Paul Tamm points us to a really wonderful interview with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, which touches on a whole variety of different topics, but a couple of quotes are likely to be interesting to folks around here. For example, he's asked about copying works of other filmmakers and whether or not he tries to "veer away" from the masters of the craft to create his own style, and he responds brilliantly:
I once found a little excerpt from Balzac. He speaks about a young writer who stole some of his prose. The thing that almost made me weep, he said, "I was so happy when this young person took from me." Because that's what we want. We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can't steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that's how you will find your voice.
And that's how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you. And Balzac said that in his book: It makes me so happy because it makes me immortal because I know that 200 years from now there will be people doing things that somehow I am part of. So the answer to your question is: Don't worry about whether it's appropriate to borrow or to take or do something like someone you admire because that's only the first step and you have to take the first step.
While (of course), I always dislike the incorrect use of the term "stealing," I found this to be quite an insightful answer from someone who is certainly in a position to pretend otherwise. However, throughout history we've heard similar (if much less eloquent) claims from others. Ray Charles famously made similar points about copying his music (shamelessly) from others to create his own unique sound (and invent soul music in the process).
Immediately after this, he's asked about business models, and he notes:
This idea of Metallica or some rock n' roll singer being rich, that's not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I'm going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you'd be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, "Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money." Because there are ways around it.
While some will misinterpret this to mean that artists shouldn't make money, that's not what he's saying at all. He's saying it shouldn't be presumed that they automatically must make money -- or that if they are to make money, that it needs to come from the film directly.
There are few successful authors who have jumped in and embraced what the online world allows you to do more than Paulo Coelho. Three years ago, we wrote about his efforts to "pirate" his own books and how he found that it only served to help his sales. He's also talked up the importance for authors of setting ideas free to help them spread. He's also gone even further than that with cool experiments like having his fans make a movie out of one of his books, via a sort of crowdsourcing methodology.
Esahc points us to a recent situation in which Coelho heard that his books were suddenly being banned in Iran for no reason (despite having been published there for over a dozen years), and his immediate response was to rush to get versions of his books that have been translated into Farsi up on his site for free downloads. He also sought the assistance of the Brazilian government to find out why the books were banned (as he notes, nothing changed in the books, so it doesn't make much sense) and, eventually, the Iranian government claimed that it's not censoring his books, even though his official publisher in the country claims otherwise. Either way, it's interesting to see that his immediate response to being censored was to release the books for free as quickly as possible.
A few weeks back, we wrote about the anti-piracy propaganda campaign that NYC has been running, paid for by taxpayer dollars, which spreads typical MPAA FUD, and concludes with the line: "There's no such thing as a free movie." However, in looking over the campaign, I just realized that the videos are hosted on YouTube... for free. In other words, while NYC and its Hollywood friends are claiming that if you get something for free, it must be illegal, they're making use of free online services themselves. Without YouTube, they'd have to pay for the hosting, bandwidth, streaming software, etc. themselves. But this way, they get it for free.
Now, it's absolutely true that YouTube could monetize the videos with ads (though, I don't see any on that video right now), but that sort of reinforces the point. There are all sorts of business models that allow you to offer something for "free" to the end user, but are monetized elsewhere. YouTube does exactly that. It offers what would otherwise be quite expensive (hosting, bandwidth, streaming software, etc.) and gives it all away for free, and has built a whole business around that. There's nothing saying that the movie industry can't do the same thing. Rather than falsely stating that there's no such thing as a "free" (to the consumer) movie, there are certainly plenty of ways that the movie industry could monetize movies that were offered free to consumers. It's just that the legacy players choose not to. And then complain. And get politicians to waste taxpayer money...
One of the popular myths we always hear about content-based business models these days is that "but people just want stuff for free." This has been debunked so many times, it's silly, but it's worth debunking again. One of the easiest ways to debunk it is to show examples of people being more than happy to pay, even if the content at the core of what they're paying for is available for free. We saw this, a few years back, when Trent Reznor sold out of his $300 "Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition Package" of the Ghosts I-IV album, even though all of the tracks were available as a free download under a Creative Common license. To some extent, we saw this ourselves, when we offered our own CwF+RtB packages, and the more expensive packages outsold the cheaper ones.
