JW: One of the things you talked about was the idea of global micropayments. That everyone could receive compensation for their bits and compensate others for their bits. I sort of like the ISP-we-pay-for-bits model that we play as long as we pay or contribute content. Any ideas about how we move more toward that type of idea? It seems more like a sea change but I like the idea and I assume that it's something you thought about.posted by jessamyn at 8:55 AM on January 14, 2010 [15 favorites]
JL: Well, yea, um. Getting from here to there is always the trickiest thing in any aspect of life and so I didn't go into that in great detail in the book. I can imagine various scenarios. For instance, at some point which is essentially now, China is going to be sick of the idea that we're the designers and they're the manufacturers and they'll start designing on their own, and then, before too long, some American manufacturer will rip off a Chinese designer and the Chinese will be upset about it.
The same sort of thing will happen for a lot of countries and then there might be enough international pressure for some sort of convention on intellectual property because this, what this is about is a social contract, a social contract will come about when enough people perceive self-interest in a system that defers gratification.
The reason we don't just go in and steal from every house or car or sleep in every house we come to even though it may be more convenient than make it home to our own house is that we've all bought into the idea that that bit of deferred gratification overall is better for us and that's what makes a social contract and enough people have to feel that they've been wronged by the system before there can be that perception--that accurate perception--of shared interest in a better system. Back to questions as to "How?" I'm suspecting that it'll be international. I'm suspecting that the United States will be dragged into it by international interests eventually.
“Well, the real money is in touring.” Really? When was the last time you saw a ‘new,’ post-record company artist headline a major music festival? At this rate, we’ll be stuck with Coldplay for decades [...]On a similar theme, there's Clay Shirky writing in the latest Edge:
The fact is that I feel my music has value. You may disagree, and that’s fine. But I know how much energy I put into what I do, and how long it takes me to make something I’m satisfied with. Giving that away just feels wrong to me. [... ]
Most think that I should stop whining, grow up and embrace the Internet, become more active, tweet more, hype more, give more stuff away, etc, etc. Honestly, I’ve tried…and will keep trying. But the bottom line is that not every paradigm or system is right for everyone. We’ve all been told for years that the Internet is our Savior; it’s cool, youthful, hip, the solution to every problem, and if you aren’t joining a new networking site on a weekly basis, you’re a social pariah. Sorry…I just don’t feel that way. -- from here
It is our misfortune to live through the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race, a misfortune because surplus always breaks more things than scarcity. Scarcity means valuable things become more valuable, a conceptually easy change to integrate. Surplus, on the other hand, means previously valuable things stop being valuable, which freaks people out.That's the nub of the problem, really. There's a massive surplus, and consequently the value of stuff is dropping like a stone. It wouldn't be a problem at all, except that while there's a surplus of stuff for us to get, the same real-world constraints apply to its creation. Quality creation isn't changing at nearly the same pace that distribution is. That's why 95% of new news still comes from newspapers.
The reason we don't just go in and steal from every house or car or sleep in every house we come to even though it may be more convenient than make it home to our own house is that we've all bought into the idea that that bit of deferred gratification overall is better for us and that's what makes a social contract and enough people have to feel that they've been wronged by the system before there can be that perception--that accurate perception--of shared interest in a better system.Thanks for the interview snippet, jessamyn. I haven't read the book, nor the rest of the interview, and I know that talking off the cuff does not always present ideas in the best way, but I have to say that Lanier's comments in response to your (very fair) question seem to be extraordinarily off-base. Quite aside from what I take to be a kind of naivety re what it might take to get China to care about intellectual property in the same way we do in the US, his comment about why we don't sleep in houses or steal cars seems so off-base as to suggest that he really hasn't given this much thought. I think any argument that's predicated on the idea that we don't steal because we all agree that delayed gratification is "better" for us is pretty cockeyed.
Would people have to register with the [US] government to read the New York Times, then? Would this invite regulation of the press?I think the real problem is the obsession with copyright as the mechanism to promote the arts. Rather then trying to track everyone and monitor everyone's computer to make sure they're not "cheating" just tax everyone and then hand out the money to artists. A non-coercive, self-reporting system for people to indicate what they look at and listen to and what they want to support could be used to divide things up.
I think it sounds like an extraordinarily bad idea.
That's too bad, because he sounds like the carbon copy of one. How is it forward thinking to try to revive the corpse of a system that flopped over a decade ago?Because the dying corpse of the MSM will heap praise upon him as it goes down. It's forward thinking like a vulture trailing a starving child.
The simple fact of the matter is that MANY people create content for free, by choice. Perhaps they are bored, or think their content sucks, or believe that no matter what, someone should be creating this content. Perhaps it brings them joy to think that some day, someone will enjoy content they created for free.True, but even people who would do it for free would create better stuff if they got paid. Believe it or not kings of power 4 billion % was created by someone working on a government grant (I've heard). So was the first Harry Potter book. If you're getting paid you can focus on your work without needing a dayjob.
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posted by The3rdMan at 8:41 AM on January 14, 2010