| In a traditional model the Consumer is the market for
the copyrighted
material, and the trick is in getting the highest price the market will
bear. The fundamental principle underlying this model is that there is a newer, brighter, shinier "toy", just around the corner and having consumed one offering then the appetite must be whetted for the next consumable. A cornerstone of capitalism and one that oils the wheels of commerce. This will not change. It will be massaged though. The digital consumable has a much longer shelf life and can be "flash mobbed" by a cultural event (a book club recommendation boosting a long forgotten tomb or a movie plugging a song) into a new lease of life. Using a global exchange like the Internet to distribute a product then the marketplace has increased exponentially. The upshot of this is that maintaining a 50 percent markup on a sales estimate of 100 units in a 1000 unit market (non-Internet) is silly. When your marketplace in now potentially in the millions of units then the only sensible approach is to re-examine your markup. If you don't then the marketplace will do it for you. This is happening at the moment and a lot of the traditional businesses are screaming for protection through DRM but that is to miss the point - the marketplace has changed, the medium has changed, the distribution model has changed and the production model has changed. The only thing that hasn't changed is the monolithic business model. Businesses will need to restructure to reflect this new climate. When the Consumer is also the Content Producer, as is the case with User Generated Content, then they are not fools when it comes to recognising the value of their input. When the Consumer is part of the Distribution chain, as is the case with podcasting, downloadable music/video, peer-to-peer systems, then they recognise their part in making the whole value model. When the consumer is part of the Medium, then only a DRM model that recognises the integral part the Consumer has to the whole digital ecosystem will be a valid one. Once I buy the content, I own it. It is mine to do with as I wish. Any commercial gain I derive from repackaging the content or selling it on should be accounted for in this new system, as I am no longer acting as the Consumer, but as the Content Producer. This is a reality that is as new to the Consumer as it is to the traditional Content Producers but one that can be beneficial to all. The drive should not be to criminalise the Consumer for also acting as the Content Producer but to embrace them as part of the new integrated model, where they are partners in the economic soup. A DRM model that clearly defines the Consumer/Content Producer in their duality will respect the rights of both. DRM should have as it's starting point the rights of the end-user/consumer. Most commercial solutions at the moment are all about protecting the Content Producer, to the detriment of the end-user, but the Content Producer, the Distributor and the Consumer may be one and the same person. Protecting the rights of the end-user, as a starting point, means that they can then move to the role of Content Producer with peace of mind. A DRM model that championed User Generated Content and allowed for credit/commercial gain to be attributed to the author would allow a proper and legal market to develop in online publishing for all. |
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