Erstellt am: 20. 4. 2009 - 13:45 Uhr
Today's webtip: Copyfight
Well, the Piratebay boys are looking at time behind schwedische gardinen, Monochrom has called out a full boycott of copyrighted materials, and the global media is doing a pretty good job of maintaining the status quo. So what's the big deal? A bunch of thieves got what they deserved and the future of western civilization has been secured. Things are good and we can all go about our business.
Right?
Well, there are those of us out there who have come to see things a little bit differently. Some people, see the music and film industries lawsuits and sponsored legislation as nothing more than an attempt at keeping dead or outdated business models alive. For others it's even more insidious. They see nothing less than the attempt to destroy the free distribution of information.
Es War Einmal...
In the good old days, the Publishers controlled not only what you could read, but which artists/authors/ideas would have access to your brains. They were a gateway whose business model thrived due to the expense of production and distribution. A business model who offered a valuable service to artists as well as consumers.
But now the times have changed, and production and distribution no longer requires massive resources and a boatload of capital. The artist/producer/idea could actually get their Intellectual Property out to an audience in an immediate and direct manner. There is no longer a scarcity of shelfspace. And that means some business models that were built off of that scarcity need some rethinking.
And some business types appear to have thunk that it's easier to keep distribution difficult, than it is to develop a new business model.
And that could mean that this glorious era of direct communication and publication might end up as nothing more than an anomaly. A freak moment in the river of history.
But I'm not here to make those arguments. There are much more capable people out there who have already done so. People who have been successful musicians, writers and publishers. People who have spent the last couple of decades embracing the changes we have faced while developing new models to help society (and business) get through them.
Your Only Alternative?
Tim O'Reilly is someone who has been thinking about the future of publishing for quite some time. Not just thinking about it, but doing his best to create it. In 2002 he wrote an article explaining his ideas about piracy, digital distribution and the future of publishing in an article entitled Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution . The Tools of Change site from O'Reilly is also a good starting point for reading ideas that you might not have heard on the evening news.
Of course, none of this is new, and many people have been watching the campaign of the copyright maximalists with alarm. And they have been doing it for several years. Johny Perry Barlow, lyricist for the Greatful Dead (a band that encouraged bootlegging) and founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote a surprisingly prescient article back in 1992. That article and a few other equally predictive tracts are talked about in a Tech Dirt article looking back at people who were looking forward.
And finally just in case you were under the impression that all copyleft advocates were a bunch of snotty nosed kids just looking for a chance to kick the captains of the music industry in the shins, there is another article at Tech Dirt that points out the work of one music executive who seems to have a clue. Too bad the rest of the company seems to be ignoring him.