My response to the French vote on the HADOPI / 3 Strikes Law

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The End of Control and the Future of Content: new Video of my Authors@Google Talk in San Francisco

The Google guys have just published a video with my talk at Authors@Google, in San Francisco, March 2, 2009 (see the details here Pdf: The End of Control Gerd Leonhard at Google SF PDF *22MB). Due to some technical issues my fancy slides (i.e. the stuff on the screen) come across very nicely in this video while I am left a bit 'in the dark' - but if you use the HQ version on the Youtube site you can still get a much better idea of what my face actually looks like (I guess always wearing black is not ideal when the lights are bad;).  Anyway, I do think this is one of my best talks, so... watch the entire 55 Mins 22 Secs.  As far as the End of Control Book is concerned, I will have an announcement on my plans within the next 10 days...stay tuned.

Here is the official Google Talks description: The End of Control & The Future of Content:  The tough issue of control emerges, again and again, as the key contention point within TV companies, publishers, record labels, and broadcasters: How can a commercial venture that is based on so-called intellectual property thrive and prosper in an environment that seems to continuously and progressively remove control from the creators/owners/providers of content, and hands it over to the people formerly known as consumers (aka the users), effectively making them more powerful every single day?  But the reality is that every click inadvertently makes another case for the consumers ever-increasing rise in importance. Within all the conversations I have had about things like commercial content versus shared content, about the read-only or the read-write web, and about copyright versus Fair Use, the crucial question always seems to boil down to WHERE IS THE CONTROL HERE, i.e., questions such as Who will control this new media universe and How much control do I need to run a revenue-generating business?

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The gloves are off: now Google needs to really get involved in the new Content Economy, asap

I already blogged about the Youtube / PRS show-down (hey - that's a great word for this) in the UK, earlier today. After reading, twittering and talking to lots of 'real' people about this today, this is my conclusion: This conundrum is not Google's 'fault' but still: Google needs to really, materially and boldly get involved with facilitating the construction of a new content logic and economy, and lead content creators, owners and representatives into a new ecosystem that will actually work for all involved parties. Because it can.

Conflicts like Youtube vs. PRS are unavoidable because the canyon between Google - imho still pretty much the primary driver of Net-fueled innovation and disruption- and the content creators (never mind the industry) gets bigger by the minute. And, in my humble opinion, Google isn't doing nearly enough to explain this to them, and to guide them more conclusively into this new domain where content isn't always king, and where it won't matter if it is or not (if it ever did).

I talked about this in my speech at Authors@Google in SF last week; hopefully we will have that video available soon. The bottom line is that this will take deep, serious, multi-lateral, honest and open collaboration between these (and other) key constituents:

1. Content creators and the content industries (in that order;)
2. Telcos, ISPs, mobile operators and other telecommunications companies
3. Advertisers, brands, and their agencies
4. Social media and social networking platforms (of course all Internet companies, other search engines and portals)
5. Governments and governmental bodies

Welcome to a new Data Economy, a new Advertising Economy, and a New Content Economy.

Your turn, Google.

I will write more about this, but here's a quick illustration (thanks to Kevin Kelly for the power-lines & copy pic)

Youtube will remove UK music videos, no agreement with PRS - when will they ever learn??

Image via CrunchBase

The UK / EU web is buzzing with the news that Youtube (Google) has started to block or remove UK music videos because they have not been able to strike a new music licensing deal with the PRS-For-Music, the UK rights society which represents the songwriters and the publishers. I particularly like the coverage of this issue by TelecomTV.com, here, but a lot more links to other coverage can be found below.

As is my habit, at times, I want to quote and comment. Before I get started, though, I want to point that obviously I don't know the terms of the license that were suggested by either Youtube or the PRS, so therefore I cannot comment on whether either one of them is realistic or not. I just know from my own experiences (among many others, with the now defunct - RIP - Sonific) and from many other deals that I have observed, that very often the respective proposals are 20-50x apart, i.e. one party may suggest 1 cent per stream while the other party wants 20-50 cents - mostly, simply because they can; after all, the rights holders enjoy the protection of having the exclusive rights to license their songs. I would not be surprised if that was the case, here (my exact guess is something like 10:1)

