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Cory Doctorow Says DIY Licensing Will Solve Piracy
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu May 14, 2009 06:58 AM
from the well-that-was-easy dept.
from the well-that-was-easy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The founding editor of Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow, has written a report about 'do-it-yourself' digital licensing, which he's touting as the panacea for piracy. Doctorow's solution for content creators is two-fold: get a Creative Commons license and append some basic text requiring those who re-use your work to pay you a percentage of their gross income. Doctorow refers to this as the middle ground between simply acquiring a Creative Commons license and hiring expensive lawyers for negotiations. He calls do-it-yourself licensing 'cheap and easy licensing that would turn yesterday's pirates into tomorrow's partners.'"
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Submission: Cory Doctorow Says DIY Licensing Will Solve Piracy by Anonymous Coward
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Paying pirates (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you want pirates to pay royalties. I always thought that pirates we pirates because they did not want to pay the royalties. What another license makes for a difference is beyond me. If they do not want to pay, they simply will remain pirates.
Re:Paying pirates (Score:5, Insightful)
When he says pirates, he means people out to make money using material they have no rights to reproduce otherwise. People who download and share things freely are completely without obligation.
I think most people are in agreement that it wouldn't catch on simply because there aren't enough teeth in it. For people to take things seriously these days, a gentleman's agreement isn't enough. We need blood, gore and violence before anything is taken seriously.
It's a "good idea" until you realize that it would be of no interest to media publishers who are the REAL people behind all this copyright mess in the first place. The plan here is to skip around these publishers by giving everyone non-exclusive rights to publish copyrighted works. So big publishers won't go for it. Little publishers might give it a go but the distribution won't be there and neither will the marketing muscle of the big establishment. And if big publishers have anything at all to do with it, it would be in trying to block it or stop it in some way.
Parent
Re:Paying pirates (Score:4, Interesting)
When he says pirates, he means people out to make money using material they have no rights to reproduce otherwise. People who download and share things freely are completely without obligation.
Piracy in the media form is a myth. Piracy in taking a ship and killing the people and stealing the cargo is piracy.
What is at issue here? Content? No. The content is available in many, many forms. From free over the air to renting the property for a period of time.
The content sucks. Not a value judgement on the quality of the programming, but a technical one. I've got about $3,000 invested in a TV and a blu-ray player, and I feel ripped off. I can't find 1080p content. Most movies I get from netflix use about 1/2 of the height of my 16x9 screen. I had to abandon cable because the quality was so poor. Actually, DVDs or free downloads of rips from DVDs are about the sweet spot for price/quality.
Until the people can figure out a way of distribution and quality content, I don't think lawsuits are a viable business model.
Last night, I watched a music DVD and it had pictures of the band's _album covers_. They were actually still worth looking at. That ended in the mid 80s with the advent of the CD. I have boxes and closets full of CDs that I've been giving away to people over the years because its not worth my time to hunt for them (they are all on harddisks now).
Bah, yet another /. article on this crap. I guess it won't change until it changes.
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Re:Paying pirates (Score:4, Informative)
Nice try - but the term 'piracy' has been associated with 'media' for nearly two centuries.
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Re:Paying pirates (Score:4, Informative)
Little publishers might give it a go but the distribution won't be there and neither will the marketing muscle of the big establishment.
Sublime got their first commercial album exposure through IUMA... but whatever.
Also, I am too lazy to go look it up, but bands without album sales have got songs into the top ten since the rules were changed to permit it... perhaps that was a UK story? So your complaints about distribution and advertising are just battered customer syndrome. Neither artists nor listeners need major labels. Or, in fact, labels.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sublime already had a huge following in CA by the time IUMA was launched.
I said first commercial album exposure. Weasel words? Maybe. But I said them before you made your comment.
Additionally, MP3s were essentially nonexistent before 1996 (when Brad Nowell died), and uncompressed music could fill an entire hard drive in those days.