You see, in trying everything--audiobooks, POD, limited editions--I've discovered the thing that captures the public's interest is also the thing that makes the most money is also the thing that has the least logistics: super-premium limited editions. Over and over again, when I describe With a Little Help to people, they fixate on the limited editions. I've had dozens of e-mails from people practically begging to buy the $275 editions I'm doing--and I stand to make $50,000 or more from them.
So that's my next project, I've decided, after With a Little Help is done and I'm back on my feet: limited editions, 100 copies each, of all my previous novels, each one elaborate, personal, beautiful, and amazing. It helps that my new office is underneath the London Hackspace, a co-op through which I have 24/7 access to a 3D printer and a laser cutter/etcher.
For my novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves a Town (a fantasy that features a trio of brothers who nest like Russian dolls), I'm thinking I will do a full-size edition, bind it, then laser cut a 66% rectangle out of the middle of the pages; print and bind a 2/3 size miniature, slip it into the void; and then cut another void out of it, nestling a tiny quarter-sized hardcover in the middle. I'll charge whatever it costs me to print plus $150, and print and bind them on demand, in tens, and sell as many as I can up to 100. I also figure I'll hold back five copies from each limited, and in a decade or so, I can have custom wooden boxes made for five sets, and auction them off for whatever the market will bear.
But people just want stuff for free, right? Especially the folks who follow the likes of Cory Doctorow... Except, of course, that's simply not true.
We've pointed out how badly many universities have fallen for the myth of magical profits from tech transfer efforts. In the last 30 years or so, there's been this massive effort for some universities to try to profit off of "commercializing" their research. What they did was set up expensive "tech transfer" offices that were in charge of taking university research, patenting it, and then trying to find buyers. The theory, then, was that the university would make lots of money and companies would get access to all this great university research. The reality is that this hasn't worked out at all. First of all, that whole theory skipped over the part that prior to locking up all that research, companies already had access to it -- and were able to actually make use of it quickly because they didn't have to go through a crazy and expensive licensing process.
The other problem is that, since these tech transfer offices are focused on making money, and all they have to sell is patents, they started to overvalue the patents themselves, making them prohibitively expensive, which actually decreased the ability to get those ideas out to the commercial sector and to turn that research into big money. And, did we mention how expensive it is to set up and run some of these tech transfer offices? A study from a few years back found that the majority of tech transfer offices lost money, with only a tiny handful (somewhere around a dozen) actually making money.
Oh, and on top of all that, this focus on putting up locks for the sake of charging has actually made basic research much harder as well, since much of it is based on freely sharing ideas -- which is made more difficult when you want to hoard the idea in order to get a patent.
At some point, you would think universities would recognize this. They're losing money, harming their own research and going against their basic principles as institutions for disseminating knowledge. Thankfully, some are finally starting to get the message. James Boyle points us to the news that the University of Glasgow has announced that it will be offering up most of its research under a free license. It is still reserving a few "key" bits of research for fee-based licensing, but it appears the default will now be free, which seems like it should be a good thing in terms of actually commercializing the research out of the university.
I spent last week at the Monaco Media Forum, which was quite an event overall. Of course, as with many such events, many of the most interesting and valuable parts happen outside of the main sessions in the conversations and meetings you have with people separate from the scheduled topics. The good thing that I took away from the event was a pretty wide sense of optimism about the vast media world that we're heading into. Having attended plenty of entertainment industry conferences lately, which seem to be surrounded by doom & gloom predictions, this event was blissfully full of a pretty optimistic viewpoint, which was refreshing and a bit encouraging. Of course, as a caveat on that, there really weren't that many actual media people at the event. Instead, there were lots of technology/infrastructure companies as well as ad and marketing firms -- and all of those have plenty of incentives to be as optimistic as possible. Perhaps it's the media folks who are depressed... but they stayed away.
