James Boyle, is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and
co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. He is also the author of the brilliant book "The Public Domain", and in this Google Zeitgeist 2008 video he does a great job explaining why we tend to favor anything but Openness, and why copyright as we know it is turning 1.3 Billion Internet users into perpetual infringers. Watch this video and... think.
More Boyle videos are here btw - all good stuff!
Very soon, a majority of people around the world will no longer connect to the Internet via desktop computers tethered to cables, or notebooks 'tethered' to WLAN boxes. Instead they will use their mobile devices (fka 'phones'). These experiences will be personalized, custom-made, location-aware, timely, interdependent, social, contextual and most importantly, 100% under the users' control.
In many developing countries, the first browsing experiences will be via mobile applications or mobile browsers. This is a huge shift for marketers, brands, content owners and ecommerce companies. Check out my recent presentations on Mobile Marketing and Mobile Content (both were held @ CommunicAsia 2009)
I made a very short video on the same topic last week (90 secs) and a lot of people have pinged me to make a longer version - so here it is, in 2 parts (thanks to Youtube's really annoying 10 minute limit).
One of the most important realizations that has recently transpired via my Twitter pipeline is how much I am gaining from the ever increasing Sharism i.e. by what others are sharing with me. I am indeed very, very lucky to be connected to so many brilliant and like-minded people that are publishing their thoughts freely and openly, using platforms such as Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Slideshare and of course, their blogs. All of you deserve a big THANK YOU.
So I figured it's time to give some more explicit credit to all those great people that have influenced me, and I maybe a good way to do that is to list them on a special, Twitter-API-based site such as Futerati; and maybe send some attention their way, in return. Futerati went online a few days ago, and much like Electric Artists' cool TrackingTwitter site (but a lot more personal) Futerati is presenting 6 constantly updated categories (Futurists, Thought Leaders Authors, Activists, StartUps and Others) with people that I follow, their latest tweets, the current number of followers, and with some brief comments on why I like them. With each featured twitter user, you can click straight through to their tweets or their profiles and easily connect with them, as well.
Please note that Futerati is a constant work in progress and therefore not complete at this time; I will be adding a lot more people as I dig through my 7400 network connections, during the next 4-6 weeks. So, if I should have listed you but have not done so yet please post something on Twitter (use @gleonhard) or use the hashtag #futerati or DM me via Twitter, or email, or comment on this blog. If we haven't 'met' yet but if you still want to be listed please ping me with your details so that I can take a look at you; in any case please note that every single connection I list on Futerati is personally selected by me. Enjoy - and RT!
I was delighted to be invited to make a contribution to the RSA Journal's July 2009 edition, the printed version of which was just send out I believe, and the online edition that just went up on their website.
The complete title of my piece is: "The price of freedom - reinventing the online economy: Gerd Leonhard explains why ‘free’ content can still pay in the long term" and I really enjoyed writing this for them.
Following my last presentation at the RSA, in April 2009, on 'The Future of Content and Creativity' I have had many good conversations about this topic. The audio track from this event is here, btw; and the video is embedded again, below. Enjoy. And RT;)
I definitely recommend that you check out the other great features in the Juy 09 RSA journal, as well, there's some great gems in there.
You can read the entire thing on the RSA page, so here is just an excerpt:
"Free information, free music, free content and free media have been
the promises of the internet (r)evolution since the humble beginnings
of the World Wide Web and the Netscape IPO on 9 August 1995. What
started out as the cumbersome sharing of simple text, grainy images and
seriously compressed MP3s via online bulletin boards has now spread out
to every single segment of the content industry – and even into
‘meatspace’ (real-life) services such as car rentals. Without a doubt,
‘free’ has become the default expectation of the young web-empowered
digital natives and now the older generations are jumping in, too.
On
top of the already disruptive force of the good old computer-based
Web1.0, we are witnessing a global shift to mobile internet – a WWW
that is, finally, so easy to use that even my grandmother can do it.
While five years ago, we needed a ‘real’ computer tethered to a bunch
of wires to port ourselves to this other place called ‘online’ and
partake in global content swapping, now we just need a simple smart
phone and a basic data connection. With a single click of a button,
we’re in business – or rather, in freeloading mode.
As users,
we love ‘free’; as creators, many of us have come to hate the very
thought. When access is de facto ownership, how can we still sell
copies of our creations? Will we be stuck playing gigs while our music
circles the globe on social networks, or blogging (now: tweeting) our
heart out without even a hint of real money coming our way?
