mediAgora

a new marketplace for media

mediAgora defines a fair, workable market model that works with the new realities of digital media, instead of fighting them.

Principles:
  • Creators should be credited and rewarded for their work.
  • Works can be incorporated into new creative works.
  • When they are, all source works should be credited and rewarded.
  • Customers should pay a known price.
  • Successful promotion of work should be rewarded too.
  • Individuals can play multiple roles - Creator, Promoter, Customer
  • Prices and sales figures should be open
  • Relationships are based on trust and reputation
  • Copy protection destroys value
Friday, January 31, 2003

Making lots of recordings

Phish's online service to allow downloads of every concert performance is a very good move. Imagine if every touring band did this, and you could download the perfromance you just heard when you get home...

Posted 1:06 AM by Kevin Marks

Thursday, January 23, 2003

Sites that could adopt mediAgora

Mixonic make CDs for you, CustomFlix do it with DVDs, and Cafepress are going to do both, as well as books on demand.
All three of them should adopt the mediAgora model for promotion.
Clay Shirky is close to getting it, though he ignores FireFly and others that did what he suggest a while back. The necessary thing is a payment system that rewards creators and promoters fairly. That is what mediAgora provides. Once it exists, the collaborative filtering, recommenation systems and so on can flourish.

Posted 12:00 AM by Kevin Marks

Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Why we need mediAgora...

Bowdlerizing for Columbine? - Why American directors have no moral rights to their movies. By Drew Clark
Cutting sex, violence, and profanity from movies is normally considered censorship. But if studios and directors like Steven Spielberg and Steven Soderbergh win a copyright suit against 11 small companies that permit consumers to avoid such scenes, free speech will be the loser, not the victor.

Most of the companies are based in Utah and offer families "clean" versions of popular films. Since they each use different methods for bypassing potentially offensive portions, the directors' and studios' claims against some are more legally compelling than others. Clean Flicks, for example, makes a master copy of Saving Private Ryan, editing out the bullet shots in the movie's first battle scene. It then duplicates the revised version for rental or purchase by the "members" of its franchises. Another company, ClearPlay, creates a software filter or mask that is downloaded to a special DVD player. Once a consumer pops an unaltered Erin Brockovich DVD in the player, the software simply instructs the player to mute Julia Roberts' foul language. Trilogy Studios of Salt Lake City takes this process one step further: Instead of skipping over the nude Kate Winslet posing for Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, its latest software tells the DVD player to display a picture of her body clothed with a corset.

I hope the DGA lose these cases.

Posted 11:50 PM by Kevin Marks