One exception was James Murdoch, who was actually a "co-chair" of the event, and he gave an interview discussing a wide range of things that are happening around News Corp. The entire video is about 37 minutes, but it's quite interesting:
Having questioned many of James Murdoch's recent statements on paywalls and copyright, I have to say that my initial impression was actually to be impressed. Here's a guy who -- without much experience -- is running a huge swath of the media industry around the world, and seems to have a very strong working knowledge of what's going on across the board, and can speak knowledgeably about them all. Many people I spoke with at the event felt the same way. On top of that, I actually agreed with many of the larger points he made about innovation, and the need to make bets on innovating, rather than just protecting their businesses and milking them for cash.
However, when he got down to the specifics, I went back to questioning many of his assumptions, and thinking that his world view may, in fact, be a bit skewed by his previous success (after, it should be noted... a string of failures, not mentioned at the interview) at BSkyB, a satellite TV provider in the UK. The more the interview went on, the more I realized that Murdoch appears to view much of the media world through that lens, and seems to saying that, in the end, the media world will end up like a giant pay TV system, with a big subscription. I think this is more wishful thinking, rather than where the internet is actually heading, and treating the internet that way will almost certainly result in failure -- such as with his paywall experiments.
He talks up the various successes with pay television (satellite and cable) around the globe, including Italy, Germany and India, and again that seems to influence his views. He points out, repeatedly, that no one really thought that going into those markets would work, but News Corp. proved all the doubters wrong -- as he no doubt believes the doubters on the internet will also be proven wrong. He gets into the discussion with the following statement, which got most of the attention (and a bunch of Twitter messages of support from those in the audience):
I think there's a lot of talk about monetizing content and there was hand-wringing and for years and years... I remember in the late 90s I was in Singapore, and people were talking about mobile media and what is it going to be and what are the killer apps and all that sorta stuff... And I guess, I just look at it more simply. I think the first rule of is if you're going to monetize something is that you should probably not give it away for free.
This is at 14:25 in the video, and you really have to see the sarcastic eye rolls when he says that last line. And, you can immediately hear the laughter in the audience (which was much louder). But here's the thing: he's wrong. And he must know that he's wrong. Media businesses have made tons of money for years while giving away stuff for free. The very, very successful network television business (of which News Corp. owns one), for example, was always based on giving stuff away for free, but selling the attention of viewers. The newspaper business (which is where News Corp. originated) wasn't based on giving away stuff for "free" totally, but on subscriptions that never even covered the cost of printing and delivery.
No, this doesn't mean everything should be given away for free, but as the CEO of a large chunk of News Corp's media business, and supposedly being thought of as the guy at the company who "gets" new media and new media economics, it seems troubling that he so flippantly ignores the basic economics of non-excludable, non-rivalrous content, and how it can be utilized as part of a larger business model, by making other things more valuable and selling them.
So if you think about it and you're investing in things and you say 'I'm trying to figure out how to make money for this,' and then you give it away, it doesn't seem to work.
James might want to check out a little company called Google, which has done rather well giving away lots of things for free.
From there, he talks about "fair" pricing, and how they want to invest in content and price it fairly knowing that not everyone will consume it. But, of course, that's not really the issue. It's not about "fair" pricing. It's about market pricing. And if everyone else is offering market pricing and you're focused on "fair" pricing -- and your so-called "fair" pricing is above the market pricing, it's not that "not everyone" will consume it, but almost no one will consume it. And that's where you run into problems. Hell, I put a ton of work into this site. Let's say I think a "fair" price for anyone reading this site is a dollar a day. But, the market says otherwise, so my job, as someone running a business, is to figure out a way to get that money by offering something of value that can be priced not fairly, but competitively that the market will want to buy. That's what business is about. It's not about "fairness." It's about understanding the market.