Daunting
as it may seem, we can no longer stick with the pillars of Content1.0,
such as the so-called fixed mechanical rate that US music publishers
are currently getting ‘per copy’ of a song ($0.091). Nobody knows what
really defines a copy any longer when the web’s equivalent of a copy
(the on-demand play of that song on digital networks) may be occurring
hundreds of millions of times per day. No advertiser, no ISP and not
even Google has this kind of money to pay the composer (or rather, the
publisher), at least not until the advertisers start bringing at least
30–50 per cent of their global US$1 trillion marketing and advertising
budgets to the table.
Traditional
expectations and pre-internet licensing agreements are exactly what are
holding up YouTube’s deals with the music rights organisations such as
PRS and GEMA: this is what the rights organisations used to get paid
for the music that is being copied, and this is what they want to get
paid now. This impasse is causing significant friction in our media
industries worldwide. Yet, below the top-line issue of money, there
lurks an even more significant paradigm shift: the excruciating switch
from a centralised system of domination and control to a new ecosystem
based on open and collaborative models. This is the shift from
monopolies and cartels to interconnected platforms where partnership
and revenue sharing are standard procedures. In most countries,
copyright law gives creators complete and unfettered control to say yes
or no to the use of their work. Rights-holders have been able to rule
the ecosystem and, accordingly, ‘my way or the highway’ has been the
quintessential operating paradigm of most large content companies for
the past 50 years.
Enter the internet: now the highway has become
the road of choice for 95 per cent of the population, the attitude of
increasing the price by playing hard to get is rendered utterly
fruitless. Like it or not, a refusal to give permission for our content
to be legally used because we just don’t like the terms (or the entity
asking for a licence) will just be treated as ‘damage’ on the digital
networks, and the traffic will simply route around it. The internet and
its millions of clever ‘prosumers’, inventors and armies of
collaborators will find a way to use our creations, anyway. Yes, we can
sue Napster, Kazaa or The PirateBay and we can whack ever more moles as
we go along. We can pay hundreds of millions of dollars to our lawyers
and industry lobbyists – but none of this will help us to monetise what
we create. The solution is not a clever legal move, and it’s not a
technical trick (witness the disastrous use and now total demise of
Digital Rights Management in digital music). The solution is in the
creation of new business models and the adoption of a new economic
logic that works for everyone; a logic that is based on collaboration,
on co-engagement and on, dare we mention it, mutual trust – an
ecosystem not an egosystem. Once we accept this, we can start to
discover the tremendous possibilities that a networked content economy
can bring to us.
Free, feels-like-free and freemium
Much
has been written on the persistent trend towards free content on the
net. It is crucial that we distinguish between the different terms so
that we can develop new revenue models around all of them. ‘Free’ means
nobody gets paid in hard currency – content is given away in return for
other considerations, such as a larger audience, viral marketing
velocity or increased word of mouth (or mouse). I may be receiving
payment in the form of attention, but that isn’t going to be very
useful when it’s time to pay my rent or buy dinner for my kids. Free
is... well, unpaid, in real-life terms.
‘Feels-like-free’, on
the other hand, means that real money is being generated for the
creators while their content is being consumed – but the user considers
it free. The payment may be made (ie sponsored or facilitated) by a
third party (such as Google’s recently launched free music offering in
China, Top100.cn); it may be bundled (such as in Nokia’s innovative
‘Comes With Music’ offering, which bundles the music fee into the
actual handsets) or the payment may be part of an existing social,
technological or cultural infrastructure (such as cable TV or European
broadcast licence fees) and therefore absorbed without much further
thought. Feels-like-free could therefore be understood as a smart way
to re-package what people will pay for, so that the pain of parting
with their money is removed or somewhat lessened – everyone pays,
somehow, but the consumption itself feels like a good deal...." Read on. PDF: Download RSA - The price of freedom Gerd Leonhard July 2009
Alright then... you don't think "Music 2.0 in 90 seconds" is enough. You don't think 3 minutes really do it, either. You liked the PDF but you want the talk. I heard you. So here is the full 18 minutes of Music 2.0, in 2 parts, thanks to the ingenious Youtube limitations (but hey... it's HD now so why am I complaining?).
Here is a link to the MP4 file (410MB) if you want to watch on while biking in the woods;) Plus: remember that you can get it all for your iPods and iPhones by subscribing to my GerdTube.net / Blip TV iTunes feed (except for this one, though - for some reason the encoding just won't work for this file).
Lorraine at Rostant Advertising in Trinidad send me the link to an interesting Web 2.0 tool called Kwout. They provide tools that allow you to take a snapshot of any piece on any webpage - mostly for quoting purposes I would think -, make a widget out of it, and re-use the quote, intact will all links etc, on your own page - pretty cool, even though the image quality could be better. Talk about Sharism!
Below is a snippet from one of my favorite essays called 'Better than Free' by Kevin Kelly, and from a blog post by me that is based on the same concepts... check it out.