Because I used to use IUMA back then and in fact spent a day whacking files for them (could have done it in moments if I knew then what I know now about scripting... but anyway) I know that they used mp2 audio back then, and had player download links on their page. IIRC they also had some u-Law samples, but that might not be right. So the lack of mp3 and the size of uncompressed audio is quite irrelevan
Re:Paying pirates (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, the "percentage of the income they make from it" would essentially be a free license for anyone to reproduce the work as much as they want without any restrictions, as long as they don't do it for profit. "Hey, post our whole feature film or piece of software to Youtube or anywhere else, just as long as you offer it for free!" would go over like a lead zeppelin with just about any content producer.
I like Doctorow's science fiction. But he's really beyond the pale on this one. Even a science fiction writer shouldn't be THAT far removed from reality.
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Re:Paying pirates (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, the "percentage of the income they make from it" would essentially be a free license for anyone to reproduce the work as much as they want without any restrictions, as long as they don't do it for profit.
That's exactly the point. CC is intended for content creators who actually want their content to spread around. The problem that Doctorow is addressing is the hesitation that some people have to going with a CC license because they don't want people taking advantage of it to profit off the work without cutting the content creator in on the deal.
This solution is not intended for the major Hollywood studios. This is intended for the content creators who want to reside in the middle ground between absolute free-for-all and totally restricted licensing — and avoid having to hire a lawyer.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How is this better than just dual licensing CC-BY-NC-SA & then selling commercial licenses?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Paying pirates (Score:5, Funny)
Yes but that's easy to do when you live in a blimp, blogging away high at the top of the piratsphere.
Parent
Re:Paying pirates (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, all he's advocating is the old state of things. The casual swappers
shouldn't be prosecuted, persecuted and litigated. The side effects of trying
to squash all the little ants ends up creating more collateral damage than it's
worth. It's far better to apply the old intent of the laws and the original
pirate ethos.
There was always a distinction made between those that just passed stuff
around and those that tried to profit from it financially.
The big problem of course, as others have said, is the fact that it is
big media that has driven the recent changes in the other direction.
They're the ones that want to make copyright perpetual and turn
criminalize everyone. They will never go for this.
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Re:Paying pirates (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Paying pirates (Score:5, Insightful)
You are on a short list of people who've read and understood the article. That list does not include Slashdot editors nor the AC who wrote the headline nor most of the people commenting here.
The licensing makes sense for certain uses but I don't see much advantage over the current system apart from the 'self serve' aspect. Licensing a photograph (which is the area I'm familiar with) for non-exclusive use is pretty straight forward and nearly always I or the client has some mutually acceptable boilerplate agreement that covers everything. Exclusive uses are more difficult and usually involve an IP attorney, but I don't see where his self-serve license would grant exclusivity.
Regardless, the biggest expense comes if you ever have to go to court to enforce a license, and that isn't changing here.
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Re:Paying pirates (Score:4, Insightful)
He's presuming that many commercial users of the product would pay the royalties if they could get a license without paying legal fees. They would cease to be pirates.
I agree that this scheme has no effect on willful pirates. I don't think it's meant to address that. The Slashdot summary exaggerates that aspect.
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I like Cory but that isn't going to work (Score:5, Insightful)
At best it will just encourage a lot of people to sell other people's media under the guise of legitimacy, while kicking back something to the creators. I can't see the MPAA/RIAA agreeing to that.
CCPlus (Score:5, Informative)
AFAIK what he's suggesting is already within the scope of the CC license.
It's been floated before, under the name CCPlus [creativecommons.org]. See also Slashdot's coverage of CCPlus [slashdot.org].
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Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I like Cory but that isn't going to work (Score:5, Informative)
He isn't trying to stop car-boot pirates, the only place he mentions pirates is a throwaway line at the end "cheap and easy licensing that would turn yesterday's pirates into tomorrow's partners". He's talking about people who want to use your material but not to just rip you off. Maybe "would turn the people who yesterday had no choice other than to be pirates into tomorrow's partners" would have been clearer, but less snappy.
