Learning to live without copyright
The use of torrents has become ubiquitous. The pirates have created a completely stable business model around themselves, which so far does not think to get rid of itself. Of course, right holders are actively trying to deal with this, but with all these lawsuits and user fines, they are unlikely to win people's love, and after all, consumer loyalty is one of the most important components of the commercial success of intellectual creations.
It is important to understand one simple thing - at the moment there are no 100% reliable and success-guarantee ways to protect copyright and prevent the free distribution of products. No matter how frightened people are, no matter how you negotiate with providers, which DRMs do not put up - anyway, even an inexperienced Internet user can easily find a “protected” product on the network.
It is possible that for rightholders the best solution in this difficult situation will not be the search for new technical and legal methods to protect their precious creativity, but to ensure that free distribution, because of which they are losing money, on the contrary, creates the possibility of making money. In other words, remembering Lincoln’s famous maxim, the best way to defeat an enemy is to turn him into a friend.
So, in this after I wanted to list, in a formal language, all possible alternative mechanisms for compensating the costs of creating intellectual products that are known to me. In this blog, respected habrayuers discussed this topic many times, but no one has yet taken the trouble to summarize all the arguments and facts. I will try to take it.
Michele Boldrin, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of St. Louis, wrote Against Intellectual Monopoly , in which he described the ideal copyright system. According to Boldrin, copyright protection should be valid for a maximum of three years. He explains this idea by saying that basically the creators of intellectual property objects (IPO) receive money from this very IP in the first six months, a year, a maximum of two or three years from the start of sales (this is true: in the book business, the first three weeks after the premiere of a new books bring 70-90% of the total income from the book; the same, but to a somewhat lesser extent, concerns the cinema and the music industry). After this time, when the main demand for OIC is saturated, there are only different degrees of success of the publisher’s attempt to make money on the wave of the old success. Thus, the main advantage of the author at first will be the “advantage of the first move”. In this sense, this copyright model is very similar to patent law, only it is even more short-term.
Boldrin cites the pornography industry as an example of such an already working model. There, the distribution system is approximately the following: pornographic film studios make films and post them on their own sites only in paid access. Studio fans and other impatient customers pay to watch, and this happens for several weeks. Finally, having collected all the cream, film studios hang these pictures free of charge on special video services, luring new customers and taming them to their brand. Then everything repeats again. In this particular industry, copyright is not very strictly enforced, but this does not prevent film studios and video services from flourishing. By analogy, Boldrin proposes to introduce a similar system in other branches of the RID (results of intellectual activity). And now there really are similar solutions, especially in the journalistic sphere. For example, the Russian magazine Expert has recently introduced paid access to many fresh articles on its website; but after a few weeks this restriction is removed and the article becomes available for free. Musicians, too, are beginning to adhere to a similar scheme: Zemfira recently began distributing her albums on her own website.
The next model was introduced for discussion on Habré by the user nForce . Her concept is simple: the music industry forms a community that then offers free music exchange lovers the opportunity to legally exchange it for a moderate regular fee, say $ 5 per month. As long as these people pay, they can continue to do what they will do anyway — change the music they like, use any software they like for it, on the platform they prefer — without fear that they are breaking law. The money received is divided between the owners, based on the popularity of their music.
In exchange, music lovers are free to download whatever they like using any software that works better than others. The more people involved in the exchange, the more money goes to copyright holders. The stronger the competition of data exchange programs, the faster innovations and improvements appear. The more people have the freedom to lay out what they like, the wider the catalog. This model was supported by the EFF organization.
It’s an interesting system, but it’s not quite clear how to stimulate users of bittorents to download in exactly the same way, but for the money. Not everyone will be attracted by the mere realization that the content they distribute to each other is completely legal.
Chris Andersen, editor-in-chief of the iconic Wired magazine, recently published the book Free: The Future of a Radical Price . In it, he praises the model of "business with free distribution" as a kind of higher form of the economy. After all, almost the entire Internet is built on this - free media, free mail, free search and so on. Some computer game developers distribute the first part of the game for free, creating an army of fans, and the remaining parts are already selling. Or, for example, you can distribute a certain product for free, and its perfect complement - for money (printer and cartridges, machine tool and blades, 3D glasses and the film "Avatar" and so on).