Now, that said -- the point he makes following this is one I agree with wholeheartedly -- which is that if someone is not willing to pay, then it doesn't mean that it's the users' fault, but that as the content producer/copyright holder/etc. It's News Corp's job to innovate and convince people that there's something worth paying for. That's the whole basis of my "reason to buy" concept. But, the problem here is that simply designating a "fair price" when it's way above market price, is usually not a reason to buy, especially when your product is in a highly competitive and dynamic market, as is the case with news.
It's the next bit where you realize how much he's still focused on the pay TV business. He notes that, in Europe and Asia, 70% of the company's revenue is from subscriptions -- rather than advertising. He uses this to suggest that people online were so focused on reach and audience share, that they weren't focused on actually making money. Again... he's right on the facts, but wrong on where that leads him. It's true that many in the online world did not focus on making money, and that was a huge mistake. But that doesn't mean that putting up a paywall is a good strategy to make money. And that's where I think the major disconnect comes in.
He then makes the specific statement that the online news business will become like the cable business, with bundles and affiliate revenue. Here he's making the classic pay TV industry error of being so infatuated with the fees that are being passed around to carry channels, that they're hoping to recreate such a world online. But, this ignores the reason those setups have developed (limited competition and scarcity of access -- both of which don't apply in the online world) as well as the incredible frustration this has created with consumers, who are fleeing in droves (something Murdoch more or less tries to dismiss during the Q&A by saying many of the cord cutters in the US are doing so because the "deals" to get people to switch from analog to digital TV are up).
It's a bit amusing to hear him note that iPad apps for newspapers are much more cannibalistic than news websites. Again, I believe that point is absolutely true, but he seems to ignore the implicit other point he's making here: which is that web pages really weren't all that cannibalistic of newspapers.
Of course, the other funny thing is that you can see pretty clearly throughout the interview that one of his key talking points is this idea that "News Corp." isn't that big. Towards the beginning he starts to call it a big media company, but then corrects himself and says "mid-size." Later, he makes sure to note that Apple is ten times the size of News Corp., and that a company like BT is making much more money in the UK. The banker interviewing him mentions Amazon as a larger company. But that's all smoke and mirrors. News Corp. is the third largest media company in the world, only behind Disney and Time Warner, has over $30 billion in revenue and $54 billion in assets. Sorry, James, you're not a mid-sized business. You're a big, big business.
Towards the end, in response to an audience question about cord cutting and how it will impact News Corps.' business, Murdoch again brings up how they'll just make it like cable to some extent, and then falls back on the "but content is really expensive to make" line, by pointing out that, while other industries may find that things get cheaper thanks to technology, that's not true in content production. He pops out this lovely line:
There is no new technology that makes athletes not greedy.... And I think that's really something that the telco industry and a lot of the tech industry hasn't really understood -- that there's (chuckle) a whole economy behind this...
It gets a laugh, and afterwards I heard a lot of people say they agreed and it was a good point. But, I think it's a line that sounds good and masks that he's discussing two separate things. The first question is the cost of producing content. The other question is how do you make money. But those two are not the same question. No one has said that you don't make money. Saying that your business model has to change is not the same thing as saying you don't make any money. If your content is expensive to produce, then yes, of course, you need to figure out a way to have it make money, but that doesn't mean that simply charging for it is the way to do that. You can get away with charging for ancillary things (convenience being a big one), but it's important to recognize what people are really paying for, or you risk alienating them quite a bit, and driving them to alternative means of content consumption.
On the whole, I actually came out of this more impressed with Murdoch than when I went in. However, I still think that he's making some pretty serious mistakes in his assumptions, and it's going to come back to haunt him and News Corp. in the long run. The failure of the paywall for The Times is just the early warning sign.
It seems pointless to try to stop the practice because it's a reality of the world we live in. People will find a way. It's not a bad thing. In fact, I probably owe like 80% of my success to the fact that people can hear my music for free to see if they like it.
