Reply to Glyn Moody, Three Years Later

I don't know how I missed this article at the time although I had responded to other Glyn Moody opsts, but I do have to say it explains a lot. Here's my answer, thanks to Stroker for pointing out the piece:

As for this wondrous "star chamber" -- and for you, Glyn Moody -- you all have in common one thing: zealous adherence to the idea of opensource software and the idea of Free as a business model, uber alles. This involves making content be freely copyable and having some business model involving customization or consulting on top of that free software or digital content -- or merely sharing it for free -- both facets of what I call the technocommunist world view.

And so merely for temporary expediency, because he saw that the political task here was to have a man-bites-dog story and have an vaunted game-god and software dictator like Philip Rosedale turn the tables, and for once give user rights to creations (unlike any game that Castronova has been in, for example) -- Lessig championed users' intellectual property rights. Then he went away and forgot about it, because he wasn't interested in users' rights, but just eroding game-god rights.

The Lindens then put in a mechanical system much like a DRM of sorts, that had copy/modify/transfer as a regime to protect intellectual property rights. It was a brilliant invention that they themselves didn't even fully grasp the uses and meaning of.

Lessig lost interest in SL, which to him didn't produce anything compelling to suit his ideologies, and which never got any traction for efforts of his fanboyz to put in a Creative Commons licensing machine. It was completely useless to people who wanted to *make money* from creations because Creative Commons simply doesn't provide a way to put up an icon on your website along with a micropayments system and say "You can copy this but you must buy the copy".

Second Life does.

Instead, what Creative Communism does is browbeat you endlessly to give away your content for free, and shill you that you can actually make money this way by getting credit and recognition that will then...magically transform into actual sales...somewhere.

This works for a few people. It mainly works for people who...write books about this concept and sell the book, like Chris Anderson, or who endlessly give lectures on the subject, like Cory Doctorow.

Meanwhile, the average dressmaker or house-builder in Second Life knows too many freebies lose business, don't make them, and they use "no copy/transfer" or "copy/no transfer" to *make money for their creations*. A few zealots continue to make free widgets -- but they make damn sure that *scripts* that execute server side are never, ever, ever made stealable -- while showing indifference to the problems of texture and prims client-side, which are stealable.

This growing hard fact on the ground disconcerted some Lindens and their early pioneers who were zealous opensourceniks. People did NOT use Creative Commons, did not like it, did not even need it (copyright is defensible without it, as it is inherent; you don't need a license to enforce it)

In fact, far from seeing them as "temporary expediencies" or "Creative Commons expression of intent" like Lessig wanted them to do, they really expected these tools to function, NOT to become a "share and gift economy" but what in fact they became: an economy that celebrated, developed, embellished upon -- and demanded! -- the copy/modify/transfer rights regime as a given *in order to uncheck the boxes and keep their IP intact".

Meanwhile, the technocommies at Linden Lab were supremely indifferent. They weren't dress makers or house builders or land sellers. They are software engineers who love opensource and are zealous about Free because they have salaries as software coders. Around them was a coterie of really zealous unemployed, unemployable or semi-unemployed coders who loved the idea of Free who might get it to work if they made widgets that might get them consulting jobs. And then big IT, like IBM, which cynically took the softare work of these kids and eventually used it to do stuff like sell $50,000 4-sim office solutions behind a firewall with the 'opensource' code of open sim, which is reverse engineered and re-engineered from SL -- precisely because Linden Lab did not stop the reverse engineering, but even blessed it.

Up to a point. When the economy they still needed for their software coding development project -- which relies on content and land sales requiring DRM and copyright protections -- was threatened by CopyBot, made and sold cynically by one of their pets in libsecondlife (who now works at Intel), they did make the use of Copybot for infringement a TOS violation -- but said its use "for personal use" was ok.

