I am jumping into the fray of the “free for all” debate. Seth Godin linked the most pertinent articles on Squidoo.
It seems that everyone takes the side and the virtual direction of his own shingle. Seth Godin in Malcolm is wrong speaks like a marketer, the internet allowed focused marketing (permission) campaigns and lubricated the display of a product, free samples and branding.
Fred Wilson speaks like a VC in Freemium and Freeconomics. As a banker Fred’s goal is to maximize the investment and while the cost of the delivery of the content is near zero, it would be most useful if the content itself is also zero. After all Google, Facebook and Twitter are not in the content creation business, they collate, sort, annotate and store what people give them for free. In Fred’s recent post about his vision for a newspaper he speaks more directly about the subject of the debate – Aggregate, Curate, Publish To Create Local Media:
“If I was starting The Village Voice today, I would not print anything. I would not hire a ton of writers. I would build a website and a mobile app (or two or three). I would hire a Publisher and a few salespeople. I would hire an editor and a few journalists. And then I’d go out and find every blog, twitter, facebook, flickr, youtube, and other social media feed out there that is related to downtown NYC and I would pull it all into an aggregation system where my editor and journalists could cull through the posts coming in, curate them, and then publish them. I’d do a bit of original reporting on the big stories but most of what I’d do would be smart curation, with a voice, and an opinion.”
Notice that nowhere in the business plan is there even a concern about how the creators of the original content get paid. The idiots just post it on Flickr and YouTube so the “editors” can start curating… It’s all deposited for free and distributed almost for free so that the bankers can scale, kill the remaining competition and maximize the return on the investment in the aggregator. This is when the “freemium” thingy kicks in. After all competition is demolished, the writers will come and beg to be published for free. And the mighty curators will rescue the lowly content creators from the abyss of obscurity. The “editors” will set fees for the writers on par with the sneaker makers in Bangladesh to make sure the adverse conditions spur the creative juices. I mean who needs Christiane Amanpour when CNN does such a good job live narrating YouTube videos during the Iran revolution? That makeup the announcers use on air has to be the most expensive part of the report. Literally no skin in that game, somebody gets bloody and you just run it on CNN freely with the ads in-between.
There is a post by Mark Cuban – Free vs Freely Distributed. Amongst his numerous business achievements Mark is an investor in Television. So I wasn’t surprised when Mark essentially articulated a TV business model. The content is distributed for free but where and how the content is displayed and monetized is tightly controlled by the content creators. Again, this is your TV model, Mark Cuban writes:
“They should distribute their content for Free where they believe it maximizes return, but should do everything possible to keep it from being distributed Freely.”
And now the idea that has been circling in my head. Permission Marketing means that you need my permission to send me an email about a product. Why don’t you need my explicit permission to use my content? You can use my photos, my text, etc, but you have to ask and agree on the terms, even if it’s free.
Ban all “embeds” and “cut & pastes”. I mean it! Redefine the internet share culture. An example, suppose Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is using a Flickr photo to illustrate his post with a credit to the photographer, naturally. Next this photo will get indexed and tagged with Guy’s text. The photo will be archived in the Google image library with Guy’s URL and will bring traffic to his blog, but rarely anything back to the original photographer. This doesn’t seem right? If you let the bird out of the cage there has to be some compensation for the person who fed and raised that bird. I remember circa 1998? Jim Cramer couldn’t get over the fact that financial Reuters feeds that previously cost thousands of dollars on the Bloomberg Terminals suddenly became free on Yahoo! This is where the trouble started!
Solution as I said is straightforward – no republishing of content without the explicit permission from a creator. No “cut & paste” and no “embeds” (brief quotes to make a point are OK). If there is one thing we did learn from Twitter is that you don’t need to republish to share. Links are perfectly fine for sharing and links should be encouraged. But free “share alike” reposts (or the widespread outright content theft) without permission are at the root of this malice.
There is already a model in the newspaper industry, the traditional opinion syndication. You want to publish editorials by Charles Krauthammer, go to Washington Post and negotiated the weekly fee (I did just that when I run a news web site). The copyright law never caught up with the internet reality and the Creative Commons license is unresponsive to the changing reality. RSS culture created the impression that content is permanently detached from the source. The remedy is to to banish the “embed” mentality! The internet sharing culture must be tweaked and reconsidered to allow people to get paid for their creative efforts.