My approach to the question of making a living off this "work" has been to make physically attractive objects that seem worthy of purchase.
He also points out that this doesn't mean that everyone who downloads needs to buy something, but that it's their choice:
Of course there will be people who don't care about owning an object, or maybe don’t have any money, or maybe who live in Siberia, and so they can just find a way to hear it for free if they want to. I don't think there's an inherent moral duty for the listener to support the singer. In the broad historical perspective music is frivolous non-work and we are lucky to have time to make it at all. Those of us who are temporarily feeding ourselves by this activity are even luckier. The internet changed the world. Old ways need to adapt. There is a new way taking shape that no one knows yet. Trying to impose the old model of lucrative systems of parasitic labels, managers, agents, distributors, etc., on the new reality is a little blind.
It's always nice to see more musicians who seem to understand the key issues, and how to take advantage of them, rather than complain about them.
This week, for our Case Study Series (check that link to see all previous case studies), we've got a fun one. Last week, we wrote about Steve Lieber, the comic artist who discovered his recent work Underground was being scanned and placed online in a 4chan forum. That story generated a ton of discussion, with some criticism, and plenty of interest in Steve's overall story. Steve agreed to do this interview, and to make it even better, his studio-mate Erika Moen, who jumped into the conversation both on 4chan and here at Techdirt joined the interview as well. Erika's perhaps most well-known for her comic DAR!. The top portion of this post will be the case study writeup, based on my conversation with both Steve and Erika, and after the jump I have the entire transcript of the interview if you'd like to see the full thing.
One of the points that we really try to get across here on Techdirt in discussing various business models and dealing with a changing marketplace is that one of the absolute key aspects is learning how to connect with fans (CwF) at a really deep level. That means a few things: it means going beyond just checking the boxes, but figuring out (a) what your fans want from you and (b) how you might deliver it, even if it may be contrary to your initial impression. And, part of that is often recognizing that when people are making unauthorized copies of your work, it's not because they're "thieves" or "immoral" or (as one of our commenters insists) "douchebags." Often, it's because they really love the work, and they want to experience it in a different way or they want to share that with others. What some people look at as "piracy," others realize is part of the way humans experience culture.
So, given that this is happening, there are all sorts of ways you can react. You can resort to the insults and name calling. You can call the lawyers and the FBI and send out angry announcements. You can call up your local elected official or pay for a lobbyist to "change the laws!" Or... you can embrace the fans, understand (1) what it is they're trying to tell you, (2) see if there's any way to provide that, and (3) use the sharing to your advantage. Now, when we posted Steve Lieber's story, one of the points that we tried to highlight in the post was that this wasn't just a case of "piracy leading to greater sales." That's similar to the whole "give it away and pray" concept. Instead, what made the Lieber story interesting was that it was clear that he engaged these fans (both old and new), and that's what drove them to want to support him and his work.
The moral of the story was not "gee, 'piracy' is good." The moral of the story was that engaging your fans in intelligent and meaningful ways, often where and how they want to engage can help you do much better than you would have otherwise. It doesn't mean "engage and you're an automatic success." It doesn't mean "engage and you'll never have to work again." It means "engage and you'll do better than you would have otherwise."
Lieber's case is a clear example of that. He admits that when he first heard about his work he had "the usual knee-jerk irritation," assuming that there was just some massive datadump of links to downloads. But when he went to 4chan, he realized it was something different:
I assumed I'd see a rapidshare link to a zip file with my book and twenty others, and someone posting a picture of a horse autopsy. Instead I arrived up at /co/ and saw a long thread in which "Internet Man," the guy who posted my book, had done so one page at a time. He had to hit "browse" and "upload" over a hundred times to post the book, and all throughout, he was talking about how great it was, nagging people to read it and discuss the story with him. That didn't feel like a pirate. That felt like a fan. And indeed, some people were starting to talk about it. So I did what I always do. I joined the conversation.
