Self-serve commercial licensing: HOWTO turn the makerverse into an R&D lab
Update: Got ideas for logos and language for the license? Brainstorm here
From edge to edge, the Net is filled with creators of every imaginable tchotchke - and quite a lot of them are for sale.Digital Licensing: Do It YourselfAnd quite a lot of that is illegal.
That's because culture isn't always non-commercial. All around the physical world, you can find markets where craftspeople turn familiar items from one realm of commerce into handicrafts sold in another realm.
I have a carved wooden Coke bottle from Uganda, a Mickey Mouse kite from Chile, a set of hand-painted KISS matrioshkes from Russia. This, too, is a legitimate form of commerce, and the fact that the villager who carved my Coke bottle was impedance-mismatched with Coke and didn't send a lawyer to Atlanta to get a license before he started carving isn't a problem for him, because Coke can't and won't enforce against carvers in small stalls in marketplaces in war-torn African nations.
If only this were true for crafters on the Net. Though they deploy the same cultural vocabulary as their developing-world counterparts for much the same reason (it's the same reason Warhol used Campbell's soup cans), they don't have obscurity on their side. They live by the double-edged sword of the search-engine: The same tool that enables their customers to find them also enables rights-holders to discover them and shut them down.
It doesn't have to be this way.
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Cory,
Great article! The only element 'missing' from your argument is the simple fact that every problem that could crop up with this scheme is already a huge thorn in the side of the big guys.
They haven't done any better, so their behaviour has nothing to recommend it, only huge costs.
Bootleg Hong Kong Disney crap is everywhere. Nintendo does its best work by making its product so good that people refuse to buy third-party peripherals. Microsoft buys companies that make the software they want -- if they won't sell, MS commissions their own version.
The MAFIAA is the only big player not using some of those alternative tactics to help their bottom line. I understand that given their contribution to their product, they have fewer choices, but I think the public's reaction to them has proven that people will not respond to their propaganda.
Um, how come Warhol didn't get sued?
I really like this idea but the legal hurdles seem problemativ - looking at creative commons where its still not clear if the license holds in court throughout the world not even to mention the "non commercial" issue. The way I see it so is that it could become so huge a movement that legality problems are swept to the side by sheer volume (thats how I like to think creative commons works at the moment). And that mostly the white hats would adopt the code so making it work by sheer good will without litigation etc.
Now seeing that Creative Commons can barely handle their current license and volume a new entity would be needed that communicates this idea and maybe at the same time even create a market place - in turn it could generate some funds to promote the idea further (I don´t think a for profit company could take over the idea for fear of lock in etc pp).
How far would that reach? Are we talking about just making "fan ware" or are we talking about "full out licensing rights" - like hypothetical me printing german translation Little Brother books (on hemp paper set in black letter on a movable type lettering press) - I mean the ramifications of a full out licensing market place - together with a big open not for profit database - could change literally the way business works throughout the world.
That was a bad example. Warhol designed the Campbell Soup can label. So of course he could, and did, use it in some of his art work.
#4, bitman362:
Er, no, he didn't.
Even if Warhol had designed the Campbell Soup can label, traditional contracts almost always stipulate that the designer can't use their design elsewhere for personal profit.
(And Warhol most certainly didn't design it - he was born in 1928. According to the NY Times, the logo was designed in 1897. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/26/business/the-media-business-advertising-after-102-years-campbell-alters-soup-labels.html Warhol did do lots of commercial design and illustration, though, especially before the mid-1960s.)
I don't know the specifics of why he wasn't sued, but in general corporations didn't used to police their brand images quite as voraciously as they do now, instead reserving their legal guns for problems like outright counterfeiting. As scrumptious as his canvases must have been, it was pretty clear even then that silkscreens don't taste like tomato soup.
Anyways, this license seems promising, at least in theory. But I particularly love the "impedance-mismatched" description for variable power inputs and circuits among different users and producers.
- Ryan
The most difficult thing with a hybrid economic system is implementing a scheme for profit sharing on the commercial end that is both efficient and equitable.
I have been thinking about it a lot since it is of dire importance to the success of a project that I am currently working (polarity confluence). I have yet to figure out a system that does not have some opportunity for abuse.
For example, say you have an RW/ UGC community creating and remixing all collaborative, freely licensed (CC) work based on original source material. In such a system the person who brings content to market gets the reward. A royalty or profit sharing system is non-existent at the moment and developing one will have huge administrative costs and is susceptible to accounting abuses. Naturally, I thought of using the community itself to more or less democratically self police profit sharing based on an overall sense of fairness through debate, discussion, voting whatever. However, most models of self regulating community behavior online are ineffective. Online communities are rarely able to self regulate in an effective manner when money is involved, the incentive for abuse is too high for some.
I am trying to think of ways to harness market forces to ensure a fair and efficient solution to this issue but have yet to come up with anything.
I don't feel bad though. Figuring out economic systems that maximize aggregate performance AND are fair (both in profit distribution and in externalities) is something that has yet to be done EVER.
Trademark law is designed to protect consumers from buying fraudulent products, not as an outright ban on reproducing logos without permission. (This is what makes it different than copyright law.) Nobody thought that Warhol was trying to pass off his paintings as actual soup, or even as a licensed product of the Campbell's company. Maybe somebody could try suing him for defamation, but I don't see how any of those paintings could have done anything but boost soup sales.
Coke, at least in its modern corporate form, is another matter. Campbell's never sold art or products bearing their soup can design before Warhol came around, so there was no way his paintings could dilute their brand image. But the Coca Cola company sells all kinds of shit with their logo on it, so they have a legitimate interest in protecting that market share.
#5 by Beanolini, May 15, 2009 5:28 AM
I've been looking for the 'worthington E' advert and or record for years, can you get me a copy please.
Andy
#9 posted by andylaugh:
Try here. Complete with surface noise.
#10 posted by Beanolini, May 17, 2009 8:58 AM
OMG Thank you so much.
Wonderful!!
Andy