Techdirt Podcast Episode 38: Yes, There Are Business Models That Don't Need Intellectual Property
from the plenty-of-them dept
Time and time again, we hear the claim that without copyright and/or patents there is no way for creators to make money, or even any reason for anyone to create anything at all. This is obviously absurd on many levels, but in today's episode we look at the most immediate and practical ones: the many business models that aren't based on intellectual property, and approaches to incentivizing creativity and innovation that don't involve locking things down.
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It seems like an absurd straw man on your part. Who makes such extreme claims, other than you?
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Who makes a claim that a copyright and/or patent is required to make money? Or create anything at all?
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Really? I hear it all the time. Lord Clement-Jones said exactly that in this talk:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2014/11/20141127t1830vNT.aspx
Axelle Lemaire said it in this talk:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2015/03/20150320t1800vWT.aspx
Those are two I have bookmarked, but I hear it quite frequently.
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I clicked on the links, but I'm not seeing where it was said. Is there a transcript or something?
I've never seen anyone make such ridiculously extreme arguments, except as "reported" on Techdirt. Still seems like a straw man to me.
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"Communities throughout the globe-particularly in parts of the Middle East and Africa, bear silent witness to the devastating impact that lack of effective copyright protection has on the ability to create. Where there is no financial incentive for the creation and distribution of cultural materials, the distribution of local cultural materials ceases, much to the detriment of society, as well as to the putative creators who are foreclosed from adding their voices to the cultural mix."
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No transcript. You have to listen to the speeches. I don't recall exactly where in them they say it. I deliberately saved both podcasts in my app though, because of that commentary.
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It's nice hearing about all the things you've bought on kickstarter, it would be nice (for your argument) if you looked at which ones had forsaken their patents.
Cowdfunding is a great alternative to venture capital, but it has no impact on IP and patents. An artist on patron still has copyright on their work. Amanda Palmer still gets and cashes her BMI/ASCAP cheques.
34 minutes in your sole solution so far is to say that trademarks are good because they're "consumer protection" and not "IP", that's a weasely argument that won't wash with your readers.
It was nice to hear you finally say that your scarcity model is Silly ("my silly formula"), I've always agreed.
FFs, Fanclubs? We don't need IP because "FANCLUBS"
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As we noted in the podcast. We were pretty explicit that none of these models excludes using IP. We're just talking about getting past the idea that IP is the only possible way to fund these things.
Cowdfunding is a great alternative to venture capital, but it has no impact on IP and patents. An artist on patron still has copyright on their work. Amanda Palmer still gets and cashes her BMI/ASCAP cheques.
Again, we said that in the podcast.
Not sure what point you're making?
FFs, Fanclubs? We don't need IP because "FANCLUBS"
We didn't say that. But if you don't think fan clubs are huge money makers for some creators, you're wrong.
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IP doesn't fund anything, it's an investment protection.
Crowdfunding can help you avoid an investor who wants that ROI for the 20 years, it can't stop people ripping off your idea inside that 20 years.
They are two very distinct problems.
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The majority people creating podcasts and videos are not making any or much money from it, but have a day job which supports their creation of videos on subject that they are passionate about. Most think they are doing well if they can meet their hosting costs, or other cash expenses of producing their content.
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That's not the way people talk about it -- which was the point we were making. Most people who support IP talk about it as it's necessary for any business model to exist. That's the point we are discussing.
As an aside, I'll also note that it's TERRIBLE investment protection.
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Normally your podcasts are quite informative. This one never really got on-topic.
As an aside you could have edited out the closing "motherfucker"
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But Imagine How Much Bigger They Could Be WITH Intellectular Property
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In days of old
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The fact that folk who make lots of money on, say, Kickstarter for creative projects without giving up the copyright on those projects says nothing about the potential of those projects to make that exact same money upon the promise of them being released into the public domain. It just says creators don't like giving up copyrights - nothing more and nothing less.
If Amanda Palmer made a promise to release the music into the public domain, she still would have got the $1.2 million - because she has every right to insist that she be paid before she works, and she could very well have stuck to that by demanding the payment everyone would have had to cough up. The fact that she gets BMI cheques says nothing to discredit this.
