Digital collaboration

In mediAgora, I go on at some length about 'derivative works' and 'source works' until most non-lawyers' eyes glaze over. Today, I heard a great example of exaclty the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Shannon Campbell is a very talented folk singer-songwriter in Pennsylvania, who posts MP3's on her site, including this one - Dreaming of Violets: (Mirrored on my site).

Scott Andrew LePera is a musician in the California Bay Area. He downloaded Shannon's song, and recorded his own accompaniment, giving this:
Dreaming of Violets (redux): (Mirrored on my site).


OK, you say, beautiful music, talented musicians singing together via their blogs,what's that got to do with your media marketplace dreaming?

Lets imagine a world with mediAgora. In this world, Shannon would have registered her song, and set a price for it (say 50 cents, including a 10 cent promotion fee). People who liked the free preview could pay for the high quality one and download it, and tell their friends and so on.

Scott could find this song, record his extra vocals and backing, and register it with mediAgora too. Say he charged 20 cents for the extra work, with a 5 cent promo fee.

I come along and hear the song on his weblog, and I like it , so I pay 70 cents. This gets me both versions of the song. I link to them here, on blogcritics and so on, and suddenly hundreds of people download the songs (note my fantasy thet hundreds of people read my weblog). Shannon gets 50 cents for each, Scot gets his 20 cents, and I get some of the promotion fee, with the rest going to them. I feel good and Shannon has to spend less time waiting on tables

Posted 1:27 PM by Kevin Marks

Last time music was under threat

A eulogy and lament for magnetic tape.

Posted 1:05 AM by Kevin Marks

End to End marketplace

Werbach does seem to get it. MediAgora can be thought of as an end to end media marketplace - it doesn't presume to know where the great content comes from, or whether it is the same for everyone, but provides a discovery and payment mechanism for it to emerge.

Posted 1:03 AM by Kevin Marks

Cashets

Cashets are a new kind of centipayment system that sounds like the original root of PayPal before their merchant terms got too high. No fees for buyers, 1% (1 cent minimum) for sellers.

Not a bad idea, but 1 cent merchant fee is still too high for doing small payments between people, like the promotion fees in mediAgora. PayPal lets you do costless transfers as a private individual. I suppose you could use this once the fees are aggregated, and it looks less onorous to sign up for than PayPal,especially as a merchant.

Posted 12:56 AM by Kevin Marks

Stallman on 'Trusted Computing'

Who should your computer take its orders from?Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing," large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal.
[...]
"Treacherous computing" is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer.

Posted 12:58 AM by Kevin Marks

Semiotic Democracy

Larry Lessig leads me to William Fisher's excellent essay on Digital Music It summarizes the pros and cons of digital online distribution very well, and includes this paragraph that explains one of the reasons I am so passionate about this idea:

Semiotic democracy. In most modern capitalist countries, the power to make meaning, to shape culture, has been concentrated in relatively few hands. One of the great cultural benefits of the Internet in general lies in its tendency to decentralize this semiotic power. In two respects, Internet distribution of digital music would contribute to that decentalization. The first, already mentioned, consists of the expansion of the set of musicians who can reach wide audiences and the associated diminution of the cultural power of the "big five" record companies. The second consists of the ease with which "consumers" of digital music can manipulate it, recombine pieces of it, blend it with their own material -- in short, can become producers.

Exactly. But they need to be able to make money doing it, which is where mediAgora comes in.

Posted 1:51 PM by Kevin Marks

The False Binary of Copyright

Reid Stott writes: this debate has become far too binary, and even the language of the debate has been hijacked. There are only two potential outcomes presented; either Hollywood and The Big Five record companies will gain control over all intellectual property so they can "protect" artists, or no creative person will ever be able to make a dime again. Or, if you are from the "information wants to be free" camp, either MegaCorps will control all intellectual property by raping "fair use," extending copyright terms nearly indefinitely, and electronically straight-jacketing consumers with copy-protection schemes ... or the world will rapidly advance into a New Renaissance where The People own all Intellectual Property, and all creations belong to the masses.
In describing the trip to these exotic and extreme locales, both sides fail to even note the middle ground over which they pass. And that middle ground contains the solutions they dare not utter, because they contain reason and compromise. And separation.
We won't be going there, except in a dream.

I have a dream that we can go there. I have a model to fill this void. Help me make it real.

Posted 1:13 AM by Kevin Marks

Bob, David and Dan converge on our theme

SATN.org: Comments from Bob Frankston, David Reed, Dan Bricklin, and others

Bob Frankston:
Where is the important debate -- the one about how to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts"? The value of progress makes the fixation on preserving a problematic means of compensation seem petty at best and at worst not only does this fixation threaten to hobble our ability to make progress it also requires the kind of invasiveness that would have been unimaginable to those who granted only limited rights to congress and then quickly amended the constitution to explicitly give us (at least in the United States) additional protection.

Instead of treating everyone as a consumer/pirate who can do no more than divvy up a limited supply of "intellectual property" we should see everyone as a potential author/contributor. Why are we so intent on limiting these technologies instead of encouraging the exploration and discovery that enriches us all?

Exactly! We can all play the rôles of Creator, Promoter and Customer.

David Reed:
What would Macaulay have thought about granting those who have limited copyrights additional rights to take vigilante action to explore any and all personal computers with no liability for harm caused by accident (such as proposed in the Berman-Coble bill)?
What would he have thought if Congress decided to criminalize the very attempt to make tools to copy works that had exceeded their copyright term (such as the DMCA does)?