')
This idea was put forward by the user DileSoft . If all the paid information will be distributed via the Internet, it will kill piracy. Why? The fact is that, for example, we will never see pirated Gmail, because Gmail and all other Google services are not installed on a computer, they work on remote servers. The same with other online programs and even online games. If you translate all media activity on the browser screen — books, movies, music — and store them not on the users' hard drives, but in the server rooms of large companies, then the pirates will not have any maneuvers, since to create comparable copies you will need your own servers and non-children power, and create a copy with the same cost as the original, the pirate does not make sense.
The user stasmat proposed a model called “Street Performer Protocol”. In this model, the author declares that he will give his work (book, music, video, program) into free access after receiving a certain amount. Those who are interested in this material, transfer funds to the account of the author at some reliable intermediary. With the accumulation of the required amount - the money goes to the author, and the work - in the public domain. If the sum could not be collected for some specific time, then the money is returned to the payers. And how to be the author - his business. It is understood that the author has some kind of reputation. If he has already established himself as a good creator, then from time to time he can put the price higher, more people will pay him and everything will be more and more eager. You can build up a positive (or negative) reputation, for example, by publishing your work for free in the Public Domain.
In this system, you can feel the injustice in the sense that some people will pay the author, and everyone will have access. In this case, you can enter initially access only paid people, and share in public access after a certain time. Thus, those who do not pay will receive less relevant material than those who spend money. There are other methods of encouraging payers.
This idea is somewhat similar to Boldrin’s short-term copyright, but the latter is best used in the music field (since it pushes a lot of money around live performances and the musicians will not care about sales), and the “protocol of a street musician” can become quite viable industry (as for the writer the fee is the most important salary).
This system, when offered for a product to pay any positive amount, is introduced from time to time in different projects, and it often presents surprises. Suffice it to recall the album RadioHead, which collected more than two million dollars in such a way that in itself is surprising, because users had the opportunity to choose the price of one cent. Recently , Wolfire Games conducted a similar experiment on its website, offering the package of indie games to customers in the same way. During the first week of the promotion, the package was downloaded by 98 thousand people who donated a total of 869 thousand dollars. Of course, the average amount paid is barely more than $ 8, which is 10 times less than the full cost of the games included in the package. However, due to the total number of buyers, costs can be compensated for by turnover, not to mention the advertising hype caused by this action.
This system is similar to the previous one, but here the buyer pays for the IP product, already knowing its quality. The product is distributed by any means, but the buyer always has the opportunity to donate part of their funds to the author. It turns out that this method is more fair in relation to the authors, since ideally the author will receive the most money, whose work people liked most of all. But in practice, such a system is not very effective, since consumers have no economic incentive to make donations: after all, they have already received usefulness from the OIC, and in this case they can be guided only by conscience and natural kindness. Now on the Internet, such a system exists for many authors as a backup, but, as practice shows, such methods of rewarding copyright works bring very funny crumbs.
It sounds paradoxical, but the idea is quite simple and understandable, and I picked it up from Lehi Andreev. Content will be distributed free and free; there will be no restrictions on it. But there will always be people who insert this content on their website without reference to the source and without the name of the author, and also hang around various advertising banners for monetization. It is these individuals who should be sought and fined, and it is these penalties that will be distributed among the authors of the original content. In other words, this system does not hinder free distribution in any way, but takes money from pirates and plagiarists who want to cash in on someone else's work. Such a solution, in my opinion, is ideal for journalistic articles.
One of the manifestations of this method of stimulating authors is a tax on blank CDs, which is likely to be introduced soon in our country. The meaning of this tax lies in the fact that usually with the help of such discs it is the files that are protected by copyright that are distributed, and for such distribution of products you need to share money. In fact, this is a tax on the whole society, which, after the collection, is planned to be divided between the right holders. But, firstly, in this particular case, the entire income will be taken by RW, which represents far from all Russian authors. From this it can already be concluded that the funds will be distributed among the authors irrationally. Secondly, recordable and rewritable compact discs are already rapidly coming out of use, and tax revenues from them will be incommensurable with the volume of file exchange over the Internet.
