Matt Mason Writes a Must Read for the + 40 Demographic
Matt Mason is a forward thinker. His book The Pirate’s Dilemma is available online for whatever you want to pay. That’s right even 0.00 USD. By offering a digital copy Mason has followed the thinking in line with Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin and Radiohead (Radiohead experimented with the free concept for the album In Rainbows). The tactic is from a powerful strategy focusing on sharing and peoples good graces or ability recognize value.
Thepiratesdilemma.com pulls together a scrambled conversation around the net generation that the music, telecommunications, publishing and traditional media industries consider kryptonite.
These are exciting times for anyone except those losing out in the above industries. The industry is not disappearing though, it is merely shifting. The true question is when will the new paradigm settle into a definition?
Combined the telecommunications, publishing and media industries have an enormous influence over society. They can unleash their agenda by having McLovin tell us not to “F with his DVD money” or call on any one of their high profile celebrities to make a couple statements.
In Sweden this week the fate of a few men are being decided concerning their involvement with “facilitating piracy”. According to the CNET article creators of Piratebay.org are not money pits (nor are they the only ones in Sweden with the will to put out sites like piratebay) so large gains from making an example out of these Swedes will not be in the cards.
Indexing is not difficult to do and programmers are gifted people so piratebay.org copycat ideas are inevitable if the site goes down. Considering the restrictions of sovereignty the task of hunting down similar people will be incredibly difficult to accomplish. Think about how incredibly difficult it would be hunt down the sources of all the bootlegged material that originates in China.
So what is to be decided in Sweden will be a watershed for law in respect to the future of sharing/peering. A two year sentence for this “crime” is dangerous in the sense that the verdict is going to look like it was issued by business and not the people. Governments aren’t fast enough to catch up and establish laws about this ever changing world which has left the courts to make up the grey area between a shifting mentality and what they have written down as laws. After two years these people may be released into a world that has incarcerated them for what they now embrace depending on the speed in which the paradigm shift occurs.
Business is having troubles adapting as well. Many of the big media companies like Warner Music Group, Viacom or Sony engage in talks with YouTube for developing revenue sharing models (targeting bootlegged copies that users upload) but recent turmoil with Warner Music Group has left the industry looking to punish and impede progress.
The music industry has been the guinea pig, canary or science lab rats to the Net Gens power grab that is spearhead by the consumer. In the book The Pirate’s Dilemma the elements are laid out from a music background and should have all the above mentioned industries drastically shifting their strategies. They can take a lesson from the myriad of success stories in both the books; Wikinomics and The Pirates Dilemma.
Cheers
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Comments
Very stimulating. I did not know that the u.s. only succeeded in industrializing because it totally ignored intellectual property rights. nor did i ever hear that origin for the word yankee. but that fact (i intend to reasearch it because i am a skeptic by nature) could be an argument for or against rigid protection of intellectual property. It is said that in some eastern cultures the entire concept of intellectual property is void. Confucious did not receive royalties, so i hear. AS Crosby Stills Nash and Young said “we’ve got to get back to the garden”.. i dont think helping industrialists to cling to wealth is the way to get there. Will we sacrifice quality of content if we abandon the principle? Mason seems to think not. But traditional newspapers are on the ropes. And someone will have to fill that void. Where will the voices of dissent come from?
janke is Dutch for “whine”. the term Yankee has been around for 350 years at least. So I think he botched that one. “Yankee”’s origin has been heavily debated among etymologists and never setttled, but to my knowlege no-one has seriously advanced the pirate-yankee-industrial-revolution-annoyed europeans theory. There is a link to pirates. Dutch sailors had been called Jan Kaas “John Cheese” and some pirates adopted that nickname in the 17th century. Usually Dutch Pirates. It became a derrogatory term for New Englanders in the 17th century as well. Perhaps at first for the Dutch settlers only, and then more broadly. As for intellectual theft in the US in the 19th century, yes it did occur. And I imagine it did annoy some Europeans.
The cover of Mr. Mason’s book says “How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism”. I predict that if there is a list of the Great Oxymorons of our time “Youth Culture” may be on there. Along with Limbaugh Leadership and Neocon Diplomacy. Don’t forget Smart Bombs. Just goofin’ everyone!..(insert current slang for goofin) I have now officially become the grumpy old man i so despised twenty years ago..
The proliferation of all forms of media continues to expand exponentially, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it! Big media needs to embrace this and recognize that the use of content has shifted to allow more ownership with the viewer/audience.
There isn’t any use in the ‘pay-per-play’ model anymore, rather communications businesses are going to have to draft up a new system for accessing its content.
Perhaps a wider subscription based system which allows for a greater degree of media consumption?