Parent
Stone soup! (Score:4, Insightful)
Get a Creative Commons license, and append some basic text requiring those who re-use your work to pay you a percentage of their gross income.
Anybody remember stone soup? In this scenario, it appears that the CC license is the stone.
Re:Stone soup! (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody remember stone soup? In this scenario, it appears that the CC license is the stone.
Yes! I remember stone soup! It's a great story. So that means Music is the carrots, Video is the potatoes, Writing is the chicken, and the Performers are all the herbs and spices that make the end dish taste fabulous.
Only trouble is... stone soup is meant to take input from an entire village, while the artistic creations of the world are only contributed from a reasonably modest percent of the population. The fact that *everybody* can enjoy them creates sort of an imbalance (though, I guess that's where the "percentage of revenue" comes into play).
Parent
Why not lower costs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doctorow is a writer so his problem may be slightly different, but it seems to me that for much of the media industry today the problem is more of too high costs than too low income, no matter what "pirates" do.
To make a standardized measurement, let's limit ourselves to one well-defined segment: 007. Look at this graph [wikimedia.org]. Investment in James Bond films has gone steadily up without a corresponding return in profits. The first 007 movie, "Dr. No", cost $1 million to make ïn 1962 and got $60 million in the box office, a 60:1 ratio. "Casino Royale" cost $100 million and got $600 million, ten times less.
One could argue that James Bond jumped the shark, but in adjusted dollars "Dr. No" got about as much income as "Casino Royale", yet cost 1/16th as much adjusted for inflation. People are still paying as much to see James Bond today as they paid in 1962.
The main problem, IMHO, is not reduced income for intellectual property owners, the problem is reduced creativity. They not only seem unable to create a character to replace 007, they also need to spend sixteen times as much to create the same level of special effects.
Re:Why not lower costs? (Score:4, Informative)
One could argue that James Bond jumped the shark, but in adjusted dollars "Dr. No" got about as much income as "Casino Royale", yet cost 1/16th as much adjusted for inflation. People are still paying as much to see James Bond today as they paid in 1962.
Actually, people are paying about 3 times more to see James Bond today than they did in 1962.
Ref: http://www.bbhq.com/prices.htm [bbhq.com]
Parent
Re:Why not lower costs? (Score:4, Insightful)
The main problem, IMHO, is not reduced income for intellectual property owners, the problem is reduced creativity.
Perhaps so, but you haven't shown such a thing.
They not only seem unable to create a character to replace 007...
Why would they? They have a good character that people like. Not replacing him isn't "reduced creativity", it's simply giving your fans what they want to see. Only a fool replaces something for the sake of replacing it.
...they also need to spend sixteen times as much to create the same level of special effects.
Blatantly false. They need to spend sixteen times as much to create a lot more special effects. Now, maybe you believe that the movies don't need that level of special effects, which is a whole different topic. It is untrue, however, that the level of special effects is the same as it was back then. The budget has grown because the amount of special effects has grown.
Furthermore, your logic as to the success of the movies is flawed. The industry isn't necessarily interested in maximizing their profit per dollar spent (although that's always nice), they're interested in making more absolute profit. Using the inflation-adjusted figures you provided, we can see that while the industry made $59 million in profits from Dr. No, they made $500 million in profits from Casino Royale. Even though their profit-per-dollar may have been less, they still made more money overall, which is what is desired.
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Re:Why not lower costs? (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps I didn't make myself quite clear. "Dr. No" made $60 million in 1962 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, "Dr. No" cost $8.4 million and got $420 million in profits, "Casino Royale" cost $140 million and got $500 million in profits.
Go to any industry executive and ask, is it better to get $420 milion in profits from a $8.4 million investment, or is it better to get $500 million in profits from a $140 million investment?
