Moving away from 'free culture'

https://medium.com/technology-liberal-arts/474f9f6957ae

by panza • 13 years ago

4 1 13 years ago

zedpm• 13 years ago

" If we create great work and send it out into the world using a delivery mechanism conducive to piracy, it’s no wonder we end up getting screwed."

That's the most important point in this piece, IMHO. People who sell digital content can't use the same business model as people who sell non-trivially reproducible goods and expect to have the same success. In theory consumers could build their own copy of a good like a pair of jeans or a bicycle, but few have the skill or desire to create a high quality replica, and the parts and equipment are specialized and most likely need to be purchased.

Digital media is trivially reproducible by unskilled people with equipment they already have on hand. Instead of a high quality pair of jeans, their good is more like a burlap sack you tie around your waist with a bit of rope: anyone who'd be tempted to buy that product would probably just make their own at lower cost.

This if course does not address the skill and difficulty of creating music or film, but rather the difficulty of reproducing it, given a copy to work with. Thus, it's reasonable to ask a large amount when crowd funding a film or album, because of course the artists should be well rewarded for their talent and effort and the many expenses in producing this good must be paid, but it's a foolish business model to put the product out and then stomp your feet when people choose not to pay when they can trivially copy it.

It's harder to copy a well-made T-shirt or hat and it's impossible to copy the experience of a live performance, so selling those is a sensible venture as well.

Moving away from 'free culture'

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