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cc-eyebeam - [cc-eyebeam] Re: copyright and the developing world

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Subject: Creative Commons-Eyebeam Forum 2003 November 12-19

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  • From: john AT dx.org
  • To: cc-eyebeam AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-eyebeam] Re: copyright and the developing world
  • Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 11:11:32 -0500 (EST)


Thanks for this anecdote, Tom. That sounds like a
very cool initiative. But the question that
arises is: in the long run, how will it help an
artist in South Africa to release a commercial
musical recording if the market for this kind of
product is being terminally eroded by
file-sharing?

You suggest that:
> So, we now have the makings of an economic
model for providing every individual throughout
the world with the opportunity to compete on
equal footing with the largest media content
providers across the music, arts, and book
publishing "industries".
>

But the reality is that those industries are
suffering serious destabilization – that will
only get much worse – as people take advantage of
the internet to share 'content' without paying
for it. But they remain giants whose interests
are directly opposed to that of your South
African friend. If he is one day able to play
with the Vivendis and Bertelsmanns of the world
on a level playing field it will only be because
the industries that those giants dominate will
have themselves been levelled.

The need is for a new model that isn't based on
importing literate capitalism online but that
capitalizes on the inherent strengths of the
internet to build economically sustainable
communities of interest by valuing what is shared
online differently.

I believe we need models that reward process
rather than product, that enable masters of
collaborative process living in developing
(predominantly oral) nations to leverage their
unique community-building skills online rather
than adapting their creative energies to a system
designed to exploit them.

To my mind the collaborative connection you
facilitated between the South African singer and
Open Studios is of far more value and
significance than the product of that
collaboration. The trick is to find ways to sell
participation in that facilitative context. It's
something that I was working on in different ways
in a business I founded a few years ago called
Globalhood (www.globalhood.net). But that was
just a start. There is a tremendous amount of
work to do to implement these models once they
have been designed. I'm trying to find out if and
where this is happening today.

Regards, and please send a link to Olu
Victo-Omole's music...
John Sobol




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