Napster Limewire and Digital Rights Today

I think most adults my age in business understand that sometimes people just own stuff. Most of law is predicated on that fact. Kids though. Wow. Because of all the file sharing craziness in the years surrounding the transition into the 21st Century, they expect that everything is free and no one really owns anything.

 

 Their iconic heroes of free everything sadly became part of the whole big business cashflow machine after discovering that yes indeed, the law was on the side of the owners. Then we get into the era of the mashup - a bit of this and that from everywhere and nowhere. No one really owns any of it because everyone owns a tiny part of it. This evolves into crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Can the 3,000 people who each gave you $10 to fund a board game project ever hope to get together to sue you for mismanaging the project?

 In fact, Kickstarter backers are exchanging something for nothing except a pledge that they will, at some estimated date in the future or very possibly after, receive what they paid for – something which very often will not even exist when one commits one's money. This isn't investment. It's not even purchasing. It's whatever comes before early adopter on the continuum of high-risk ways to rid oneself of cash. -- Gizmag

If you never ever want to ever ask for money for anything you say or do or display, this kind of anarchy might be acceptable. But if you ever expect to ask for money for anything, to charge money, to sell products, then you have to be much more careful about your own digital rights management.

Let me show a few examples. First an actual event.

Photo of myself on Carstensz (not mine)

Several years ago I was publishing a fanzine. An author sent an article in. I edited it severely. It was a horrible job of writing. I published the article. Three months later an international "real" publication published a nearly identical article by the same author. I called the magazine and they gave me quite a few poor excuses, claiming they'd received the same pitiful article I did and that they somehow managed to edit it into a nearly identical (like 95% identical) article. They gave me an advertising credit as compensation. I should have taken cash.

Now for a speculative event.

Photo of myself on Carstensz (not mine)

Say that you are a mountain climber and took a bunch of video and photos of your trip. A friend of a friend offers to edit your video into a "cool" video. Possibly using some of the dump & spray presets in iMovie or whatever app. You like it and it's actually a lot better than you can do. You go on the slideshow circuit charging $1000 to various clubs and charities to show your slideshow, including the movie. After a year of doing this every weekend you've made about $50,000. In the middle of your slideshow the Sheriff appears with a subpoena and confiscates your laptop. Your friend of a friend has sued for his share of the slideshow profits. Since there's no contract, and no money has changed hands, they can win 3x damages plus legal fees. In a worst-case scenario this could be something on the order of $150,000. The law is on friend-of-friend's side. You stole his artwork and made money off it.

When should you use "free" or collaborative product? When should you let others use your product for "free"? I'll share a few thoughts on that topic in a future post.

Photos are from a climber and a guide on Carstensz 2013 - these do not appear in my books because they were not taken by me, and were not taken with my camera.