Anyway, here we go, from TelecomTV.com "Yesterday YouTube  announced that it was going to take down all the premium music content currently available to UK YouTube users because it had failed to hammer out a new licensing deal with the UK's Performing Rights Society (PRS) for Music, a notoriously hard-line royalty collector. YouTube said the PRS wanted more royalty payment for each video view than YouTube could ever make from the ads situated next to each"

My comment: this points to the root of the problem, right away. Any deal between the mighty Google and the still-trying-to-find-the-right-$-model Youtube and the rights-holders' representatives has to be about sharing the revenues that are actually achievable, in the market, here and today, and jointly building a system that can generate more and more revenues, tomorrow and beyond. Again, as Larry Lessig says, and as I have proudly annexed from him, it's about Compensation Not Control!  To the PRS: NO, you cannot have both - and it looks like you just decided against Compensation???

Unfortunately, this detrimental mindset has become a default seeting: many if not most of the rights societies in the so-called developing world, and now apparently the PRS, too, have adopted one of these 2 strategies: a) if a potential licensee is still too small and economically insignificant to warrant their consideration, they will not offer any license at all, unless it neatly fits one of the existing templates b) if a potential licensee is large, juicy, popular and financially connected to an entity that seems to have verrrrry big pockets (see Last.fm, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook... maybe), they will ask for the moon and try take them to the cleaners. Even better if that entity has been previously in-breach of the existing licensing traditions and regulations - more leverage is always a good thing, right? Just study the mind-boggling story of my favorite web-radio service, Pandora. Never mind that this kind of 'it's my right and I will fully exploit it as I see fit' - thinking is also pretty much what has gotten us into this horrible economic crisis, as well - but that's another story.

None of this has anything to do with real, honest and open intention of building a mutually beneficial and future-oriented model, and everything to do with what I like to call Economic Egoism that is effectively set in stone i.e. law by some outmoded laws from over 20 years ago. As long as rights organizations -whose tasks it is to license music not to forbid its use - are pursuing this strategy we will not get to a point of 'peace' with all those new entities that clearly want to use, and pay for their music.

The PRS published a very revealing statement when Youtube announced their decision to play hard-ball and remove the music videos - here is the nugget: "Google had revenues of $5.7bn in the last quarter of 2008". What does that have to do with negotiating the fair and equitable licensing rates for music? PaidContent.org has some great comments on this issue, interviewing YouTuber Patrick Walker, including this one:  "to suggest that, because Google’s a big company, we should just suck it and pay a ridiculous rate is not something that we’re going to stand by...it’s hard for new models to emerge when the starting point is a massive loss on a per-stream basis".

In fact, I believe that this kind of attitude from rights organizations, publishers and record labels will most certainly lead to government  intervention, sooner rather than later, since a dysfunctional market is not good for anyone - and clearly, this is what we have now, and it appears to be here to stay. I think... I have said it before:)

So here is my message to the PRSForMusic (as they are now called) and their members (hopefully they have a say in this, too): pleasssse get off this bizarre and decidedly Web 0.0 idea that Google should now be paying for everything that you think has been 'stolen' from you on the Internet. Instead, give YouTube a flexible, open, transparent and realistic license that gives everyone room and time to MUTUALLY develop this model, going forward. There is nothing to be gained by refusal! Start to cooperate rather than to try to dominate these conversations. COMPENSATION NOT CONTROL. And do it now, or have somebody else force you to.

More: Techdirt's ueber-brain Mike Masnick comments:  Google has simply pulled music videos down in the UK. Basically, Google is making the point to PRS: you need us much more than we need you". The UK Telegraph has a few nice quotes (even though I don't agree with their conclusion that Youtube has a lot more to lose than the songwriters)

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Amazon Kindle: rights-holders oppose robotic reading feature, Amazon makes it an option

Image via CrunchBase

Read: E-Commerce News: E-Commerce: Amazon: Only Copyright Holders Can Unzip Kindle's Lips.
This is an interesting debate that once again shows that many rights holders will need some serious hand-holding when it's about understanding new technological implementations. I think this will be a major task, and very powerful if somewhat tedious opportunity, for the likes of Amazon, Google (Youtube), Yahoo and Facebook (yes... why? Stay tuned!) and very soon, the big agencies such as DDB, Ogilvy and Saatchi, as well as for all those Telecoms that want to play in the content & experience business (and which one does not?).

The creators and rights holders urgently need to understand and embrace the web-fueled paradigm of 'giving something' in return for 'getting something' - and the increasing empowerment of the people formerly known as consumers (aka the users) means that the creators will have to give more before they can get something back. Some people would call that the pressure of the Attention Economy - but this is the undeniable reality of the hyper-connected and mobile world we now live in, and it is not something we can switch on or off as we see fit. Ignore this trend at you own peril - witness the music industry's refusal to give more value before the purchase, and where it has taken them.

Now, Spotify, Last.fm, Myspace and iMeem provide free music on-demand, Hulu and Youtube provide free TV shows on-demand, Amazon and Google let people search-and-read-inside-the-book. And now the new Kindle will allow you to listen to a robotic voice rendition of a book - hardly a competition with the audio book, I would argue. In fact, this feature would probably drive people towards buying more audio books - free added values convert to sales based an getting better interfaces and higher quality. Sounds familiar?

This whole debate is very much like, years ago, the issue of Amazon's Search-Inside-The-Book feature. After a lot of deliberation, the publishers found out that the new feature really did increase sales (I think by something like 10%) and what's more, it got a lot of people 'addicted' to the book right there and then - which is usually the best way of snagging a new customer.

I think that Amazon should consider offering an additional, small monetary incentive to the publishers as well as some clever reporting on who is listening where (based on opt-in), and maybe even some promotional, highly targeted audio 'advertising' options to the participating book publishers, and thereby sweeten the deal.

But most importantly, the publishers need to start looking beyond their constant fears of cannibalization of existing revenues, and look at all these new options with less toxic assumptions (as social media expert and fellow bloggerati Neil Perkin likes to calls them). In addition, drastically lowering the price on digital books (the audio versions, too) would go a long way in boosting the take-up of electronic reading. And beyond that: what if you could use Kindle to have actual conversations with the readers - wouldn't that be a boon to writers and publishers?

The bottom line: switch to Openness and find new revenues.  Now. Look at Nokia / Symbian, Firefox, Apache, Adobe, Android... Openness is tough but it always wins the users.

Ceck out this video on 'Compensation not Control' (MidemNet 2009)- this Lessig-inspired meme applies here, too!

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Norwegian ISP Telenor Rejects Demands to Block The Pirate Bay (via Digital Media Wire)

Image via Wikipedia

Norwegian ISP Telenor Rejects Demands to Block The Pirate Bay | Digital Media Wire.

"Norway's Telenor has rejected a demand from record label and movie studio trade groups that its ISP service block access to Sweden-based file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay, Billboard reported. "Asking an ISP to control and assess what Internet users can and cannot download is just as wrong as asking the post office to open and read letters and decide what should and should not be delivered," the company said in a statement..."We comply with all relevant laws and regulations and can see no legal basis for any ISP to act in the interests of digital intellectual property rights holders by blocking individual websites," said Ragnar Kaarhus, head of Telenor Norway"

I don't think PirateBay is defensible but it's good to see that someone can still lay it out like it is: controlling what people do with their Internet connection amounts to Censorship.

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Facebook's CEO on the ToU debacle: "Governing the Facebook Service in an Open and Transparent Way" - Adios Control!

Read Zuck's post: Facebook | Governing the Facebook Service in an Open and Transparent Way.
When Facebook changed their Terms of Use last week, making it look a lot more 'controlling', all hell broke loose.  Even in Switzerland (where I live), the national TV news reported on the uproar that followed. Everyone hated Facebook's new ToUs and lots of people were considering ditching their accounts. Even though their new ToUs did not surprise me, and I already consider everything I do on Facebook to be kind of  'in public domain' (under the Creative Commons license I use for pretty much anything), I do think that they way they have gone about this left a lot to be desired. Their brilliant and decidedly Web2.0 move was to immediately back-paddle and return to the old ToU - very smart, and something that probably got them extensive media coverage all over the world (hey - there's a lot more room to grow, from their measly 160 Million or so users;).

So Zuck wrote in this blog-post:  "Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way. And... we came to an interesting realization—that the conventional business practices around a Terms of Use document are just too restrictive to achieve these goals. We decided we needed to do things differently and so we're going to develop new policies that will govern our system from the ground up in an open and transparent way. Beginning today, we are giving you a greater opportunity to voice your opinion over how Facebook is governed"

Well-done. Sure sounds a lot like Facebook will be more like a 'Public Utility' ... kind of like the BBC, maybe? Now, there's another blog-post, right here!

But here is the key point, for me: It is now abundantly clear that the WE-THE USERS can control and influence what happens - not (just) the 'Network Owner' or 'Provider' or 'Media Company' or 'Studio' or 'Label' or "TV / Radio Network".  If we-the-users, the people formerly known as consumers, don't like it, we'll leave, taking all our friends with us, deflating the platform's value very quickly - just imagine what would happen to Google if we pulled our trust from them. Control has now shifted to the Users - and that's a good thing.

This is,  of course, the topic of my next book (download some previews, here).  More soon.  Facebook ToU tag cloud by Flickr, AuntieP

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Compensation not Control - The Future of Music: video & audio versions of my presentation at MidemNet 2009 (*one of my best ;)

Finally, here is the video and audio version of my presentation at MidemNet 2009, in Cannes France. I put a ton of work into this presentation and, well, honestly... I think it's one of the best I have ever done on this topic.  Hope you enjoy it - and please comment, below, and / or spread the word!  Thanks to the Midem organization for providing the DVD with this video.

The topics: why the music industry needs to license the Internet just like it has licensed Radio (i.e. with a collective license), why criminalizing the users & fans will not work - and why those efforts should be re-directed to the creation of a new 'Music 2.0' ecosystem that actually produces growing revenues, where those new revenues will come from, and how the music flat rate - aka music like water - would work. See my previous blog post for more details and the PDF of this presentation. The MidemNet blog is here. My free book, Music 2.0, is here, btw;)

Youtube versions here.  MP3 file download: Compensation not Control Futurist Gerd Leonhard MP3

Audio via Soundcloud, below  

Compensation not Control Futurist Gerd Leonhard at MidemNet 2009 by gleonhard

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Across Irish Sea: two bold tactics against music piracy, Gerd comments: Compensation not Control! (CS Monitor)

Image by gleonhard via Flickr

A god read: Across Irish Sea: two bold tactics against music piracy | csmonitor.com.
This is a good review of the Isle of Man plans to make music sharing on the Internet legal. I was asked to comment on this; here are some excerpts: 

“The logic is quite straightforward: You find a way of creating a payment within the network,” says Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist and author...Although a similar idea failed in France in 2006 amid a fierce lobbying effort by the recording industry, Mr. Leonhard has long argued that if the recording industry licensed Internet networks with a flatrate for streaming and downloading music, then advertising and other subsidies would be able to cover the entire CD business. He doesn’t even think the Isle of Man’s tax is necessary.

“The payment of about €1 [$1.28] per week, which we have been debating in Europe as a flat rate, is entirely possible to raise through the ecosystem. The music won’t be free, but it will feel like free,” he says, in an interview from Austria. Business models like Leonhard’s are becoming more feasible as concert tours, merchandise, and endorsements become more lucrative than recordings. “When Prince gives away his CD away with a British Sunday newspaper, he knows that he will be guaranteed three sold-out shows. That is worth more to him than the recording,” Leonhard says...."

Author and futurist Leonhard says the recording industry is fighting an uphill battle: “The tactic of criminalizing users hasn’t produced any money. The industry needs to look for compensation, not control.”

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Is music's future on the Isle of Man? The IHT on the Music & ISP discussion, quotes me ;)

Image via WikipediaThis is a good read: Is music's future on the Isle of Man? - International Herald Tribune.... not just because they quote me (that's a good start, though;) but also because it's a pretty summary of the issues.  I paraphrase: 

"The island, a rainy outpost in the Irish Sea, is promoting an offbeat remedy for digital piracy, which the record companies blame for billions of dollars in lost sales. Instead of fighting file-sharing, the government wants to embrace it - and it is trying to enlist a skeptical music industry in support....Under a proposal announced this month, the 80,000 people who live on the Isle of Man would be able to download unlimited amounts of music - perhaps even from notorious peer-to-peer pirate sites. To make this possible, broadband subscribers would have to pay a nominal fee of as little as £1, or $1.37, a month to their Internet service providers"

"A lot of people in the business are concerned with how much money they are losing, but not with how much money they could make," Berry said. Under his proposal, the money collected by the Internet providers would be sent to a special agency that would distribute the proceeds to the copyright owners, including the record labels and music publishers. They would receive payments based on how often their music was downloaded or streamed over the Internet, as they now do in many countries when it is performed live or on the radio. The Isle of Man didn't invent the idea. The concept of a so-called blanket license to distribute music in digital form has been discussed since the days when Napster, before its rebirth as a legal service, thumbed its nose at the music industry"

"While the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major labels in the United States, has backed away from a nearly six-year campaign of litigation against individual file-sharers, the music companies' continuing effort to battle piracy in other ways dismays some analysts. "They spend 90 percent of their time trying to keep me from doing what I want to do and 10 percent of their time trying to make it possible," said Gerd Leonhard, author of "The Future of Music."