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Re:Why not lower costs? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Reduced creativity is part of the problem, but another aspect is there is simply "too much creativity", in the sense that today, practically anyone can produce anything with very little investment. Those same eyeballs are being spread more thinly because there is so much goddamned content out there.
There's also the disproportionate salaries in the movie industry, that were certainly nowhere near as distorted back then as they are now. Does it really "cost" 100 million to shoot a Bond movie, or does it cos
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
With regard to salaries, then vs. now:
Elizabeth Taylor was paid $1MM to perform in Cleopatra. That's about $7MM in 2009 dollars. Very, very few female celebrities make more than $7MM per picture today.
The film grossed $43MM, which is about $300MM today.
Relative hyper-commercialization and hyper-glamorization is an exercise left to the reader. Sure, celebrities didn't have Twitter accounts in the 1960s and (with a few exceptions) didn't show up in naked photos. Yet the star-making machine was in full force,
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think your analysis is complete.
Using your figures, we assume a 600% inflation rate since 1962 ("... yet cost 1/16th as much adjusted for inflation", applied to $100 million current dollars, yields a little over $6 million dollars or 6 times the unadjusted cost for "Dr. No"). That may seem a little high, but I just put the numbers in an inflation calculator (The Inflation Calculator [westegg.com]) and it's close: 679% inflation between 1962 and 2007. So, let's assume that figure.
At 679% inflation, "Dr. No"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I really hope this takes off (Score:5, Interesting)
What you are forgetting is that this is aimed to people who do want to paint the license, but can't. There are "pirates" who will just profit from another person's works, and there always will be. The idea is that you shouldn't be forced to be one of them.
Take my case for example. I ran a small t-shirt store, whose drawings included, but were not limited to, characters of famous and not-so-famous movies, who were definitely copyrighted and/or trademarked. I did make money off them, and never paid the creators a dime. Why? The cost to get a license agreement with just one of the biggies would be enough to put me out of business. And their terms weren't suited to me as well. They wanted a huge upfront payment followed by a small per-unit cost.
So, as a law-abiding citizen, I just went out of business? Of course not, I just didn't contact them and hoped that they wouldn't contact me.
The terms that Doctorow proposes would suit my purpose just fine. And I would pay.
Also, I don't think the big distributors would be against it. The distribution terms he proposes aren't advantageous to a big distributor. It wouldn't be fostering competition. And I doubt that the shop from around the corner can damage them.
Re:I really hope this takes off (Score:4, Insightful)
The terms that Doctorow proposes would suit my purpose just fine. And I would pay.
You didn't before.
You flew under the radar.
Why should anyone believe you will behave any differently now?
The geek is always puffing smoke about the "failed business model." Meaning the one in which he is expected to cough up some cash.
Parent
Re:I really hope this takes off (Score:4, Informative)
Take my case for example. I ran a small t-shirt store, whose drawings included, but were not limited to, characters of famous and not-so-famous movies, who were definitely copyrighted and/or trademarked. I did make money off them, and never paid the creators a dime. Why?
Because you were not sufficiently creative to produce original designs for which people would pay, and felt entitled to profit from the work of others? Many of us would have no problem with you wearing the shirts, but selling them is pretty much indefensible. I wonder if Copyright shouldn't be extended indefinitely, but with derivative works permitted and protected immediately so that anyone is free to reinvent anything any time, but nobody is free to reproduce anything without permission ever. It would promote similar, competing works... But still prevent people from gaining from the labor of others. They would have to do something.
Parent
Won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Most Piracy isn't a for profit business. It is just some one who downloads a bunch of pirated stuff, when he actually does buy a product he will post it online for the rest to pirate, combined with a few hackers to break any DRM to make sure what they get wont get others in trouble. But they do it to protect themselves because they don't want to pay for the software. Granted there is some people making money off of software piracy. However most of it is if any money trades hands is to cover cost.