That and 100 other ways of letting the analog hole/digital copying problem grow and grow rather than setting policies about it led to where we are today, where a disgrunteld former favourite featured in Showcase with high-traffic venues of the best builders and artists of SL who couldn't get his business to make money (he refused to sell much content or land, believing in Free) then decided to leave SL, but before going, announce that he would release BuilderBot, better than CopyBot in that it could copy the entire sim's worth of builds, with parts by all different creators, and therefore threaten their intellectual property.

Lessig knowingly built this time- bomb because to him, user IP was a mere wedge -- a temporary issue -- to erode IP of game gods, in the overall project of eroding IP completely, which he views as "in the way" of innovation, creation, community, blah blah -- and intended to enable creators merely to get *credit* by having their name on a product to discourage copying without crediting.

Kapor and Rosedale are much the same in their views, only slightly tempored by the cunning pragmatism of men who still have to keep funding their software project with the hopes and dreams of little dressmakers and housebuilders on their platform -- because they now take a commission out of every sale on Xstreet.com, which is a former resident merchants' site that they bought out, and they also continue to collect land sales and maintenance fees, i.e. server rental fees. So they still need a formal nod to those hundreds of thousands who check OFF on the boxes c/m/t instead of unchecking them to enable c/m/t in a CC like regime.

There was $450 million worth of user content generated last year in this fashion by people who DID NOT repeat DID NOT use Creative Commons or GNU licenses except for a very tiny ideological minority. That was a triumph of field practice and human life over ideology and cant coming from copyleftists. It happened despite all the indifference and active hostility of rampant theft on the grid by the Lindens, who tell reporters of security exploits to get better coders or "build a different business model" or take months to answer a DMCA claim.

Oh, you say, doesn't this prove that Free works, that people still made money despite copying? No, because it represents what people accomplish even when you hobble them with indifference to IP, not the increased revenues they could have had, and it represents a plateau, as paid memberships have dropped, 60 day uniques have stagnated and gone backwards in the last year, and purchases have reduced. Creators are burned and leave for other pastures -- Blue Mars, which does not have user-generated content of the amateur sort, but will make agreements with developers to put their content in the world with third-party tools, has a regime that won't introduce the sort of problems that copybot and builderbot impose on economies.

Glyn Moody, here is the moral of this story: Free does not work. What works is c/m/t and commerce, and building a regime where creators GET PAID FOR CONTENT and have choice as to how much loss leaders in "Free" they put in their business rather than have it imposed by Creative Communist diktat. Only a few coders can make money from consulting sold on top of free software -- they can't impose that model on all of us.

Thus, despite all the snarkiness of people like Clay Shirky or Jay Rosen who hate micropayments and refuse to consider how media could indeed pay for itself (as it robustly *does* pay for itself in micropayments in SL), the message here is very strong: web 2.0 and 3.0 can be different than 1.0 in not turning into a giant copy shop, where coders and widgeteers and huge monoliths like Google benefit by offering free software to have reduced business costs for themselves, and manipulate mega-audiences, but destroy the value of all kinds of things from movies to newspapers.

Web 3.0 and the remainders of Web 2.0, whether you like it or not, will be a story of a big fork away from opensource occurs, because it simply doesn't work *for enough people*, and over to proprietary coded platforms that secure IP in a variety of ways, or mixtures of opensource and proprietary that makes OS accountable with registration and authenticated plug-ins.

Comments

[Stroker Serpentine]

I had an interesting conversation with a dear friend and industry leader in VW's and MMO's during a recent visit. He is an active proponent of IP because he is a software engineer but considers himself a content creator first and foremost.

He has been following the development of SL over the years and applauds C/M/T as well. Although he feels that the interface is too "bulky" and overly comprehensive for most to adapt to quickly. Therefore alienating many from the onset. I agree with him on that point.

He made the comment that if you really want to see the true agenda of the developers,in terms of commercial application, reverse engineer/decompile the scripting language and write a "clone" that offers the same functionality and can be replicated. Then introduce that into the platform. Thereby basically allowing scripts to be copied along with textures and geometry.

He detailed how this could be accomplished as my eyes glazed over, but asserted that it wouldn't be too difficult knowing the expected results of the code.