Now in Russia and abroad opens a whole series of startups - video services, working on advertising contributions. From the latest Russian examples - sites ivi.ru and zoomby.ru. It’s not very important for the viewer whether to watch a couple of commercials or not, but a legal site can provide exclusive materials, better image quality and timely appearance of new materials. The only problem is that the leadership of the video portal for competitiveness with pirated resources must be negotiated with a large number of copyright holders, because a small amount of video content will reduce all investments and promotion to nothing. Unfortunately, while modern Russian video services can not boast a large assortment of films and TV shows.
A similar system can be used not only in the field of video, but also in the music field (Internet radio) or in the literary and journalistic field.
This idea is somewhat apart from the rest, but it is also important in understanding the problems of copyright infringement. Why is piracy so popular? Is it really only about money? Most of the post surveyed people said that if paying for digital content were as simple as inserting a bill into a computer, they would have bought most programs, music, and movies without hesitation. In order to buy, for example, a computer program, you need to either leave home and go to the nearest electronics store, or deal with bank cards, money orders, serial codes, license agreements, and so on. In this sense, buying a pirated version is much more sensible - it saves not only money, but also time with nerves.
Therefore, an important task for the copyright holder is to build an extremely simple connection between the consumer and the product, to make payment quick and easy, and service maintenance is prompt and enjoyable. No wonder that the European Union recently unveiled a five-year plan for the development of IT and telecommunications, where a special role was assigned to the development of legal music services and the formation of a single market for digital services and goods.
If the copyright owner still loses money, let him try to get it back through adjacent areas: for example, in the case of the music industry, through frequent concert tours with good organization and cheap tickets, which is now a rarity for Russian reality (and not only Russian).
Which of these methods do you think are the most effective, for which of which is the future? What are their advantages and disadvantages over each other?
What is better for movies, for music, and for books?
Can you add any more items to this list?
I would be grateful for any interesting thoughts on the topic.
It is important to understand one simple thing - at the moment there are no 100% reliable and success-guarantee ways to protect copyright and prevent the free distribution of products. No matter how frightened people are, no matter how you negotiate with providers, which DRMs do not put up - anyway, even an inexperienced Internet user can easily find a “protected” product on the network.
It is possible that for rightholders the best solution in this difficult situation will not be the search for new technical and legal methods to protect their precious creativity, but to ensure that free distribution, because of which they are losing money, on the contrary, creates the possibility of making money. In other words, remembering Lincoln’s famous maxim, the best way to defeat an enemy is to turn him into a friend.
So, in this after I wanted to list, in a formal language, all possible alternative mechanisms for compensating the costs of creating intellectual products that are known to me. In this blog, respected habrayuers discussed this topic many times, but no one has yet taken the trouble to summarize all the arguments and facts. I will try to take it.
Short term copyright
Michele Boldrin, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of St. Louis, wrote Against Intellectual Monopoly , in which he described the ideal copyright system. According to Boldrin, copyright protection should be valid for a maximum of three years. He explains this idea by saying that basically the creators of intellectual property objects (IPO) receive money from this very IP in the first six months, a year, a maximum of two or three years from the start of sales (this is true: in the book business, the first three weeks after the premiere of a new books bring 70-90% of the total income from the book; the same, but to a somewhat lesser extent, concerns the cinema and the music industry). After this time, when the main demand for OIC is saturated, there are only different degrees of success of the publisher’s attempt to make money on the wave of the old success. Thus, the main advantage of the author at first will be the “advantage of the first move”. In this sense, this copyright model is very similar to patent law, only it is even more short-term.
