Towards a Commons Taxonomy

As regular readers will know, I regard the concept of the commons as an increasingly important one, not least because it pulls together threads found in many disparate areas. But one consequence of that richness and broad reach is that a unitary idea of the commons is not enough: we need a taxonomy of the many different kinds of commons to help us tease out their particular characteristics in different situations.

Here's one such attempt:

The Five Commons constitutes an evolving vision of the emerging 21st Century economy. Each of the five commons represents a key area in which transition is apparent.

The Forward Foundation hopes that by sharing this vision, people will find clues and insights into new ways of structuring human activity and sustainable living.

Five Commons Presentations

Here are links to presentations of each of the Five Commons.

* Thing Commons
* Culture Commons
* Energy Commons
* Food Commons
* Access Commons

The associated presentations are well-worth watching - they're quite short.

Those are interesting choices, but I can't help feeling they're somewhat arbitrary. I also miss there any sense of the key differences between certain commons.

For example, there is a huge gulf between non-rivalrous digital commons, and rivalrous analogue ones. Where the latter can suffer the "tragedy of the commons", the former cannot. Similarly, there's a big difference between environmental commons like air, sea or forests, and artifical commons - the "Thing Commons" mentioned above. I'm also a little unsure whether the "Access Commons" - which is "access to infrastructure and services (i.e. politics)" - is really best construed as such.

Still, this is all thought-provoking stuff, and as such, to be welcomed. I shall certainly be pondering more as a result.

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An (Analogue) Artist's Reply to Just Criticism

There's a new meme in town these days: “rights of the artists”. The copyright industries have worked out that cries for more copyright and more money don't go down too well when they come from fat-cat monopolists sitting in their plush offices, and so have now redefined their fight in terms of struggling artists (who rarely get to see much benefit from constantly extended copyright).

Here's a nice example courtesy of the Copyright Alliance – an organisation that very much pushes that line:

Songwriter, Jason Robert Brown, recently posted on his blog a story about his experience dealing with copyright infringement. Knowing for a long time that many websites exist for the sole purpose of “trading” sheet music, Jason decided to log on himself and politely ask many of the users to stop “trading” his work. While many quickly wrote back apologizing and then removing his work, one girl in particular gave Jason a hard time.

First of all, I must commend Mr Brown for the way he has gone about addressing this issue. As he explains on his blog, this is the message he sent to those who were offering sheet music of his compositions on a site:

Hey there! Can I get you to stop trading my stuff? It's totally not cool with me. Write me if you have any questions, I'm happy to talk to you about this. jason@jasonrobertbrown.com

Thanks,
J.

Now, that seems to me an eminently calm and polite request. Given that he obviously feels strongly about this matter, Mr Brown deserves kudos for that. As he explains:

The broad majority of people I wrote to actually wrote back fairly quickly, apologized sincerely, and then marked their music "Not for trade."

However, he adds:

there were some people who fought back. And I'm now going to reproduce, entirely unexpurgated, the exchange I had with one of them.

Her email comes in to my computer as "Brenna," though as you'll see, she hates being called Brenna; her name is Eleanor. I don't know anything about her other than that, and the fact that she had an account on this website and was using it to trade my music. And I know she is a teenager somewhere in the United States, but I figured that out from context, not from anything she wrote.

After some initial distrust, the conversation starts to get interesting, and it turns out that Eleonor, although just a teenager, has a pretty good grasp of how digital abundance can help artists make money:

Let's say Person A has never heard of "The Great Jason Robert Brown." Let's name Person A "Bill." Let's say I find the sheet music to "Stars and the Moon" online and, since I was able to find that music, I was able to perform that song for a talent show. I slate saying "Hi, I'm Eleanor and I will be performing 'Stars and the Moon' from Songs for a New World by Jason Robert Brown." Bill, having never heard of this composer, doesn't know the song or the show. He listens and decides that he really likes the song. Bill goes home that night and downloads the entire Songs for a New World album off iTunes. He also tells his friend Sally about it and they decide to go and see the show together the next time it comes around. Now, if I hadn't been able to get the sheet music for free, I would have probably done a different song. But, since I was able to get it, how much more money was made? This isn't just a fluke thing. It happens. I've heard songs at talent shows or in theatre final exams and decided to see the show because of the one song. And who knows how they got the music? It may have been the same for them and if they hadn't been able to get it free, they would have done something else.

Which is, or course, absolutely spot on.

Mr Brown tries to explain why he disagrees using three stories. The first is about lending a screwdriver to a friend, who then refuses to give it back:

He insists that he has the right to take my screwdriver, build his house, then keep that screwdriver forever so he can build other people's houses with it. This seems unfair to me.

And he's right of course: it *is* unfair, because he has lost his screwdriver, which is an analogue, and therefore rivalrous, object. His sheet music, by contrast, in its digital form, is non-rivalrous: I can have a copy without taking his copy. Yes, there's the issue of whether he loses out, but as Eleonor pointed out, sharing sheet music is a good way to drive sales – it's marketing.

