permaculture

[Milton Dixon <miltonics@midwestpermaculture.com>]

 Marjory, I'm sorry that your DVD has not brought you as much income as 
you had hoped.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think the 
problem was in your expectations and in planning on income from a 
digital product.  I think that anyone that expects to make money selling 
a product that can be infinitely and perfectly copied for virtually no 
cost will be greatly disappointed.

This is not the only occurrence of this that has appeared on this 
mailing list.  Your problem is not unique to you alone, but is shared by 
anyone who works hard to develop something, document it, and then sell it.

Unfortunately the laws that govern us and our past experiences give us 
little indication that they have become irrelevant.  It is the nature of 
the product itself and the culture that has grown around it.  Right or 
wrong young people have been patterned to get things for free and will 
continue to as long as they are able.

I do however think it fabulous that your DVD has been distributed to 
over 100,000 people.  It is probably far better result in terms of 
eyeballs than you were hoping for.  Also I hope that it will help you 
leverage more participants for your workshops, which I would be 
attending if they were not so far away.  What other ways might you be 
able to leverage this problem into a solution?

We can look at the world of media as we wish it to be or as it really 
exists.  This is the same problem facing our society in so many 
different ways.  I think you already have some understanding of this and 
I infer that this is the reason you are working hard to provide your own 
food and make a real life for yourself outside of our current cultural 
paradigm. I hope that you can gain clarity about how our media system 
works and put your energy out in ways that both benefit you and educate 
those that so desperately need it.

-Milton


On 8/23/2010 8:20 AM, Marjory wrote:
> We've produced a DVD on food production, and are barely making our 
> costs back having sold about 1,000 to date. I saw on the various 
> copying websites that there have been over 100,000 illegal downloads.  
> Emails and letters of 'cease and desist' to the sites yield little 
> results except feeding my frustration.
> It is important to do good research and present important info for 
> sustaianble living, but this sure has me discouraged.
> To be honest, I think from reading the account names that some of the 
> ones who uploaded the files and made them available were from this 
> permie list.  sigh.
>
> Marjory
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