I'd like to hear that speech.

Dan Bricklin:
The right to create derivative works is important
I've been reading a lot about yesterday's Eldred v. Ashcroft hearing and listening to some commentary on the radio. People keep talking about the right to make copies. What they keep forgetting about is one of the most important things to our culture: The right to make derivative works. It isn't that I'm lazy or cheap and just want to take from you (the image that keeps on being portrayed, incorrectly, of those who value the public domain). It's that unless it's in the public domain I can't build on what you did.

A key element of the mediAgora model is that you are giving permission for derivative works to be created by using the mediAgora system. A derivative work can incorporate other works, and they are added to the price.

Posted 1:31 AM by Kevin Marks

Making My Own Music

Kevin Kelly has an army of preservers
So far music listeners around the world have digitized more than 850,000 albums and 10 million songs of all musical genres. Fans have already converted almost all music ever recorded.
[...]
Owners of an about-to-expire copyright have several favorite arguments for extending it. One is that it spurs creativity by making original works more valuable. But an extension actually restricts creativity by narrowing the shared universe of works artists can build upon. Another is that they need an extension as an incentive to convert old material into new media. As Jack Valenti, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, has pointed out, digitizing films is expensive. "Who is going to digitize these public domain movies?" he asks.

I have an answer: movie buffs. Not only have fans moved almost all of music into the digital era, they have been busy moving hundreds of millions of documents onto the Web and are producing millions of pages of daily reporting and news in Weblogs. And without the help of paralyzed publishers, avid readers have already converted nearly 20,000 books in the public domain.

The passion of fans is unstoppable - and technology will make it only more so. Listeners, readers and watchers now have the means to do chores that companies themselves used to have to do.

Posted 10:03 AM by Kevin Marks

The Recoriding industry explained

Jack Kapica writes:
It's easy to fail in e-business; what's hard is failing magnificently.

The Big Five music recording companies have been transcendent in this respect.

Their combined efforts have gone beyond killing their e-businesses and are close to destroying an entire industry.

Posted 2:10 PM by Kevin Marks

Lileks makes my point about source works

In today's Bleat he says:
The link changes everything. When someone derides or exalts a piece, the link lets you examine the thing itself without interference. TV can't do that. Radio can't do that. Newspapers and magazines don't have the space. My time on the internet resembles eight hours at a coffeeshop stocked with every periodical in the world - if someone says "I read something stupid" or "there was this wonderful piece in the Atlantic" then conversation stops while you read the piece and make up your own mind.

Exactly. This is why creating a work based on a source work should be allowed by default, providing your customers pay the price for the source work too.

Posted 12:28 AM by Kevin Marks

Fortune: Tuning out the Customer

David Kirkpatrick writes:
Something has gone terribly wrong in the relationship between media companies and their customers. The use and enjoyment of music and video appears to be rising, as a multitude of new methods of digitally receiving and using it emerge. But rather than welcome the opportunity to develop new markets, media companies view the new digital tools with alarm. The companies are convinced that legitimate sales of their products are suffering as people download, copy, and share media, especially music. They're determined to stop it.

The media companies are now undertaking an assault on the customer. They shut down Napster, the most popular new technology application in many years. They have sued and shut down sites that listed lyrics to popular songs. They have begun selling CDs with so-called "copy protection" that should instead be called "listen prevention," because they often are unplayable on PCs and other popular listening devices.

Posted 5:23 PM by Kevin Marks

Is Chiariglione on board?

He spoke to the AES conference:
Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, Telecom Italia Lab's vice president of multimedia, commenced the 113th AES Convention with a rich and unprecedented speech supporting open access to protected content. Introducing attendees to his delivery network for the first time, Dr. Chiariglione outlined key precepts behind widespread sharing of protected materials. "The problem is this: Content is art, and it should be considered art," he said. "Six billion people have six billion ideas." He continued to say that the only solution to trademark fraud and piracy was to engender a system that rewards music labels, musicians and consumers equally.

Dr. Chiariglione's proposed system relies on standards that allow the production of protected audio with access available to any user who obtains the rights. He asserted that his system was not a "free to all" system, rather, a delivery network trading paid content rights for unfettered access.

"The future doesn't stop today," he stated. "Art must not stop today. We need to produce a way for artists to benefit from art to keep making art. Let's make technology and content friends of mankind. Unless people get value from their art, they can't make it. All artists should have means to produce their art and receive remuneration."

In coda, Dr. Chiariglione paid homage to John Lennon's ballad, "Imagine." He said, "Let me have a dream. Imagine no blocking technologies. It's easy if you try...Imagine six billion people sharing content."

Chiariglione is the 'father of MPEG'

Posted 11:22 PM by Kevin Marks

RIAA Sues Radio Stations For Giving Away Free Music

RIAA Sues Radio Stations For Giving Away Free Music
LOS ANGELES?The Recording Industry Association of America filed a $7.1 billion lawsuit against the nation's radio stations Monday, accusing them of freely distributing copyrighted music.
"It's criminal," RIAA president Hilary Rosen said. "Anyone at any time can simply turn on a radio and hear a copyrighted song. Making matters worse, these radio stations often play the best, catchiest song off the album over and over until people get sick of it. Where is the incentive for people to go out and buy the album?"
According to Rosen, the radio stations acquire copies of RIAA artists' CDs and then broadcast them using a special transmitter, making it possible for anyone with a compatible radio-wave receiver to listen to the songs.

It's from the Onion, but it does sound familiar, doesn't it...

Posted 1:50 PM by Kevin Marks