One could say that all this copyright business is an aberration.
Until the arrival of the printing press we did not have a way to cheaply reproduce lots of copies of creative works. I assume that there was no such idea as "copyright" why would there be?
Artistic creative types could not sell to a mass market. They had patrons. People with power and money who liked beautiful and interesting things would pay to keep guys around who could do that.
Now we come to the situation that such works can be copied for effectively zero cost. But copyright law is still hanging around trying to stifle benefits of that in order to keep vested interests in the money.
As Gordon said, copyright mostly does not work anyway. Seems most song writers, composers, authors etc never see a significant return on the effort they have put in and indeed the middle man takes the big slice.
As such doing away with copyright completely would not harm many. Only those who did happen to hit the jack pot.
It's silly to argue that copyrighted, protected commercial IP should retroactively be treated as open source freeware simply because technology has made copying free and easy to do. Difficult to enforce? Yes, but that doesn't make it right or acceptable. Gordon worked hard on his book BECAUSE the system supports and defends the "pay per read" model. Take that away and people won't write books anymore. You might be able to dig up similar info from free websites, but you'll pay for that in legwork. Otherwise, for the near future, plan to pay for the convenience of Gordon's all-in-one compilation.
There are a lot of laws that I consider silly, but I still have to abide by them. That's the price of civilization.
Oh man... The system has not ever supported the pay per read model. This is the same argument the movie studios have tried to make with pay per view, and it's not the right argument.
Gordon needs to make as much money as he can, or depending on one's outlook, enough money, by writing, period. How that gets done is the matter at hand. True for any creative person right now.
If Gordon is writing and making money selling copies of his writing, then those people who buy those copies pay for copies of his writing. Whether or not they choose to actually read them is entirely up to them, and it has nothing to do with the copy of the writing they bought. They could buy it as a gift, they could read part of it and decide it's a better support for the computer monitor, they could love it and pass it along to friends, who do the same, and they could resell it too, and that's all covered under the right of first sale.
Now that copies are easy and cheap, it's harder to get people to pay for copies. So then, we need to invoke ways to pay people for writing, put simply. There are a growing number of ways to do that. At the end of the day, the writer desires to make a life writing, and the writer desires they get read.
I put many things here that suggest ways to make money by writing that do not directly involve selling copies of writing, and I did so, not to defend infringement, instead in recognition that infringement does happen, and will happen, unless we adopt an entirely closed, trusted (and not by us maggots) computing model, and in the defense of the idea that creative people need to make as much money as they can through creative works. Those means and methods work, and people are making as much as they can, or enough, to continue being creative too. It's ugly, but it's where we are, and I'm a realist.
Regarding the music artists, many of them have recognized how this works, and you can find their music for free on their websites, where you can engage them in conversation, learn about the causes they may have a soft spot for, get introduced to their friends, buy copies of their music at various quality levels, get art, fan art, submit fan art, find out where they are live, and god knows what else, direct from them to fans, no middle men at all. Between that kind of thing and touring, they do very well and the unhappy ones are the middle men actually.
I could not find good data for this niche for authors, but I did find some compelling data in the niche of genre fiction, and self-published indie authors are doing extremely well in both margins and volume compared to the top 5 publishers, and those trends are growing, which suggests books are going to play out about the same way music has. Which is good news, because the slightly smarter than the average bear music pioneers have figured most of this out already.
Finally, I anal about this, because poor physical analogies and or arguments can and do support closed computing arguments, none of which I want anything to do with. It is the little, subtle differences between information and physical things that need to be well understood and regulated on that basis, or we will end up with crappy regulation, which is highly likely to be worse than what we have now.
I'm not really arguing for scrapping copyright laws or otherwise. Just mulling over what is going on here.
Clearly the "Mickey Mouse", literally, way things have evolved is not good. I find it hard to believe that such long copyright terms are for the general good. When it comes to heavily armed police in helicopters raiding a suspected enabler of of copyright infringement things have clearly gotten out of hand.
I put many things here that suggest ways to make money by writing that do not directly involve selling copies of writing,
Until you've demonstrated that you've done these things successfully, and/or come out from your alias to show your credentials, your suggestions really don't hold water. Who listens to a an anonymous oracle? Besides, these things are nothing new, nor do they mitigate the underlying problem of GROWING piracy. This needs to be acknowledged first. (I see there are those here that seem to be from some other century about it -- um, copyright protection is in the US Constitution, BTW. Extensions to the copyright act, right or wrong, have nothing to do with the discussion of when a work is pirated within days and even hours of its publication. Please don't obfuscate.)
Workshopping how to mitigate the damage of piracy belongs in another forum, quite frankly, where the participants have demonstrated their cred and knowledge through real-life experience. Most every artist knows about Web sites, ad revenue, social networking, alternative income streams, and so on. These are palliatives to the bigger problem, the elephant in the room that sooner or later cannot be ignored.
Viewing "taking content" as illegal is a very big stretch. Taking PHYSICAL items, a watch a car, a book;or entering a PHYSICAL place, your house house, movie theater, a store, can be illegal.
As I demonstrated before, the PHYSICAL thing that is taken is the consideration (e.g. money) otherwise earned from the distribution of the content. The content can be in any form -- book, LP, cassette, mindmeld, professional conference, personal or phone conversation with an expert, legal consultation, it doesn't matter. All those other things you mention represent something of value. Would you agree money has value?
If not paying for something you receive, when payment is expected, means a loss of money, then that's taking something away. That's called stealing.
Value is the expectation of the return for the consumption of anything, and that includes content. Your argument implicitly says content has no value, by stating its taking does not equate to any kind of loss. That's a false assumption, though not an uncommon one. And, frankly, a big reason piracy is as bad as it is. I'm not saying you created or condone the practice, but your attitude certainly keeps it alive.
Viewing "taking content" as illegal is a very big stretch.
One does not generally "take content". One makes a copy of some pattern somewhere and takes the copy away. This is in fact illegal in many cases due to the existence of copyright law.
Gordon,
As I demonstrated before, the PHYSICAL thing that is taken is the consideration (e.g. money)
Since when did money become a "physical thing"?
Of course, I'm just nit-picking, I know what you are getting at.
Now, the assertion that taking a copy is always a loss to the creator is clearly false.
People do copy stuff that they would never have paid for. Either it's to expensive to get a legit copy or it's just not that enticing no matter how cheap. Basically if they had to pay they just would not bother and no revenue would be generated anyway.
Tricky... Are we talking US dollars, bit coins, rupees, or pre Euro francs?
If not paying for something you receive, when payment is expected, means a loss of money, then that's taking something away. That's called stealing.
I expect everyone in the world to give me a dollar. Just because of the joy I give from publishing documentation on forth; it provides folk hours of fun as a easy target to bash. And a few folks seem to find it useful sometimes, when they want to get started with forth.
Unfortunately, no-one seems to agree with me on this point (at least the "give me a dollar" part). So then they must be stealing? Arrest everyone everywhere!
Selling a book means the book. The publisher pays the author so the publisher can paint the book with the publisher's story.
If I tell a joke, can I forbid the world from re-telling the joke? I made it up, its a great joke, everybody says so, that why they re-tell it to their friends. No, I can sell a CD with my show recorded on it, but the joke itself is out there, and anybody can now tell it. Folks STILL buy recording from George Carlin, Firesign Theatre, etc. Folks still go to see shows, even though they heard the Rolling Stones play "Brown Sugar" a zillion times. This is how is works, it we don't like it, its still how it works.
I actually think a shorter term of copyright would increase competition and create more jobs. As it is, there are a lot of corporations that have stockpiled intellectual property and desire to dole it out slowly rather than look for new product from new sources.
Extending the copyright did nothing much for the majority heirs and families of the original creators. Generally it created a big boost in value for 2nd hand owners that bought near end of the term rights cheaply and now have a valued asset.
In the case of computer software, quite a bit of what is protected in nearly useless anyway as the development cycle has been so fast paced. Does anyone really want to pay for a licensed copy of Wordstar these days? It wouldn't hurt much if this was all public domain.
The whole extension made teaching English abroad much more difficult as a lot of decent books for teaching just became protected and too costly to use. The big irony is that the US government language courses are not protected by copyright due to the US Constitution, so that material is available for free. Nonetheless, it seems the US government shifted over to buying materials from private industry rather than publish their own. So even those texts are growing out-dated...
The overall impression of the changeover -- greed and a take back, nothing to do with fair play for those that respected the old system.
I am growing very tired of the negative and or dimunitive characterizations. Please reconsider those, or I may well begin to return the favor. Thanks.
We are having a valid discussion. There are ideas here to discuss, and I provided supporting material for mine, and offeredm and may well consider adding considerably to that support. Additionally, I did provide personal information to help people better understand the context.
I have not characterized ideas or people here in a negative or dimunitive way, and the reason for that is to discuss the ideas and dynamics surrounding this issue.
Did you all know HubSpot is filing a 100 million IPO? Inbound content marketing is an extremely effective way to improve revenue, and their model works very well given a content and personal / corporate brand to work from. One of the very means I put here as a way to improve on revenue, BTW
If you want to research me, go ahead. It is not hard. Additionally, I specifically do NOT want you, any of you listening to me and taking risks without doing your own work. The ideas are here, and I'll support them too. What credentials I have are simply not material. Take those, do the work, ask the questions and your revenue is your business not mine, and it is simply not productive at all to turn a rational discussion into a size contest, and I'll have exactly none of it.
Again, simply not material. Please reconsider.
If anyone here thinks they have it right, or is in posession of "the answer", then it is simply not hard to put the info here, cite your sources and link your data and get after it.
In particular, the idea that we can end infringement without also closing computing is extremely difficult to refute. Given that, we are left with maximizing revenue in every way possible, while at the same time messaging to people about the harm infringement causes. We also need to recognize all the value moving out there, and I've presented that here in multiple ways too.
From Lessig: We have law, norms, money or markets, and physics as means to regulate people today. Law does not actually prevent action, a matter I covered here multiple times. That is fact. Technical means do stop people, which is the closed computing dilemma, also fact.
That leaves norms, and it leaves markets, both of which are the basis for the vast majority of my commentary here to date.
That's it kids. No magic bullets. As a realist and pragmatist. moving to maximize revenue is the single most potent decision to make in light of the state of computing and infringement to date, and doing that, coupled with messaging (asking for the business and communicating value) can, will, and does very signfificantly marginalize infringement.
Support your position here, and I'll do the same. Reconsider negative characterizations, because they are unwanted, are unproductive, and simply do not advance the discussion in any meaningful way, and are in a real sense bullying, and I'll have none of it, and can punch well above my weight, if required.
I agree. An idea has merit of it's own no matter who the messenger is. No matter how anonymous or famous they may be. The idea is the thing that needs eveluating not the person you hear it from.
A thought experiment while I do some work here, and I'll do that work in the hopes one of you does, in fact refute it with better work, so we all improve our understanding, OK?
Two authors: Moe and Larry. Curly is off to the side eating popcorn hoping to learn something.
Moe is famous, and established through major publishers and works the traditional business. Larry is unknown, but talented.
Larry decides he wants to maximize the revenue from his talent, while Moe is worried over tech changes and reduced sales through established channels.
Larry authors some material, and offers it for sale direct, publish on demand, e-book, Amazon, etc... Larry gets few takers, though he does get very favorable feedback.
What is Larry's real problem? It is not his work, which is on par with Moe. It is that he isn't known, nor established. Larry lacks capital mindshare and or endorsements, say not having a degree, etc...
Larry needs readers, or users more generally, and he needs endorsements.
So larry decides to offer his work freely, seeds torrent sites, promotes on social media, and in general makes it possible to the maximum degree for people to read his work, and in that work he asks for referrals, endorsements, shares, likes, donations, feed back and whatever else he can get out of readers.
Some time later, Larry finds his email box full, social media buzz running well, twitter chatty, has followers, likes and whatever else happens as a result of this.
Larry finds his direct sales improved, and he goes on to author more works to an engaged and loyal audience. Perhaps he gets picked up by a major publisher, or perhaps he takes his capital and expands on his name and body of recognized work and builds out other business, kits, videos, speaking, etc...
Now, compare and contrast Moe and Larry. Moe made investments, likely capital ones, but he could have just done the work for a very long time too, and got to established channels, networked and is promoted by those channels, which results in lots of readers, a degree of credence, a basis for a strong personal brand, and so on. Those things cost money.
People infringed the Smile out of Larry, but what did he get? The same things! In fact, if Larry does well enough, those same established channels will court Larry as they know where there is mindshare, there is money to be made.
Questions:
Do both authors work have intrinsic value?
How is the investment Larry made different from the one Moe made, and how does that relate to the value of the work above?
Does infringing present as a pure loss, or a mix of loss and value? Show your work, and in particular, demonstrate how a pure loss scenario also explains Larrys success?
I'll leave you all to join Curly in some idle thoughts for a while. I have decided to cite some material and it will take me a bit to put it together, but I have also decided doing it here is likely worth while for all involved too.
Remember, I am coming at this from a realist, pragmatist point of view. I am business minded, good at making money, love profit, am a capitalist, and I absolutely believe the only realistic way to do business is with a real understanding of the dynamics so that thoughts, ideas, etc... present me with the real set of risk/ reward choices, and given those, I can see success, if success is possible.
Know that. Every single word here is from that perspecitive, not some "I want freebies" garbage.
Forrest Mims is a famous author. Back in the day he wrote of electronics books and articles for beginners, amateurs and hobbyists. By all accounts many professional engineers got their start, their inspiration as kids from Forrest. I have no idea if he made any kind of living out of it but there we are. Those books are copyrighted of course. No copying or free stuff allowed there.
Today David L. Jones, Martin Lorton and others are actually making a living doing the same thing. However they don't write books, they make videos. Check YouTube. Those videos are free for the taking. Revenue of course comes from the advertising Google wraps around them.
Problem is of course, what if making videos is not your thing? What if you just don't have the looks, voice, style and plain old personality to pull that off, to attract an audience over the long term? There are a billion videos on YouTube made by smart guys about interesting things that are just too much like hard work to sit through.
Not sure where I'm going with this observation but it seems times have changed.
I'm not diminishing your ideas, but I have questioned your insistence that you have the answers. You have characterized these suggestions as solving the problem. Not only do they not even address the problem of piracy, they are things most working artists already do, or have thought about doing.
Understand that for the average content creator, many of these ideas take so much time and effort, for the value they return, that it's more productive to get a job at Wal-Mart as a customer greeter. Or, horrors, a sales clerk at Radio Shack!
You want the real world? Here it is:Making $200 for 40 hours of work is hardly what I'd consider worthwhile. And that's being generous. Many of these ideas don't return even that for the independent content creator, unless you are very lucky. Luck should never be part of any business plan.
I'm sorry if you feel I have been disrespectful, but again I ask, why should I take advice from you? And it IS advice, you're not just stating your opinion. Okay, you've given your advice/opinion, which is your right, but does that mean you're not allowed to be challenged? You give advice freely, but stubbornly refuse a request asking for experiential proof that these ideas are worthwhile to pursue. I don't know you. Maybe you're Stephen King, or the owner of a big publishing company. Or a successful literary agent.
Or maybe something else. I already have an agent, I've had my fill of working with big publishing companies, but I'd like to know Stephen King. We had a mutual friend I'd love to share stories about. Then again, it's quite possible I'd appreciate who you are and what makes your advice worth the taking, even if you are none of these.
Feel free to "return the negative and or diminutive characterizations" if you feel you must - though I've done neither; I simply asked for a clue to your expertise with all these suggestions for me -- and they are for me; I'm the only money-grubbing, unconstitutional law-loving, Internet Luddite writer hack in this thread. You know who I am, and what I do. I've given you that professional courtesy.
Hmm... Forrest Mims is a famous author.
...
Not sure where I'm going with this observation but it seems times have changed.
First, Forrest is retired. Any writing he does is for the pure fun of it, and the check a nice bonus for him and his wife. Second, he's more rabid than I am about people pirating his stuff.
Yes, times have changed, but is that in debate? I thought we were talking about unbridled piracy of digital content. And how there are people -- including on this board -- that continue to insist digital content is not physical (it is; it occupies space, it takes energy to create and reproduce, it requires a medium for transportation, etc.) and therefore it cannot be stolen. That's a Hmmm for you, right there.
Today David L. Jones, Martin Lorton and others are actually making a living doing the same thing. However they don't write books, they make videos. Check YouTube. Those videos are free for the taking. Revenue of course comes from the advertising Google wraps around them.
Funny how people seem to complain about commercials on TV yet are more than willing to watch ads to get something for "free". IMO that means they assign very little value on their own time.
It's a form of indirection that I really don't like. Instead of A paying B for something now we have C paying B in the hope that A will purchase something from C. A has to put up with some sales BS from C to gain access to what they want from B.
We are trading direct value for value interactions for with the hope of getting something for nothing when really we are selling our time and attention to marketers.
Going along with this for pragmatic reasons may be useful in the short term, but is setting the course for a rather bleak future.
It does not matter who is who here. If the idea is good it is good. If it stinks it stinks. It's up to the reader to judge.
Perhaps potatohead is actually Steven King. So what? Does not make the idea any better or worse.
Not only that an idea that worked really well for one person and made them rich and famous at one time may fail miserably if adopted by another person at another time. Times change, people are not all the same.
Yeah it does, if you're giving advice. The advice was directed at me, so I have the right to question its source.
Sharing ideas, links, and suggestions is one thing, but passing yourself off as an expert -- even if you are -- usually comes off better if you explain your expertise.
I'd rather not get into the scourge that is advertising. I pretty much have no idea what goes on on TV since 1976 when I left the parental home except that generally if I find myself in front of a TV I'm soon looking for a means of escape. Except of course if it tuned to the BBC which I gladly pay for.
The wall to wall advertising we all suffer at every turn is becoming a total nightmare.
It's not all bad though. This very forum is a form of advertising run by Parallax. The advertising Google wraps around YouTube vids is pretty unobtrusive. So far...
But what is this?:
It's a form of indirection that I really don't like. Instead of A paying B for something...
When has it ever been that you paid an author, composer, musician or whoever directly for the work they produce? Historically that almost never happened. In fact it was impossible because the rights to sales were signed over to some middle man by the creator.
Today with the availability of the internet it is actually possible for the creator to skip the middle man.
Yeah it does, if you're giving advice. The advice was directed at me, so I have the right to question its source.
I don't get the idea. How does the source make the advice any more or less valid?
Yes you have the right to ask who or what the source is. The source has the right not to tell you. I just don't see how that information helps in evaluating the advice.
Yes you have the right to ask who or what the source is. The source has the right not to tell you. I just don't see how that information helps in evaluating the advice.
I'll just assume you're joking. I'd certainly hope you don't take important advice from just anybody. Or maybe you don't, but in this case you think there ought to be an exception.
This is not to say I didn't evaluate the advice. He/she felt it was necessary to keep giving more, so better ask why I should care.
Again, if you want to research me, do it. You won't find all of my experiences online, and BTW that is my own way of compensating for infringement. A lot of my work is in a specific niche, there are some authors working it with books, etc, but the real dollars are in targeted materials, instruction and a mix of content they get to keep, and some that is served up to them.
Now, I could go on and say more, but it's just not material. And I've left that niche largely but for some lighter contract work. Making things here in the US is more compelling to me right now.
What I did was spend some time looking at your niche, the same kind of thing any content marketing and or general business consultant would do. I've actually put in a bit more time since, but didn't share it.
I did that for the purpose of supporting my part in the discussion, and to offer some stimulus for you to consider in the hopes those considerations would improve what you are seeing right now, and that was driven by simply desiring to contribute meaningfully to what appeared to be an ugly conversation.
I'll take your expression of good intent at face value, and will think nothing more of it.
If you want my thoughts more on the record, that needs to happen on the write me a check gig, not the free discussion among friends here gig, which is precisely why I'm not going to invoke any discussion of that kind.
Quite frankly Gordon, you have put out the word that infringement has impacted your revenue. And you put out that infringement is bad.
What solution do you propose?
I submit, there really isn't one without closing computing. If there is, what is it, and what are the costs?
I responded with the idea that infringement also has value and that it can be exploited and suggested you may in fact have good options open to you.
And I think you do too.
So the observations I put here were put here for that purpose. You can do what you like with them, for they are worth precisely what you think they are. That is how the free, open gig works. There is absolutely no discussion on that on my part. I draw a hard line.
On a macro scale, taking you out of the picture, and mind you you did put yourself into it, we need to improve the state of things as costs and risks run higher than they could run, and that isn't going to happen when we cannot even discuss the matter in real terms, which is the primary point I made throughout this entire discussion.
Since you put yourself into this, and I'm happy you did and hope you can benefit from the dialog, offering my observations is in bounds, and again, put here with the best of intentions.
If you found any of my observations compelling, I suggest you make a modest investment in time, and perhaps a few dollars to understand if they really do make sense for you. That is all we are capable of here without also having a formal business relationship, which I do not desire and am not intending, nor asking, nor implying should happen. Edit: And I did offer to drill down, and that is intended for clarity, should it be needed.
Again, barring we close computing, infringement is going to happen. The remedy is going to be a mix of law, norms (to which your point regarding it being not OK is well taken Gordon), physics, and money or markets.
Fixating on one, say law, ignores the potential in the others, which leads to false choices, which increases risk and cost for everybody involved.
If I really want expert advice I will seek out a suitable source, be it on matters medical, legal, financial, technical or whatever. Often this involves dealing with professionals like doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects, car mechanics etc who will gladly take my money for such advice. Or I might be lucky and have a friend, acquaintance or family member who is an "expert" who will cheerfully help for free. As it happens that advice, despite the credentials of it's source is not always beneficial or even correct.
This however is the internet. A place where billions of people say whatever like. They may be right, they may be wrong. They may be joking. They may be trying to deceive you for whatever reason. They may be genuinely well meaning but ignorant or stupid. Everybody has their own experiences, points of view and agendas. Luckily most people seem to be well meaning.
Take it, evaluate it, cross check it, even try it if it sounds plausible. No guarantees are given.
Disclaimer: The content of this post may well be totally bogus.
I have had my fill of working with big publishers...
Good. I agree strongly with you. And the options I put out there are great jumping off points for some research and perhaps consulting, both of which I very strongly encourage you to do. And my basis for that is simply a rational assessment of the changes and impacts out there today. We may well get better solutions, and I hope we do, but those are a ways off. Meanwhile, you have an outstanding personal brand, a ton of good content, are known and respected as a pioneer, etc... all of which position you to do a lot and do it direct and in creative ways.
None of that excuses infringement. But it does speak to options, and that they exist, and that can be a part of improving things for you.
See the thought experiment above? The whole point of it was to show there is value associated with infringement, and where there is value, it is possible to make money. None of that is OK, or optimal, it just is, barring some solution... I don't see one at the present time.
Heater, First off I didn't ask for the advice. It's been repeatedly given -- with good intention, no doubt. Since it was directed at me, it only makes sense to ask, "who the hell are you?" Or maybe in terms a little less challenging, but the idea is the same.
Though my business has been impacted by Internet piracy, I've adapted and work in numerous projects where I'm personally insulated from much of the problem (e.g. work-for-hire, etc.). Still, I bristle at the suggestion I've done nothing about it. I mean, really! I spend 40-60 hours a week on this job, and never think of other ways to do better? Come on.
Well meaning suggestions aside, my complaint is people making outlandish remarks about what does or doesn't deserve a consideration of value. We're still a society based on principle, at least the society I care to be part of. I am afraid that if it comes down to "well, digital ain't real," there's not much hope for us.
PH, I'm not talking infringement, which is a legal concern. I'm talking about piracy, which is a social issue. Putting aside the theft of income (it seems that's not physical so it doesn't exist), I've already noted that, in 2014, this piracy has moved away from relatively benign peer-to-peer sharing, which has little or no criminal infrastructure. It's since moved into centralized file lockers, many of which are run out of Russia and other parts of the world by the worst of crime syndicates. If you think there is value in working within this system, we have nothing further to say. These lockers are a cancer, and if you don't kill the cancer, it'll kill you. Simple as that.
I have no idea what you're talking about with closed computing. I know what it is, but its introduction in this thread is IMO a straw man's argument, at best.
I do appreciate the offer to track you down, but it's not my way of spending an amusing afternoon. My PM box is empty if you'd like to share more about yourself. I will keep it confidential, though I don't understand the need for secrecy. This is not to say I'm interested in taking the discussion private. I have no more to say that hasn't been said, and I've repeated myself enough already enough already enough already.
(On edit: The tail of your message says something about changing laws. I've never suggested that, though I feel parts of the DMCA have become unworkable. All I've asked for is a change in ATTITUDE toward what constitutes theft of someone's work. A simple request. Alas, I'm guessing from some of the responses here, that attitude won't be changing any time soon.)
First off I didn't ask for the advice. It's been repeatedly given -- with good intention, no doubt -- but not needed or desired.
Yes, true. As I said, this, right here as we speak, is the internet. Think of it like wondering into a bar and ending up chatting to who ever happens to be around. By virtue of just being there you are going to hear all kind of stuff. Might be one of the most famous authors in the country or a famous TV personality or a regular hard working guy or just another loser. All these things have happened to me, usually it has been hard to tell which is which. The last thing I do in such situations is start asking "Who are you? What are you?" If they want to say they say eventually.
I have no idea what you're talking about with closed computing
Ah, now I see why you and potatohead have been talking at cross purposes for such a long time.
The argument goes something like this:
1) People just copy stuff if they can. They may not be bad people. They may not have bad intentions. They don't even think about it so hard. They just do it. Having stuff available on the net is like littering the streets with your dollar bills. Sure people are going to pick them up and spend them. You really expect them not to?
2) If you really want to stop all this digital "piracy" you have to have total control of every computer in the world. You need to encrypt and digitally sign everything. You have to track who has paid for it and who has not.
3) It is doubtful whether the requirements of 2) can ever be met. Seems everything can be hacked eventually. Especially if the crypto keys have to be in the device in the users hands. See DeCSS for example.
4) Here is the biggie. We don't actually want to hand over control of our computing devices like that to anyone. The price of the cure for "piracy" for the benefit of a few corporations like Disney is just unacceptably high.
That is what all this talk of "closed computing" computing is about.
As a writer on computing topics I'm surprised you have not been immersed and familiar with these arguments that have been debated for many years now.
First, it is my sincere desire you make enough, because you are great Gordon. Let's not lose track of that. Regarding statements made, advice, etc... when I supplied my personal experiences, I opened the door for commentary about them. You did the same. That is all that happened. What you do with that is up to you.
No implication was made about you doing nothing. There was an implication that you could potentially do more or differently, and I'll stand by that commentary. Doesn't mean it is true, but there is no harm in putting it out there either, for reasons already given.
Now, I am a pain in the Smile. I do not support inaccurate discussions on this topic. I've expressed why and I've expressed how. I wish I could, but in all that I have seen and learned, a very signficant part of the mess we have is due to a poor dialog all around. The only remedy I find viable is to message to a more accurate state of discussion.
eg: Infringement is a legal matter ... piracy is a social one.
Well, it is all infringement. Piracy is contributory infringement, where somebody infringed on the right of copy, potentially use, and distribution and somebody else infringed, though not necessarily knowing, on the right of copy and the right of use, assuming they do anything with that download.
It is hard to talk about, but necessary to talk about, because that is where the better state of law, markets and norms is to be found, and it also is likely to prevent extreme physical measures, like closed computing from happening.
And that happening is a real threat. Perhaps I will document that another day. But, you can know I believe that, and please feel free to sell me on not believing that. I'm all ears and hopeful.
Additionally, I am more than happy to join you in expressing and setting better norms! In this we agree, and your mention of piracy as a social issue rings largely true to me. It just needs to be accurate so the norms work for us, not against us. Bad norms can lead to bad law, which generally does not benefit us in a general sense.
My complaints, not clearly mentioned, or potentially lost in the mess above, center in on failure to recognize precisely what does happen when infringement occurs and the implications and possibilities those have on markets.
Markets, to me, actually present as a more valuable solution, because they very strongly influence norms, which suits your cause Gordon, but they do so while paying us to set those norms! Establishing ways and means for people to get it at a cost they find makes sense given their value perception, offering people alternatives, tools, ways, means to contribute (creative commons) can, does and should continue to compete with free, as in those dreaded storage locker things we both hate.
(perhaps legal means can be employed to address those things, though the US largely botched handling of Kim Dotcom... we should be smarter about this stuff, which again reinforces my point of accuracy in discussion)
Finally, competing with free, and or simply and more generally maximizing mind share however any of us gets it, means we marginalize low value infringement, and we maximize higher value activities, and with devices like Creative Commons, replace infringement with authorized activities that can generate considerable revenue and or add value to works. (translations, transcodes, fan derivatives, etc...)
Well, almost finally. Really, the flip side of open computing is making sure open models, that do compete with closed ones, also means leveraging this share / copy whatever we want to call it culture, and it means promoting works of value, adding on to them, and in general, all of that competes with closed, and having all that be possible matters to me more than eliminating infringement does and the reason for it is that I generally get a much higher use value out of open than I do closed, and I don't have to infringe on anybody! True for nearly anyone who takes the time to make the learning investments needed.
This happens to annoy the closed producers, who would much rather us writing our own stuff, our own movies, software, building our own media players, robots and whatever else be discouraged in favor of a spend to solve rather than a work, or learn to solve culture. Piracy happens to be at the center of many arguments used toward that unacceptable end.
(again, why I make accuracy the issue I do)
Man! I'm sorry this got difficult. I hope it has value, and I have good intent with my contributions.
Heater mentioned a bar. That is a good analogy. Let me tell you a short story:
I once ended up chatting with a fairly wealthy person in Indy for a few days. We liked one another, and traveled in very different circles. Once we both figured out we wanted to just talk as people, we had a blast! Life, love, law, business, kids and you name it. He was holed up in a hotel transferring control and wisdom to the new owners of a multi-million dollar company he created. "stay and play gig, as he calls it" I was there on a technical consulting conference getting all geared up to make money the following year. (content, sales, service, support, consulting)
I shared my history and he shared his and we were often shocked at how our station in life, wealth, etc... colored things, and we were shocked at what a different perspective could bring to the table. I know for a fact, I suggested a change to a start up that probably made him a ton of money, and he knows for a fact that he shared some business insight which helped me grow considerably in my own efforts to mature, take an executive role, etc...
I know his name and he knows mine. I also know neither of us will go beyond that, because it was about stimulating and challenging dialog, a happy circumstance, that we would dishonor by crossing those lines. We also know, should we meet again, we both will pull up a chair, get drinks and catch up as two peers fond of one another would want to do.
The magic of it all was just being brutally honest, not judging, and once one understood the other, sharing bits the other would really want to know. One of the best and most productive conversations I ever had, and he feels the same. We both know a friendship would be difficult, wealth and power seperating us, and we both know what that means and we both had a gentlemen's agreement to respect one another and let it all play out. We both expressed some hard realities from our perspective too. It was good to get those out there and kick them around a little. I know I understand "one percenters" considerably better now.
