All Hail the Hub and Spoke
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 by Patrick RossThe hyperbole that surrounds the digital “revolution” (for instance, the use of that word) can be a little dizzying. I would encourage all of us to make sure we are taking in sufficient oxygen, and realize that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or at least to a predictable course, as a stream does after recovering from storm-related flooding. Specifically, please understand that our digital world is not entirely “new,” and as a result we don’t need to discard well-established principles of rights and ownership for creators.
My latest frustration was spurred by a fairly thoughtful but absurdly sweeping speech by Gerd Leonhard, one of many self-described “futurists,” who gave a talk at Google’s London office; his presentation was modestly titled “The Future.” (He explains in the beginning that it originally was on the future of media but he realized while preparing it that his vision was far broader than that. No hubris there!)
In a nutshell, he makes an argument that many have made before him; we are moving from a mass-media world of central distributors and consumers (as I call it, point-to-multipoint) to a world where we are individually networked with many others (point-to-point).
Your point, Mr. Leonhard?
Yes, this is a shift, a real one. It is not revolutionary, however. As I have previously noted — I encourage you to read this past blog entry on the subject, which has cool charts and graphs, as cool as I can make them anyway — this is actually a return to the methods of communication common throughout recorded history.
The mass-media age folks the age of Mr. Leonhard and I grew up in was the historical aberration. In fairness to Mr. Leonhard, he is not the only one to miss this point; very smart people such as Professor Yochai Benkler also fall into the trap of extrapolating beyond the reasonable; in his case, he seems to view our planet of 6 billion people as capable of operating as a kibbutz.
This notion of a return to point-to-point norms is an important baseline to operate from; we are returning to a historic equilibrium.
But it is also important to keep to a minimum the hyperbole of point-to-point communications.
In nearly all communication we refer to as point-to-point, there are actually facilitators, distributors. Twitter the company serves as a distributor of tweets, Facebook and MySpace act likewise. Google is the ultimate aggregator, but there are more human ones as well such as The Drudge Report and Huffington Post.
This myth of bottom-up distribution can perhaps best be found with Wikipedia, the site that makes many digital “revolutionaries” all tingly. Do you perpetuate the meme that Wikipedia is the ultimate town square, the completely democratic entity that gives equal weight on the thoughts related to dinosuars as precursors to birds to a high-school dropout and a decorated paleontologist?
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Wikipedia repeatedly has clamped down on its editing process, most recently last month. The site is becoming increasingly hierarchical, although it should be noted that the editing itself is largely voluntary. Still, the Wikimedia Foundation has acknowledged that the Pareto Principle is in effect with their operation; a very small cadre of volunteers oversee vast quantities of content, not unlike a traditional encyclopedia. We see this same pattern with Facebook and Twitter, where the vast majority of posts are done by a tiny minority of participants.
Think this wiki model, regardless of how hierarchical it is, is “revolutionary?” Try reading Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman. It took seventy years to write the Oxford English Dictionary, known as the OED. How was it done? A private society of individuals began asking lovers of books to mail in slips of paper of references they saw to words in books, not just exotic words but mundane ones as well. Millions of slips of paper were sent in over the years, with motivations of the senders ranging from just wishing to contribute to something larger than themselves to others enjoying the rare books the society would mail to them to read (they were obligated to return the books but didn’t always do so).
Here’s what happened. The project, expected to just take a few years, soon became too big for a private philological society to manage. Oxford University brought the project into their fold, and a large new building was built to manage it, complete with numerous cubbyholes to hold slips of paper. Numerous editors and sub-editors were brought in to sift through the slips of paper, and find the few references that would be included in the dictionary. (Generally they were looking for the first recorded reference for each meaning of each word, plus some ones that well-represented the meaning of the word in the quotation itself.) Of course, the editors wrote the final dictionary entries.
This was a classic example of a hybrid network, centralization overseeing decentralization. It is what we are seeing in the digital world today.
