A sharing economy is an economy where people come to interact and exchange ideas and work. No one is there to make money but instead are all there by choice. I would consider internet communities like reddit sharing communities. People gather here to talk with other people and to amuse themselves. They are not actively trying to make money. In fact in many communities like this people who post links to their own sites are shunned as it is seen as shameless self promotion and an attempt to make money where money should not be a factor.
A commercial economy is one like the one we live in every day. We pay for what we want and get paid for performing some needed task. A very few of us are fortunate enough to get paid for doing what we love but not very many. Everything in a commercial economy has a price. Generally its price is in some way connected to is scarcity. For this reason commercial economies sometimes struggle in the digital world where no object is truly scarce. However there is money to be made or there would be no internet.
Lessig’s greater argument is that copywrite is not serving the purpose that it was originally intended for. It no longer inspires creativity and in fact actively stifles it. He mentions both commercial and sharing economies because they are going to both have a difficult time as the world becomes more digital. Commercial economies are going to lose some of their steam as possession becomes more and more digital. Let put it like this. If my apartment were burning down right now I would get my cats and my computer and gtfo. Everything thing else I own can be replaced and mostly just sits around taking up space. There are a couple of items that are of sentimental value to me that I would want to have to pass along to my kids or others but these were all given to me. The things that are important to me are not as commercial as they would have been to someone30 years ago in my same place.
The flip side of the coin is that the newness of the internet is wearing off. People are smart and love nothing so much as money. Because of this people will always find a way to make money off of something. I talked about reddit earlier as a sharing economy. Lets revisit that now. Reddit is an internet link aggregation site with the ability to vote links up or down. There is a dark underside to reddit though. The use of voting blocks to send a topic to the first page for a company in return for monetary rewards is quite common. Basically a large number of people with multiple accounts get together and try to get comments to the front page. This is the cancer that killed digg.com a site that started out a lot like reddit. Reddit has taken steps to ensure that this dosent happened but I am sure people still find a way.
The end result is that both of these economies are going to have to come together to form the hybrid economies that lessig talks about or face eventual obliteration.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Blog 10: A remix of expectations
The remix is here: http://i.imgur.com/vMJtV.jpg
On page 68 Lessig discusses the RW culture of media. He starts out with a bit about how text is the today’s Latin in that it is used as a medium for communication for the elite. I have not decided how much I but this idea but I can say that it is something I have thought on quite a bit. I read a lot. When I was a child my family had a television but it was not connected to anything but a VCR. This is probably why I enjoy reading so much. So I balk at the idea that reading does not hold the same importance for others that it does me. However when I think deeper on the issue I realize that none of my friends read with anything that could be described as regularity. The one friend I have who comes the closest is one who reads comic books non-stop. I stumbles across this comic remix on the internet the other day and immediately thought of this friend. I am constantly telling him he needs to make the jump from comics to books and then he will see what a real plot is like. He tells me that I need to widen my range of media consumption to include comics as they do tell some compelling stories. I don’t know that either of us will ever win this debate but I sent him this remix as a jab. It clearly makes mock of one of his favorite things. He loved it and the idea got stuck in his head. I spend a great deal of time rewriting old comics with him several weekends ago. It was very enjoyable. I suppose I had better connect this back to Lessig. I never felt a connection to comics as strongly as I did when I was rewriting. Suddenly old comics that told horribly racist stories were rewritten to mock their main character. It was around this time that I realized Lessig was right. Books are becoming the communication means for elitists while media is the language of the common man. To speak it is something we grow up learning how to do. Without ever intended to I have started creating remixed media.
This remix connects back to Lessig’s arguments about remixed media in other ways. Clearly this comic is not hurting the original creators ability to tell their story or make money from it. The person who remixed this comic has so changed it form it s original story as to be unrecognizable. This is the point of a remix. The only link back to this comics original origin is that you know the words are not what was originally intended by the artist and that makes it a little bit more funny. Most of the mirth derived from this piece comes with the new story the remixer told through it.
Lastly this comic is hosted by imgur.com which was created with the express purpose of hosting pictures in an easy format. It is used largely for remixes. It has developed into a mini image blogging site. You can comment on the images hosted if you know where to look for the original posting. The link I have included is the image only link. I was unable to find the page link. But what is important about this is Lessig’s ideas about not censoring ones feedback. When you post an image in imgur people who find their way to the comments page and leave a comment never intend to come back and probably could not find their way back if they wanted to. This leads to very honest comments. There is so little censorship of opinions on the internet and I think that might be the most horrible and importing part about the remix. People are going to tell you what they think of you remix and it will have little to do with anything but their own feelings and thoughts. People pay very little heed to feelings on the internet. I have just about run out of thoughts on this topic so I suppose I will stop for now.
