\"if you love your content, set it free\" ?

I am Mike Ellis
I have spent 10+ years working on the [content] web
I am a user experience zealot, strategist, social(web)-ist
I work for a not for profit IT company called Eduserv

first of all, a couple of things

these slides will be online
(and available under CC)

this session
is based around a question:

“ if you love your content, set it free ”
\"
?\"

..I’m not going to try and answer that question.

instead, I'm going to consider
the content and user landscape

try and find some connections...

...and avoid getting into too much detail

(yes, I’m a chicken)

let's start right at the beginning
..and ask: “where does value come from?”

even this isn’t straightforward

for the most part, value is about scarcity

rarer + more sought-after = higher value

which means: if you have it, hide it

...and only provide when people pay

this has been the value model for generations

then the web came along.

now the entire value landscape has
literally been blown away

the effectiveness of the network has
devalued the distribution chain
“It makes increasingly less sense even to talk
about a publishing industry, because the core
problem publishing solves - the incredible
difficulty, complexity, and expense of making
something available to the public – has stopped
being a problem.”
Clay Shirky / “Newspapers and thinking the unthinkable”
http://bit.ly/YoqJi

networks are getting faster / more ubiquitous,
DRM is dead,
hidden content is unpopular

not to mention radical
changes in users, too

1. search and find is everything
2. fickle, shallow, agile users
3. \"digital natives\" (ug!)
4. \"free is 'normal', right?..\"

models of ownership and
consumption are changing
“..for my generation you partly constructed your
identity around what you owned - your bookshelf,
record collection and DVD archive were important
aspects of who you..but for the digital generation
this strong link with ownership has been broken.
It took time and money to build up any of those
collections. Therefore they demonstrated a
commitment which was worth exhibiting. In a
digital world this effort is greatly reduced, and as
a result so is the emotional attachment one feels
towards them.”
Martin Weller / “Ownership ain’t what it used to be”
http://bit.ly/2vU1oB

the music industry...

less CDs, more digital music being sold
“17 million fewer CD buyers
in 2008 compared to the prior
year”
ZDNet UK: “CD sales drop, digital downloads on the rise”
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=14758

new (business) models are rampant

..illegal? yes. available (via Google)? yes.

\"Even ferocious litigation
would be inadequate to
constrain massive, sustained
law-breaking\"

newspapers..?

according to Clay Shirky
“When someone demands to
know how we are going to
replace newspapers...they are
demanding to be told that old
systems won’t break before
new systems are in place. They
are demanding to be told that
ancient social bargains aren’t
in peril, that core institutions
will be spared, that new
methods of spreading
information will improve
previous practice rather than
upending it. They are
demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer
people who can convincingly
tell such a lie.”

which demands a radical(ish) response

books?

Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist
“ In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And
everyone was puzzled. We came from
zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the
next year we were over 100,000. [...]
I thought that this is fantastic. You give
to the reader the possibility of reading
your books and choosing whether to buy
it or not. [...]
So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my
pirate editions… And I created a site
”
called The Pirate Coelho.
http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124

cultural heritage?

similar issues around ownership,
authority and tone of voice

but really starting to understand
the huge benefits of “we is better
than me”

..and adding value for users

the point?

this isn't just a brief blip, after
which we'll carry on as before

this is serious, serious change

revolution-style change

what does living through
a revolution mean?

chaos, factionism, failure
and emergence are prominent

the prevailing direction of travel is
becoming more clear:

the evidence is starting to show that
scale is more important than scarcity
“There is more opportunity in leveraging the scale of the
Web than trying to create scarcity.
We’ve all been engaged in many attempts at creating
scarcity [in digital music] and none of them have worked.
Meanwhile, others have been leveraging the scale of the
Web with great success.
We should learn from this pattern and apply our energy
appropriately.”
Ian Rogers, ex-VP Yahoo! Music
http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=147

this means that letting go of the hold
you have on your content becomes
increasingly important

the rise of the API as an example

the world of linked data
http://bit.ly/QOi6T

this is hard. after all, control and
authority are what makes us...us, right?

well, maybe authority comes from
the real, from authenticity

and not (always) from a designed,
understood, moderated pathway

once we've realised that the important thing
is our content and not where it is consumed,
we should find it easier to let go..

systems that are user-focused
are the ones that will survive

systems that are institution or industry
focused are the ones that will fail

access (not necessarily free,
but it helps) is a Good Thing
\"Where some people have trouble is that
those new opportunities may be in
different places than the existing...
...the total amount that any content
creator can capture is still much larger
than it was before. It's one of those cases
where getting 20% of a huge pie is much
better than getting 90% of a tiny pie.\"
TechDirt: \"The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Free\"
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070503/012939.shtml

let's be very clear:
good things are happening

Open API's
Open Access
Open Search

but they're often being resisted
“ sources suggest that
”
compliance [with open
access policy] remains low

and are often weighed down by
hugely complicated politics

..if there's one thing that doesn't work,
it's complicated business models

maybe we need to forget the original models

...or at least, radically simplify

and focus on loosely joined

if..
..giving away PDF's of books increases book sales
if..
..streaming music for free increases other revenues
if..
..having an open API increases content reach

where might we go?

thanks for the free stuff:
big finger me
don't panic http://flickr.com/photos/brighton/2153602543
question http://www.flickr.com/photos/drachmann/327122302
castle mine
trees and moon mine
landscape http://www.flickr.com/photos/24471966@N04/2851251413/
connection http://www.flickr.com/photos/29487767@N02/2855271953/
tag cloud wordle
chicken http://www.flickr.com/photos/slopjop/2476844826/
vertigo http://www.flickr.com/photos/anapinta/1324230318/
diamond http://www.flickr.com/photos/clagnut/233522021/
valuable http://www.flickr.com/photos/10ch/3347658610/
hidden http://www.flickr.com/photos/21173961@N07/2189341054/
cash http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/211399263/
crowd blur http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoriapeckham/164175205/
bifurcation http://flickr.com/photos/ethanhein/2292232215
suberbia
robots
fog
baby http://www.flickr.com/photos/ntr23/730371240/
lazy http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkumber/2645078671/
cds http://www.flickr.com/photos/joemad/2170846681/
web2
newspaper http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/172495285/
book http://www.flickr.com/photos/andross/3137926953/
sea http://www.flickr.com/photos/10589224@N05/3386776372/
bored dogs http://flickr.com/photos/bobilina/361415711
revolution http://www.flickr.com/photos/flickerbulb/53116195/
light http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/3199296759/
direction http://www.flickr.com/photos/b-tal/116220689/
easy
silos
opportunity http://www.flickr.com/photos/wasabicube/2270556458/
good things http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaplanbr/526326334/
openness http://www.flickr.com/photos/gauri_lama/3039881498/
resisted http://www.flickr.com/photos/mandj98/2931196061/
lights http://www.flickr.com/photos/mostafa/19172096/
telegraph http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericsetiawan/23293820/
forget http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfajardo/396104047/
zen http://www.flickr.com/photos/robnwatkins/113258509/
golden http://www.flickr.com/photos/da100fotos/490531799/
unknown http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahmedrabea/246570462/

and thank you for listening
mike.ellis@eduserv.org.uk http://slideshare.net/dmje