Boldrin cites the pornography industry as an example of such an already working model. There, the distribution system is approximately the following: pornographic film studios make films and post them on their own sites only in paid access. Studio fans and other impatient customers pay to watch, and this happens for several weeks. Finally, having collected all the cream, film studios hang these pictures free of charge on special video services, luring new customers and taming them to their brand. Then everything repeats again. In this particular industry, copyright is not very strictly enforced, but this does not prevent film studios and video services from flourishing. By analogy, Boldrin proposes to introduce a similar system in other branches of the RID (results of intellectual activity). And now there really are similar solutions, especially in the journalistic sphere. For example, the Russian magazine Expert has recently introduced paid access to many fresh articles on its website; but after a few weeks this restriction is removed and the article becomes available for free. Musicians, too, are beginning to adhere to a similar scheme: Zemfira recently began distributing her albums on her own website.
Exchange for money
The next model was introduced for discussion on Habré by the user nForce . Her concept is simple: the music industry forms a community that then offers free music exchange lovers the opportunity to legally exchange it for a moderate regular fee, say $ 5 per month. As long as these people pay, they can continue to do what they will do anyway — change the music they like, use any software they like for it, on the platform they prefer — without fear that they are breaking law. The money received is divided between the owners, based on the popularity of their music.
In exchange, music lovers are free to download whatever they like using any software that works better than others. The more people involved in the exchange, the more money goes to copyright holders. The stronger the competition of data exchange programs, the faster innovations and improvements appear. The more people have the freedom to lay out what they like, the wider the catalog. This model was supported by the EFF organization.
It’s an interesting system, but it’s not quite clear how to stimulate users of bittorents to download in exactly the same way, but for the money. Not everyone will be attracted by the mere realization that the content they distribute to each other is completely legal.
Freeconomics
Chris Andersen, editor-in-chief of the iconic Wired magazine, recently published the book Free: The Future of a Radical Price . In it, he praises the model of "business with free distribution" as a kind of higher form of the economy. After all, almost the entire Internet is built on this - free media, free mail, free search and so on. Some computer game developers distribute the first part of the game for free, creating an army of fans, and the remaining parts are already selling. Or, for example, you can distribute a certain product for free, and its perfect complement - for money (printer and cartridges, machine tool and blades, 3D glasses and the film "Avatar" and so on).
')
Cloud Services
This idea was put forward by the user DileSoft . If all the paid information will be distributed via the Internet, it will kill piracy. Why? The fact is that, for example, we will never see pirated Gmail, because Gmail and all other Google services are not installed on a computer, they work on remote servers. The same with other online programs and even online games. If you translate all media activity on the browser screen — books, movies, music — and store them not on the users' hard drives, but in the server rooms of large companies, then the pirates will not have any maneuvers, since to create comparable copies you will need your own servers and non-children power, and create a copy with the same cost as the original, the pirate does not make sense.
"Protocol of a street musician"
The user stasmat proposed a model called “Street Performer Protocol”. In this model, the author declares that he will give his work (book, music, video, program) into free access after receiving a certain amount. Those who are interested in this material, transfer funds to the account of the author at some reliable intermediary. With the accumulation of the required amount - the money goes to the author, and the work - in the public domain. If the sum could not be collected for some specific time, then the money is returned to the payers. And how to be the author - his business. It is understood that the author has some kind of reputation. If he has already established himself as a good creator, then from time to time he can put the price higher, more people will pay him and everything will be more and more eager. You can build up a positive (or negative) reputation, for example, by publishing your work for free in the Public Domain.
In this system, you can feel the injustice in the sense that some people will pay the author, and everyone will have access. In this case, you can enter initially access only paid people, and share in public access after a certain time. Thus, those who do not pay will receive less relevant material than those who spend money. There are other methods of encouraging payers.
This idea is somewhat similar to Boldrin’s short-term copyright, but the latter is best used in the music field (since it pushes a lot of money around live performances and the musicians will not care about sales), and the “protocol of a street musician” can become quite viable industry (as for the writer the fee is the most important salary).
Pay-as-you-go system
This system, when offered for a product to pay any positive amount, is introduced from time to time in different projects, and it often presents surprises. Suffice it to recall the album RadioHead, which collected more than two million dollars in such a way that in itself is surprising, because users had the opportunity to choose the price of one cent. Recently , Wolfire Games conducted a similar experiment on its website, offering the package of indie games to customers in the same way. During the first week of the promotion, the package was downloaded by 98 thousand people who donated a total of 869 thousand dollars. Of course, the average amount paid is barely more than $ 8, which is 10 times less than the full cost of the games included in the package. However, due to the total number of buyers, costs can be compensated for by turnover, not to mention the advertising hype caused by this action.
