Dear c-r,
In the case of ISP charges, I argued that we should have a sensible
economic perspective -- realistic re/ cyber-future realities -- if we
wanted to participate effectively in the legislative/regulatory debate.
In the case of copyright reform, I argue that we need a sensible
perspective about content-charging economics, unless we want to be on the
defensive every time some wacko copyright proposal gets introduced.
In the ISP case, I suggested looking at the upside: charges for
services rendered actually favors our usage patterns, if the charging-unit
is chosen appropriately.
For copyrights, there's one particular upside scenario I offer for
your consdideration, as it leads to some interesting observations.
Consider the entrepreneurial opportunities for individuals and small
independent producers in an environment with a certain kind of strong
copyright enforcement.
What kind of enforcement do I have in mind? To put it very crudely
and over simplistically -- bear with me -- the idea would be that each
message transfer is a transaction, any message can have a copy-price
attached to it, and mailers are required to collect the price from the
recipient if delievery is accepted. (No, this isn't original, and all
kinds of details would have to be worked out.)
I hope the mechanism-description did not obscure the simple idea --
that you can put things out for sale on the net, and know you'll get your
royalty from every reader/listener/viewer. This could be an awesome
enabler of people-culture on the net. Suppose you wrote good poetry (or
legislative analysis), and suppose 10,000 folks would be glad to pay a
nickle to read new releases of your work -- then you might be able to
support yourself doing what you enjoy.
We'd be cutting out the middleman publisher and keeping our net
culture, but introducing a self-supporting mechanism.
The big guys want similar strong copyright, but of course their
goals are different. They want to tie-up ownership of premium content
(Disney libraries, live sports, brand-name publications, etc.) and then
charge an arm-and-a-leg for peeks. I'm not sure how successful we could be
in preventing them from charging for "their" content the way they like.
What we _might_ be able to do is influence the rate structures so
that our own opportunities as producers/distributors are not forsaken. If
we leave it to "them", they'll set up the tariffs so that low-price,
small-list distributions incur prohibitive overhead costs in distribution
or payment settlements. They seek the economic-model and level-of-control
that they've enjoyed in the broadcast business.
Does someone have a better vision-scenario in mind?
Regards,
Richard
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Posted by Richard K. Moore - •••@••.••• - Wexford, Ireland
Cyber-Rights: http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/
ftp://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/cyber-rights/library/
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