecked), times a 100 metro areas in USA, times 5 years, times $20 a (good quality) book. That's $1 million. Or $50k to $200k per year. Kind of what your boss pays to employ you. All stolen, free profit by libraries. But at an unintended cost. The Constitution never meant for Library greed nor the corporate greed on the other end.
Few books succeed. Nearly all are a loss or only make a few $1000s per year.
Do not write books. They do not pay. Books lose. In fact it is a huge loss to authors. Do not be an author.
Better to write 10 empty books than 1 good one, because quality loses. Same occurs in every country not respecting property. Any type property.
The Law of Unintended Consequences says something must give. There is no free lunch. The consequence is poorer quality writing and fewer authors dumb enough to write. The Library is wasting your time to read poor quality junk. But they get paid, junk or not.
Amazon at least encourages 'some' quality media because anybody can rate and comment upon media. Anyone can sample before paying. Google is just a search engine. Except where they have singly redefined copyright law. Multi national corporation have no allegiance to flag or country. The Constitution does not apply to Google. They are worse than the Library.
The ideal is still the local bookstore where buyer beware. The buyer can preview the entire product before purchase.
Copyright (c) 2009 me :-)
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
does he also note down that google's adwords and adsense programs provided millions of individuals and small businesses with their breaks, because they were the first programs implemented by a major internet player to take small businesses, small webmasters and publishers seriously ?
before adwords and adsense, big players were treating small site owners and businesses like dirt. they didnt care zit about them, they were the pariah of the internet practically. you wouldnt get accepted into their advertising programs, you wouldnt advertise your site in their publishing organs and so on. we never existed. we were 'infeasible'.
google gave people a huge break with adsense and adwords. i myself saw a lot of small sites became noticeable publishers and startup, one man show businesses become small businesses with my own eyes. (im a web developer). same goes for amazon, they took small people seriously and provided various apis and syndication options right before anyone cared. a lot of people are making a living out of them now.
finally i would like to note that as someone who lived through the period and knows which corporations brought innovation and competition and which stifled it, i dont give a flying fuck about Cory Doctorow's opinions and woes. less Doctorows, the better in my opinion.
Read radical news here
This is the same Cory Doctorow that was never willing to respect the Amazon boycott, right? As I remember it he was sticking Amazon affiliate links all over his site, long after slashdot had switched to bn.com.
And he's still doing it, isn't he?
Funny, he sounds like someone with a clue:
Isn't Amazon still one of the few major players that will let almost anyone who self-publishes market their product through Amazon? Do they no longer do this?
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Cory, you're talking about Google toppling a couple of big *search engine* companies, then saying nobody will be able to do to Google's Youtube business what Google did to Altavista and Yahoo. But Google didn't build Youtube, they bought it, with the money from the search business, after their own video site lost out to Youtube.
So... someone DID "do it to Google", but instead of suing them they bought them.
Does this mean the RIAA and the MPAA are also 'a danger to everyone involved in the creative industries' because they act as the intermediary between creators and audiences? How has copyright law lowered the cost to enter these industries in the past?
He is a Cory, that is his formal title, you could call him Cr. Doctorow
'Tis an injustice that you are not modded up. For, I read Cr. Doctorow, as Cocker Doctorow, which, is rather brilliantly funny.
This is my sig.
I'm selling eBooks through Amazon and Fictionwise, and will move into POD books soon also through Amazon. There is no way to reach that audience other than by playing by their rules since I don't have a big mainstream publisher behind me. If I can sell for money through Google in the future I'll do it there as well. If Amazon and Google are making too much in the way of profits off of my work - compared to zero profits otherwise for me - then I will use what I do get from them to invest in their stock in order to share those profits.
Wake me when a better proven selling model for a small author arrives.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is he really equating the artificial scarcity of the classic media publishing businesses with a "healthy competitive marketplace?" Healthy for a certain insider elite no doubt. Bad rubbish...
Very well put. I am a (perhaps sometimes overly enthusiastic and/or unfair) frequent critic of Doctorow's goofy worldview and various hypocrisies, but at the heart of my intense dislike for the guy is what you've said. Am I an elitist because I don't consider someone without any degrees to be an expert on much of anything, especially difficult subjects like economics and law? Well... Maybe. What's wrong with expecting someone who gets as much of a readership as Doctorow gets to have at least proven himself minimally competent in fields he wants to affect?
I remember when Andrew Keen published his book The Cult of the Amateur, which questioned the real market/economic importance of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, and every time Doctorow mentioned him, it was like this: "Andrew Keen, failed dot-commer, argues in his ridiculous book..." It was always the "failed dot-commer" thing that drove me crazy, because, um, everyone I know in IT lost their jobs in that crash. Does that mean we have no right to comment on the IT industry anymore? On the contrary, someone who was on the bleeding edge of Web 1.0 is probably a pretty good person to consult about the business model failings of future internet businesses. A college-dropout with a high school diploma in hippie who has to give his terrible books away and whom we've only heard of because he made friends with a guy who started a zine and then a blog called Boing Boing and uses it to distort and spin news to advance his silly activist agenda against anybody ever making money off of their creations ever again? Not so much.
It is in his harsh treatment of Keen that we see his true face: He is the amateur in the title, and it is his cult that Keen was warning everyone about. The internet is wonderful for giving people a voice. The problem is that people aren't always very good at judging authority, and armchair economists and lawyers can be mistaken for the real thing.
Monopolies will always be evil.
Why? Simply because they can, and can get away with evil.
If only there was some easy way for music, text, and video to be sent easily and painlessly from one person to another! I'm envisioning something like a "web" that connects people together. And if it was electronic, that would be even better! Maybe it could even involve computers in some way!
Oh, some sort of "inter-network" so that people can download their broad bands. I don't see it reaching rural areas without some sort of new deal analogous to the U.S. rural electrification starting in the 1930s.
The problem of Google as content provider and intermediary is potentially deep, and transcends copyright issues. For many of us, Google is where we turn first to find out about a subject. If Google decides not to include a source of information in its search results, we may never learn that such a source exists. But do they do that? Why would they? They not only do it, but are willing to lie about it. I show how with an example here: http://lee-phillips.org/youtube/
I am a firm believer that more and better standards plus increased use of standards such as RDF and The Semantic Web will finally give us the internet and world we want. The so-called "gatekeepers" Doctorow wrote of only exist because web developers eschew standards that don't immediately make their sites look better or produce immediate results in terms of increased sales. These web developers cater to the "gatekeepers" (AKA