On 1/28/07, Lucas Gonze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 1/27/07, Steve Watkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Im not sure Id agree that a sense of victimization or righteous anger > > are the primary driving forces behind such things, but they are in the > > mix somewhere when it comes to reactions of music etc industry. > > When somebody makes the argument that the profit of a third party is > necessarily their loss, they are arguing from victimization. > > Let's say you argue that aggregated creators deserve a share of the > profits of an aggregator. That doesn't follow from economics. The > economic point of view is that investors in the aggregator, its > owners, are the ones who deserve a share of the profits, because they > also stood to lose money if it lost money. > > When I buy a house for $X, I stand to lose $X and also stand to gain > whatever I can sell it for above $X. If the value of my house goes up > because my neighbor painted and fixed up their own place, my neighbor > has no claim to my profit.
I COMPLETELY disagree with our house argument. Instead let's talk roads. Let's say I'm a private road builder... not many of those exist due real world physical limitations.... but let's continue anyway. If I build my road an I decide to charge 50 cents a truckful and your watermellons you're giving away for free are traveling down that road are you entitled to some of my money. Fuck no. In many respects this is all mefeedia, or webjay, or google search or myheavy or any of these players are. Now... there's some funny lines if you start really getting into it.... and I would love to get into it. But this is what we're talking about... wether it's making playlists, or rolling your own feeds, or remix, or aggregation... or just plain old SEARCH... these are all the roads of the metaverse. They're the architecture of information. Do to some seriously screwed up bacwards moves in copyright law this space needs mass copyleft licensing before it can even function.... and it stil exists in a grey legal area. Right now we have road makers like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon thinking they can charge the automanufacturers a tax for using their cars. Why? Because they figure they can make a lot more money off the people already paying at the toll booth ... by hidding other hidden costs in the network. And meanwhile you have the content industry... these car makers... thinking that they can not only tell car owners not only what roads they can and cannot drive down... but installing GPS under every hood that shuts the car off if it's off their predefined network of roads.... but that's not all... to keep people from hacking these GPS systems they're locking the hoods of the cars and trying to make it illegal for anyone to own a key or use it but their dealerships. And now everyone things they have it all figured out... but some of those damn fucking anarchists socialist scumbags come along and say you know the fuck what! We don't need your goddam shiny fancy cars... nor your fucking roads... we've got Linux, we have Podsafe music, we've got RSS and blogging... we'll make our own damn cars... and build our own roads. And now these fascist road builders and car makers are starting to understand the new world order of things. They're more terrified then every... but as they're scratching their heads and shitting their pants they looking around at these new netoworks and these new cars and starting to realize two things. 1) They're not as powerful nor as important as they thought they were and more importantly... 2) That this IS the new order of things... and they do have to "compete with free". If we're really really lucky then maybe, just maybe... these automakers are looking around at their own technologically gilded cages (cages they themselves have made! Though they bitch of nothing but the stench of rotten apples.) ...and they look around at all these beautiful linux companies "giving it away for free" ....and videoblogs, and podcasts, and podsafe musicians... these marketplaces like emusic that sell cars with unlocked hoods... horror of horors... and they're starting to realize that they can and always could compete and thrive and succeed in this space all along. They just had their heads to far up their arses. Competeing with free was never really the damn problem at all. And why the fuck would it be, the water industry has been doing it here in the U.S. for years and it's one of the healthiest industires on the planet. As McDonalds has proven with their bottled water brand Dasani in europe you CAN take free water right out of the tap put it in a bottle and sell it right back to people and make a make quite a snazzy profit. All these metaphors may be insane... but it's true... these metaphors pretty much exactly describe the state of the IP word. One final word. The truth is in the future all IP will be on some level free... because it MUST be free for the world to function. It's not only a moral and ethical imperitive it is also an economic imperitive. As time goes buy economics will DEMAND (as in supply and demand) that all the worlds intellectual property be more and more free until a new economic balance is met. People often thinking I'm talking in cryptic tongs... but you can apply this logic to ANY intelectual property and you can see it happening everywhere around us. If you're a photographer you cannpt sell a photo on the web without providing at the VERY least a thumbnail of what that photo looks like. And if you've been paying attention you'll notice that the large that free thumbnail the more you have a chance of making a sale. What's the optimum size for giving away that free thumbnail!? That's completely up to the artist and how they interpret the laws of supply and demand. What about movies... certainly movies haven't become free yet!? But they have! Five years ago you were lucky to find a movie trailer online. Now you name a movie and there's a trailer online. You're nowhere if you haven't provided a trailer on the web. What's more these trailers are almost all freely downloadable and distributeable. They're getting longer. They're getting more and more highres.... extremly highres even. And that's not all. Now people are releasing 5 minute trailers... they're releasing teaser trailers, and theatrical trailers... and some crazy sons of a bitches are releasing whole sections of their movies! Mainstream artist are giving away free mp3's on their sites. Independant artists are putting copy-left podsafe licensing on their music and actually encouraging podcasters to syndicate it!! Heh! Doesn't this sound like Videbloggers encouraging people like mefeedia and yahoo video, and dabble to syndicate their videos!? And have you checked out how many magazines and newspapers are giving away their entire publications for free on the web!? I personlly love when they put the entire thing on the bittorrent networks. How is it that they can give it away for free and still make it up on profit? How long untill a TV producer clues into putting not intersticial ads into their shows, but actual product placements and brand overlays... that can't easily be removed and then by passes network tv distributors alltogether and realizes they can make a 1000% more profit distributing their content on bittorrent? I'm a POS honkey... And I grow tired of ranting tonight. Go check out someone elses rant... he'll tell you all about the future of TV... I mostly agree with him even though I don't even know his name and I think his speach was given in 2005! http://www.mininova.org/search/bittorrent+future/ Here! Here's a REALLY good reson to watch the above linked to presentation on the future of telivision. The presenter says one fundamental thing. The advertising model still fundamentally works for television though the distribution model may well cange to things like bittorrent. The only problem he suggests is that since bittorrent distributes globaly how then do we target niche audiences!? He doesn't answer that one... because honestly he didn't know the answer.... so I'm going to tell you myself because I think you'll find it very pertinent. In a world where you can distribute your media directly to audiences world wide for virtually NO cost at all, how do you target your ads so you can make money? You SYNDICATE! Which is you syndicate your show to a niche market maker whom already has a critical mass audience and all the right advertisers ligned up who want to reach that audience. You bring the content... they bring the advertisers and the audience, and everyone gets happy. Bells should be ringing by now. Here we com full circle... because if you vloggers want to get paid and I know not all of you do, but if you want to, you should have seen GENIUS and opportunity in what MyHeavy was doing with your content even if it was a gross abuse of your licensing rights. The answer should have hit you in the head like a ton of bricks. Indeed I pointed it out in the original myHeavy thread. My Heavy HAS a critical mass audience already created. They have a network. They have advertisers all lined up ready to meet that audience. There's one thing My Heavy needs... and that's content like Ask A Ninja, or Rocketboom, or Ze Frank. Ask a Ninja isn't going to undermine any of these guys markets. I'd be pretty damn suprised if many if any Heavy.com user also had even heard of any of the major vlogs. The point is syndication is the key to everything 1) reaching new audiences 2) targeted advertising 3) getting vloggers paid. That's it, case closed. I had fun. So concludes my lesson in how to write a bitchy rant. :) more comments below on specific details of this vision. > There are people who read my blog in Bloglines, for example, but I > make no claim to Bloglines' revenues. If Bloglines goes out of > business I lose nothing, so why should I stand to gain if it makes > money? Ditto videoblogs and video aggregrators. good point.... but bloglines isn't just abouter house... or a blog for that matter... unless it's some sort of freaky house that fit's a thousand other houses inside. The metaphor is definitely roads, which is a metaphore for syndication and the search