Geir Isene : Straight talk on IT

Battle for Ant Hill

April 20, 2009 7:56 pm isene General IT, Free Software

With the record industry and friends in the blue corner and a whole generation in the red, the stage is set for the fight of the century.

The film, record and proprietary software industry is rejoicing the acceleration of their own demise. The Pirate Bay verdict is putting gasoline on the fire that has been burning steadily stronger since the last crucifixion - Napster. Crucifixion of rebels may not bring the people in power the effect they are seeking.

It has been said that stopping piracy of copyrighted material is like stopping the sea coming in. Resistance is futile. It is - not because people are inherently thieves but because they are inherently creative.  Give people the opportunity to contribute their creative powers and they will do so in hordes. Witness Wikipedia or the Free Software movement.  It’s disrupting the status quo of the cultural man-in-the-middle. But that man is living on borrowed time. Time to let him go.

The cultural distribution industry will die. The distinction between the creator of culture and the consumer will dissipate. Today everyone are cultural consumers. Tomorrow everyone can be creators. With free flowing culture and everyone building on what everyone else has created, the ant hill innovation of culture will again be the rule. It has too long been the exception - by force of law.

The Free Software industry is spearheading the concept. Here a 14 year old wizkid can have real impact on enterprise grade software. As long as she can program quality code, her contributions are included in heavy weight products like Voice over IP or webserver solutions. Scary? Sure - for the Old School thinkers and doubters. Opportunities? You bet - for the ant hill innovation.

Make no mistake, the Free Software industry is a booming industry making headlines every day. It is reshaping the IT world, showing the power of individual contributions.

Not to long ago, the Old School thinkers and doubters dismissed Free Software as “unserious” and “insignificant”. Now even Microsoft is getting serious about Free Software.

In the world of free flowing culture, the now men-in-the-middle will have to reincarnate to keep their jobs. The record companies could look to thriving companies in the Free Software industry for inspiration. They should focus on new and better services helping the artists produce better art and for consumers to get what they want instead of acting as a distribution overhead. If they do not reincarnate, they will keep sinking and remain six feet under.

The Pirate Bay trial is just the climax of an industry that has long been beating up their customers. It’s bad business practice to criminalize and fight a whole generation of customers. With Pirate Bay after-polls showing more than 80% disapproval of the verdict it’s an up hill battle for the aging industry. Instead of inventing better methods of generating and distributing culture, they have insisted on keeping a tunnel vision on their immediate cash cows. And defending it to their own death it seems.

The Old School often rebuts with “how can we or the artists generate cash if everything we create is taken for free”. Well if we turn it all around in a simple thought experiment we may see this in different light… If the music industry was all free and spearheading the ant hill concept with the software industry being all closed and proprietary, we could imagine a conversation going like this:

Musician: “You should open up and embrace the ant hill innovation”
Programmer: “how would we make money, what on earth could be a viable business model for free software?”
Musician: “Well we have a range of business models for different contributors”
Programmer: “You guys have an easy time at it, you could put on a concert any time you needed cash. No one would pay to see me hack away on a keyboard”

It’s easy to see what revenue streams would disappear and much harder to envision new opportunities. Especially when the current revenue streams are making one fat and blind.

We don’t see the porn industry whining and taking The Pirate Bay to court.  This industry is extremely competitive, may be the biggest industry on the Internet and the one with the most successful alternative revenue models. While not an argument endorsing the porn industry, it is to show that a free market does indeed bring out creativity.

Rip away artificial monopolies like copyright and patents and as long as there is demand for culture, money will find its way from the consumer to the creator. Albeit without the man-in-the-middle.

Although it’s hard to envision the possible plethora of business models in a truly free market, it is not hard to come up with a few intriguing ones.  We could see a moving from distribution companies who pretend to serve the creators of culture over to companies rigged to serve the consumers. This would include jazz groups arranging concerts, special membership perks and first releases to members and at the same time funding new productions for their consumers. The old model of commissioned productions could also see a new spring.

In addition to free market business models, the society could see value in creation of certain types of culture. The society could see the benefit in investing in jazz music, folk music or 3D digital artwork while leaving pornography to cater for itself. Such a long term investment could be facilitated by the use of state income or by lowering the tax for culture providers.

But talk is of course cheap and the proof of the pudding lies in the eating. The best way to get real traction toward a free cultural society is to show new viable business models. This is why the upcoming Genero model for cultural distribution is interesting - a free system catering for any type of user license with minimum distribution overhead.

What if we took all the creative power used for protecting what is already created and put it to use in creating more culture? What a creative society we would have. With more content providers, less lawyers and fewer law suits.

May the new generation win the Battle for Ant Hill.