I know some stuff from that talk that I should not know. He does too, though the bits I got are worth more financially. He got some insights that might not be worth the money, but I'll bet his daughter appreciated, just by way of one example. And I shared some insights about how 20 something "millenials" really are playing the game differently.
So think of this exchange like that. We may travel in different circles and that is OK. I read about some of my convo in the paper with a grin. "He was right, or I was..." Whatever. I might see something appear or disappear on a site somewhere related to this discussion here and grin in the same way. It's not who was right, or that the observations, ideas, suggestions indicate status, stature, etc... It is that the honest dialog did some good and that is why we talked for each evening for a few days. We both understood and loved it and benefitted from it.
This dialog should be no different for we are all peers here with common interests, a desire to better ourselves and our friends, learn, play, do, build.
Bad or good, that is and will continue to be my intent here. Not judging. Sharing, because we are better for it.
Re: Secrecy. It's not hard to find out something about me. For this discussion, it's not material, and you obviously don't need my permission. However, you might wonder how somebody might take the interest I do, and that one boils down to a long and varied professional and entrepreneurial, some still under NDA, work history related to closed software and some content that has left me very well versed in these matters. I've done some research as part of consulting in addition, where some of the task was to identify ways to maximize revenue in precisely the way suggested at here.
I use pseudonyms for a variety of reasons. They are benign, and they allow for some kinds of discussion in other venues, say politics as an example, without also having to manage people who don't understand what "just a discussion" is. I'm sure you can relate. Simple as that. Nothing nefarious. Often these kinds of discussions can be a contact sport when they don't need to be, which is another way to put this.
An LP containing a song is physical, a book containing a story is physical. If folks had stretched the law to ALSO cover non physical things (like the song itself or the story itself), more power to them, but its obviously wrong to do so (see what I did there?) and this will eventually be fixed.
But the law has _always_ been that way. There's nothing new here. Imagine you shoplift a CD and get caught. Should you be charged for theft of an item worth $10, or for an item worth 20 cents? The latter being the approximate physical value of the medium.
Comments
Until the arrival of the printing press we did not have a way to cheaply reproduce lots of copies of creative works. I assume that there was no such idea as "copyright" why would there be?
Artistic creative types could not sell to a mass market. They had patrons. People with power and money who liked beautiful and interesting things would pay to keep guys around who could do that.
Now we come to the situation that such works can be copied for effectively zero cost. But copyright law is still hanging around trying to stifle benefits of that in order to keep vested interests in the money.
As Gordon said, copyright mostly does not work anyway. Seems most song writers, composers, authors etc never see a significant return on the effort they have put in and indeed the middle man takes the big slice.
As such doing away with copyright completely would not harm many. Only those who did happen to hit the jack pot.
There are a lot of laws that I consider silly, but I still have to abide by them. That's the price of civilization.
Gordon needs to make as much money as he can, or depending on one's outlook, enough money, by writing, period. How that gets done is the matter at hand. True for any creative person right now.
If Gordon is writing and making money selling copies of his writing, then those people who buy those copies pay for copies of his writing. Whether or not they choose to actually read them is entirely up to them, and it has nothing to do with the copy of the writing they bought. They could buy it as a gift, they could read part of it and decide it's a better support for the computer monitor, they could love it and pass it along to friends, who do the same, and they could resell it too, and that's all covered under the right of first sale.
Now that copies are easy and cheap, it's harder to get people to pay for copies. So then, we need to invoke ways to pay people for writing, put simply. There are a growing number of ways to do that. At the end of the day, the writer desires to make a life writing, and the writer desires they get read.
I put many things here that suggest ways to make money by writing that do not directly involve selling copies of writing, and I did so, not to defend infringement, instead in recognition that infringement does happen, and will happen, unless we adopt an entirely closed, trusted (and not by us maggots) computing model, and in the defense of the idea that creative people need to make as much money as they can through creative works. Those means and methods work, and people are making as much as they can, or enough, to continue being creative too. It's ugly, but it's where we are, and I'm a realist.
Regarding the music artists, many of them have recognized how this works, and you can find their music for free on their websites, where you can engage them in conversation, learn about the causes they may have a soft spot for, get introduced to their friends, buy copies of their music at various quality levels, get art, fan art, submit fan art, find out where they are live, and god knows what else, direct from them to fans, no middle men at all. Between that kind of thing and touring, they do very well and the unhappy ones are the middle men actually.
I could not find good data for this niche for authors, but I did find some compelling data in the niche of genre fiction, and self-published indie authors are doing extremely well in both margins and volume compared to the top 5 publishers, and those trends are growing, which suggests books are going to play out about the same way music has. Which is good news, because the slightly smarter than the average bear music pioneers have figured most of this out already.
Finally, I anal about this, because poor physical analogies and or arguments can and do support closed computing arguments, none of which I want anything to do with. It is the little, subtle differences between information and physical things that need to be well understood and regulated on that basis, or we will end up with crappy regulation, which is highly likely to be worse than what we have now.
Clearly the "Mickey Mouse", literally, way things have evolved is not good. I find it hard to believe that such long copyright terms are for the general good. When it comes to heavily armed police in helicopters raiding a suspected enabler of of copyright infringement things have clearly gotten out of hand.
The terms that enabled a Disney to exist are just about right, so we might get another, or a different Disney.
Until you've demonstrated that you've done these things successfully, and/or come out from your alias to show your credentials, your suggestions really don't hold water. Who listens to a an anonymous oracle? Besides, these things are nothing new, nor do they mitigate the underlying problem of GROWING piracy. This needs to be acknowledged first. (I see there are those here that seem to be from some other century about it -- um, copyright protection is in the US Constitution, BTW. Extensions to the copyright act, right or wrong, have nothing to do with the discussion of when a work is pirated within days and even hours of its publication. Please don't obfuscate.)
Workshopping how to mitigate the damage of piracy belongs in another forum, quite frankly, where the participants have demonstrated their cred and knowledge through real-life experience. Most every artist knows about Web sites, ad revenue, social networking, alternative income streams, and so on. These are palliatives to the bigger problem, the elephant in the room that sooner or later cannot be ignored.
As I demonstrated before, the PHYSICAL thing that is taken is the consideration (e.g. money) otherwise earned from the distribution of the content. The content can be in any form -- book, LP, cassette, mindmeld, professional conference, personal or phone conversation with an expert, legal consultation, it doesn't matter. All those other things you mention represent something of value. Would you agree money has value?
If not paying for something you receive, when payment is expected, means a loss of money, then that's taking something away. That's called stealing.
Value is the expectation of the return for the consumption of anything, and that includes content. Your argument implicitly says content has no value, by stating its taking does not equate to any kind of loss. That's a false assumption, though not an uncommon one. And, frankly, a big reason piracy is as bad as it is. I'm not saying you created or condone the practice, but your attitude certainly keeps it alive.
braino: One does not generally "take content". One makes a copy of some pattern somewhere and takes the copy away. This is in fact illegal in many cases due to the existence of copyright law.
Gordon, Since when did money become a "physical thing"?
Of course, I'm just nit-picking, I know what you are getting at.
Now, the assertion that taking a copy is always a loss to the creator is clearly false.
People do copy stuff that they would never have paid for. Either it's to expensive to get a legit copy or it's just not that enticing no matter how cheap. Basically if they had to pay they just would not bother and no revenue would be generated anyway.
Tricky... Are we talking US dollars, bit coins, rupees, or pre Euro francs?
I expect everyone in the world to give me a dollar. Just because of the joy I give from publishing documentation on forth; it provides folk hours of fun as a easy target to bash. And a few folks seem to find it useful sometimes, when they want to get started with forth.
Unfortunately, no-one seems to agree with me on this point (at least the "give me a dollar" part). So then they must be stealing? Arrest everyone everywhere!
