I think the main issue is about content, whether creative or research. Selling mousepads on top of the cartoon, writers selling (? I can’t even think of anything) on top of their articles or stories, musicians touring instead of getting paid for their music devalues the content itself.

But the funding community pushes this mentality out to a lot of start-ups – get the numbers up and you’ll get funded (we’ll figure out how to monetize it later).

I see what she means though. It’s an interesting perspective that I admit I’ve never thought of before. To me free has always meant a rebellion against elite controling interests like record labels who use and abuse their artists.

Am I using and abusing artists? HMM. I’ll have to think more about that. That’s not my intention, but I don’t want to have to pay for every little click I make either or for a whole new library of music every time the format changes.

I’ll be interested to know what she’s come up with. I like cartoons. Could be cool.

Why? Because that was persistent, wholesale exploitation of someone else’s content. Definitely, “not cool” as you said.

Where’s the line between exploitation and exposure? I like how trademark law settles name disputes using the standards of “diminished value and confusion.” You can trademark the same name as another company as long as doing so doesn’t cause marketplace confusion (i.e. Acme Trucking won’t be confused with Acme Bridal Gowns) and if the use of the name won’t diminish the existing company’s reputation or value.

Let’s apply that to copying: If a site runs every one of your comic strips without linking to you, it is wrong because it confuses the visitor into thinking they own or have licensed your content and diminishes your value (by stealing eyeballs from you without giving any back).

On the other hand, why wouldn’t you be extremely “happy and grateful” when a popular site features an occasional copy of your comic strip with a link? This exposure is really a huge asset, promoting your brand and driving eyeballs to your door.

Still, it remains up to you how to monetize that attention.

However, you lay an awful lot of blame on geeks, as if they are so oblivious to the value of other creatives that they are willing to trample everyone else’s livelihoods beneath the sandaled feet of their hippie “free” tech culture.

On the contrary, tech culture from the beginning has been about freedom as you value it – freedom to compute, to create, to share ideas and goods (digital usually) which, initially, have no intrinsic value. It just happens that this incubator for created value also provides the means for sharing/stealing those same digital goods once they prove their value.

You seem to think Geeks hacked into our brains one day and injected the thought, “Hmmm, I’d rather pay $0 for cool stuff”. I believe that was already “burned-in” to human nature, don’t you think?

As you rightly point out, though, the human impulse for FREE becomes a big problem for artists (like musicians and cartoonists) who have traditionally relied on an entrenched channel (music label or newspaper) to control and monetize their work.

So what are creatives to do?

First, recognize that controlled channels are gone and not coming back. Second, understand that while a creator’s relationship to the Demon Commerce was indirect before, it is now either more direct (i.e. T-shirts) or more subtle (monetizing attention).

Taking your example, Bill Watterson (a peerless national treasure, to be sure) is deluded if he thinks he never participated in commerce. Notice that his work was given away for $0 marginal value every day in the newspaper. It was copied, passed around and plagiarized. Yet, he thrived because his amazing art was paid for by coupon inserts, classified ads for busted washing machines, and shameless pitches for shady vacation timeshares.

What has changed for the 21st century Bill Wattersons?

1. They now don’t need to wait to be discovered by a cigar-chomping comics editor somewhere. They can self-publish online and build an audience (and a brand) virally.

2. They can monetize their attention immediately and directly, themselves.

3. They have to be aware that once they publish a piece of work online, they can’t control its dissemination, only exploit its popularity. For instance, once Monday rolls around, Sunday’s cartoon is “worthless” (already downloaded, emailed, devalued to $0). But, happily, each “stolen” copy becomes a walking, talking ($0 cost) advertisement for more of the same. The artist’s brand builds and they can capitalize on that: Page views become ad revenue and [Buy Now] buttons sell books of compiled “worthless” cartoons for a hefty profit with no middle-man, etc.

No doubt, geeks have accidentally engineered a huge change in the landscape for content and content creators. But, if you look around, I believe you might see a landscape fertile with more possibilities (and profit for creatives) than the one it plowed under.

I’d like to clarify, since I said it only parenthetically in this essay, that I don’t believe that the vast majority of geeks have any malicious intent (virus creators, identity thieves, etc. notwithstanding).

It’s a problem of conflicting worldviews. Geek philosophy rules the Internet, even for those who aren’t geeks. I would hope that geeks recognize the responsibilities that go hand-in-hand with power and more consciously try to “do no harm,” or at least own up to the harm they do others, whether it’s intentional or not.

As to your question, SJones: why wouldn’t you be extremely “happy and grateful” when a popular site features an occasional copy of your comic strip with a link? This exposure is really a huge asset, promoting your brand and driving eyeballs to your door.

First, that link is almost never present, even when the cartoonist has a website, and many do not. But that aside, nobody but the owner of the content should be able to make that call. If I owned a restaurant, I couldn’t drive to the Heinz warehouse, take cases of ketchup without paying and then use the excuse: Hey, I have a popular restaurant, and I’m exposing your product to your customers and driving mouths to your door! Even if this would be valuable for Heinz (yeah, right), it’s nobody’s call to make but theirs.

It’s extremely presumptuous at best to decide for other people what’s good for them.

I was an animation festival this past summer. The guys from Adult Swim were there. From left, right and center, people kept making the claim that they should be “flattered” and “happy” that their content was constantly stolen and put on You Tube. “You’ll make more money this way!,” was the loud chant. But these creators called bullshit. They said, Look, it’s OUR business, WE are the ones who know it, and we’re here to tell you that this theft has cost us so dearly that we very well might not survive.

Free was destroying them, not benefiting them, and could hurt their fans in the long run, because the guys at the top were threatening to cut off funds to produce new animations, since they were no longer earning their keep.

Let’s face it, it’s been a convenient rationalization to buy into the conscience-soothing idea that “if I take this for free, the creator will actually make more money,” but it simply isn’t true in most cases. If the creator happens to be in a place where free works for him or her, then great, let them decide to pursue a free strategy. But if not, nobody has the right to push free on them. And if you do, you’ll ultimately not only destroy them, but harm yourself because of the declining quality of content that results.

Free is a tantalizing myth, but a myth just the same.