2. They already don't respect your license. Why would they respect this. It is like telling the wolves in the zoo if they don't eat the rabbits then they will get a good meal later, then place a bunch of rabbits in the wolf cage of hungry wolves. They have already convinced themselves that Software Piracy is good and some how they are heroes for fighting the man.
3. After the fact enforcement, or in other words, if you don't do this and you are caught then we sue you. It is better to correct issues before it gets to that point. Though I am not a fan of DRM, DRM has probably saved a lot of people from getting sued and loosing a lot of money (on both sides) as DRM for the most part keeps the Honest honest. Sure it is a download patch away to breaking the DRM. However that is probably that one step too far that isn't worth it and they will just buy a copy. And no one bashing at the door and suing a guy for piracy of software that is stilled crippled.
Okay, but the maths causes problems (Score:4, Insightful)
Hollywood accounting (Score:3, Interesting)
This doesn't even work in licensing with proper commercial corporations like the record labels and film studios. It will fall foul of "Hollywood Accounting" [wikipedia.org]. Normally this is applied to rip off artists who are promised a percentage of profits (they find the company they've dealt with has made no profits, they've all been moved into a different company). This is slightly harder with gross revenue, but not much.
Different uses require different payscales (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a big problem with this idea... Let's imagine you're a photographer who uses this new system, and asks for 8% of gross. I'm a printer, and I want to use your work. I have to give you 8% of gross for a birthday card made from your work, 96% of gross for a 12 month calendar using your work and 11 of your friends work, and illustrating an encyclopedia would cost me many times more than gross!
Re:BRILLIANT IDEA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:BRILLIANT IDEA (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to agree. Current copyright laws dont work, because they do not allow "fair use". In fact licensing and patenting is getting to a point where the social benefits are not weighed in and thus otherwise profitable and usefull tools are distributed illegally.
However, the proposal will work fine for components, patents and such. But would be disasterous for coplete products, and would require a fair-use or even free-use model to follow it.
As someone else already pointed out, there are a ton of piriates out there who pirate to make money, and another ton who just "make a copy for the car", or even those who "make a copy for their friends". In either case the complete replication of a work is so simple that the recipient has no intrest in purchasing the original work, because the copy is "perfect", in that it's digital.
Some countries are already starting to deal with this issue by giving out licenses for "unlimited use" of example music, while you pay a monthly fee, this fee makes you able to download pretty much any piece of music and use for any non-commercial use you want. Same thing goes for videos and books. For years you have been able to get them at the local library as often as you wanted, basically for free.
With these great distribution models, then where's the incentive to pirate ? In the exact business model that the distribution companies are employing. Libraries and ISPs have limits in their spending policies because of wear and tear on their products, aswell as the strain on their profits due to aquisitions. But once the product becomes digital, it's just a matter of time before a purchase will last lifetimes, given that they again are subject to a decent pricing.
You dont have to be a genious to know that the laws of supply and demand show that the higher the price, the lower the demand and vice versa. So in our day and age, you can actually distribute your products at a price close to free, if the user himself will create the physical object (CD, book, whatever) on his home printer. So with the significantly lower price on distribution, a lower prices can be charge for the product, and more people will "buy".
The business model suggested simply states that IF the user decides to make a little dough by turning the download into for instance a karaoke thing and selling it to his friends, then he should fork over a part of his profits. I can't think of ANY artist who would normally provide his work free of charge who would object to this business model.
Ofcourse that doesn't stop people from pirating against THIS model, or even the business from claiming they wont make money this way, but how's that different from today ?
It's different in one major aspect: People who contribute, and people who are not profiting from other peoples work are no longer criminalized. A 6-year old who just wants to hear the latest justin timberlake song, or the co-worker who hands his collegaue a DVD and says: "hey I recorded this from the late night show, you REALLY have to see it" will no longer get treated like the taiwaneese pirate who bootlegs 60 million DVDs a month and sells them on ebay. So IF the taiwaneese pirate is willing to fork over $5 pr DVD he sells, then presumably the licensee dont give a crap if it's buena vista home entertainment or hai-fats local DVD store that made the physical copy as long as they get their end of the business.