Selling a book means the book. The publisher pays the author so the publisher can paint the book with the publisher's story.
If I tell a joke, can I forbid the world from re-telling the joke? I made it up, its a great joke, everybody says so, that why they re-tell it to their friends. No, I can sell a CD with my show recorded on it, but the joke itself is out there, and anybody can now tell it. Folks STILL buy recording from George Carlin, Firesign Theatre, etc. Folks still go to see shows, even though they heard the Rolling Stones play "Brown Sugar" a zillion times. This is how is works, it we don't like it, its still how it works.
Extending the copyright did nothing much for the majority heirs and families of the original creators. Generally it created a big boost in value for 2nd hand owners that bought near end of the term rights cheaply and now have a valued asset.
In the case of computer software, quite a bit of what is protected in nearly useless anyway as the development cycle has been so fast paced. Does anyone really want to pay for a licensed copy of Wordstar these days? It wouldn't hurt much if this was all public domain.
The whole extension made teaching English abroad much more difficult as a lot of decent books for teaching just became protected and too costly to use. The big irony is that the US government language courses are not protected by copyright due to the US Constitution, so that material is available for free. Nonetheless, it seems the US government shifted over to buying materials from private industry rather than publish their own. So even those texts are growing out-dated...
The overall impression of the changeover -- greed and a take back, nothing to do with fair play for those that respected the old system.
We are having a valid discussion. There are ideas here to discuss, and I provided supporting material for mine, and offeredm and may well consider adding considerably to that support. Additionally, I did provide personal information to help people better understand the context.
I have not characterized ideas or people here in a negative or dimunitive way, and the reason for that is to discuss the ideas and dynamics surrounding this issue.
Did you all know HubSpot is filing a 100 million IPO? Inbound content marketing is an extremely effective way to improve revenue, and their model works very well given a content and personal / corporate brand to work from. One of the very means I put here as a way to improve on revenue, BTW
If you want to research me, go ahead. It is not hard. Additionally, I specifically do NOT want you, any of you listening to me and taking risks without doing your own work. The ideas are here, and I'll support them too. What credentials I have are simply not material. Take those, do the work, ask the questions and your revenue is your business not mine, and it is simply not productive at all to turn a rational discussion into a size contest, and I'll have exactly none of it.
Again, simply not material. Please reconsider.
If anyone here thinks they have it right, or is in posession of "the answer", then it is simply not hard to put the info here, cite your sources and link your data and get after it.
In particular, the idea that we can end infringement without also closing computing is extremely difficult to refute. Given that, we are left with maximizing revenue in every way possible, while at the same time messaging to people about the harm infringement causes. We also need to recognize all the value moving out there, and I've presented that here in multiple ways too.
From Lessig: We have law, norms, money or markets, and physics as means to regulate people today. Law does not actually prevent action, a matter I covered here multiple times. That is fact. Technical means do stop people, which is the closed computing dilemma, also fact.
That leaves norms, and it leaves markets, both of which are the basis for the vast majority of my commentary here to date.
That's it kids. No magic bullets. As a realist and pragmatist. moving to maximize revenue is the single most potent decision to make in light of the state of computing and infringement to date, and doing that, coupled with messaging (asking for the business and communicating value) can, will, and does very signfificantly marginalize infringement.
Support your position here, and I'll do the same. Reconsider negative characterizations, because they are unwanted, are unproductive, and simply do not advance the discussion in any meaningful way, and are in a real sense bullying, and I'll have none of it, and can punch well above my weight, if required.
(goes off to get some supporting material)
Two authors: Moe and Larry. Curly is off to the side eating popcorn hoping to learn something.
Moe is famous, and established through major publishers and works the traditional business. Larry is unknown, but talented.
Larry decides he wants to maximize the revenue from his talent, while Moe is worried over tech changes and reduced sales through established channels.
Larry authors some material, and offers it for sale direct, publish on demand, e-book, Amazon, etc... Larry gets few takers, though he does get very favorable feedback.
What is Larry's real problem? It is not his work, which is on par with Moe. It is that he isn't known, nor established. Larry lacks capital mindshare and or endorsements, say not having a degree, etc...
Larry needs readers, or users more generally, and he needs endorsements.
So larry decides to offer his work freely, seeds torrent sites, promotes on social media, and in general makes it possible to the maximum degree for people to read his work, and in that work he asks for referrals, endorsements, shares, likes, donations, feed back and whatever else he can get out of readers.
Some time later, Larry finds his email box full, social media buzz running well, twitter chatty, has followers, likes and whatever else happens as a result of this.
Larry finds his direct sales improved, and he goes on to author more works to an engaged and loyal audience. Perhaps he gets picked up by a major publisher, or perhaps he takes his capital and expands on his name and body of recognized work and builds out other business, kits, videos, speaking, etc...
Now, compare and contrast Moe and Larry. Moe made investments, likely capital ones, but he could have just done the work for a very long time too, and got to established channels, networked and is promoted by those channels, which results in lots of readers, a degree of credence, a basis for a strong personal brand, and so on. Those things cost money.
People infringed the Smile out of Larry, but what did he get? The same things! In fact, if Larry does well enough, those same established channels will court Larry as they know where there is mindshare, there is money to be made.
Questions:
Do both authors work have intrinsic value?
How is the investment Larry made different from the one Moe made, and how does that relate to the value of the work above?
Does infringing present as a pure loss, or a mix of loss and value? Show your work, and in particular, demonstrate how a pure loss scenario also explains Larrys success?
I'll leave you all to join Curly in some idle thoughts for a while. I have decided to cite some material and it will take me a bit to put it together, but I have also decided doing it here is likely worth while for all involved too.
Remember, I am coming at this from a realist, pragmatist point of view. I am business minded, good at making money, love profit, am a capitalist, and I absolutely believe the only realistic way to do business is with a real understanding of the dynamics so that thoughts, ideas, etc... present me with the real set of risk/ reward choices, and given those, I can see success, if success is possible.
Know that. Every single word here is from that perspecitive, not some "I want freebies" garbage.
Forrest Mims is a famous author. Back in the day he wrote of electronics books and articles for beginners, amateurs and hobbyists. By all accounts many professional engineers got their start, their inspiration as kids from Forrest. I have no idea if he made any kind of living out of it but there we are. Those books are copyrighted of course. No copying or free stuff allowed there.
Today David L. Jones, Martin Lorton and others are actually making a living doing the same thing. However they don't write books, they make videos. Check YouTube. Those videos are free for the taking. Revenue of course comes from the advertising Google wraps around them.
Problem is of course, what if making videos is not your thing? What if you just don't have the looks, voice, style and plain old personality to pull that off, to attract an audience over the long term? There are a billion videos on YouTube made by smart guys about interesting things that are just too much like hard work to sit through.
Not sure where I'm going with this observation but it seems times have changed.
http://www.forrestmims.org/publications.html
http://www.eevblog.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/mjlorton
Understand that for the average content creator, many of these ideas take so much time and effort, for the value they return, that it's more productive to get a job at Wal-Mart as a customer greeter. Or, horrors, a sales clerk at Radio Shack!
You want the real world? Here it is:Making $200 for 40 hours of work is hardly what I'd consider worthwhile. And that's being generous. Many of these ideas don't return even that for the independent content creator, unless you are very lucky. Luck should never be part of any business plan.
I'm sorry if you feel I have been disrespectful, but again I ask, why should I take advice from you? And it IS advice, you're not just stating your opinion. Okay, you've given your advice/opinion, which is your right, but does that mean you're not allowed to be challenged? You give advice freely, but stubbornly refuse a request asking for experiential proof that these ideas are worthwhile to pursue. I don't know you. Maybe you're Stephen King, or the owner of a big publishing company. Or a successful literary agent.
Or maybe something else. I already have an agent, I've had my fill of working with big publishing companies, but I'd like to know Stephen King. We had a mutual friend I'd love to share stories about. Then again, it's quite possible I'd appreciate who you are and what makes your advice worth the taking, even if you are none of these.
Feel free to "return the negative and or diminutive characterizations" if you feel you must - though I've done neither; I simply asked for a clue to your expertise with all these suggestions for me -- and they are for me; I'm the only money-grubbing, unconstitutional law-loving, Internet Luddite writer hack in this thread. You know who I am, and what I do. I've given you that professional courtesy.
First, Forrest is retired. Any writing he does is for the pure fun of it, and the check a nice bonus for him and his wife. Second, he's more rabid than I am about people pirating his stuff.
Yes, times have changed, but is that in debate? I thought we were talking about unbridled piracy of digital content. And how there are people -- including on this board -- that continue to insist digital content is not physical (it is; it occupies space, it takes energy to create and reproduce, it requires a medium for transportation, etc.) and therefore it cannot be stolen. That's a Hmmm for you, right there.
Funny how people seem to complain about commercials on TV yet are more than willing to watch ads to get something for "free". IMO that means they assign very little value on their own time.
It's a form of indirection that I really don't like. Instead of A paying B for something now we have C paying B in the hope that A will purchase something from C. A has to put up with some sales BS from C to gain access to what they want from B.
We are trading direct value for value interactions for with the hope of getting something for nothing when really we are selling our time and attention to marketers.
Going along with this for pragmatic reasons may be useful in the short term, but is setting the course for a rather bleak future.
C.W.
Perhaps potatohead is actually Steven King. So what? Does not make the idea any better or worse.
Not only that an idea that worked really well for one person and made them rich and famous at one time may fail miserably if adopted by another person at another time. Times change, people are not all the same.
Yeah it does, if you're giving advice. The advice was directed at me, so I have the right to question its source.
Sharing ideas, links, and suggestions is one thing, but passing yourself off as an expert -- even if you are -- usually comes off better if you explain your expertise.
The wall to wall advertising we all suffer at every turn is becoming a total nightmare.
It's not all bad though. This very forum is a form of advertising run by Parallax. The advertising Google wraps around YouTube vids is pretty unobtrusive. So far...
But what is this?: When has it ever been that you paid an author, composer, musician or whoever directly for the work they produce? Historically that almost never happened. In fact it was impossible because the rights to sales were signed over to some middle man by the creator.
Today with the availability of the internet it is actually possible for the creator to skip the middle man.
Yes you have the right to ask who or what the source is. The source has the right not to tell you. I just don't see how that information helps in evaluating the advice.
I'll just assume you're joking. I'd certainly hope you don't take important advice from just anybody. Or maybe you don't, but in this case you think there ought to be an exception.
This is not to say I didn't evaluate the advice. He/she felt it was necessary to keep giving more, so better ask why I should care.
Now, I could go on and say more, but it's just not material. And I've left that niche largely but for some lighter contract work. Making things here in the US is more compelling to me right now.
What I did was spend some time looking at your niche, the same kind of thing any content marketing and or general business consultant would do. I've actually put in a bit more time since, but didn't share it.
I did that for the purpose of supporting my part in the discussion, and to offer some stimulus for you to consider in the hopes those considerations would improve what you are seeing right now, and that was driven by simply desiring to contribute meaningfully to what appeared to be an ugly conversation.
I'll take your expression of good intent at face value, and will think nothing more of it.
If you want my thoughts more on the record, that needs to happen on the write me a check gig, not the free discussion among friends here gig, which is precisely why I'm not going to invoke any discussion of that kind.
Quite frankly Gordon, you have put out the word that infringement has impacted your revenue. And you put out that infringement is bad.
What solution do you propose?
I submit, there really isn't one without closing computing. If there is, what is it, and what are the costs?
I responded with the idea that infringement also has value and that it can be exploited and suggested you may in fact have good options open to you.
And I think you do too.
So the observations I put here were put here for that purpose. You can do what you like with them, for they are worth precisely what you think they are. That is how the free, open gig works. There is absolutely no discussion on that on my part. I draw a hard line.
On a macro scale, taking you out of the picture, and mind you you did put yourself into it, we need to improve the state of things as costs and risks run higher than they could run, and that isn't going to happen when we cannot even discuss the matter in real terms, which is the primary point I made throughout this entire discussion.
Since you put yourself into this, and I'm happy you did and hope you can benefit from the dialog, offering my observations is in bounds, and again, put here with the best of intentions.
If you found any of my observations compelling, I suggest you make a modest investment in time, and perhaps a few dollars to understand if they really do make sense for you. That is all we are capable of here without also having a formal business relationship, which I do not desire and am not intending, nor asking, nor implying should happen. Edit: And I did offer to drill down, and that is intended for clarity, should it be needed.
Again, barring we close computing, infringement is going to happen. The remedy is going to be a mix of law, norms (to which your point regarding it being not OK is well taken Gordon), physics, and money or markets.
Fixating on one, say law, ignores the potential in the others, which leads to false choices, which increases risk and cost for everybody involved.
Again, if you have an alternative, let's see it.
No. I'm not joking. In fact I'm very serious.
If I really want expert advice I will seek out a suitable source, be it on matters medical, legal, financial, technical or whatever. Often this involves dealing with professionals like doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects, car mechanics etc who will gladly take my money for such advice. Or I might be lucky and have a friend, acquaintance or family member who is an "expert" who will cheerfully help for free. As it happens that advice, despite the credentials of it's source is not always beneficial or even correct.
This however is the internet. A place where billions of people say whatever like. They may be right, they may be wrong. They may be joking. They may be trying to deceive you for whatever reason. They may be genuinely well meaning but ignorant or stupid. Everybody has their own experiences, points of view and agendas. Luckily most people seem to be well meaning.
Take it, evaluate it, cross check it, even try it if it sounds plausible. No guarantees are given.
Disclaimer: The content of this post may well be totally bogus.
Good. I agree strongly with you. And the options I put out there are great jumping off points for some research and perhaps consulting, both of which I very strongly encourage you to do. And my basis for that is simply a rational assessment of the changes and impacts out there today. We may well get better solutions, and I hope we do, but those are a ways off. Meanwhile, you have an outstanding personal brand, a ton of good content, are known and respected as a pioneer, etc... all of which position you to do a lot and do it direct and in creative ways.
None of that excuses infringement. But it does speak to options, and that they exist, and that can be a part of improving things for you.
See the thought experiment above? The whole point of it was to show there is value associated with infringement, and where there is value, it is possible to make money. None of that is OK, or optimal, it just is, barring some solution... I don't see one at the present time.
Though my business has been impacted by Internet piracy, I've adapted and work in numerous projects where I'm personally insulated from much of the problem (e.g. work-for-hire, etc.). Still, I bristle at the suggestion I've done nothing about it. I mean, really! I spend 40-60 hours a week on this job, and never think of other ways to do better? Come on.
Well meaning suggestions aside, my complaint is people making outlandish remarks about what does or doesn't deserve a consideration of value. We're still a society based on principle, at least the society I care to be part of. I am afraid that if it comes down to "well, digital ain't real," there's not much hope for us.
PH, I'm not talking infringement, which is a legal concern. I'm talking about piracy, which is a social issue. Putting aside the theft of income (it seems that's not physical so it doesn't exist), I've already noted that, in 2014, this piracy has moved away from relatively benign peer-to-peer sharing, which has little or no criminal infrastructure. It's since moved into centralized file lockers, many of which are run out of Russia and other parts of the world by the worst of crime syndicates. If you think there is value in working within this system, we have nothing further to say. These lockers are a cancer, and if you don't kill the cancer, it'll kill you. Simple as that.
I have no idea what you're talking about with closed computing. I know what it is, but its introduction in this thread is IMO a straw man's argument, at best.
I do appreciate the offer to track you down, but it's not my way of spending an amusing afternoon. My PM box is empty if you'd like to share more about yourself. I will keep it confidential, though I don't understand the need for secrecy. This is not to say I'm interested in taking the discussion private. I have no more to say that hasn't been said, and I've repeated myself enough already enough already enough already.