The second story concerns lending another friend a first edition copy of a book by Thornton Wilder; once again, the friend refuses to give it back:

Two months go by; there's a big hole on my bookshelf where "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" is supposed to go. I call my friend, ask him for my book back. He comes over and says, "I love this book, yo. Make me a copy!"

Again, we have the analogue element: this is a rivalrous object, and when the friend has it, poor Mr Brown doesn't have it. But there's another idea here: making copies:

the publishing company won't be able to survive if people just make copies of the book, I say, and the Thornton Wilder estate certainly deserves its share of the income it earns when people buy the book.

Here, the important thing to note is that people *can't* “just make copies of the book”. Yes, they can photocopy it, but that's certainly not the same as a first edition, which is not only rare, but comes with a very particular history. Even if you photocopied the text in order to get to know it, it wouldn't detract from the value of the first edition, which is a rare, rivalrous analogue object. And the Thornton Wilder estate has *already* been paid for the first edition, so there's no reason why they should expect to be paid again if a photocopy is made. And once more, sharing photocopies is likely to drive *more* sales of new editions – which will produce income for the estate.

The third story is even more revealing:

I bought a fantastic new CD by my friend Michael Lowenstern. I then ripped that CD on to my hard drive so I can listen to it on my iPod in my car. Well, that's not FAIR, right? I should have to buy two copies?

No. There is in fact a part of the copyright law that allows exactly this; it's called the doctrine of fair use. If you've purchased or otherwise legally obtained a piece of copyrighted material and you want to make a copy of it for your own use, that's perfectly legal and allowed.

And Mr Brown is absolutely correct – in the *US*. But here in the UK, I have no such right. So what seems self-evidently right to Mr Brown in the US, is in fact wrong in the UK. The reason for that is absolutely central to the whole argument here: the balance between the rights of the creators and the rights of the users is actually arbitrary: different jurisdictions place it at different points, as Mr Brown's example shows.

In fact, Eleonor touched on this in another amazingly perceptive comment:

I assume that because something that good comes from something so insignificantly negative, it's therefore mitigated.

The “something good” that she's talking about includes things like this:

Would it be wrong for me to make a copy of some sheet music and give it to a close friend of mine for an audition? Of course not.

What she is saying is that in weighing up the creator's rights and the user's rights, things have changed in the transition from analogue to digital. Making a copy of a digital object is a minimal infraction of the creator's rights – because nothing is stolen, just created – but brings huge collective benefits for users. And so we need to recalibrate the balance that lies at the heart of copyright to reflect that fact.

As Mr Brown's examples consistently show, he is still thinking along the old, analogue lines with rivalrous goods that can't be shared. We are entering an exciting new digital world where objects are non-rivalrous, and can be copied infinitely. Not surprisingly, the benefits to society that accrue as a result easily outweigh any nominal loss on the creator's part. That's why we need to ignore these calls to our conscience to think about the poor creator – even one as pleasant and sympathetic as Mr Brown – because they omit the other side of the equation: the other six billion people who form the rest of the world.

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Why Sharing Will Be Big Business

As you may have noticed, one of the central themes of this blog is the power of sharing. Mostly, I talk about non-rivalrous goods like software or music: here, sharing is a no-brainer, because copies can be made for almost zero cost, allowing everyone to share a digital resource. But what about the world of analogue *rivalrous* goods - the traditional kind of stuff we are most used to in everyday life?

Here, sharing is harder to arrange, since you need someone to lend something to another party, which requires organisation in the physical world. And where there is friction, there is a business opportunity in terms of making reducing that friction. Here's a perfect example of that:

Chegg may very well be the fastest-growing, most successful, second-generation e-commerce startup that you hardly ever hear about,except maybe for the fact that it’s raised more than $140 million. Chegg is the “Netflix for textbooks.” It lets students across 6,400 college campuses rent from a virtual bookstore containing 4.2 million books. Based on my analysis (which I get into more detail below), the company is on track to generate $130 million in revenues in 2010, up from $25 million in 2009, and $10 million in 2008. During the January, 2010 semester, I estimate the company made close to $1 million in revenue a day, up fivefold from $200,000/day the previous January, and it should double that this coming September. My analysis suggests Chegg will do close to $50 million in revenue this September alone. It is underappreciated, to say the least.

The article goes on to point out the larger implications of Chegg's success:

Chegg is disintermediating the $5B+ college textbook market by providing a low-cost, short-term, nationwide rental alternative to the high-priced university bookstore. This disruptive model will likely shrink industry revenues by half in the coming years, with Chegg in a leadership position to command 80%+ market share. The key questions, of course, are: 1) Is this a winner-take-all market, 2) What can Chegg do to fend off the likes of the major bookstore owners, Barnes & Noble and Follet, as well as Amazon and Apple, and 3) Is Chegg a harbinger of a new age of startup rental services?

In answer to that last question, no and yes: I don't think we should regard this as old-style rental over the Internet, but a new kind of sharing where people spread the cost of rivalrous goods. However you look at it, though, it is going to be big.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Someone Has a Man with a Red Flag Moment

This is so misguided:

Digital personal property (DPP) is an attempt to make consumers treat digital media like physical objects. For instance, you might loan your car to a friend, a family member, or a neighbor. You might do so on many different occasions and for different lengths of time. But you are unlikely to leave the car out front of your house with the keys in it and a sign on it saying, "Take me!" If you did, you might never see the vehicle again.