On page 68 Lessig discusses the RW culture of media. He starts out with a bit about how text is the today’s Latin in that it is used as a medium for communication for the elite. I have not decided how much I but this idea but I can say that it is something I have thought on quite a bit. I read a lot. When I was a child my family had a television but it was not connected to anything but a VCR. This is probably why I enjoy reading so much. So I balk at the idea that reading does not hold the same importance for others that it does me. However when I think deeper on the issue I realize that none of my friends read with anything that could be described as regularity. The one friend I have who comes the closest is one who reads comic books non-stop. I stumbles across this comic remix on the internet the other day and immediately thought of this friend. I am constantly telling him he needs to make the jump from comics to books and then he will see what a real plot is like. He tells me that I need to widen my range of media consumption to include comics as they do tell some compelling stories. I don’t know that either of us will ever win this debate but I sent him this remix as a jab. It clearly makes mock of one of his favorite things. He loved it and the idea got stuck in his head. I spend a great deal of time rewriting old comics with him several weekends ago. It was very enjoyable. I suppose I had better connect this back to Lessig. I never felt a connection to comics as strongly as I did when I was rewriting. Suddenly old comics that told horribly racist stories were rewritten to mock their main character. It was around this time that I realized Lessig was right. Books are becoming the communication means for elitists while media is the language of the common man. To speak it is something we grow up learning how to do. Without ever intended to I have started creating remixed media.
This remix connects back to Lessig’s arguments about remixed media in other ways. Clearly this comic is not hurting the original creators ability to tell their story or make money from it. The person who remixed this comic has so changed it form it s original story as to be unrecognizable. This is the point of a remix. The only link back to this comics original origin is that you know the words are not what was originally intended by the artist and that makes it a little bit more funny. Most of the mirth derived from this piece comes with the new story the remixer told through it.
Lastly this comic is hosted by imgur.com which was created with the express purpose of hosting pictures in an easy format. It is used largely for remixes. It has developed into a mini image blogging site. You can comment on the images hosted if you know where to look for the original posting. The link I have included is the image only link. I was unable to find the page link. But what is important about this is Lessig’s ideas about not censoring ones feedback. When you post an image in imgur people who find their way to the comments page and leave a comment never intend to come back and probably could not find their way back if they wanted to. This leads to very honest comments. There is so little censorship of opinions on the internet and I think that might be the most horrible and importing part about the remix. People are going to tell you what they think of you remix and it will have little to do with anything but their own feelings and thoughts. People pay very little heed to feelings on the internet. I have just about run out of thoughts on this topic so I suppose I will stop for now.
Blog 9 Lessig to me
Lessig is showing the reader how copywrite is criminalizing our culture. From time immemorial humans have understood the concepts of progression. We all know that on the first day god created the earth and we are all familiar with the concept of standing on the shoulders of giants. This is the heart and soul of Lessig’s argument. We all take from those who have come before and pass it on to those who come after. It is only in the last one hundred years that this kind of thing has become illegal. Lessig provides an example of censorship in culture when he talks about an exhibit that features the music of john Lennon sang by a number o f people who are big fans of his work. Despite the fact that the artist was not in it to make money Yoko Ono objected. Yoko has created a lot of art herself so it is somewhat startling that she would fail to see the art in this. It makes me wonder how much of it is just a lack of communication. Recently Weird Al made a parody of Lady Gaga. He submitted it to Lady Gaga for approval but it was rejected. Weird Al wrote about it on his blog where word of the post reached Lady Gaga who promptly called up Weird Al and told him to go ahead and put the song out. It turns out that her manager turned down Weird Al without ever even telling Lady Gaga.
This ties nicely into the next section of this blog. Read Only culture as Lessig discusses it is the culture that has dominated the 20th century. It develops when the cost of producing media is very expensive. When it takes significant resources to produce media then there will be less media produced and distributed. This means that those with the resources will not risk their money on an artist who is different. This is the restrictive reality that is ready only culture. It is dominated by a very small number of media produces who control most if not all of the media market. Lady GaGa is a holdover of this RO culture. One of the last few vaulted to dominance by the media giants who are desperately trying to cling to control. Weird Al’s inability to contact her is a side effect of read only culture. Lucky for us Weird Al has been embracing the Read Write culture that is now rising to dominance. He writes a blog in a unprofessional style. There is not filter between his thoughts and our eyes hungrily eating up his words on the web. This is the hallmark of Read Write culture. As the price of producing media has dropped more people have been able to enter the ranks of the media producer. This causes a twofold effect. First celebrities are more approachable and media production covers a much wider swath of culture. People are seeing and liking media now that they would have never had the chance to see 20 years ago.
In this introduction to his book Lessig talks about John Sousa. Sousa was a composer at the start of the 20th century who made many famous pieces of work. He saw something sweeping the nation that he did not like. This was the predominance of the phonograph. He was disgusted by the idea that people were forgoing singing and creating music because they could listen to it whenever they wanted. He went to congress to fight for copy write as a way to stop the spread of this infernal machine. He was really concerned by what he rightfully saw as the start of read only culture where humans would become like robots because we were all shaped by the same music and culture that was fed to us by media giants. I can speak to what growing up in the 70’s was like but I don’t feel like this was a totally detrimental problem. Instead it provides the common group for read write culture to grow from. Lessig put Sousa in his book to show people that copy write was originally viewed as a way to preserver culture and reward creativity. It look like that’s what it would be at the time because the circumstances required a change. Are circumstance have changed once more and it’s time to reconsider our laws.
This ties nicely into the next section of this blog. Read Only culture as Lessig discusses it is the culture that has dominated the 20th century. It develops when the cost of producing media is very expensive. When it takes significant resources to produce media then there will be less media produced and distributed. This means that those with the resources will not risk their money on an artist who is different. This is the restrictive reality that is ready only culture. It is dominated by a very small number of media produces who control most if not all of the media market. Lady GaGa is a holdover of this RO culture. One of the last few vaulted to dominance by the media giants who are desperately trying to cling to control. Weird Al’s inability to contact her is a side effect of read only culture. Lucky for us Weird Al has been embracing the Read Write culture that is now rising to dominance. He writes a blog in a unprofessional style. There is not filter between his thoughts and our eyes hungrily eating up his words on the web. This is the hallmark of Read Write culture. As the price of producing media has dropped more people have been able to enter the ranks of the media producer. This causes a twofold effect. First celebrities are more approachable and media production covers a much wider swath of culture. People are seeing and liking media now that they would have never had the chance to see 20 years ago.
In this introduction to his book Lessig talks about John Sousa. Sousa was a composer at the start of the 20th century who made many famous pieces of work. He saw something sweeping the nation that he did not like. This was the predominance of the phonograph. He was disgusted by the idea that people were forgoing singing and creating music because they could listen to it whenever they wanted. He went to congress to fight for copy write as a way to stop the spread of this infernal machine. He was really concerned by what he rightfully saw as the start of read only culture where humans would become like robots because we were all shaped by the same music and culture that was fed to us by media giants. I can speak to what growing up in the 70’s was like but I don’t feel like this was a totally detrimental problem. Instead it provides the common group for read write culture to grow from. Lessig put Sousa in his book to show people that copy write was originally viewed as a way to preserver culture and reward creativity. It look like that’s what it would be at the time because the circumstances required a change. Are circumstance have changed once more and it’s time to reconsider our laws.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
DTC 356 Movie Tie In
The dual economies Lessig is talking about on pg224 seem like a very convincing idea. Lessig does a good job of pointing out something that the movie seemed to stress as well. When you have this share economy coexisting with a commercial with cross over between the two the people from the sharing economy who's work ends of commercialized in any way are going to want some kind of recognition. This might not necessarily mean monetary compensation but something as small as recognition.
The movie talks about industries that had control in the past desperately trying to control the future course of their market. I feel like this ties in well to the section were Lessig is talking about LucasFilms under handed offer of free web space for starwars mashups. This idea of "Sure you can use our material all you want to make a mashup but anything you make belongs to us" is supper disappointing. This is clearly LucasFilms just looking for a way to control a new trend. There are some companies that have made the transition well to a hybrid share economy. Amazons market place is a great example of this. When you purchase something on Amazon you get the option to review the product you bought. Most people have written a review at least once for just such a purpose. The logic behind it is that if you used reviews to purchase a product then you need to post some reviews so that the next fellow to come looking at the product has the same robust reviews that helped you make your choice. All the while Amazon sits back and watches as their website gains in value with customer convincing one another to purchase products. Their is a important trade of here that both the book and the movie touched on. In order for this system to work Amazon has to have a hands off approach. If they tamper with the review system too much then customers will loose faith in it.