There are many more sources for music today than fifteen years ago, but there generally are facilitators of transport, from iTunes to Pandora to, yes, LimeWire. The same is true for other creative works.
Are there point-to-point connections between individuals in which creative works are passed? Yes. Is this in fact the most efficient system for transport, even in the digital age? Of course not.
Look at the growth of the Internet itself. DARPA didn’t sit down and draw a map of what the Internet would look like in 2009 and then proceed to dig trenches for cables. No, the Internet has grown, almost like a living organism, by adapting to need. When bottlenecks occur bits follow new paths, and engineers then build out where the most need occurs. The Internet backbone, and the ISP layer on top of it, has evolved as a series of hubs and spokes, not unlike the same model that has emerged in air travel. Why? Efficiency. There may be a flight directly from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but it will be a lot cheaper to connect through Atlanta. It’s just more efficient for the airline.
A few years ago I heard a brilliant thinker arguing that wireless networks would soon be passe. There would be no cell phone towers, no wi-fi routers. Our own devices would serve both as receivers and transmitters. If I stood in D.C. and texted my daughter in Alexandria, my text would bounce across hundreds of individuals’ mobile devices in nanoseconds and reach her. Is this technologically possible? Yes. Is it going to become a reality? No. Why? Because customizing all of our electronic devices to perform these tasks is simply less efficient than our current hub-and-spoke model.
What does this mean for copyright? It means that futurists are absolutely correct that the 20th Century model of a few large distributors directly providing us most of our creative works is becoming less and less of a reality. But it also means there will still be distributors, just more of them operating on smaller scales. This will make more challenging the licensing of rights, but in no way means rights don’t remain important. There will be more producers of works, as we are already seeing, but economies of scale will mean there will continue to be large ones along with small.
Each of us can be a producer, and each of us can be a distributor. But most distribution will go through larger channels. How does a creator monetize distribution when it is truly point-to-point, when it is your Uncle Fred downloading a file from your computer? I don’t know. Multiple attempts by copyright owners and P2P companies to figure out how to do that on a broad file-sharing scale thus far have not been successful.
But let us not be lulled into the vision of Leonhard, or of Benkler, who speaks lovingly of individuals donating unused bandwidth to the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project without really focusing on the fact that SETI is actually managed by a team of full-time scientists operating out of Berkeley. There is a center to that doughnut.
Celebrate the increase in production and distribution options in the digital age, a return to societies of our ancestors. But also note that an increase in production and distribution options does not mean there must be a reduction in creators’ rights in production and distribution.
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Great post! I too have come to think the mass-media era of the past several decades has been somewhat of a historical aberration, but you’ve definitely said it better than I could.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:33 am
[...] All Hail the Hub and Spoke [...]
September 4th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Some great points here.
I believe one point that may yet be left out of the conversation is that we think of music distribution to be entirely the thing of industry, and perhaps we need to envision, rather, developing quality communities instead. Is P2P a community? Yes, a huge one. Is P2P a quality community? No, because it doesn’t nurture it only leaches. I think our best way to counter the negative effects of P2P, and similarly harmful community behavior, is by educating and actively assembling supportive, nurturing communities that believe in feeding the well, not just taking from it. I think that we’re ready for this, as evidenced by the recent effect the environmental movement has had on society. The consequences are different, and certainly may seem trivial in comparison to mass exctinction, but it is perhaps a model, nonetheless.
September 5th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Thank you, Mr. Ross!
The illogic of the people who claim that “the new digital world means a different paradigm financially” — and who use that statement to argue against copyright — have been the bane of my existence for some time. Choosing the example of the creation of the OED was a superb illustration of the idea that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The only problem is that some people who want to eliminate IP rights and copyright are probably not logged on to your blog (I’m reading it via a link from ASCAP) and a post I made a few weeks ago challenging the claims of one anti-copyright group was not included on their blog, so I’m guessing that the people most ignorant about all this are also least likely to accept articulate and cogent arguments in response.
However, I already added a link to The Copyright Alliance on my personal website, and I’ll continue to do my small part to work with the Copyright Alliance. Thanks for this brilliant and important bit of added ammunition in the war to protect copyright.
September 5th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Thanks, Brian and Leigh.
Brian, P2P is a community, and some do contribute, but by sharing when they do not have the authority to do so. (A defender of illicit file-sharing told me awhile back that risking legal harm by offering files to others was a charitable act, an interesting moral pretzel.) Communities in the long term need internally produced contributions; without that, we have the tragedy of the commons.
Leigh, thanks for your encouragement. I think you’d be surprised how many digital utopians (as I like to call them) read this blog; the question is, do they actually absorb anything they read? They are likely receiving far more reinforcement for other points of view elsewhere in their own echo chambers, or digital hollows, as I wrote here once — http://blog.copyrightalliance.org/2009/05/journalism-and-the-digital-hollows/ . Thank you for doing your part to spread the word.
September 6th, 2009 at 1:49 am
Patrick, this is the self-described futurist, Gerd Leonhard, responding to your post. I will quote you and comment.
1) You say: “Specifically, please understand that our digital world is not entirely “new,” and as a result we don’t need to discard well-established principles of rights and ownership for creators”. You are wrong there, on part 1, Patrick: a connected world of 2Billion+ digital natives IS a new world - just look at your own kids (if you have any). You are right on part 2: no need to discard ownership etc - the need is to EXPAND it and license the web just like we licensed Radio or TV. Just like CableTV was illegal until the Supreme Court made it legal - by mandating a license fee, the same must happen for content online, starting with music. Please take a look at some of my essays on this topic at http://www.musiclikewater.com or look at my “Compensation Not Control” video at http://www.gerdtube.net. This message is crucial: COMPENSATION NOT CONTROL. What you seem to be suggesting in your comment on my Google video is that Control is needed to get compensation - and that is an illusion, in my opinion, and only leads to further loss of compensation. Read my essays at http://www.endofcontrol.com
2) You say: “But it is also important to keep to a minimum the hyperbole of point-to-point communications. In nearly all communication we refer to as point-to-point, there are actually facilitators, distributors….What does this mean for copyright? It means that futurists are absolutely correct that the 20th Century model of a few large distributors directly providing us most of our creative works is becoming less and less of a reality. But it also means there will still be distributors, just more of them operating on smaller scales. This will make more challenging the licensing of rights, but in no way means rights don’t remain important”
Patrick, please tell me where in my Google speech see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUrj7CJ0CUs I mention that rights aren’t important. Tell me where I say there won’t be distributors, or that copyright is dead. I just say that Distribution is NOT A BUSINESS on its own any longer, and that selling copies is giving way to selling (or rather, bundling access) that USAGE RIGHTS can probably make creators more $$ than insisting on copyright mechanisms from 50 years ago. Yes, that’s the law, now - but do you want revenues, do you want a future, or do you want to chase the horses back into the barn? There IS a solution, and it’s a new blanket license for the use of content (starting with music) on the web. Just give PERMISSION and you will receive PAYMENT.
Patrick I do wish you would look at my writings and videos with an open mind, without the assumptions that surface again and again, above - I am trying to solve a problem for creators, here, not put your holy cows on the grill. Read my stuff with that in mind, and THEN tell me where the absurdness is, ok? Happy to talk.
Cheerio from Switzerland
Gerd Leonhard
http://www.twitter.com/gleonhard
September 8th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Hi Gerd,
Thanks for commenting on the blog.
I think we’re talking past each other a bit. Where you say I’m “wrong” it depends on focus. You say scale of communication is new; true. I say point-to-point, which was the thrust of your early remarks, is not new; that is also true.