Meanwhile, his studio-mate, Erika, joined the conversation for a couple of reasons. Not only is she just interested in the whole business model issue, and loves to get involved in such discussions, she also wanted to plug Steve's book, noting that he had been "too much of a gentleman" to suggest people buy the physical book.
I actually found this part of Erika's response the most fascinating of all. Part of the reason she joined the conversation was to share and help others learn from the overall experience. It's a recognition of how a true community works, where different folks in the community help each other out:
The second time I spoke up was to explain the logic behind why someone would publish their book for no pay. If you have no experience in the comics world and are unfamiliar with how Image works, yes, that could look like a bad deal. The world of publishing is completely fascinating to me and I love to prattle on about it any chance I get. At the last Stumptown Comics Fest I even hosted and recorded a panel on self-publishing, because the more people that are informed, the more people can try it out for themselves. I never could have produced all my books and navigated being self-employed without all the help and support I received from my friends who had done it before me, so I like to pay it forward to anyone if I can.
Erika's definitely been a big believer not just in engaging with the community, but also in how "free" can be an important component of a business model, noting that DAR!, as a free comic, acts as an advertisement for the books of archives, which she can sell. She's also realized that free can create new opportunities, even in the physical world:
There is one active marketing tool that I do use at comic conventions that has really helped. I give away a free sampler of the comic in the form of a single sheet of printer paper, folded in half to be a flier containing four of my favorite strips. I spend about $40 on 500 copies and almost always run out by the end of the convention--which large portion of my sales coming from people who had never seen my comic before coming back to buy the book because they enjoyed the sampler. It has been genuinely effective. I can count on the fact that I will sell at least 100 books a con and I have no doubt the flier is the cause behind half of those sales.
While Steve has always been big into engaging with fans, he hadn't thought that much about the value of free works in combination with that engagement, but that's changing. He says that after this experience, he's definitely going to make more works downloadable and shareable. Some of his work is with the big comic shops (his next book is from DC Comics), and he doubts he'll be able to release those freely, but his own works are going to be available. Part of this experience was making the key realization that obscurity appears to be a much bigger problem than piracy:
Scans of my comics are sitting on hundreds of servers in countries I can't even spell. My stuff will be out there for free, no matter what. Ok. So now what? My goal is to tell good comics stories. I'd like people to read them in print editions, because I love print, and I think that's where I think my art looks best. Everything I've seen tells me that the people who have read my work digitally are more likely to pick it up in print than people who don't know my stuff at all.
Of course, the big question that caused a lot of discussion was how well did the comic actually sell, with some arguing that the following chart, without a scale or absolute numbers didn't tell very much:
However, the details suggest that this little engagement did quite well. Again, even if you didn't have the absolute numbers, the key point that we've been highlighting is that by engaging, you can do better than you would have otherwise, and that seems quite clear from the chart, no matter what the absolute numbers are. However, let's dig into some of the details. First, it's important to note that, while the book got tremendous reviews, it just didn't sell very well. Steve noted that both he and Jeff Parker (the author of Underground) have decently high profiles due to past and current work, but for whatever reason, Underground just didn't sell all that well when it was released. As he noted "it happens," and said that "we gave it our best shot and it was time to move on." So they had pretty much stopped thinking about Underground until all this happened.
So, once Steve (and Erika) engaged, what happened? Well, the book went from a random sale every here and there via their Etsy store, to over 150 sales in just as few days. And that's just the versions on Etsy (which contained a few different options), with the most popular being the signed book by the Jeff and Steve. The book (unsigned) is also available on Amazon, and Steve and Jeff won't know about sales there until their next monthly statement, however, there are indications that it's been selling well on Amazon as well -- and... people have just been hitting the "donate" button on the website as well:
Our Amazon rankings skyrocketed and stayed there for days. We were listed as #7 on Amazon's manga list, (a weird classification, but whatever.) And on the charts for our own publisher, Image Comics, we were the only book to crack the top ten that wasn't a volume of The Walking Dead (source of the much-hyped AMC tv series.) The donation button been insane too. Lots of $5.00 donations with requests for another book.