Now wouldn't that twist some knickers!Free the integers! FTW!

[cube inada]

Same Moral of why web3d failed a decade ago.... Why you all know about Dancer, and Prancer, but not about.....oh well..:)

Ready for the SL Revolution?

BAN FREEBIES!.
thats right.. one new line of code in SL....

Make all "price boxs" either 99L$ or no copy/transfer at all.

make SL a .99 cent store at rock bottom- just like realife or ebay:)

its time, isnt it? the pyramid has topped out, the experiment done as suggested. time to also admit that the same "educators" that couldnt sell 3d education by walking through king tuts tomb in 1999 cant make a go of it either in 2009 for the same reasons.

eventually another set of apps, maybe even a open sims server with a cloned system(CMT for all) will emerge and grow..just as all online vr/mmo gaming objects have grown in popularity, but ONLY being worth something to a gamerz play.

So END 0L$ settings in SL.
Force the Profits!
Make the Metaverse Pundits obsolete and back to the farms.

[Prokofy Neva]

Can you list why they can't make walking through King Tut's tomb work, in 1999 or 2009?

[cube inada]

I thought i did:)

Presenting a "working" walkthrough tomb has been pretty much the same for a decade.

And i guess "getting others to pay you/or paying yourself to build one" hasnt changed much at all as well:)

If the question is one of "sustainability" or "monetization" beyond the initial funding, then I think many who read this blog already can make that list and another one of how it could potentially work with those elements active.;)

I didnt see anything at heritage key site or the SL TUT exhibit/presentation that suggested to me anything different from what I saw from ventures around 1999.
:)

[Prokofy Neva]

I mean something different. If you saw Blue Mars' promo video, they also are hooking up with Discovery was it, to make some sort of historical/geographic sort of things. And my broader question isn't "can you monetarize them" because I don't think people will pay $5 to go into a virtual museum, although they may go in for free and then buy something for their avatar inside or a mug, I suppose -- but it's more, do these sorts of diarama thingies work online?

Do people find them compelling or are they boring?

[cube3]

After 15 years of making/pitching and doing them.;)

Most cannot be described as truly compelling enough for the request for money from a "mass media consumer" upon entry.;)

Your "experienced" time in SL, has for the most part , imo, delivered to you a more correct "recipe" for succesfull web3d media "success" beyond what is called "the games biz".

Also, just an aside, as you know- one mans boring is anothers "nirvana", so if you pick the right rich twits tweeter, he'll pay for it.:)

A dozen years of web3d coonferences..., theres a non monetized VR museum being shown every year;)

I know of the Blue Mars press releases, and yes have seen the tech demos for years now--- yes. it will have higher 3d media playback capabilities than Open sims or SL;) but as i suggested, none of whats really at play is in my opinion about technical issues.

It never really has been.:)

[melponeme_k]

http://npirl.blogspot.com/2009/07/statement-from-not-possible-irl-group.html

The NPIRL group has no problem with builder bot.

Ironic since many of these people were screaming bloody murder and threatening legal sanctions against screen shot photographers stealing their stuffs!

[cube3]

I have asked to be removed from that group. The statements made, and the methods used to come to them, do no reflect my thoughts about the tactics used to promote creators interests in professional design or the best interests of designers or visual artists in the digital medium.

I never authorized any group to speak for my professional and ethical manners on what Rezzable has created for itself by its actions.

cube3

cube3

[Darien Caldwell]

NPIRL doesn't care about it because none of them actually build anything worth protecting. They are a group that tries to make a name for themselves by pointing to the hard work of other people. As such, I frankly couldn't care less what they think. It's like a guy who loves and leaves the ladies giving his thoughts on abortion. He lacks the proper credentials to comment meaningfully, as someone both unaffected and knowledge-deficient on the subject.

[cube inada]

http://freetoplay.biz/2009/07/22/designing-balancing-and-managing-virtual-economies-cc09/

some monetization notes online today.....

i found the 3 ring notes about "player" pricing to be of note.

c3