Demanding you get paid for your work before you work can work on such a platform without the assumption of copyright. If the new Batman was planned, with the promise of it being public domain after, there's nothing wrong with DC saying "but we need $50 million for it to happen - so that we can make the movie, get paid, and even make a profit which we believe would be rightfully ours". And they would most certainly get it, considering how people know that if they don't pay it won't happen.
And bear in mind that if internet corporations want the traffic that comes from this public domain Batman, they'd have to contribute to the crowdfunding pot too. Depending on the potential that could tally several hundreds of thousands of dollars a corporation (if they want the profit from the traffic) - in other words, you can hold to account those who might have otherwise used the uselessness of copyright to screw you over instead.
What's clever about assurance contracts is that they solve the so-called "free-rider" problem in a very direct and head-on way. The claim by copyright advocates is that if you don't prevent the copying of a movie, 3 people will have only paid $10 in total to the artist while the artist should have got $30. But assurance contracts does not need to stop the unauthorised coping: it just means the artist says "all 3 of you pay $10 each totalling $30, or nobody gets any movie". And there the artist can secure the $30 that was rightfully his. I can't think of a more effective paywall than that.
And as we can tell from those who buy pre-owned DVDs only to give the artist nothing at all - something that copyright law does nothing to stop - there will always be those who don't pay but yet there is still a standing movie industry, so there's no "game theory" issue to worry about crowdfunding either. In other words, if everybody waited for someone else to pay for the brand new DVDs straight from the artist, the industry would collapse, but that doesn't happen. Therefore, it wont happen with crowdfunding substituting copyright either.
And also, others DO know the value of paying artists directly and not via pre-owned art. Copyright law doesn't really deserve credit for the funding of artists (and I'd especially say that more so in a world where people can "steal" on the internet without getting caught, but regardless there are others who still pay - again, no credit to copyright law for those who do the right thing without having to be told by a law).
Simultaneous payments are not that hard to set up. When ISPs take monthly payments from millions of subscribers, that's a multi-million dollar simultaneous payment for a server - and de facto assurance contract - every month. Same with tickets for gigs. Same with subscriptions. Same with pre-orders. Same with betting agencies for live sports events. There is plenty of evidence that it works, and that copyright is not necessary for payment. And there's no reason why it can't extend to Google, ISPs etc to make them pay their share simultaneously with other interested parties to the creative project.
Copyright is at the end of the day a system that is worse than the Ron Paul vision of replacing the US state dollar with a private currency, and even someone as stupid and crazy as him wouldn't dare advocate such a private currency should be in digital JPEG form. And why shouldn't I make this comparison? Isn't a private currency, made up of JPEG images, something you would forbid other people from infringing by making unauthorised copies for their own unjustified value? Shouldn't such a private JPEG money system work according to the logic of copyright? We all know everybody would cheat such a crazy set up of money and companies would end up having more confidence in the Zimbabwean Dollar.
There is a reason why politicians make jibes about how their opponents take on policies with the worth of "Monopoly money", though what is not as known as it could be is that Monopoly money, from the board game, is copyrighted, and therefore in theory should be a valuable, tradable, de facto private currency according to those who believe in artificial scarcity. I would seriously like to hear a good reply as to why this should not be the case, considering everything copyright advocates believe in about the notion of "utilitarian" policies and the like.
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I appreciate the response and the links. It's not worth it for me to listen to the recordings just to verify some extreme claim that might have been made. The opportunity cost doesn't justify the time. Regardless, the point I'm making, though admittedly poorly, is that it's simply not true that the "maximalists" generally think it's true that simply nothing would be disseminated without copyright. That position is obviously incorrect and without nuance. But the problem with your response is that it's similarly not nuanced. There's no need for either side to play the all-or-nothing card. I think we all know it's not so black-and-white.
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I will grant you that very few people would flatly claim "without copyright all art would stop." And yet the consistent underlying message when people talk in favour of strengthening/expanding/strictly enforcing copyright is that there is a direct causal relationship between the amount of legal control afforded to and exercised by artists, and the quantity/quality of art produced by our society. The implication is entirely clear: "without copyright we would have less art, possibly no art, or at least no good art". And that's utter nonsense.
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Re: But Imagine How Much Bigger They Could Be WITH Intellectular Property
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