Revenue-sharing is an always recurring debate in the blogopsphere and concers the possible expropriation of value from the user-producers (i.e. the Third Enclosure process).
There are several arguments that would conspire not to make this a central issue. I just want to review a few of them here.
The most important one for me is the contention that peer production is a form on non-reciprocal production. You contribute voluntarily, and put the result in a pool which can be freely used. This means that there is no direct expection of reciprocity from a particular person.
In such acts of individualistic collectivism (as coined by Trebor Scholz), the giving is the receiving, as their is a direct exchange of reputational/learning/relational value which occurs by the act of sharing itself, and which is later reinforced by the health of that particular commons. What the companies that build platforms then do is to monetize derivative value streams, such as the attention of the audience that has been aggregated through their assistance. Revenue sharing can disturb this process, because when it directly links revenue to the effort and its success, it in fact changes the non-reciprocal production into something else: money changes the motivation, and one starts producing for different reasons than the direct production of use value. Now of course, for some producers this may be the point, and it is a legitimate desire, but such production is qualitatively different. Recall our previous discussions on a hierarchy of engagement, where we distinguish between sharing as icing on the cake vs. common production. In the first alternative, revenue-sharing makes more sense, since the primary motivation may be individualistic, while in the second, the production of the common means that direct financial returns might have crowding out effects.
An interesting add-on is inspired by a contribution by John Sobol to a recent iDC discussion I participated in. He writes:
“in a user-generated networked culture you have to locate value in processes (like relationships) rather than products. I think that we need to be talking about the Process Economy.”
I think that this is a crucial insight. Why does not everyone worry about expropriation by the commercial platform providers such as YouTube, or even the copyrighting of comments by Amazon? Because the real value that is produced is not the tangible comment or video, but the reputation and relationships that it has enabled, of which the particular act of sharing is just a part of a general process. This key value that user-producers are ‘getting’, is not captured/monetized/monopolized by any private operator.
There is no expropriation, except through the delusion that copyright grants the providers of these social spaces control and ownership of the social intercourse.
This delusion may similarly delude other tulipomaniacs into thinking such property is a valuable investment, but then that’s true for a pile of bricks in the tate gallery.
Meanwhile, the social community regards its commercial ‘exploitation’ as highly amusing – though some still get fearful (even if they don’t quite know why).
There is a class of public work that only has value whilst it exhibits all the signs of being unowned and uncontrolled. The fact that there’s some smallprint that states otherwise is inconsequential.