Even if the acceptable price consumers are willing to pay for content approaches zero, that hardly means the value of content approaches zero. To the contrary, if you're able to search vast amounts of content for what is most interesting to you, the value you receive from that content increases with the size of the search space. It's a clear win for the audience.
But what about the content producers? Already, most "real book" authors don't publish to get rich from royalties, and derive most of their value in the form of personal and professional publicity they receive from their work. If the acquisition of such publicity shifts from big corporate publishing houses who have the business deals in place to get you on The Daily Show to something more democratic, authors benefit from an increasingly meritocratic system, as well.
> ... that hardly means the value of content approaches zero. To the contrary, if you're able to search vast amounts of content for what is most interesting to you, the value you receive from that content increases ...
The value of which Mr. Adams speaks is economic -- i.e. what is exchanged for the content:
> And so, as our ability to search for media content improves, the economic value of that content will approach zero.
Uh, according to that model there's still no actual payment. Most "Real Book" authors make money from royalties, those Daily Show appearances are PR in order to actually sell copies. Non-fiction authors can supplement their income with things like workshops and presentations . . . but fiction authors are pretty much screwed in that little scenario.
What's interesting to me is whether our values will change as this content essentially becomes widely available and free.
Currently, we have a perceived value of something based on its cost (see any web app pricing article). Will this evaporate as almost all content becomes free? Will our perceived value based on cost be replaced by some ranking system that Adams alludes to as "better search"?
This is the second variable that I think many people miss when they talk about the inevitable shift to free content as a negative thing for consumers.
There is no question that the value of each individual piece of content for each user will drop. However there is also no question that we get more utility out of the content we have, and therefore there is no question that the value of all of the content we have is greater.
The important questions are what fraction of that utility gets captured as income by various providers along the way (a smaller slice of a bigger pie can still be more), and how much an individual provider can capture.
Data from the music industry indicates that musicians who share their music freely make more money in the long run from increased concert sales, and memorabilia sales. (The Grateful Dead are an extreme example.) Data from http://www.baen.com/library/ shows that putting books online increases sales. So we have two examples where more free content translates into more money.
However for now it appears that the search engines, particularly Google, are in the best position to capture value out of the utility of content. But Google recognizes that it is in trouble without content creators and is actively trying to help. Here is hoping that they succeed.
Putting books online increases sales by giving extra exposure to those books which are online, compared to books which are not online. Assuming that it would still boost sales if all books were online is a textbook example of the fallacy of composition.
I've never heard of books being online for free. I would guess you'd only find maybe the top 100 bestsellers on bittorrent, or limewire. I doubt most of the books people want are shared online.
This is incorrect. Vast numbers of books have been on Usenet for at least two decades, and that was hardly the earliest internet book “piracy”. Pick an arbitrary “book people want” and it’s quite likely to be online.
The other day I downloaded a single torrent that had nearly 1500 science fiction novels in it. The intersection between this torrent and the titles in my bookcases was about 75% (40+ year old collection.) I did spot checks for torrents of random non sf titles, not to download, just to check availability, and the hit rate, with minimal searching, was about 50%. A little googling also found Mega-whosis downloads for lots of titles, including a large collection about half the size of the torrent I downloaded previously.
A spot check for technical books, some within the year, turned up about a 40% success rate. The older the book, the more likely I was to find a copy, down to about 5 years or so ago. Older tech books are available, but only titles that are big names in their fields. I did find one rather nice torrent listing older science books.
I would say that the online book piracy movement is rolling along pretty well. And this is in support of people willing to put up with the awfulness of reading on a laptop or desktop screen. IMHO, the iPad is _really_ nice for novels, short stories, comics, and manga. Less good for highly formatted technical and illustrated books; but still better than using a laptop.
"At some point, I assume, a Google search for any popular book title will return an illegal source at the top of the page."
This is not true. Generally speaking, the easier it is for a 40 year old to find, the easier it is for rightsholders to find and sue. Furthermore Google tends to be pretty cooperative with removing links to egregiously infringing stuff.
Charlie Stross recently republished a post by Milena Popova titled "Why Content Is a Public Good" [1] that I quite enjoyed, and think is relevant to this discussion. It goes into some detail on the true economic nature of content, and gave me a framework within which to think about it.
It is curious that he believes this transformation will be unleashed by the iPad. The reason he gives:
"The iPad has a browsing capability that allows you to see any content on the Internet, legal or not, and consume it from just about anywhere."
is untrue, and not just because there is a large amount of flash content on the Internet. Only a small fraction of illegal content on the Internet is available on the publicly accessible web. I see no reason to think the iPad will ever have bittorrent or filesharing applications, or that a large influx of iPads would allow pirates to overwhelm whatever forces are currently keeping copyrighted material off the web. So how is the iPad supposed to be some sort of game-changing tool for copyright violation?
He seems to be mixing-up value and price, or something like those. Is it bad to have more good stuff -- the choice to have good stuff? That seems wrong. What is going to zero is limits on distribution.
Banging on with words like 'illegal', 'criminal', 'stolen' makes it sound like a testy lament that the barbarians are at the gates. Things are changing, and most likely for the better. The fear of diminishing content from loss of incentive is not materialising. Between 2002 and 2007, film, book, and music production are all significantly up ('File-Sharing and Copyright'; Oberholzer-Gee, Strumpf; 2010.)
Not being able to imagine how production might be funded without distribution monopolies (copyright) doesn't mean new ways cannot be developed. The tech that is withering copyright gives us much more than it takes away.
"As our ability to search for media content improves, the economic value of that content will approach zero."
In simple words, he's just saying:
Piracy makes your content worth nothing.
I just don't think this is true. Piracy has been rampant in movies, but movies continue to make money in theaters, pay-per-view, netflix, or just good old TV.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 56.2 ms ] threadBut what about the content producers? Already, most "real book" authors don't publish to get rich from royalties, and derive most of their value in the form of personal and professional publicity they receive from their work. If the acquisition of such publicity shifts from big corporate publishing houses who have the business deals in place to get you on The Daily Show to something more democratic, authors benefit from an increasingly meritocratic system, as well.
The value of which Mr. Adams speaks is economic -- i.e. what is exchanged for the content:
> And so, as our ability to search for media content improves, the economic value of that content will approach zero.
Currently, we have a perceived value of something based on its cost (see any web app pricing article). Will this evaporate as almost all content becomes free? Will our perceived value based on cost be replaced by some ranking system that Adams alludes to as "better search"?
This is the second variable that I think many people miss when they talk about the inevitable shift to free content as a negative thing for consumers.
There is no question that the value of each individual piece of content for each user will drop. However there is also no question that we get more utility out of the content we have, and therefore there is no question that the value of all of the content we have is greater.
The important questions are what fraction of that utility gets captured as income by various providers along the way (a smaller slice of a bigger pie can still be more), and how much an individual provider can capture.
Data from the music industry indicates that musicians who share their music freely make more money in the long run from increased concert sales, and memorabilia sales. (The Grateful Dead are an extreme example.) Data from http://www.baen.com/library/ shows that putting books online increases sales. So we have two examples where more free content translates into more money.
However for now it appears that the search engines, particularly Google, are in the best position to capture value out of the utility of content. But Google recognizes that it is in trouble without content creators and is actively trying to help. Here is hoping that they succeed.
A spot check for technical books, some within the year, turned up about a 40% success rate. The older the book, the more likely I was to find a copy, down to about 5 years or so ago. Older tech books are available, but only titles that are big names in their fields. I did find one rather nice torrent listing older science books.
I would say that the online book piracy movement is rolling along pretty well. And this is in support of people willing to put up with the awfulness of reading on a laptop or desktop screen. IMHO, the iPad is _really_ nice for novels, short stories, comics, and manga. Less good for highly formatted technical and illustrated books; but still better than using a laptop.
This is not true. Generally speaking, the easier it is for a 40 year old to find, the easier it is for rightsholders to find and sue. Furthermore Google tends to be pretty cooperative with removing links to egregiously infringing stuff.
[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/why-cont...
"The iPad has a browsing capability that allows you to see any content on the Internet, legal or not, and consume it from just about anywhere."
is untrue, and not just because there is a large amount of flash content on the Internet. Only a small fraction of illegal content on the Internet is available on the publicly accessible web. I see no reason to think the iPad will ever have bittorrent or filesharing applications, or that a large influx of iPads would allow pirates to overwhelm whatever forces are currently keeping copyrighted material off the web. So how is the iPad supposed to be some sort of game-changing tool for copyright violation?
eBooks are merely leased to you, read your EULAs folks and start writing the publishing houses because this is a load of crap.
FWIW -- I can read my iPad in the sun just fine, provided I tilt it so the glare is gone.
Banging on with words like 'illegal', 'criminal', 'stolen' makes it sound like a testy lament that the barbarians are at the gates. Things are changing, and most likely for the better. The fear of diminishing content from loss of incentive is not materialising. Between 2002 and 2007, film, book, and music production are all significantly up ('File-Sharing and Copyright'; Oberholzer-Gee, Strumpf; 2010.)
Not being able to imagine how production might be funded without distribution monopolies (copyright) doesn't mean new ways cannot be developed. The tech that is withering copyright gives us much more than it takes away.
In simple words, he's just saying:
I just don't think this is true. Piracy has been rampant in movies, but movies continue to make money in theaters, pay-per-view, netflix, or just good old TV.