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• eric - Mar 12 2007 | books, music, free, piracy, DRM, copyright, Tim O'Reilly

  The 7 lessons of distribution for authors:

  Quoted: 1) Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
  2) Piracy is progressive taxation.
  3) Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
  4) Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.
  5) File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.
  6) "Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service.
  7) There's more than one way to do it.

  • ljc - Mar 12 2007
    

    i'd agree except for #6 - i think "free" might be partially, but won't be entirely replaced by better-quality paid service. sharing won't eliminate the paying market, but it will cause it to shrink.

  • eric - Mar 12 2007
    

    6 reads a bit funny to me too but I don't necessarily agree that free services cause the paying market to shrink in all situations. In fact, many of the articles I pointed to today in my little barrage of dots say that free distribution can "expand" the paying market.

    This isn't a zero-sum game. There is a point at which it may not be as wise to give things away for free but I think for artists who are relatively obscure, it may be the way to build a paying audience - which is the point...

  • ljc - Mar 12 2007
    

    well, either way i'm all for free distribution. it may well be that it helps obscure artists (for whom i have a lot of sympathy) and hurts the big ones and their publishing/recording companies (for whom i have a lot less). in any case there's really no way to stop it, short of extreme levels of policing and regulation which would be bad in many, many ways.
• urbansheep - Aug 07 2006 | copyright, article, TimOReilly, p2p, imported:del.icio.us