(On edit: The tail of your message says something about changing laws. I've never suggested that, though I feel parts of the DMCA have become unworkable. All I've asked for is a change in ATTITUDE toward what constitutes theft of someone's work. A simple request. Alas, I'm guessing from some of the responses here, that attitude won't be changing any time soon.)
The argument goes something like this:
1) People just copy stuff if they can. They may not be bad people. They may not have bad intentions. They don't even think about it so hard. They just do it. Having stuff available on the net is like littering the streets with your dollar bills. Sure people are going to pick them up and spend them. You really expect them not to?
2) If you really want to stop all this digital "piracy" you have to have total control of every computer in the world. You need to encrypt and digitally sign everything. You have to track who has paid for it and who has not.
3) It is doubtful whether the requirements of 2) can ever be met. Seems everything can be hacked eventually. Especially if the crypto keys have to be in the device in the users hands. See DeCSS for example.
4) Here is the biggie. We don't actually want to hand over control of our computing devices like that to anyone. The price of the cure for "piracy" for the benefit of a few corporations like Disney is just unacceptably high.
That is what all this talk of "closed computing" computing is about.
As a writer on computing topics I'm surprised you have not been immersed and familiar with these arguments that have been debated for many years now.
Barring that outcome, infringement exists.
First, it is my sincere desire you make enough, because you are great Gordon. Let's not lose track of that. Regarding statements made, advice, etc... when I supplied my personal experiences, I opened the door for commentary about them. You did the same. That is all that happened. What you do with that is up to you.
No implication was made about you doing nothing. There was an implication that you could potentially do more or differently, and I'll stand by that commentary. Doesn't mean it is true, but there is no harm in putting it out there either, for reasons already given.
Now, I am a pain in the Smile. I do not support inaccurate discussions on this topic. I've expressed why and I've expressed how. I wish I could, but in all that I have seen and learned, a very signficant part of the mess we have is due to a poor dialog all around. The only remedy I find viable is to message to a more accurate state of discussion.
eg: Infringement is a legal matter ... piracy is a social one.
Well, it is all infringement. Piracy is contributory infringement, where somebody infringed on the right of copy, potentially use, and distribution and somebody else infringed, though not necessarily knowing, on the right of copy and the right of use, assuming they do anything with that download.
It is hard to talk about, but necessary to talk about, because that is where the better state of law, markets and norms is to be found, and it also is likely to prevent extreme physical measures, like closed computing from happening.
And that happening is a real threat. Perhaps I will document that another day. But, you can know I believe that, and please feel free to sell me on not believing that. I'm all ears and hopeful.
Additionally, I am more than happy to join you in expressing and setting better norms! In this we agree, and your mention of piracy as a social issue rings largely true to me. It just needs to be accurate so the norms work for us, not against us. Bad norms can lead to bad law, which generally does not benefit us in a general sense.
My complaints, not clearly mentioned, or potentially lost in the mess above, center in on failure to recognize precisely what does happen when infringement occurs and the implications and possibilities those have on markets.
Markets, to me, actually present as a more valuable solution, because they very strongly influence norms, which suits your cause Gordon, but they do so while paying us to set those norms! Establishing ways and means for people to get it at a cost they find makes sense given their value perception, offering people alternatives, tools, ways, means to contribute (creative commons) can, does and should continue to compete with free, as in those dreaded storage locker things we both hate.
(perhaps legal means can be employed to address those things, though the US largely botched handling of Kim Dotcom... we should be smarter about this stuff, which again reinforces my point of accuracy in discussion)
Finally, competing with free, and or simply and more generally maximizing mind share however any of us gets it, means we marginalize low value infringement, and we maximize higher value activities, and with devices like Creative Commons, replace infringement with authorized activities that can generate considerable revenue and or add value to works. (translations, transcodes, fan derivatives, etc...)
Well, almost finally. Really, the flip side of open computing is making sure open models, that do compete with closed ones, also means leveraging this share / copy whatever we want to call it culture, and it means promoting works of value, adding on to them, and in general, all of that competes with closed, and having all that be possible matters to me more than eliminating infringement does and the reason for it is that I generally get a much higher use value out of open than I do closed, and I don't have to infringe on anybody! True for nearly anyone who takes the time to make the learning investments needed.
This happens to annoy the closed producers, who would much rather us writing our own stuff, our own movies, software, building our own media players, robots and whatever else be discouraged in favor of a spend to solve rather than a work, or learn to solve culture. Piracy happens to be at the center of many arguments used toward that unacceptable end.
(again, why I make accuracy the issue I do)
Man! I'm sorry this got difficult. I hope it has value, and I have good intent with my contributions.
Heater mentioned a bar. That is a good analogy. Let me tell you a short story:
I once ended up chatting with a fairly wealthy person in Indy for a few days. We liked one another, and traveled in very different circles. Once we both figured out we wanted to just talk as people, we had a blast! Life, love, law, business, kids and you name it. He was holed up in a hotel transferring control and wisdom to the new owners of a multi-million dollar company he created. "stay and play gig, as he calls it" I was there on a technical consulting conference getting all geared up to make money the following year. (content, sales, service, support, consulting)
I shared my history and he shared his and we were often shocked at how our station in life, wealth, etc... colored things, and we were shocked at what a different perspective could bring to the table. I know for a fact, I suggested a change to a start up that probably made him a ton of money, and he knows for a fact that he shared some business insight which helped me grow considerably in my own efforts to mature, take an executive role, etc...
I know his name and he knows mine. I also know neither of us will go beyond that, because it was about stimulating and challenging dialog, a happy circumstance, that we would dishonor by crossing those lines. We also know, should we meet again, we both will pull up a chair, get drinks and catch up as two peers fond of one another would want to do.
The magic of it all was just being brutally honest, not judging, and once one understood the other, sharing bits the other would really want to know. One of the best and most productive conversations I ever had, and he feels the same. We both know a friendship would be difficult, wealth and power seperating us, and we both know what that means and we both had a gentlemen's agreement to respect one another and let it all play out. We both expressed some hard realities from our perspective too. It was good to get those out there and kick them around a little. I know I understand "one percenters" considerably better now.
I know some stuff from that talk that I should not know. He does too, though the bits I got are worth more financially. He got some insights that might not be worth the money, but I'll bet his daughter appreciated, just by way of one example. And I shared some insights about how 20 something "millenials" really are playing the game differently.
So think of this exchange like that. We may travel in different circles and that is OK. I read about some of my convo in the paper with a grin. "He was right, or I was..." Whatever. I might see something appear or disappear on a site somewhere related to this discussion here and grin in the same way. It's not who was right, or that the observations, ideas, suggestions indicate status, stature, etc... It is that the honest dialog did some good and that is why we talked for each evening for a few days. We both understood and loved it and benefitted from it.
This dialog should be no different for we are all peers here with common interests, a desire to better ourselves and our friends, learn, play, do, build.
Bad or good, that is and will continue to be my intent here. Not judging. Sharing, because we are better for it.
Re: Secrecy. It's not hard to find out something about me. For this discussion, it's not material, and you obviously don't need my permission. However, you might wonder how somebody might take the interest I do, and that one boils down to a long and varied professional and entrepreneurial, some still under NDA, work history related to closed software and some content that has left me very well versed in these matters. I've done some research as part of consulting in addition, where some of the task was to identify ways to maximize revenue in precisely the way suggested at here.
I use pseudonyms for a variety of reasons. They are benign, and they allow for some kinds of discussion in other venues, say politics as an example, without also having to manage people who don't understand what "just a discussion" is. I'm sure you can relate. Simple as that. Nothing nefarious. Often these kinds of discussions can be a contact sport when they don't need to be, which is another way to put this.
-Tor
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/one-mans-endless-hopeless-struggle-to-protect-his-copyrighted-images/