• How it feels to be sued for $ 4.5 million - http://bit.ly/bHMSX #

Het departement Cultuur, Jeugd, Sport en Media van de Vlaamse overheid heeft zijn website rond e-cultuur vernieuwd. Op cjsm.vlaanderen.be/e-cultuur vind je alle informatie over e-cultuur: publicaties, studiedagen, projecten, onderzoek en ontwikkeling enz!

The New Yorker recenseerde onlangs Chris Andersons nieuwe boek “Free” en plaatste een aantal kritische vraagtekens bij zijn theorie:

The only problem is that in the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, “has so far failed to make any money for Google.”

Why is that? Because of the very principles of Free that Anderson so energetically celebrates. When you let people upload and download as many videos as they want, lots of them will take you up on the offer. That’s the magic of Free psychology: an estimated seventy-five billion videos will be served up by YouTube this year. Although the magic of Free technology means that the cost of serving up each video is “close enough to free to round down,” “close enough to free” multiplied by seventy-five billion is still a very large number. A recent report by Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube’s bandwidth costs in 2009 will be three hundred and sixty million dollars. In the case of YouTube, the effects of technological Free and psychological Free work against each other.
[...]
there’s plenty of other information out there that has chosen to run in the opposite direction from Free. The Times gives away its content on its Web site. But the Wall Street Journal has found that more than a million subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online. Broadcast television—the original practitioner of Free—is struggling. But premium cable, with its stiff monthly charges for specialty content, is doing just fine. Apple may soon make more money selling iPhone downloads (ideas) than it does from the iPhone itself (stuff).

(bron: Malcolm Gladwell, Priced to Sell: Is Free the Future? In: The New Yorker)

• Chris Anderson on the free business model - http://bit.ly/cOwdf #

Aflevering van het Nederlands VPRO-programma “Goudzoekers” over de invloed van downloaden op de muziekindustrie:

(Probeer deze link als de player niet werkt)

Een paar interessante commentaren bij de verkoop van Pirate Bay deze week. The Guardian vindt alvast dat het altruïstisch imago van de initiatiefnemers compleet aan diggelen is geslaan:

Pirate Bay’s purchase by a Swedish gaming company proves giving away copyrighted material without compensation isn’t altruistic – it’s a business model  [...]

The Pirate Bay is not the first company (and, yes, whatever image they tried to portray, it was always a business) to have built their entire existence on making copyrighted material available for free, without asking, or compensating, the people who created the material. As far back as 2000, Napster was in the dock for copyright infringement; in 2008, the brand was bought by the American electronics retailer Best Buy for $121m (£74m). As I’ve previously reported, LastFM built their business on unlicensed music only to sell it to CBS for $280m (£171m). And let’s not forget Google’s purchase of YouTube for $1.65bn (£1bn). For supposedly “altruistic” ventures, these companies sure made a lot of money. Some would argue the artists whose music built these businesses should have received some of that money.

De krant stelt zich ook vragen hoe de site “legaal” kan functioneren:

But even if it looks as though GGF got a bargain, many in the music industry struggle to understand how the firm will be able to function – let alone make a profit – if it operates legally. The company says it intends for content providers and copyright owners to get paid for content downloaded via The Pirate Bay. Hans Pandeya, the chief executive, plans to charge ISPs and generate revenue from advertising. I find it hard to believe ISPs will pay, and the problem with ad funding is something to which Google can testify. Pandeya has admitted there are a lot of ifs. He also rather remarkably told the New York Times: “It is possible that they [record labels and other copyright owners] won’t want to get paid.” If Pandeya wants to get paid for the work he does, what makes him think musicians don’t?

The Register vat het cynisch samen:

The Pirate Bay has executed the Web 2.0 business plan to perfection: give someone else’s stuff away for free - then find a bigger idiot to buy the company.

Amanda Palmer, a solo artist and member of the Dresden Dolls with releases on Roadrunner Records, has achieved Internet notoriety for using Twitter to gross $19,000 in 19 hours over three separate events. The first was a T-shirt created during a Twitter conversation with fans and other followers. The second was a Twitter-driven webcast auction. The third was a donation-only gig in which fans got on the guest list via Twitter.

Lees de details op “Lessons learned from Twitter windfalls” (Billboard.Biz)

Interessant Nederlands debat naar aanleiding van het nieuwe boek van Joost Smiers en Marieke van Schijndel: Adieu auteursrecht, vaarwel culturele conglomeraten: