Death to Copyright!
- Image via Wikipedia
The Artist as Marketer and Performer
Ever since the dawn of the digital age ( December, 1974) we’ve been hearing about the death of copyright and intellectual property.
The reasoning goes something like this: Information such as movies, music and writing can now be perfectly preserved, copied and distributed for virtually no cost anywhere in the world in any quantity needed. Because of this it inherently has no worth and ethically it makes no sense to restrict this information to only those willing to pay for it. Information has value only when freely disseminated to those who need it.
In this model “performance” becomes valuable. Intellectual Property owners should freely distribute their property in order to build “Mind share.” If the property is accepted by the audience, they will then be willing to pay for non-distributable performance events ( Concerts, film screenings, book readings, seminars, etc.) that add value to the base product.
There are lots of examples that point to this model succeeding. I-tunes, YouTube, MySpace and Linux all are successful. Yes, You pay a nominal fee for some products, but in most of these models, value rests in the fact that these are all freely available. I type this on a computer running Slax into a form from WordPress, who will save it in a My SQL database. All free to me, and therefore more valuable to me as an aspiring writer than Office, Movable type and MS SQL.
This Model scares the gatekeepers- The editors and publishers- who cannot afford to relinquish control to the audience. Since they don’t create the product, Their value is in their expertise. Right now Scholastic will make Millions on the last Harry Potter book Both because they did all the heavy lifting on the previous books and they’ve been the ones to have to wade through all the horrible amateur clones trying to get published in an effort to find the next profitable series.
Now the gatekeepers are talking about the Long Tail. In this model, entry barriers have been removed, but the public still relies on the gatekeepers to filter out the trash. for them, they still make most of their money on a relatively few blockbusters, but now they can afford to keep the long tail of works in print. The publishers, having taken the risk to buy the rights, now are fighting for eternal copyright, both in case a popular work proves valuable in perpetuity, and if it does not so they can continue to market the few copies to this long tail.
But this is rapidly changing and the gatekeepers are becoming less valuable.. In the near future, the next Harry Potter, or LOTR or Green Day or Whatever might come directly from the Web- a meme that will be marketed directly by its savvy creator. Already there are author’s like Cory Doctorow
In the future, then, I propose that copyright will become less important to creators as income will not be generated directly from the work itself, but from the performance of the work. as barriers to entry fall,I will be able to publish my work myself in a professional manner with very little financial risk. but the rewards will be greater. I will be able to set my own price, and will have to market myself as a performer.
Coming up next: Long live Copyright!
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[...] just like Real Property. This Goes directly against prevailing wisdom, as espoused in my essay Death to Copyright. That the digital age has effectively killed the idea of copyright as it is now possible to freely [...]