Read it and spread the word using the tools below;)

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Compensation not Control: Music 2.0 (my presentation at the MidemNet event in Cannes)

Compensation not Control Futurist Gerd Leonhard at MidemNet 2009 by gleonhard

Update here

If you were at my MidemNet presentation in Cannes / France, today... here it are my slides (I will add more details later... it's 2.30 am now ;). Hopefully MIDEM will make the entire video available soon, as well. Be sure  to check the MidemNet blog for updates (and the Kyte channel! 3MB PDF: Compensation not Control Music 2.0 Gerd LeonhardMIDEMNet 2009 low res

High resolution version viewing and downloading via Slideshare:

Compensation Not Control Music 2.0 Gerd Leonhard Midem Net 2009.Key

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: isps leonhard)

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YouTube Now Mutes Videos With Unauthorized Copyrighted Music - ouch! (via Mashable)

Mashable: YouTube Now Mutes Videos With Unauthorized Copyrighted Music. "Perhaps this has been going on for a while, but I’ve never noticed it before. YouTube users often create an original video using their favorite popular song as the audio. I’m afraid that they won’t be able to do that much longer, since YouTube has started muting videos that use unauthorized copyrighted music (and that pretty much means all user-created videos.) You can see some examples here, here and here. The official notice from YouTube under the video says the following: “This video contains an audio track that has not been authorised by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.”

Ouch. This will really hurt. Everyone. The amateur film makers, the artists, Youtube, us - the users. Yes, sure, I know: synchronization [the use of music in a public audio-visual production] is subject to a license by the writer, publisher, label, artist (and another dozen of parties), no matter how small the use. That's the law.
BUT: where will this by-the-book implementation of these laws lead us?  The answer is: criminalization.

Youtube (i.e. Google) will be virtually destroying 10s of millions of videos that millions of users have created and uploaded. I understand why Youtube would comply with demands for this, but this is really a bummer - would it not make sense for the music (publishing) industry to instead provide a non-commercial LICENSE for UGC content, and in return get traffic, referrals and shares of ad revenues? Would it not make sense for such a license to be created NOW rather then in 3 years? 

Another instance of music industry control obsession that just makes you want to scream if you haven't lived under a rock for the past 5 years. When is Compensation FINALLY going to be more important then Control?

PS: Mashable rocks. Read their blog!

UPDATE

Norwegian Dagbladet comments   Techcrunch rips into this topic   ReadWriteWeb

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Larry Lessig on Colbert, talking about Copyright: hilarious video

Larry is doing a great job here, standing up against Stephen Colbert's bizarre verbal ambushes - a must watch: "This is Artistic Socialism"  Via ZDNet.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Lawrence Lessig

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

ISPs and Music: compensation not control (comments on new content economics)

In preparation for my presentation on how ISPs and the Music Industry can work together (see today's Midemnet blog post), I have recorded a short podcast on the topic, below. The MP3 (4MB) is here:  Gerd Leonhard 21st Century Music Economics

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Why Apple Won't Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone (Wired.com) - but not for long I think

Good story here: Why Apple Won't Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone | Wired.com. The marvels:

"Don't hold your breath waiting for the iPhone to support Adobe's Flash software: Apple's terms-of-service agreement prohibits it....Allowing Flash — which is a development platform of its own — would just be too dangerous for Apple, a company that enjoys exerting total dominance over its hardware and the software that runs on it. Flash has evolved from being a mere animation player into a multimedia platform capable of running applications of its own. That means Flash would open a new door for application developers to get their software onto the iPhone: Just code them in Flash and put them on a web page. In so doing, Flash would divert business from the App Store, as well as enable publishers to distribute music, videos and movies that could compete with the iTunes Store"

Plausible explanation but of course there is no way Apple can let this continue in the long run - everyone wants Flash on their mobile devices. Zero chance for Apple to keep the lid on like this, imho. What do you think?

Picture via Flickr - well done Martin!