Post payment system
This system is similar to the previous one, but here the buyer pays for the IP product, already knowing its quality. The product is distributed by any means, but the buyer always has the opportunity to donate part of their funds to the author. It turns out that this method is more fair in relation to the authors, since ideally the author will receive the most money, whose work people liked most of all. But in practice, such a system is not very effective, since consumers have no economic incentive to make donations: after all, they have already received usefulness from the OIC, and in this case they can be guided only by conscience and natural kindness. Now on the Internet, such a system exists for many authors as a backup, but, as practice shows, such methods of rewarding copyright works bring very funny crumbs.
Copyright on free distribution protection
It sounds paradoxical, but the idea is quite simple and understandable, and I picked it up from Lehi Andreev. Content will be distributed free and free; there will be no restrictions on it. But there will always be people who insert this content on their website without reference to the source and without the name of the author, and also hang around various advertising banners for monetization. It is these individuals who should be sought and fined, and it is these penalties that will be distributed among the authors of the original content. In other words, this system does not hinder free distribution in any way, but takes money from pirates and plagiarists who want to cash in on someone else's work. Such a solution, in my opinion, is ideal for journalistic articles.
Public sponsorship
One of the manifestations of this method of stimulating authors is a tax on blank CDs, which is likely to be introduced soon in our country. The meaning of this tax lies in the fact that usually with the help of such discs it is the files that are protected by copyright that are distributed, and for such distribution of products you need to share money. In fact, this is a tax on the whole society, which, after the collection, is planned to be divided between the right holders. But, firstly, in this particular case, the entire income will be taken by RW, which represents far from all Russian authors. From this it can already be concluded that the funds will be distributed among the authors irrationally. Secondly, recordable and rewritable compact discs are already rapidly coming out of use, and tax revenues from them will be incommensurable with the volume of file exchange over the Internet.
Advertising model
Now in Russia and abroad opens a whole series of startups - video services, working on advertising contributions. From the latest Russian examples - sites ivi.ru and zoomby.ru. It’s not very important for the viewer whether to watch a couple of commercials or not, but a legal site can provide exclusive materials, better image quality and timely appearance of new materials. The only problem is that the leadership of the video portal for competitiveness with pirated resources must be negotiated with a large number of copyright holders, because a small amount of video content will reduce all investments and promotion to nothing. Unfortunately, while modern Russian video services can not boast a large assortment of films and TV shows.
A similar system can be used not only in the field of video, but also in the music field (Internet radio) or in the literary and journalistic field.
Convenient payment system, optimization of service, development of related industries
This idea is somewhat apart from the rest, but it is also important in understanding the problems of copyright infringement. Why is piracy so popular? Is it really only about money? Most of the post surveyed people said that if paying for digital content were as simple as inserting a bill into a computer, they would have bought most programs, music, and movies without hesitation. In order to buy, for example, a computer program, you need to either leave home and go to the nearest electronics store, or deal with bank cards, money orders, serial codes, license agreements, and so on. In this sense, buying a pirated version is much more sensible - it saves not only money, but also time with nerves.
Therefore, an important task for the copyright holder is to build an extremely simple connection between the consumer and the product, to make payment quick and easy, and service maintenance is prompt and enjoyable. No wonder that the European Union recently unveiled a five-year plan for the development of IT and telecommunications, where a special role was assigned to the development of legal music services and the formation of a single market for digital services and goods.
If the copyright owner still loses money, let him try to get it back through adjacent areas: for example, in the case of the music industry, through frequent concert tours with good organization and cheap tickets, which is now a rarity for Russian reality (and not only Russian).
Which of these methods do you think are the most effective, for which of which is the future? What are their advantages and disadvantages over each other?
What is better for movies, for music, and for books?
Can you add any more items to this list?
I would be grateful for any interesting thoughts on the topic.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/95507/
All Articles