Further Reading:
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
We all naturally approach this debate from our respective corners, but I think that's what's made it so interesting and volatile. I'm trying to wrap my head around it from the personal perspectives of a marketer and writer, and the professional perspective of a publisher who struggles daily with the limitations of a traditional media model and the lack of clarity in new media models.
As for “redefin[ing] the internet share culture”, I think that's a far more hopeless cause than establishing a clear value for the content being shared and simplifying the revenue share model. I like the Fair Syndication Consortium's proposal to force content aggregators to share ad revenue with content originators and think that's a much more likely compromise.
May be I should clarify that I don't mean to ban sharing entirely, but there has to be a point or a mechanism agreement that allows the originators to decide what is the value of the content. If they are OK with free, than the content is free but the originators have to acquiesce to it. You want to embed a YouTube video, there is a check out next to it. Technicality this is not too complicated, culturally this is a huge gap.
hi Ben. i'm pleased to see you post your thoughts on this debate. its a good one.
you can call me all sorts of names and i won't get offended. but please do not call me a banker. i don't loan money. i am not a bank. i don't come collecting if your idea fails. i fail with you. i am an investor.
i create a lot of content. photos on flickr, videos on youtube, blog posts, twitter posts, etc. I want everyone to come take them and use them as widely as possible.
and there are millions of people just like me who are amateurs but can do the same work that pros do.
that's why its a new world.
You're mixing up legitimate complaints about content-scraping with your Flickr and YouTube examples, both of which have options for limiting the shareability of content. On my blog, I only use Flickr photos that have the proper CC notation AND the “Blog This” option enabled. And, as you noted, I fully credit the photographer and link back to their page on Flickr. I've had a few instances where someone changed their settings on a picture after the fact and I had to find another picture to use. No harm, no foul.
Guy, I am aware of the Flicker permission settings and I publish Flicker photos as well. I was trying to make the point. The internet has perfected the art of sharing and now we need to think and advocate how we can drive value back to the content originators. Right now there are only two settings – share and don't share. But why not allow another permission setting, i.e. share but pay me a 99 cents, or 15 center per year, etc. Technically this is not hard to do and this is in fact the iTunes model. I wish it would be an available setting on different types of content, video, text, etc.
We need to refocus on allowing the creators to charge for the content.
But those options DO exist. For my online journal Spindle — which is technically a commercial venture, though not really — I've used iStockphoto, where photographers get paid for the usage of their photos. They also have videos.
Fred, I understand the magnetic power of sharing. If you create a masterpiece and no one can see it, as if it doesn't exist. At the same time a simple photo appreciated and liked by many has an immeasurable value. Humans really yearn for validation, even more than money. But there should be an option to share for free and an option to charge for the content. After all this is the Apps model. If it is OK for the iPhone why not have this option on Flicker or Youtube or a Reblog button connected to PayPal? As responded to Guy, we already perfected sharing, perhaps now is the time to drive value back to the content creators and originators.
P.S. Thank you for educating me on the differences between a banker and an investor.
Guy, thank you for reminding me about the stockphoto, etc. I would be curious to see what is Spindle. But of course there are options, this is like Google talking to the Department of Justice – “Yes there are other search options available. Check that!” But we all know that for all intents and purposes there is one game in town. What I am trying to say is that a change in culture, a change in the mind set is required.
That is the freemium model you are articulating and I totally agree. I suggested to flickr back before they were bought by yahoo! That they should built an iStockPhoto competitor. It would have been the most natural monetization move of them all. But you still gotta start with free to earn the right to get paid
An interesting approach to ownership of web content, but I believe it's too late to go backwards. The best thing you can do is understand how the dynamics have forced free to move forward. What can we do to best reward those who create great content?
I'm a big fan of freemium, and I'm trying to build that model into my blog as well as a software project I'm working on. Rewarding folks who generate great content monetarily is as natural as paying an artist for their work.
Mark, all the best with your business. I hope you really succeed.
I don't know what backwards means. In business and life its 90% trial and error. We adjust, businesses adjust. Case in point is Yahoo that now owns Flickr. The ad model is no longer working for them, they must find other sources for revenue. Nothing is cast in stone and people do change their habits. In the end we all are interested in reward flawing back to the creators. Change is possible.
Not a moment too soon for the freemium discussion, Bloomberg reports that NYT is considering a $5 monthly charge http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarch...
The interesting part of that report is that they would charge for the NYT on mobile devises first. My thoughts are that Apps paved the way for the mobile model. Have the internet occurred in general in the same time fram, we would have been paying for it too. A matter of time IMHO but the move by the NYT would embolden people to start charging.
Also interesting that Google today decided to display copyright license next to the images.
I believe the charging is inevitbale. Note this press release:
ASCAP Seeks Royalties on Embedded YouTube Music Videos
http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/07/09/ascap-s...
Hi Ben. I came over here from Glen's page, so apologies for my lateness to the debate here. A couple of points:
“Why don’t you need my explicit permission to use my content?” Well, technically you do, surely? That might not be how people act, though.
I'm a content producer. Unlike Glen, I'm nervous about the Fair Syndication Consortium's proposal. It's too close to the Performing Rights Society's balls-up of YouTube that means there's a whole load of musicians who can't get their videos out to me in the UK. I would like to be able to post my work for free if I want to and reserve the right not to share in the ad revenue of the places I post it. Culture-based industries have a habit of defending protectionist practices in the name of defending content producers, when actually they defend the industry not the individual.
A couple of small points. 1. I'm broke. I scrape by in a day job. I'm not a rich erson writing as a hobby trying to drive hardworking writers out of business. 2. I do want to make a living from my writing. BUT 3. I would like to have the right to try and do that by using the business model of my choosing, and I choose to give my content away for free. I will always give it away for free in electronic form. I believe my novels are good enough and have enough appeal that readers will be prepared, down the line, to pay for my books. As someone who believes cultre is a conversation between artist and audience, I can only see supply side protectionism as a form of cultural murder (not morally, logically). If my writing isn't good enough to attract paying bookbuyers, or my business model's too misjudged and people don't buy, no one has anything to fear from me. If my writing or my business model IS good enough then why shouldn't I take a slice of the industry's pie.
I guess my point is – collective agreements and fair treatment for producers sound great (hey, it's like Fair trade for coffee growers, we already have the preconception it must be A.Good.Thing). But the problem with collective agreements is they draw circles, they impose boundaries, they categorise. The wonderful thing about the internet is it attacks categories and boundaries, and finds ways to disrupt cartels. Long may that continue.
Please note, I am a member of the Year Zero Writers collective (http://www.yearzerowriters.wordpress.com) but the opinions stated here are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of my fellow Zeros :-)
Dan, thank you for your comment. Sorry for responding so late I was traveling. Thank you for sharing your quest to be a writer. I am sure you will succeed. Incidentally I don't think there is a culture of a “conversation between artist and audience”. Anything that pretends to be culture is a conversation first. I believe in this strongly, it is all about having live exchange to polish your ideas that you then can explore in writing.
For sure you to have the right to free publish but you should also be allowed to get paid. There needs to be a mechanism and the expectation that content is not worthless. I am not advocating the collective agreements. I am advocating the built in ability to charge for the content.
I will check out the web site…
Hi Ben, thank you so much for getting back to me. Apologies that you caught me in one of my more abrasive moods before – I can only put it down to too much or too little caffeine :-) I agree there isn't a culture of conversation, but I believe that this is what art should be – I've written in a couple fo places about returning to the old models of oral storytelling, where the teller has a distinctive voice but moulds the story to the particular audience, always sympathetic to their concerns – and how the internet offers unique insighst into the way tales like Beowulf and The Odyssey were composed.
I absolutely agree on the expectation that content is not worthless. I know some people think making work available for free degrades its intrinsic value (or the estimation thereof) but that misses the mark. In the music world, the biggest free file-sharers are also the biggest purchasers, and the intrinsic monetary value of content is clearly related to the subjetive aesthetic value individuals place on it. I think that's transferable to written content. In other words, just because I give something away, deosn't mean someone wouldn't be prepared to pay for it (or an almost identical work by someone else) if it had a price tag, provided they love it. Likewise, if I give someone one book for free and they think it's rubbish, they won't come back for my next one even if it's also free.
Dan, your ideas about storytelling are interesting but I was thinking more about conversations way to refine ideas and culture. Rather than a conversation between an author and an audience. I was thinking horizontally.
To your second point. Absolutely you need to give and graciously receive samples.