"If you love your content, set it free" ?

quot;if you love your content, set it freequot; ?

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 ” quot; ?quot;

..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. quot;digital nativesquot; (ug!) 4. quot;free is 'normal', right?..quot;

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.

quot;Even ferocious litigation would be inadequate to constrain massive, sustained law-breakingquot;

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 quot;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.quot; TechDirt: quot;The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Freequot; 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

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"If you love your content, set it free" ?

by Mike Ellis on Mar 31, 2009

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"If you love your content, set it free" ? — Presentation Transcript