[cc-community] Rcrd Lbl to offer CC and Free as in Beer Music
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Fri Nov 16 22:41:11 EST 2007
jonathon wrote:
>>Is it really? Do we *actually* want people to starve themselves in order to provide us with art we can use freely?
>
> What is the difference between releasing software under the GNU GPL,
> and releasing a song (Ogg format) under the CC-BY-SA?
If you meant this rhetorically, I hope you will note that this is not
remotely responsive to what I wrote!
However, since you pose the question, yes there *IS* a significant
economic difference between the two cases which makes it easier to build
a case for the GPL software release to be an economically rational act
and harder for the song to be:
Software=Utilitarian Value
We do not principally value software for itself. There may be some
exceptions to this -- certainly there are people who simply find code
beautiful, and really would hang the source code to EMACS on their wall
as an objet d'art.
However, in general, we evaluate the worth of software in utilitarian
terms. That is the primary value of the majority of people who receive
it. As such, we are interested not in the software itself, but in what
we can do with it.
Free software is intrinsically more valuable because you can do more
with it. Thus the GPL release greatly increases the utilitarian value of
the work.
More importantly, for the purposes of establishing economic rationality,
the utility the work can be even further increased by purchasing
services from people to help you use the work (or use the work for you).
If at least some of those services are provided by people who contribute
to the work's code, then they receive direct economic benefit from
writing the code.
Whether or not this benefit exceeds the benefit of releasing the same
product through a proprietary license and selling copies of it is a
complicated evaluation. It may not be exactly optimal in all cases. But
it is at least true that the action is rational in that the author does
receive a reward for the GPL licensing, relative to not writing the code
at all.
Song=Aesthetic Value
We do not evaluate music in the same way. The principle value of music
is aesthetic -- we simply wish to experience it sensually.
This is not absolute, either. There are some songs which contain
information that you may find useful. There is, for example, a song
whose lyrics are the instructions for creating a DeCSS decoder. And of
course, many songs could be said to provide good or bad advice on
relationships.
We also may, as musicians ourselves, use old music to make new music.
This is possibly the closest we get to a practical utilitarian value in
music.
But in the main, we just want to listen. Thus the principle "services"
that might be offered are simply means of distribution -- which is
something that free licenses of necessity cannot restrict, thus it is
difficult to find business models that rely on it.
Notice that the most prominent example of a so-called "creative" work
that has proved successful -- Wikipedia -- is actually "utilitarian". We
value encyclopedias more for their educational value than for the joy of
reading them.
Now, I would not try to make the case that there are no solutions for
this problem, but it is a real problem.
What I was actually responding to, however was the erroneous idea that
free-licensing of works is, must be, or even *should* be "altruistic" --
in the sense of serving the community *at the expense of the author*
(i.e. a self-sacrificing act).
Since the authors are part of the community, it follows that if the
authors suffer, so does the community (and vice versa). Furthermore, the
authors' ability to continue to contribute to the community relies on
their being able to receive something back.
(There's an exception to this which is when the harm to the author is
much less than the benefit to the community and the act is not a
sustained process, but rather a limited-time event --- then the action
of one person, within what they can stand to give, can save or help a
lot of other people. We're wired for that kind of altruism, and that's a
good thing -- but it only occasionally applies to licensing artwork).
Suggesting that authors should be encouraged to release all of their
work without hope of reward of any kind is certainly not an optimal
outcome. That would starve the artists, and ultimately we'd all be
poorer for it.
Clearly a balance of some kind must be struck. Can CC-By-SA or GPL
provide that balance? I don't know, that depends on clever people to
think up business models for them (mind you, some have already been
thought of -- even for aesthetic works).
But the point is to communicate those business models and the resulting
opportunities to authors, not to encourage them to release their works
blindly without any means of being rewarded for it.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
More information about the cc-community
mailing list