The key point in all of this, again, comes back to the one thing that we started this case study off with: the engagement was key. Connecting with the fans, in combination with the free work, is what made this work. Erika noted that many of the people who ordered on Etsy or who donated left notes basically saying that it was Steve's "totally awesome" participation in the community that drove them to willingly (happily) give him their money. She also notes that Steve didn't just join in the conversation, but he really got involved. As she noted she saw him go in there "out-niceing and out-classing everyone, even the people trying to troll him." That seems to have worked wonders...
Thanks to Steve and Erika for taking the time, and if you'd like to learn more about them, here's Steve's website and his Twitter account. Here's Erika's website and her Twitter account. And, of course, here are the links to the works they discussed, Underground and DAR!, where you can find out all you need to know about their works and ways to support both Steve and Erika.
The full transcript of the interview is after the jump for those who want to read it...
Is it just me, or is the BSA becoming a bigger and bigger joke each time it does just about anything these days? For years, the organization has put out its yearly bogus stats on "piracy," which have been debunked over and over and over again. They're about the only trade group that still has the gall to equate a single unauthorized copy to a single lost sale (even the RIAA and MPAA have moved away from that claim). They've also been known to simply make up survey numbers, rather than actually ask people in certain countries. And then, even on news stories, they seem to make it clear that they have no clue what's going on -- such as last week's announcement that ACTA was a treaty already signed by 37 countries, when it's neither a treaty, nor has it been signed by anyone.
The latest is equally as ridiculous and makes the BSA look even more uninformed than usual. As a whole bunch of you have sent in, the BSA apparently sent the European Commission a letter, objecting to the proposed "European Interoperability Framework for European Public Services." You can read the letter below:
The Free Software Foundation Europe has done an incredibly thorough debunking of the letter, which is a worthwhile read from top to bottom. One key snippet is in response to the BSA's absolutely laughable assertion that "royalty free" means "non-commercial":
The BSA argues that "[m]any of today's most widely-deployed open specifications incorporate patented innovations that were invented by commercial firms...including WiFi, GSM , and MPEG."
This is an attempt to create a false dichotomy between "commercial" companies inventing patented technology, in contrast to "non-commercial" inventions which are not patented. In reality a great wealth of unpatented modern technology originating in commercial companies constitute globally implemented standards (such as HTML5), whilst continuing to provide their creators with revenue. There is no such divide, either economical or ideological, between hardware and software technologies which are patented, and those which are not. Yet the BSA divisively implies there is a difference between conventional and accepted business methods, which they associate with patents, and un-businesslike non-commercial organisations, which they associate with patent-free technology. Given the increasing prevalence of Free Software in Europe's IT service market, such a claim is plainly false.
It really does make you wonder why anyone takes the BSA seriously these days, as it's even more ridiculous and unbelievable than your average protectionist industry trade association. What's amazing is that the folks at the BSA actually think such buffoonery is a good idea, when all it's really continued to do is sap the organization of pretty much any credibility.
About a year ago, we highlighted how the online MMO based on Dungeons and Dragons had gone free after trying to charge for a while, and showed how going free didn't mean you lost money, but it could work well as a part of a business model. And, indeed, reports from earlier this year showed that revenue had increased 500% for the "free" game -- once again highlighting how "free" does not mean "no money." In fact, the success of this free effort was so well received that Turbine's owners agreed to let them open up the Lord of the Rings MMO as well.
And, as a whole bunch of you have been submitting, once again, it looks like, by going free, they've been able to make a lot more money. In just a few months, they've doubled their revenue by embracing free. The game is now free to play, and so a lot more people are playing -- and many of them are choosing to then pay for certain additional offerings within the game. Once again, the point is the same, if you recognize where and how free fits into your business model, you can make a lot more money. No one is saying that everything is free or that anyone should stop making money. It's all about understanding the economics of how to use free to create a more efficient market to make more money.