Even though the idea is not new, it is IMO a great way to legalize (and in a smaller way also to profit from) the "casual pirate", while offering the organized crime a way to become respectable, and at the same time holding the door open for the possibility of legal action.
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Re:BRILLIANT IDEA (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to agree. Current copyright laws dont work, because they do not allow "fair use". In fact licensing and patenting is getting to a point where the social benefits are not weighed in and thus otherwise profitable and usefull tools are distributed illegally.
Current copyright laws don't work, because due to technology, ideas can now be reproduced to infinity.
The scarcity 'factor' that enabled publishers and recording companies to profit has now been removed. Those who cannot adapt to this new reality must go under so that the innovators may thrive.
If a bread multiplying machine was invented would you outlaw it with the best interest of bakers in mind? No. You ( we ) would want free bread.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I had the same thought -- this model could turn existing counterfeiters into business partners, especially in markets that are presently unprofitable with a Megacorp's typical overhead. So let the counterfeiter absorb the manufacturing and distribution cost, and pay the royalty (as a percentage of their gross) as insurance against being busted/prosecuted. This amounts to free money for the content owner megacorp, with zero investment of their own in a relatively low-profit market.
Counterfeiters would probab
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR.
Re:BRILLIANT IDEA (Score:4, Funny)
You wouldn't shoot a policeman, THEN STEAL HIS HAT [metacafe.com]
Parent
Re:BRILLIANT IDEA (Score:4, Insightful)
CC is all about free sharing. Personally, I have no objection to people using my music in free projects. I do, however, have an objection to people using it to make money without cutting me in.
It's not that simple. People might profit a lot without technically making money. If you make something (let's say an image good enough to be a work of art) and CC it and someone else uploads it in their ad-supported website... They don't technically earn anything from your image (at least nothing from which it would be easy to calculate royalties. And saying "pay 27% from whole site's ad revenue" would be stupid and just as unfair if someone just uploads the image once) but it helps them make money.
Or perhaps if he uses it as art (background, load screen, etc.) in a game he lets people download for free (isn't necessarily open source or anything like that). He doesn't directly earn money from the image but it might be part of something that helps him get higher wage jobs, investor funds, etc. and earn more with those. And what if the website from which people download the game has ads?
Those aren't all the possible cases and I am not saying that people even should be able to earn money in all those. I ask you not to nit pick about some single examples. Rather... What I am trying to say is that it is VERY difficult to divide stuff to "He profits so he should pay me 27%" and "He doesn't profit so he should pay me nothing".
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Re:BRILLIANT IDEA (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a photographer [k-gallery.com] and sometimes put together slideshows of my work set to music, and while royalty-free music tends to be crap, ASCAP and BMI won't even talk to me for less than $6,000, which is a little excessive for one-time use for a client's wedding slideshow on my blog.
I wish the recording industry could do for commercial rights to music what iTunes did for digital downloads. Make it simple, charge a reasonable fee for a sync license, and small business will buy it. But when every use of a song requires lawyers to negotiate a contract, and when the fees they want are completely out of proportion with any gross the user might expect...who wins here? The song doesn't get used and the artist and the label don't get any money.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The artist doesn't really get much in the way of money anyway.
Re:BRILLIANT IDEA (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, because now you've moved from the Copyright law category to the Contract law category, which is by and far less compromized and much easier to enforce/more difficult to abuse.
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Because he isn't talking about the guy downloading from P2P as much as he is talking about artists like Danger Mouse [wikipedia.org] who can't sell their albums because greed has made sampling all but dead. Which frankly sucks. This of course was kinda the whole reason for HAVING a Public Domain in the first place, which was stolen from us by Disney to make sure that damned mouse will NEVER be free as long as politicians are corrupt.
But the simple fact is the copyright laws have become SO long and SO nasty that pretty much