As to the broader point on rights. I hear your focus on “control” (an ugly word but you are defining the semantics here, unfortunately) but of course copyrights are by definition control — control over reproduction, distribution, derivative works, etc. You may favor new funding models for creators, but if they involve a surrender of control then by definition they involve the dissolving of some rights.
Now I guess the key to this debate becomes, what was the point of your presentation? It seemed to be a call to action. You talk about collective licensing. That is hardly new. In your world, music, it is happening all over the place, as labels license entire libraries to download, subscription, streaming with download and/or subscription, etc. You surely know that labels have even experimented with licensing in the P2P space; I’ve spoken on that subject numerous times at conferences, it is a tough nut to crack but they’re trying.
Cable is a dated example of licensing, and involves streaming analog feeds, but there are much better examples of that licensing happening today, online, in the digital space, with individual purchases of copies of works. Look at my Kindle, for example; publishers are licensing broad portions of their lists to Amazon, and I can buy them with a downloading time of seconds any time my Kindle can connect to the Sprint 3G network (I’ve only lost connection once, deep in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York). As backlists are converted to Kindle format we’ll see more options.
The key here is that rightsholders — publishers — are voluntarily licensing to Kindle. When authors as rightsholders have a role to play, their consent is involved as well.
So if that is the model you’re talking about, your call to action isn’t necessary, because it’s happening every day.
I think the purpose of your speech — and correct me if I’m wrong — is to argue that the ONLY model sustainable in the future is a blanket license for consumers. Amazon has a broad license with publishers, but consumers purchase one book at a time. Even in the proposed Google Book Search, complete access to a full work is only available through purchase. And of course it is an opt-in system for rightsholders.
You seem to be in the same camp as EFF, Jim Griffin, and others arguing that we all pay one flat fee to some impartial fee collector and then we have unlimited access to creative works. You focus on music, but presumably that would apply to movies, TV shows, video games, books, magazine and newspaper articles, photographs, illustrations, anything copyrightable and digitized. Somehow fees would be divvied up among rightsolders and distributed, and somehow downloads would be tracked of all of these works (many of them downloaded in private networks or transactions) and we would calculate proper ratios without violating anyone’s privacy.
Beyond the logistical challenges of this (see Rhapsody or Napster or Spotify, which focus on music), please acknowledge that this system only works if the downloader has full confidence that what they are grabbing from someone else is under the license. That is where your “blanket” license comes from.
With an understanding of music, you know of such a license in the US, the one songwriters live under in which anyone can cover one of their works as long as they pay a statutorily set fee per recording. If I write an amazing song, the only way I can “opt out” of others’ use of my composition is to never allow my song to be released as a performance. Once it’s out there, you can grab it and I can’t stop you (again, you can grab the composition without asking me, not the sound recording). I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the only wealthy songwriters are also recording artists.
Bottom line, if you are advocating a compulsory blanket license, the only kind that provides legal assurances for the downloader, that is by definition not just a loss of control by the artist, it is an abrogation of their rights under copyright. That point is inarguable.
If you are instead advocating that individual rightsholders OPT IN to a quasi-blanket regime, well, knock yourself out, but recognize that they still have the right to ignore your prescient advice and continue to be dullards by expecting to receive some sort of compensation tied to the direct reproduction and distribution of their works.
But I don’t think “voluntary” is truly what you’re talking about here. Your presentation doesn’t suggest that. It would be like showing a nightmare scenario of people dying globally from swine flu solely because there were a few foolish people that were choosing not to wash their hands, and then saying: “So I’d recommend washing your hands but I celebrate your right not to wash your hands.” In the scenario laid out, if everyone washes their hands, swine flu dies, so I’d assume you’d advocate mandatory hand-washing.
Blanket licenses only work when mandatory.
The compulsory license chimera is one of the top ten copyright canards (#6, actually), which I dismissed last year here. http://www.copyrightalliance.org/files/userfiles/file/10myths.pdf
Thanks again for posting.