Kitty Hawk and Post-Digital Copyright
Letting the current generation of lawmakers decide what is and isn’t permissible online is like letting the pre-flight lawmakers decide that land ownership extends infinitely up into the air.
Which, if I’m not mistaken, is exactly what some people thought should happen, in the post-Kitty Hawk USA.
This is the level of absurdity we’re talking about, when we talk about demanding that bits be treated as the legal equivalent of atoms. We’re talking about banning air travel because a spot ten thousand feet above Jim-Bob’s cabin is somehow a key element of Jim-Bob’s day to day life, and flying over unnoticed infringes on his rights.
There’s a collapsing content business because people are still trying to legislate bits into atoms, and spending countless millions on lawsuits, lobbying and hackneyed technologies to make this happen.
It won’t work. The invention of the plane made it necessary for Jim-Bob to let go of the imaginary right he had to the space above his head, the same way content industries need to let go of the imaginary value of text and images that can be instantly copied at no cost, and transmitted at no price.
I don’t care if the world worked one way for your entire career. It doesn’t work that way anymore. Making it illegal for the world to have changed just ruins any chance of developing sustainable businesses.
Put another way, prohibition created organized crime. Endless rivers of money went to criminals because, well, people were gonna drink anyway. A law that does not change behaviour isn’t a law, it’s failed governance.
Let the planes fly, because the second we realized they could, the world changed.
[Edit: apparently I am accidentally stealing this comparison from Lawrence Lessig. This isn’t shocking, because I make a point of reading as much of his work as possible. Still, apologies.]
Steve Jobs said people don’t read any more. But Apple is in talks with several media companies rooted in print, negotiating content for a “new device.” And they’re not just going for e-books and mags. They’re aiming to redefine print.I’m looking forward to this. I think iTunes LP is the first application of Apple’s new publishing format. They have a history of doing this kind of thing — releasing something small that uses a new technology, then revealing what it was really developed for.
This is one of the real questions of innovation in media - who goes first, the platform or the content?
Media can’t start producing content on a mass scale for a device that doesn’t yet exist, especially when you take into account the state of media finances, and the amount of time it will take for such a platform to become standard.
Tech companies are in better shape, but a platform without content is a hard sell, even for a company like Apple that gets the benefit of the doubt from most of its customers.
The argument I expect is one based on the platform already existing through webmagazines. Which, though technically true, would require a media company to take a look at funding a webmag as something other than an addition to a print version, or a store of old content. Even my favourite web magazines are generally text and images served online, i.e., bastardized print. Something with interactive content, exclusive embedded video, innovative presentation of information? if you know where to look, you can find little hints of magic, but not as a standard element of magazines presented online.
There’s something terrifying about Content Marketing being anything less than a standard approach.
Mostly because I can’t imagine a form of promotion that doesn’t involve creating some kind of content - which means the difference is, when you call it content marketing, it means you actually treat your promotional materials, advertisements, etc, as content.
Which, in turn, means that treating these things as content is rare.
I don’t understand the logic of putting together anything that represents your brand that doesn’t further the narrative, expand on the content, and stand on it’s own as an experience.
If every piece of content you create is judged as a creative product, and as a promotional one, people will probably care more. At the very least, you won’t run the real risk of a promotional extension of your brand devaluing it.
To use one of my standby examples, no one has ever read Acne Paper, and felt that they had been sold something that only has value based on its relation to a clothing label. I’m sure someone has read it and thought ‘what does this have to do with jeans?’ but that’s the point. It expands and enriches the meaning of the brand.
Don’t talk to me about viral, or remixable, if you aren’t willing to have a long conversation about the creative and artistic value of the promotional content you create.
3 Words on the Future of Content: Alternate Revenue Streams.
The seemingly universal assumption that advertising revenue will save us, will keep art and culture online solvent, will fill the gap between VC and buy-out that most people actually consider a business, is by far the largest threat I see to the internet, moreso than telcos that think they own everything created online, more than absurd copyright lobbyists, more than politicians who actually conceive of the thing as a ‘series of tubes’.
We’re a world that, by and large, doesn’t have a plan. Some people will survive, and thrive, on ad revenue online. Off the top of my head, we have Google and Gawker. Google will survive because they make money from more content than any one media brand, any one company, could ever create. Gawker will survive because the association with their brand is worth at least as much as the ad campaign, and because they have a demonstrated willingness to blur the line between selling advertising, and selling integration into the editorial content of their properties. I don’t know where Nick Denton’s line is, and I don’t care - he gets it, and he will make money.
But if your plan is 1. Get traffic 2. ??? 3. Profit, you should know that banner ads aren’t really going to cut it as a step two for a huge number of companies. And the point where waiting for the rates for online advertising to go up seemed intelligent was about 5 years back.
We need to get working on a new plan. One that goes further than selling eyeballs. The internet depends on it.
A generation is now coming of age that is used to being — and demands to be — in control of their content.They want it on-demand — not necessarily in the hands of the “broadcaster” or content provider.When they want to read something, they expect to click and see text.When they want to hear something, they expect to touch and get audio.When they want to see something, we have trained them to click and get video.If “radio” (whatever that becomes in the future) can’t do all three of these things, it has no future in the digital world.