But that's the whole point about digital content: you *can* leave it out in front of your virtual house, and allow people to take it, because you *still* have a copy. It's non-rivalrous - that's it's amazing, wonderful, nature. Trying to make it rivalrous is like putting a mad with a red flag in front of a motor car because it goes too fast: it's *meant* to go fast.

And to those who riposte: What about the creators?, it's the usual answer. Being able to give away copies of your work freely is an opportunity, not a threat: it's called marketing, and it's cost has just gone down to nothing.

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What Mr. Lammy *Still* Does Not Get

Surpising - but good - news if true:

Internet service providers will not be forced to disconnect users who repeatedly flout the law by illegally sharing music and video files, The Times has learnt.

Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, said last year that the Government had “serious legislative intent” to compel internet companies to cut off customers who ignore warnings not to pirate material.

However, in an interview with The Times, David Lammy, the Intellectual Property Minister, said that the Government had ruled out legislating to force ISPs to disconnect such users.

The reasoning is notable:

Speaking ahead of the publication of a report on the future of Britain's digital industries, Mr Lammy said that there were very complex legal issues wrapped up in enforced disconnection. He added: “I'm not sure it's actually going to be possible.”

Spot on. I hope this also means that the UK will be voting against any attempts to bring this in at a European level.

Given this understanding, I was disappointed with the following from Mr Lammy:

Mr Lammy, who has begun a big consultation entitled Developing a Copyright Agenda for the 21st Century, said that there was a big difference between organised counterfeiting gangs and “younger people not quite buying into the system”. He said: “We can't have a system where we're talking about arresting teenagers in their bedrooms. People can rent a room in an hotel and leave with a bar of soap - there's a big difference between leaving with a bar of soap and leaving with the television.”

I quite agree about the difference (and support legal action against criminal counterfeiting gangs), but it's got nothing to do with bars of soap. This metaphor perpetuates the erroneous idea that infringing on copyright is simply stealing - albeit stealing bars of soap. It is not only legally totally different, it is conceptually totally different in the case of digital files, as in the present situation.

If I steal a bar of soap from a hotel (heaven forfend), the hotel no longer has the soap; it incurs a real loss from something being taken away. If I make a digital copy of a file, nobody loses that file; nothing has been "taken".

The correct - and important - question is whether the copyright holder loses at at any point. That comes down to the simple arithmetic of whether people making unauthorised copies of music increase or decrease the number of copies that are later sold.

The evidence seems to be the former - the idea being that unauthorised copies function as marketing for the "real" thing. This means that the music industry should actually encourage such copies, since ultimately they will reap the benefits - just as the Monty Python crew have done:

when Monty Python launched their channel in November, not only did their YouTube videos shoot to the top of the most viewed lists, but their DVDs also quickly climbed to No. 2 on Amazon's Movies & TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 per cent.

As has been said before, the greatest loss to artists comes not from unauthorised copying, but from not reaching as much of your potential audience as possible, as easily as possible.

It's great to see Mr Lammy taking a reasonable line here, but it would be even better if he understood the profound difference between analogue and digital, and between rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods, that lies at the heart of this whole discussion.

Behold! The New Anti-Open Access FUD

As I've noted before, I'm something of a connoisseur of FUD, and I really like coming across new examples. Here's one, directed at the burgeoning open access movement, which wants to make publicly-paid for scientific papers freely available (and others, too):

'The idea of public access to research information is a little bit specious,' added Robert Parker, managing director of RSC publishing. 'The UK government will be funding the London Olympics in 2012, but that doesn't mean that everybody can have free tickets - there is a big difference between funding something and having it be freely available.'

Nice sleight of hand there, Robbie. Except that the UK government is funding the Olympics in the (probably mistaken) belief that everyone will benefit from the knock-on effects on the economy, world prestige, blah-blah-blah: so there *is* an expectation of getting something in return for the public funds. And of course no one expects free seats - because there is a finite number of them - whereas the larger benefits, if they materialise, can be shared.

Open access is different because taxpayers can benefit from it directly. Most importantly, though, open access is digital in nature, and therefore can be copied and distributed for effectively zero cost - it is non-scarce and non-rivalrous. There is no way of giving away seats at the Olympics for zero cost, because they are scarce, rivalrous resources. The economics are completely different, as any managing director should understand. (Via Peter Murray-Rust.)

The Real Spectrum Commons

I have referred to radio spectrum as a commons several times in this blog. But there's a problem: since spectrum seems to be rivalrous - if I have it, you can't - this means that the threat of a tragedy of the commons has to be met by regulation. And that, as we see, is often unsatisfactory, not least because powerful companies usually get the lion's share.

But it seems - luckily - I was wrong about spectrum necessarily being rivalrous:

Software defined radio that is beginning to emerge from the labs into actual tests has the ability to render all spectrum management moot. Small wonder that the legal mandarins there have begun to sneer that open source SDR cannot be trusted.

In other words, when you make radio truly digital, it can be intelligent, and simply avoid the problem of commons over-use.