This is the idea example of how a hybrid share economy should work. The user puts in time and effort but not to add value to a company but instead to help other consumers in the hopes that other consumers will do the same and the overall level of shopping will improve. Amazon gets value from this customer to customer exchange and retains some basic moderator rights but for the most part has given up control in exchange for value added.
The books goes on to talk about the CDDB that provides track labels based off the work of a large community. I think this also falls into the category of the method trying to retain power. Basically what started as a free where idea was bought out by someone who specialized in building startup companies for profit. The mistake they made here was trying to turn a direct profit off the work of a large group while retaining full control over how the work of that group could be used. They would have run into far fewer problems if they would have decided to become a nonprofit. Mozilla the company that makes the popular free browser Firefox makes a healthy profit each year off it's business deals. The money is used to pay the salaries of Mozilla's employees and then is reinvested in Firefox and other Mozilla projects. A great deal of the work on Mozilla is not done by paid employees. People are still willing to volunteer their time and skill to help the project out because no one is making a profit off their work. This is how it should work. If you have an awesome idea for a business but it requires the work of a large volunteer population to make it work you don't really own the rights or shouldn't. Instead any company that arises from the business should be a non-profit. This allows the company to have contracts with other businesses to generate operating revenue and pay a staff of core employees who's job it is to oversee and guide the work of volunteers. No one is going to begrudge the creator of and idea a hefty salary to work at the company and working on your creating and getting a paid for it is a pretty swell deal. Like the movie says we will have trouble until this idea of control exerted by the those who used to control a business fades.
The movie talks about industries that had control in the past desperately trying to control the future course of their market. I feel like this ties in well to the section were Lessig is talking about LucasFilms under handed offer of free web space for starwars mashups. This idea of "Sure you can use our material all you want to make a mashup but anything you make belongs to us" is supper disappointing. This is clearly LucasFilms just looking for a way to control a new trend. There are some companies that have made the transition well to a hybrid share economy. Amazons market place is a great example of this. When you purchase something on Amazon you get the option to review the product you bought. Most people have written a review at least once for just such a purpose. The logic behind it is that if you used reviews to purchase a product then you need to post some reviews so that the next fellow to come looking at the product has the same robust reviews that helped you make your choice. All the while Amazon sits back and watches as their website gains in value with customer convincing one another to purchase products. Their is a important trade of here that both the book and the movie touched on. In order for this system to work Amazon has to have a hands off approach. If they tamper with the review system too much then customers will loose faith in it.
This is the idea example of how a hybrid share economy should work. The user puts in time and effort but not to add value to a company but instead to help other consumers in the hopes that other consumers will do the same and the overall level of shopping will improve. Amazon gets value from this customer to customer exchange and retains some basic moderator rights but for the most part has given up control in exchange for value added.
The books goes on to talk about the CDDB that provides track labels based off the work of a large community. I think this also falls into the category of the method trying to retain power. Basically what started as a free where idea was bought out by someone who specialized in building startup companies for profit. The mistake they made here was trying to turn a direct profit off the work of a large group while retaining full control over how the work of that group could be used. They would have run into far fewer problems if they would have decided to become a nonprofit. Mozilla the company that makes the popular free browser Firefox makes a healthy profit each year off it's business deals. The money is used to pay the salaries of Mozilla's employees and then is reinvested in Firefox and other Mozilla projects. A great deal of the work on Mozilla is not done by paid employees. People are still willing to volunteer their time and skill to help the project out because no one is making a profit off their work. This is how it should work. If you have an awesome idea for a business but it requires the work of a large volunteer population to make it work you don't really own the rights or shouldn't. Instead any company that arises from the business should be a non-profit. This allows the company to have contracts with other businesses to generate operating revenue and pay a staff of core employees who's job it is to oversee and guide the work of volunteers. No one is going to begrudge the creator of and idea a hefty salary to work at the company and working on your creating and getting a paid for it is a pretty swell deal. Like the movie says we will have trouble until this idea of control exerted by the those who used to control a business fades.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)