space. Let's argue some more, I love your rants and aggree with everything you're saying about syndication even if you can't make a metaphor work to save your life. So... you really believe that MyHeavy should be able to put ads all over peoples videos on vloggers aggregated videos on myheavy.com? It is an extremely interesting concept... but I can't see how the economics could possibly work. Secondly, where DO you draw the line. Even if MyHeavy putting ads on others aggregated content certainly a) this counts as a derivative work for profit, b) if not that then the lack of attribution is a violation of creative commons, and c) the misrepresentation of the work as their own by dropping their logo on it is absolutely 3VIL to the core. Are you really saying the MyHeavy advertising was OK if they'd properly represented the work and linked back to the original blog post? I definitely seeing the MyHeavy's and Mefeedia's as having value to offer as they build robust audiences. In that respect they're almost EXACTLY like today's current tv networks. It's the same damn busiess model. However I would have to say, and I think you'd have to agree that the only thing to determing is how the relationship between these future networks and the content producers will work. I think that while on some level most media will be free on another some opt-in relationship must be established before any serious money can be made, and it must be some sort of rev share or outright blanket marketing. > Ask yourself this: if MyHeavy goes out of business, what does it cost > you? And how do you know whether they are even making a profit right > now? (I doubt they are). The reality is that you don't know or care > whether they exist, much less whether they are profitable. The only > thing that matters to you is whether *you* are profitable. Myheavy ISN'T making a profit of course, but they did just get somethign like 12 million in funding or some such. If they go out of business.... I think it hurts us ALL... because I think it's lost opportunity. I'd be betting my money on them. I don't know much about myheavy, but if I had an entertainment vlog I'd have already emaled me and asked them to KEEP me up on myheavy.com and worked with them to make some sort of licenscing deal. I probably would have played hardball. As for "my prfitability" I somewhat agree... myheavy is potential untapped market... so the likely hood it is canabalizing any vlogs market is absurd. The outrage I think comes from the mere possibility that someone COULD be profiting off our media when none of us have yet to make any money. > People in the music business made the same bogus argument over and > over again in reaction to third parties who benefit from their work. > If somebody sings my song at a birthday party and everybody has fun > because of that, don't I deserve a few bucks? If my song accidentally > ends up in the background of a scene in a documentary, don't I get > paid? If an Elvis impersonator lands a good gig in Vegas, doesn't the > Presley estate get a cut? there's a line there between absurdity and just good sense. Where do you think it is? > So that's my case that the sense of righteous anger is misplaced. Now > for the issue of victimization -- why do I say this anger flows from a > misplaced sense of victimization? I have nothing to say on this, other then, why you picking a fight... don't insult us... or at the very least bait us.... sure you could call it a "victim complex".... or you could just call it a rightous anger due to finding out that someone making ANY revenue (notice I didn't say profit as you mention above, because it's not about profit just revenue)... anyway, it's anger that anyone could be making ANY money off our content witout asking... .... that said... I totally agree about the comparisons to the RIAA and MPAA... we're pushing opportunity AWAY as they did... instead of realizing potentials and trying to establish new possibilities. > The value of my house goes up because my neighbor painted and fixed up > their own place. Do they deserve a cut? Why shouldn't they get a > share, since it was their work? Their improvements weren't cheap > either! I mean, they slaved on their fixup every weekend, they put a > ton of money into the painters, they took a day off from work to get a > construction permit -- where do I get off making a fortune off them!? I still don't get your metaphor.... MyHeavy is not another house in the neighborhood. The road metaphor is much more apt I think... let's argue it. > But hold on, there's another way of looking at it. My benefit is a > positive externality. Per Wikipedia at > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality, 'an externality is a cost or > benefit from an economic transaction that parties "external" to the > transaction receive.' Just so for remixers and aggregators and all > the other third parties, whether street people or rich corporations, > who benefit from the labor and investment of a videoblogger. How do you feel about the mix tape DJ's busted in Atlanta? Something not many people realized... a) they were NOT mixtaps