[cc-community] Strayform - where artists and fans connect to fund and distribute new creative works (Maiki)
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Sat Jun 9 20:16:05 EDT 2007
drew Roberts wrote:
> On Friday 08 June 2007 04:48 pm, Terry Hancock wrote:
>>The process is inexpensive and distributed, but it is not "costless".
>
> Terry, I think the idea is that people will make copies for their friends,
> while not technically costless, it is close enough to it not to matter to
> much in my book.
I'm not arguing against any major point here, I just think it's
important to always remember that distribution is never without costs --
what changes is who pays the cost and how they pay it.
It may *seem* costless, but it does have to be paid for somewhere along
the line.
Forgetting this can result in blunders.
> Well, you know I don't like NC, but I think that was not in this
> picture. Someone let me know if I was mistaken or mixed up
> threads...
FWIW, I think NC was probably one of the blunders. But no, I don't think
it was mentioned. I was just making an observation.
It's just like forgetting that it actually costs something to burn a
Linux distribution onto a CD and ship it to somebody. This doesn't
invalidate the whole concept of free Linux distributions, but it does
represent costs which must be paid *somehow*.
Specially crafting a license which scuttles the means of recovering
those costs was, let's say "sub-optimal".
I think a mental model of commons production that ignores the costs of
distribution can lead you to such sub-optimal results. It's fuzzy
thinking, which IMHO reduces the credibility of the whole argument --
regardless of its actual merits. :-)
So I have this tendency to mumble corrections under my breath when
listening to this kind of talk. Which doesn't necessarily invalidate the
whole argument -- but may do so in principle, so you have to second
guess the speaker, and figure out for yourself whether the point
mattered or not.
OTOH, this is probably more text than the point really merits. ;-)
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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