Yet again, we see an online "business model" that involves taking someone
else's creative work, and only talking about licensing when sued (after
suggesting the real problem is not their illegal behavior but rather a flawed
system).

The latest example is a
service called Redlasso, now being sued by multiple parties (including some
of my members, although I haven't discussed the case with them). Like other such
services, it takes something that for good or ill can already be done online and
streamlines it to make it easy for online users. In this case, it allows you to
capture broadcast video and then share it online. One little detail — they
kinda forgot to, well, you know, get the permission of the video owners.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard at conferences that you should
never ask for licensing first, because it's too difficult. Instead you should
just go for it. Either you'll be left alone or someone will buy you (think
Google and YouTube). Should you get sued, you can always settle and get the
licenses you thought would be hard to obtain legitimately.

This is a peculiar way of doing business. I once managed a restaurant
kitchen. I had to be in early in the morning to deal with the bread delivery
guy, the meat delivery guy, and the produce delivery guy. They'd be in my
restaurant for several minutes, because I needed to make sure there wasn't
rotten produce on the bottom of the boxes, that the meat wasn't spoiled, and
that I hadn't been delivered stale bread or had my stale bread returned to me
(the twisties were color-coded for dates.)

During that time their trucks were outside the restaurant, idle. What if I
learned the delivery routes of bread, meat and produce trucks, followed them
around, liberated them of some of their goods while they were in the restaurants
(they likely wouldn't notice if I didn't take too much) and then opened up a
shop? Nobody would say that was a good business model. No one would say I should
just aim to sell to a bigger competitor. No one would say that if I were sued, I
could just negotiate a distribution deal with the truck drivers.

Why should the Redlasso case be any different? Well, some would say making a
copy of something online is different than taking a loaf of bread. But they are
both goods, produced at some cost, and I would venture that the TV program cost
more, and involved more hard-working people, than the loaf of bread.

If everyone took bread off trucks, I guarantee the cost of bread would go up
and the incentive to be a baker would go down. If everyon took meat off trucks,
I guarantee the cost of meat would go up and the incentive to be a butcher would
go down. If everyone took produce off trucks, the cost of produce would go up
and the incentive to farm would go down. If everyone takes creative works
online, the cost of creative works will go up and the incentive to be an artist
will go down. Thus, we'll be looking at higher prices, and if we avoid the
higher prices to take the free copies, we'll accelerate the decline in
production of new works.

There's a pretty simple answer here. Copyright law, derived from the
Constitution, gives creators the right to license. They have every incentive to
do so. Just go and ask. We'll all win.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 10:34 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under creators, economy, market forces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.