like you used to make in highschool. They were tapes of "remixes"... just like the same shit we pass around online everyday. You wouldn't recognize a sample in them if you tried. I say this not because it changes a whole lot legally, but because there's a HUGE cultural disconnect... and I can pretty much gurantee 99% of the planet totally misunderstood what a hiphop mixtape was b) DJ Shadow... it was DJ shadow right? I'm always using the wrong name, sorry... anyway... I read up on him. He's a paid promoter for MANY artists the RIAA claims to represent. One of three or so major east coast promoters / taste makers in fact. I don't know the specifics, but I do know the RIAA just shot several of it's labels in the foot. c) there's no doubt about it... in the world of hiphop in atlanta they don't get much better than this guy, he was obviously a maveric and even a generally all around upstanding member of the community. Fuck the RIAA. > What matters has nothing to do with the benefit of third parties. It > has to do with the health of the videoblogger. If you got what you > wanted out of your vlog, who cares whether other people benefitted > too? Did you have fun? Did you make friends? Did you make something > beautiful and worthwhile? If so, keep doing it. If not, quit. There > is no need for my neighbor to get a share of my profit if their > intention was to live in a better home. Unless of course... you're a vlogger struggling to make ends meet .... then some asshole making money off your stuff without offering you a cut might fucking piss you off... and you'd be right to. You're assuming everyone on this list has gotten everything they want out of vlogging, but by their very being on this list it would indicate they're unsatisfied and always looking for what's next, what's new... how am I going to make some money? MyHeavy is NOT a neighbor... unless there a neighbor who parks their hummer in your driveway and comes over and raids your fridge... and takes your lawnmower without asking. Needless to say, I think your metaphor sucks. :P > Our work on CCMixter.org made it possible for remixers in the > community to do stuff they couldn't have done otherwise. Ok, they > lost the potential to earn money from people who sampled them, but > they wouldn't have created those samples if they weren't able to > sample others in the first place. Whatever they might have lost was > something they wouldn't have had in the first place. As Rox says, > "from way out there it all belongs to all of us. We are the > messengers." Yeah, but people on CC mixter.org OPTED IN! people on ccmixter had a choice. Many vloggers here had a choice and they chose creative commons, drivatives OK if non-commercial and atribution is required. That was their choice, MyHeavy VIOLATED that choice in a big way. I get the gist of your argument, I really do, and I don't think you'll find anyone who understands nor is interested in your general argument more. I just think you should take more care at focusing your argument because it is really condescending or at the least baiting. > So that's the arguing from victimization thing. It's an argument that > doesn't flow from economics, just from a sense of entitlement. > > > What a totally different attitude we might have to all forms of > > ownership, rights, control, freedom of all creative works, ideas, and > > reuse, if we lived in some totally different world where everybody did > > a practical job such as farming during the first part of the day, and > > then returned home to converse, create, remix and redeploy, entertain > > , amuse and educate fellow humans during the afternoon & evening. > > As a musician, I have no desire to do it for a living. I really do > prefer to do it on the side. It makes me happy to play in the morning > before I go to work, and that's all I need. Kick ass... I like the final sentiment... but I must remind you that even though I too do things... like write... and pretty much EVERYTHING I've done in this space purely because I love it, that some people do want to or expect to get paid or make a living off of their music, their videos and their books.... and what's more I WANT them too... because I want to read books that only someone writing full time could write... and I want to watch video art that's made by artists who've dedicated their lives to art... and these things CAN'T happen if noone ever gets paid... which I don't think is what you're implying... but I don't think you're seeing what iI'm seing... which is that myheavy isn't just extraneous crap. It's an OPPORTUNITY to get these people who's art we love and appreciate PAID. If you''ve seen some better way for videobloggers to get paid on a wide basis DO let me know. This is the best thing I've seen yet. What's more it's a model that's remarkably similar to what Podtech and some others are doing. P.S. I really hope I haven't overdone it, because there's some points here that I REALLY hope you and others will respond too. Damn my rambling nature! :) Peace, -Mike mmeiser.com/blog mefeedia.com > -Lucas > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > >
