Kevin Kelly on business models in a world of free copy-ability
Openness creates wealth, enclosure captures it. That enclosure can be willfull, i.e. using proprietary licenses to protect part of the value you want to bring to the market (think of the dual licensing schemes in open source software), or, more fundamentally, you can create added value that is by nature difficult to copy, even in an environment of openness and free copy-ability.
This is the track chosen by Kevin Kelly in an important contribution, worth reading in full. The only things that cannot be free, because they cannot be copied easily or at all, are what he calls “generative values”.
Here is the excerpted list, by Kevin Kelly:
“A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.
Immediacy — Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released — or even better, produced — by its creators is a generative asset.
Personalization — A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room — as if it were preformed in your room — you may be willing to pay a lot.
Interpretation — As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it’s no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software.
Authenticity — You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don’t need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You’ll pay for authenticity.
Accessibility — Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our “possessions” by subscribing to them.
Embodiment – At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you’d like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather.
Patronage — It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators.
Findability — Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention — and most of it free — being found is valuable.”
February 5th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Kevin Kelly’s “generative values” can be viewed as classifications of service provided by creators in a service market.
We can already see that as distribution costs become near-zero, there are two directions or trends for a society that treats nonrival goods as rival goods, and creative works as property:
1. Restrict technology in an attempt to create artifically high distribution costs.
2. Develop and evolve a service market model for creative (nonrival) work creation.
As expected, we see a mix of these two.
The first is a combination of “old guard” and established interests, particularly corporate interests.
The second is seen in the more technologically savvy, and generally younger generations; they know near-zero distribution cost is the reality and nonrival goods are not “property;” they see artificial scarcity through technological surveillance and restriction as an unjustified smothering of freedom. This oppression is seen as unfair, and reverse psychology comes into play: the harder they are pushed, the harder they push back, going to great lengths and personal risk to fight, undermine, and protest the system.
I think we’re seeing a shift to the creation of these “generative values” by creators, but we also need new compensation models enabled through user/creator-owned “free” commons: what I think of as a “commons agora,” which maintains near-zero cost of value transfer (payment/compensation) and growing layers of metadata that can be mined and used (via searches, categorization, ranking, communities) to connect creators and customers. Complementary development of these components, along with ensuring continual user freedom via GPL-like licensing, should increasingly create wealth and further undermine attempts at technological restriction.
We must also consider who owns the property that enables transmission, and how open the commons can truly be without opening those commons as well. The “old guard,” of course, is already leveraging this control against user freedom, under the euphemism “Quality of Service.”
These trends and general socioeconomic mechanics are why I’m working on describing a socioeconomic model that applies a service economy to both nonrival and rival goods. I think we’re already headed that direction, but we need to establish human accountability and freedom as a whole before someone dictates it for us.