Just received this file via MPJC podcast site; it's the audio version of my 30-minute speech on The Future of Media, get more details via my previous post on MPJC 2009. Note: the introduction (90 secs) is in Dutch but my speech is in English.
Chris Anderson published an interesting excerpt from his upcoming new book "Free" in the recent edition of Wired Magazine. If you are in the Content / Media Business, this is indeed a must-read (the book, as well as this excerpt). Here are the nuggets I found (quoted from Chris / Wired) - I couldn't have said it better myself! The [links] are added by me, though.
"The most important thing is relevance. We'll always choose a
"low-quality" video of something we actually want over a "high-quality"
video of something we don't" [comment: watch this video where I speak about Context and Content = Kings]
"What this boils down to is the difference between abundance- and
scarcity-based business models. If you're controlling a scarce
resource, like the prime-time broadcast schedule, you have to be
discriminating. There are real costs associated with those half-hour
chunks of network time, and the penalty for failing to reach tens of
millions of viewers with them is calculated in red ink and lost
careers... But if you're tapping into an abundant resource, you can afford to
take chances, since the cost of failure is so low. Nobody gets fired
when your YouTube video is viewed only by your mom"
"Sound schizophrenic? That's the nature of the hybrid world we're
entering, where scarcity and abundance exist side by side. We're good
at scarcity thinking—it's the 20th-century organizational model. Now we
have to get good at abundance thinking, too" [comment: yes, indeed, there's no cookbook, yet!]
As you may have guessed from my travel schedule (see sidebar) I get a constant stream of new people and companies, conference organizers, existing clients and all kinds of organizations that want me to go somewhere and make a presentation, hold a keynote speech or run a think-tank event; from all over the world, and on many different topics. If I actually accepted each invitation I am quite certain I could literally travel from one speaking engagement to the next, for pretty much the entire year. That would certainly get me Red Carpet status with most of the 8 airlines that I usually travel with, I guess.
There have always been a good many logistical challenges in organizing think-tanks and other events; however, the current financial crisis has definitely resulted in much tighter budgets, pretty much everywhere. Increasing concerns for the environment are also palpable - making countless long-distance trips for the sole purpose of a 90-minute speech and subsequent panel discussion is probably not the best example for the efficient use of energy.
Therefore I have been busy exploring new ways how I can present to - and have real conversations with - interested clients from anywhere on the globe without continuously enriching the likes of Lufthansa, Swiss and Singapore Airlines. Again, I do believe that nothing beats the live performance, the face-to-face meetings and the actual experience in what people have started to call the 'meat-space' (as opposed to cyber-space I guess), but maybe some new ways can be explored that offer a similar, and less costly experience.
I recently found a very interesting platform in the new Present.io offering (a new service by Drop.io), which (for anyone with a browser and good Internet access, no additional software is needed) allows for remote presenting, commenting and chats, as well as sporting integrated conference calling, too; all in-one place, and for free. Well, at least for the basic version - they are banking on the Feels-Like-Free / Freemiummodel, too, and it's working with me already. Good stuff.
The combination of services like Present.io with a live phone call, or Skype / iChat Video, has worked out really well, already, and so going forward, I will start to accept more requests for virtual / remote presentations (some people use the term 'webinars' btw).
I look forward to experimenting with you on what the best formats for this may be; if you have any other ideas for better technical solutions please use the comment box or below or contact me via Twitter or eMail; the same goes for anyone interested in booking a virtual presentation.
Lastly, here is an example of the Present.io / Drop.io widgets:
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Traditional
expectations and pre-internet licensing agreements are exactly what are
holding up YouTube’s deals with the music rights organisations such as
PRS and GEMA: this is what the rights organisations used to get paid
for the music that is being copied, and this is what they want to get
paid now. This impasse is causing significant friction in our media
industries worldwide. Yet, below the top-line issue of money, there
lurks an even more significant paradigm shift: the excruciating switch
from a centralised system of domination and control to a new ecosystem
based on open and collaborative models. This is the shift from
monopolies and cartels to interconnected platforms where partnership
and revenue sharing are standard procedures. In most countries,
copyright law gives creators complete and unfettered control to say yes
or no to the use of their work. Rights-holders have been able to rule
the ecosystem and, accordingly, ‘my way or the highway’ has been the
quintessential operating paradigm of most large content companies for
the past 50 years. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7d8e6328-1d47-418b-bd32-757aa729f7ee)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=40d81070-edaa-4241-8e76-b9dbed2e1e2e)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=41cefd35-7565-4a96-8f5a-20ff1f103713)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=df7b59cd-0b72-4fa1-9802-cac014ee4061)
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![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e8590b61-07eb-4898-bb36-efe8ab30ae15)
