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Creators Don’t Get to Choose Which Business Model Works
As it becomes harder and harder to attack the logic of the CwF+RtB business model, I’ve seen a lot more people reaching for a kind of compromise or balance option. It goes something like, “Okay, I see how this model can work, but it should be the creator’s choice whether or not they use it.”…
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Seeing Past the Banner Ad
Crosbie Fitch added some good insights in response to my previous post about web advertising, noting that the internet is returning balance to communication, changing effective advertising strategies from monologues to dialogues. In addition to basking in the knowledge that he reads my site, I’d like to riff on his post a bit and look…
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Ad Blocking Is Here to Stay
This has been discussed at some length before, but with yet another one of my favorite websites featuring a columnist adding their voice to the fracas, I thought it was worth revisiting. Like Ars Technica before him, Louis Lazaris of Smashing Magazine chastises folks who aren’t keen on including ads in their web browsing experience,…
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Missing the Point of the GPL
Michael Martin of Pro Blog Design seems like a swell chap, but his recent post on applying the GPL to premium WordPress themes exemplifies the kind of erroneous thinking I frequently find in the creative community. In trying to apply scarcity rules to infinite goods, he misses out on an opportunity to utilize, rather than…
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I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property
Despite the attempts to elevate it to something tantamount to actual items, so-called “intellectual property” occupies the Land of Make-Believe along with unicorns and elves. Yet the very suggestion that the monopoly privileges associated with IP are invalid raises hackles and provokes fervent responses from the faithful. Jack Valenti brilliantly set the course during his…
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Conventional Foolery
Ever since Ubisoft decided that forcing users to constantly “phone home” over the internet was a great way to stop unauthorized sharing of their games, the tired old DRM debate has been experiencing yet another flareup. I was rather disappointed with the treatment the issue got by a few of the webcomics I follow: While…
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Bennet Lincoff’s Proposal Has a Familiar Stink
The Bennet Lincoff proposal has been getting a decent bit of play from the “copyright compromise” crowd, and advocates replacing copyright with a renamed “digital transmission right” that covers how digital files are used online. It’s voluntary, but the unspoken part is of course that if you don’t pay for a license, you’re operating illegally…
Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.